Inner Religion in Jewish Sources: A Phenomenology of Inner Religious Life and Its Manifestation from the Bible to Hasidic Texts 2020015847, 2020015848, 9781644694299, 9781644694305, 9781644694312

Citation preview

Inner Religion in Jewish Sources A Phenomenology of Inner Religious Life and Its Manifestation from the Bible to Hasidic Texts

Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah Series Editor Dov Schwartz (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan) Editorial Board Ada Rapoport Albert (University College, London) Gad Freudenthal (CNRS, Paris) Gideon Freudenthal (Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv) Moshe Idel (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) Raphael Jospe (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan) Ephraim Kanarfogel (Yeshiva University, New York) Menachem Kellner (Haifa University, Haifa) Daniel Lasker (Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva)

ACADEMIC STUDIES PRESS

Inner Religion in Jewish Sources A Phenomenology of Inner Religious Life and Its Manifestation from the Bible to Hasidic Texts Ron Margolin Translated by Edward Levin

Boston

2021

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Margolin, Ron, author. | Levin, Edward (Translator), translator. Title: Inner religion in Jewish sources : a phenomenology of inner religious life and its manifestation from the Bible to Hasidic texts / Ron Margolin ; translated by Edward Levin. Other titles: Dat ha-penimit Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2021. | Series: Emunot: Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020015847 (print) | LCCN 2020015848 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644694299 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644694305 (adobe pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Jewish philosophy--21st century. | Judaism--Philosophy. | Hasidism--Philosophy. | Phenomenology. Classification: LCC B5800 .M3613 2020 (print) | LCC B5800 (ebook) | DDC 204.01--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015847 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015848 ISBN 9781644694299 (hardback) ISBN 9781644694305 (adobe pdf) ISBN 9781644694312 (ePub) Copyright © 2021 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved. Book design by Lapiz Digital Services. Cover design by Ivan Grave. On the cover: Marc Chagall, Jacob's Ladder (Genesis 28:12). Etching, hand-coloured, on Arche Vellum. From the series Bible, Marc Chagall, Editions Verve, Paris,1956. © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Published by Academic Studies Press 1577 Beacon Street Brookline, MA 02446, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

In loving memory of my wife Amalia

Contents

Prefaceix Introduction1 Part One: Ritual and Custom Chapter 1. Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments

57 59

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience Introduction: The Meaning of Ecstatic Experience and Mystical Experience in the Study of Religion Chapter 2. Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Experiences Chapter 3. Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing

157

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner Introduction: Interiorization in Religious Thought Chapter 4. The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law Chapter 5. Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life Chapter 6. Epistemological Interiorization

261 263 267 341 447

159 173 211

Afterword: The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental 511 Bibliography543 Index of Subjects 585 Index of Names 591 Index of Sources 596

Preface

This book, based on my research into the phenomenology of inner religious life, is a study of six categories of interiorization found in Judaism and other religions. The developments that have occurred in these religions, different though they may be in substance, reveal the common motif of religious interiorization. A phenomenology such as this cannot encompass all facts and properties, of course, but that is the price of innovating tools for research. In recent decades, studies of comparative religion have frequently been attacked for ignoring interreligious distinctions and for focusing instead only on the phenomena they share. However valid this criticism may be, it does more harm than good to deny any value at all to comparative studies. Dismissing comparative studies as reductive cannot obscure the fact that there is a deep structure common to religious phenomena. The six categories I propose in this book are not total or absolute, but they cast a conceptual and theoretical net that facilitates discussion of religious interiorization and inner religious life. The phenomenology of inner life as it applies to Jewish sources enables us to observe the uncertainties of the place and value of inner life for a religion in which a transcendent and heteronomic obligation to fulfill the commandments is central. The focus on inner religious life in Judaism and other world religions does not spring from a denial of their outer social, institutional, prescriptive, and ritual aspects. The immanence of the psyche engages even those who are not inclined to relate the social, theological, or legal aspects of religion to other important elements in human existence that are addressed in religious sources in general and in Jewish sources in particular. The book’s introduction elucidates the underlying concepts of this phenomenology. It explains the distinction between inner and external

x

Preface

religion, between inner religious life and religious interiorization, and between understanding psychology and psychologizing, and it reviews the philosophical background of the concepts of inwardness in the study of religion. The introduction explains a range of Jewish concepts regarding inwardness in Judaism and the role of comparative research in this work. Throughout the book, I examine multiple sources, above all Jewish sources which reflect inner religious life in Judaism. Each chapter culminates in examples from Hasidic writings to validate the claim that a religious development from the Bible to Talmudic literature, medieval philosophy, and Kabbalistic thought reached its peak in them. To some degree this structure challenges the conventional format of Jewish studies and the study of religion based on an essential distinction between the sources of different historical periods and literary genres. In the field of Jewish Studies, this is particularly evident in the classification of sources into discrete categories: biblical, halakhic, midrashic, philosophical, or Kabbalistic. The chronological arrangement of Jewish sources in my study does not change the fact that they are drawn from different historical periods and intellectual contexts, yet the inner religious aspects they share justify the comparative approach I have taken. Reading these sources in light of diverse forms of interiorization breaks down the tall barriers often constructed by researchers between different types of sources and affords a more integrative view. The phenomenological methodology I have used here, in the spirit of Gerard van der Leeuw, the phenomenologist of religion, requires a clear differentiation between the depiction of phenomena and a philosophical discussion of their significance. I have left the discussion for the final chapter, elucidated through my own philosophical understandings of many matters in the book which grew out of dialogs with a long list of contemporary thinkers and scholars. In particular I wish to thank my friends and colleagues and the institutions that assisted me in writing this book: Moshe Idel, who encouraged me in my decision to publish the book in its present format, and whose studies I address here and agree with more often than not; Avi Sagi, who proposed the publication of this book in the Hebrew series, Parshanut ve Tarbut, interpretation and culture, which he edits for Bar Ilan University press, who supported me all the way and whose important works informed the writing of this book, particularly the concluding chapter; my colleagues at Tel Aviv University’s religious studies program and the Department of

Preface

Jewish Philosophy and Talmud. For many contributions to the thoughts that crystallized here, a true cross-fertilization of ideas, I wish to thank my seminar students over the years at Tel Aviv University and the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Special thanks go to Donniel Hartman, president of the Hartman Institute, where many of these pages were written, for supporting the Hebrew and the English editions of the book. For our long conversations and shared reflections I gratefully dedicate this book to my late wife Amalia, to our sons Jonathan and Ayal, and to my mother Yael Peled-Margolin. Heartfelt thanks go to the translator of the Hebrew book into English, Edward Levin, and to Jeremy Fogel, a true friend who helped with the reading of the manuscript. Many thanks as well go to the Yoran Schnitzer Foundation for Research in Jewish History and to the Jewish Studies School of Tel Aviv University. Finally I wish to thank Dov Schwartz, editor of this series and to the directors and staff of Academic Studies Press for their dedicated work in publishing this book. Tel Aviv 2020

xi

Introduction

Inner Religion Like all human culture, the phenomenon of religion exists on two planes: the outer social expanse and the inner mental realm, which is focused upon the individual’s inner life. The study of religion, which significantly developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, usually distinguishes between sociological-anthropological research on religion and psychological-phenomenological inquiry. The first approach is concerned with religion as a social and objective phenomenon, independent of the private, subjective thoughts and conceptions of individuals. For example, the social anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard lists three aspects of religion that, from the sociological perspective developed by Emil Durkheim, give it its objective nature: Firstly, it is transmitted from one generation to another, so if in one sense it is in the individual, in another it is outside him, in that it was there before he was born and will be there after he is dead. He acquires it as he acquires his language, by being born into a particular society. Secondly, it is, at any rate in a closed society, general. Everyone has the same sort of religious beliefs and practices, and their generality, or collectivity, gives them an objectivity which places them over and above the psychological experience of any individual, or indeed of all individuals. Thirdly, it is obligatory. Apart from positive and negative sanctions, the mere fact that religion is general means, again in a closed society, that it is obligatory, for even if there is no coercion, a man has no option but to accept what everybody gives assent to, because he has no choice, any more than of what language he speaks. Even were he to be a skeptic, he could express his doubts only in terms of the beliefs held by

2

Introduction

all around him. And had he been born into a different society, he would have had a different set of beliefs, just as he would have had a different language.1

The second approach focuses on the mental, and therefore more subjective, facets of religious life, that is, the conscious and direct contents of the individual’s subjective life, which religion influences either as part of social norms, or due to a personal choice that is independent of social religious conditioning. According to Durkheim, “[a] religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things which are set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.”2 In this sociological conception, the significance of religious beliefs and practices does not lie in their contents, but in the fact that they create social cohesion. Unlike this notion, the study of inner religious life is attentive to the manner in which the contents of religious beliefs and practices impart meaning to the life of the individual, apart from their contribution to social cohesion. The literary-historical research of religious texts, accompanied by the anthropological testimonies that assumed increasing importance in the first half of the twentieth century, provide the data for discussions of both the social and psychological aspects of religion. The distinction between exterior and interior religion does not imply a substantive division between these two planes. As a general rule, the two levels are intertwined and mutually supportive. In his discussion of the religious experience, which he based on Max Scheler’s work, van der Leeuw noted that there can be no inner without the outer. No emotion exists without its accompanying speech and posture, and every thought is associated with form and action. Consequently, he argues, we cannot speak of “institutionalized religion” as the antithesis of inner religious experience.3 Van der Leeuw developed the conception of “inward action” to show that every experience is both outer and inner. Moreover, each experience can be examined from two different perspectives: that of expression, which is the outer point of view, and that of impression, which is the inner aspect.4 1 Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 54–55. 2 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Experience (London: Allen and Unwin, 1976), 47. 3 Gerardus van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology, trans. J. E. Turner (London: Allen and Unwin, 1938), 459–60. 4 Ibid., 460.

Introduction

Although I agree with the fundamental understanding that every outer aspect has an adjoining inner aspect, and vice versa, in the reality of religious life, the idyllic inner plane, which reflects an exalted inwardness, is often detached from the plane of outer life, which reflects reality as it is. In many instances, there is a disparity between the outer aspect of religious behaviors and the inner facet ascribed to those behaviors that emerges from a study of the religious texts discussing those aspects. In some instances, each plane is almost totally detached from the other and exists independently. A certain activity, such as the offering of a sacrifice or public prayer, which is meant to give expression to religious sentiments of thanks and praise, could easily become an exclusively social act. In such a situation this action would express—in terms of the inner world of the sacrificer or public worshiper—social solidarity or aesthetic pleasure and remain indifferent to any religious gratitude. That is to say, outer activities are always accompanied by inner contents, but these contents are not necessarily identical with the inner meaning that the religious literature prescribes for these activities. Some people are defined as religious on the basis of their outer social behaviors—even when their religious conduct is detached from the inner meanings given by the religious texts themselves. Other people, in contrast, express no religious practices and affiliation in their outer lives but ascribe a central place to religious contents in their inner lives. Externally, these people do not seem to belong to any religious culture. Such extreme dissonances in the life and worldview of many people, with, perhaps, a growing prominence in recent generations, in itself justifies the distinction between exterior and interior religious life. Obviously, even if we assume that van der Leeuw correctly objects to the bifurcation between the outer and inner facets of religious life, this artificial division for the purposes of study should still contribute to a better understanding of religious life as a whole. But if, as I have argued, the frequent partial or almost total detachment between exterior and interior religious life does in fact occurs, then the distinction between exterior and interior religious life is valid and essential for a deeper understanding of the subjective and mental aspect of religious life.

Inner Religion and the Concept of the Subject The Western investigation of inner religion with philosophical, phenomenological, and/or psychological tools is directly related to the enhanced

3

4

Introduction

standing of the self and of subjectivity in Western culture. Charles Taylor argues in his book The Sources of the Self that the contrast between the inner and the outer dimensions shapes the languages in which we express our self-understanding: We think of our thoughts, ideas, or feelings as being “within” us, while the objects in the world which these mental states bear on are “without”. Or else we think of our capacities or potentialities as “inner”, awaiting the development which will manifest them or realize them in the public world. The unconscious is for us within, and we think of the depths of the unsaid, the unsayable, the powerful inchoate feelings and affinities and fears which dispute with us the control of our lives, as inner. We are creatures with inner depths; with partly unexplored and dark interiors. . . . But strong as this partitioning of the world appears to us, as solid as this isolation may seem, and anchored in the very nature of the human agent, it is in large part a feature of our world, the world of modern, Western people.5

Kantian philosophy, the second Copernican revolution in European thought, sought to rescue the objective status of science in Western culture. However, in reality it contributed to the ascent of subjectivity as establishing consciousness. In the twentieth century, subjectivity became not only the focus of many philosophical teachings, but also the base for the meteoric rise of psychology in general, especially psychoanalysis. The personality theory developed by Freud on the basis of Plato’s discussions of the soul in Phaedrus emphasized the dark sides of the inner self that had been repressed by “reason” especially because of enlightened thought. These aspects were depicted in ancient and medieval thought as passions, or as independent entities that presumably invade the individual’s inner world in order to dominate it. Freud included these facets in his comprehensive theory of personality. [M]en are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them 5 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 111. Taylor’s book is devoted in its entirety to a clarification of this issue. For an additional discussion, see Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Introduction

not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on them, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and kill him. Homo homini lupus. Who, in the face of all his experience of life and history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?6

Freud revealed the id, the repressed instinctual element in man, and included it in man’s self-perception: it demanded close examination. This expanded understanding of the inner self contributed, inter alia, to the rise of new trends in Western culture that to a considerable degree discarded the fundamental tenets of enlightened thought. Despite his declared secularism, Freud contributed greatly to the increased interest in the approach of various religions to the instinctual dark forces within man. Despite Taylor’s claim that the distinction between the inner and outer elements of the self is characteristic of modern Western thought, some Western scholars question this division. For instance, the concept of intentionality developed by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), based on the thought of his teacher Franz Brentano, who went beyond formal logic and psychologization, undermines the classical distinction between object and subject. In a new definition of subjectivity, Husserl argues that all consciousness is intentional, that is, directed to what is outside the subject rather than the supposed depths within.7 This line of thought influenced a series of twentieth-century German and French philosophers. Husserl does not negate the subject, or the understanding of the inner-outer dichotomy, but rather corrects the Western understanding of its nature. The postmodernist philosopher Michel Foucault completely denies the existence of the subject, and with it the division of outer and inner, subjective and objective reality. In practice, postmodernists attempted to undermine the psychoanalytical conception of subjectivity. They denied the very possibility of speaking about an independent inner human essence. 6 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961), 58. 7 On intentionality in Brentano’s teachings, see Jan Pavlik, “Brentano’s Theory of Intentionality,” Brentano Studien 3 (1991): 63–70. On intentionality in Husserl’s thought, see McIntyre and Woodruff, “Theory of Intentionality,” in Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook, ed. J. N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1989), 147–79; and in greater detail idem, Husserl and Intentionality: A Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982).

5

6

Introduction

First and foremost, their argument was an attack on the great project of the Enlightenment, which championed the concept of the “subject” in its original meaning—“what is located under”—as the heroic founding focus of human experience and action. Foucault’s writings posit the subject as a fiction, the product of social and cultural forces. It has no inner essence or universal validity; it is changing, fluid, and has many faces. [The subject] is not a substance; it is a form and this form is not above all or always identical to itself. You do not have towards yourself the same kind of relationship when you constitute yourself as a political subject who goes and votes or speaks up in a meeting, and when you try to fulfill your desires in a sexual relationship. . . . In each case, we play, we establish with one’s self some different form of relationship.8

According to the postmodernists, our identity is a construction of the culture in which we live, of the social order into which we are born. This culture gives us the linguistic tools and the symbolic codes with which we think about ourselves and about the world. Does the acknowledgement of these conditioning brings into question the existence of the hidden inner essence of man? Emil Durkheim, the founder of the French sociological tradition, first conceived the self as and entity fashioned by society. His thought formed the base of French structuralism and influenced both the anthropological school of Claude Levi-Strauss and the linguistic movement following de Saussure. Despite Foucault’s insistence on the difference between his conception and the structuralism of Levi-Strauss and de Saussure,9 his objections to the essentiality of the subject attest to his affinity with structuralist 8 Raul Fornet-Betancourt et al., “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom: An Interview with Michel Foucault on January 20, 1984,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 12 (1987): 121. My thanks to Asaf Sagiv for drawing my attention to this source. 9 “If I suspended all reference to the speaking object, it was not to discover laws of construction or forms that could be applied in the same way by all speaking objects, nor was it to give voice to the great universal discourse that is common to all men at a particular period. On the contrary, my aim was to show what the differences consisted of, how it was possible for men, within the same discursive practice, to speak of different objects, to have contrary opinions, and to make contradictory choices; my aim was also to show in what way discursive practices were distinguished from one another; in short, I wanted not to exclude the problem of the subject, but to define the positions and functions that the subject could occupy in the diversity of discourse” (Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith [New York: Pantheon, 1972], 200).

Introduction

thought. Apparently, Durkheim’s sociology exerted greater influence on this way of thinking than Foucault himself was willing to admit. The waves spread especially by the postmodernist critique of the subject intensify the ongoing discussion about its existence and nature. To quote Jacques Derrida: “This question of the subject and the living ‘who’ is at the heart of the most pressing concerns of modern societies.”10 Indeed, debates about which of the two factors, environment or heredity (“nature or nurture”), is more central in constructing the personality rest on two worldviews with different consequences in terms of values, determinism, and indeterminism and free will. Similarly, the disagreement between sociology and psychology is predicated upon fundamental axiological differences between the two disciplines, and is not simply a matter of scientific dispute. However, since both of these perspectives are firmly focused on reality, this philosophical and ethical divergence is concealed behind the appearance of their objectivity. Sociological and postmodernist views, which see the self as a product of social conditioning, are more deterministic. They grudgingly accept the anarchistic or nihilistic conclusions that follow from the idea that the individual is motivated by a social and cultural conditioning over which he or she has no control. Philosophical and psychological views that stress the substantiality of inner man assume the existence of free will and rationality. In short, these intellectual positions forestall the idea that the subject is a field of opposing forces in favor of a model of the subject as an essential entity despite everything. Strengthening the awareness of the subject to himself is central to preventing this disintegration of the subject for such philosophies. According to Durkheim and his followers, the future of culture is conditional upon its ability to create secular mechanisms that will substitute the unifying force of traditional religious rites and preserve social cohesion in new ways. For Freud and his disciples, the future of culture is dependent upon the ability of individuals to correctly manage their inner world through the conscious illumination of the dark elements at work within them. At the end of the twentieth century, the subject was declared dead by postmodernists. This statement could be compared with Nietzsche’s 10 Jacques Derrida, “‘Eating Well,’ or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” in Who Comes after the Subject?, ed. Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (New York: Routledge, 1991), 115. See also Nick Mansfield, Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

7

8

Introduction

proclamation of the death of God in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Aaron David Gordon said of Nietzsche’s declaration: “All that died was the obsolete and fossilized concept concerning God, but not God, not the unknown that you encounter whenever you think and feel, but which cannot be perceived or attained, that you run into whenever you live yourself, whenever you feel, think, speak, without knowing what it is and from where it comes.”11 Similar sentiments could be voiced about the death of the subject: the concept that became obsolete and fossilized might have died at the end of the twentieth century, but not the subject that you encounter within yourself whenever you think and feel.

On the History of Interest in Inner Religion Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Western culture showed increased interest in the connection between religion and the inner psychological life of the individual.12 This interest was sparked by the search for new forms of religious life, as sociologists by extensive 11 Aaron David Gordon, Man and Nature [Heb] Edited by Yuval Jobani and Ron Margolin (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2020), 94. Gordon (1856–1922) was both a Torah scholar and an autodidact maskil (member of the Jewish Enlightenment) born in the Ukraine. In 1904, at the age of forty-eight, he joined a group of young pioneers from Eastern Europe who, including David Ben-Gurion and other later founders of the State of Israel, immigrated to the Land of Israel, in order to work as an agricultural laborer. He was an important thinker who lived among these young people and joined the group that founded the first kibbutz, Deganyah, near the Sea of Galilee. His outstanding personality and thought influenced the founding generation of the State of Israel. His original existentialist philosophy was marked by spiritual-religious searching. Gordon took an interest in Buddhism and was erudite in modern philosophy and Russian literature. 12 The rise of individualism and subjectivity characteristic of Western society in recent decades is expressed, inter alia, in the Western citizens’ inclination to limit their commitment to external authorities and to compliance with the laws of the country in which they live. This limitation usually entails denying the right of other external authorities, such as religious establishments, to fashion the individual’s life in areas not essential to the existence of the state, such as sexual and marital matters, or the realm of opinions and beliefs. The elevation of subjectivity and the modern concept of the self to fashioners of the individual’s reality has greatly weakened the force of the allegedly objective revelation standing at the basis of the historical revealed religions, and especially the monotheistic religions. Since these religions justify the moral and religious demands of their faith communities by force of such claims, it is not surprising that the enhanced standing of subjectivity corresponds to the decline in the coercive power of the religious authority, which argues for a transcendental and objective source of its power. Personal experience and subjective considerations have

Introduction

secularization paradigms predicted a bleak future for institutional religion in the modern world.13 By revealing the subjective psychological contents of the religious individual, thinkers such as William James and Rudolf Otto showed that modern man could come into personal contact with religious life, while disregarding its institutionalized and social aspects. These elements of religion were increasingly perceived as external only, devoid of inner psychological meaning, and irrelevant for the modern social outer life that replace organized religion. This interest began in the early nineteenth century, with those European philosophers who were profoundly affected by the Romanticism of thinkers such as Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854), Christian Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829), and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834). The works of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the father of religious existentialism, who was influenced by these writers, are among the cornerstones of the conception of inner religion. In the second half of that century, this trend was continued by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra presented the prophet of a new religion who showed an alternative way to affirm life. Nietzsche’s call was like the little boy’s claim that the king is naked in Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” For Nietzsche, Christianity in the second half of the nineteenth century had become a petrified system of social practices, devoid of any inner meaning and no longer joyful. Accordingly, Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, in order to make room for something new. This declaration, along with the rise of existentialist philosophy, gave significant momentum to the study of psychology at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. On the one hand, twentieth-century psychoanalysis fueled the psychologization of religion. This development questioned the transcendental axioms at the basis of the monotheistic religions. Freud, who regarded religion as produced by obsessive neuroses and the Oedipus complex, argued for its substitution by psychoanalytical thought, which would be more successful in healing man’s ills. Jung, who identified the divine with an archetype within the collective unconscious, ascribed great importance become the decisive factor in the individuals’ decisions, especially as regards their private life. 13 For a current formulation of the secularization paradigm, see Olivier Tschannen, “The Secularization Paradigm: A Systematization,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36 (1997): 109–22.

9

10

Introduction

to religious content that he found in dreams and myths. However, he also used this content reductively, in order to improve his therapeutic method.14 Jung stated that his approach to religion was based on an empirical objective point of view: “Psychological existence is subjective in so far as an idea occurs in only one individual. But it is objective in so far as that idea is shared by a society—by a consensus gentium.”15 According to Jung, a religious symbol is not a signifier that attests to the nature of an outer god; rather, it is a collective human expression of a religious content that occurs empirically in the individual psyche. Other researchers, influenced by philosophy and psychology, different than that of Freud, were more positive in their understanding of the nature of religion and its place in modern life. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James is one of the foundational books on the psychological aspects of the religious phenomenon. James’s fundamental assumption was that the external and institutionalized aspects of different religions could be separated from the inner, psychological processes occurring in people who report religious experiences. His position was that although inner life is inextricably bound to its outer expression, differentiating between the two components is possible by way of the study of religion. James stated that mental occurrences are existential and irrefutable facts, and that their existence could not be questioned by philosophy. Therefore, subjective religious experience could provide the base for the examination of the reality of inner religious life.16 At the beginning of the twentieth century Georg Simmel, in his book Sociology of Religion, analyzed the difference between institutionalized religion and natural religiosity.17 His student Martin Buber developed this distinction and defined religiosity as natural religious sentiment and religion 14 See Carl G. Jung, Psychology and Religion, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969). On the debate between Buber and Jung, see Judith Buber Agassi, Martin Buber on Psychology and Psychotherapy (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 34–71, 201–24; Martin Buber, “Religion and Modern Thinking,” in Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1988) , 63–92. 15 Jung, Psychology and Religion, 6. 16 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1928). See especially lecture 2, 26–52. 17 Georg Simmel, Sociology of Religion, trans. Curt Rosenthal (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), 23–24. See also Simmel, Essays on Religion, ed. and trans. Horst Jurgen Helle with Ludwig Nieder (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 20–25, 121–33.

Introduction

as the external framework into which this sentiment is placed.18 In I and Thou, which was initially planned as an introduction to the study of religion, Buber formulated this disparity in a more fundamental manner. His conception was based on the distinction between I-Thou relations, and I-It relations, characterized a pragmatic, instrumental attitude to the other and to the reality. In religious terms, an I-Thou relationship is the foundation for inner religion, and especially for the encounter between man and God, whom Buber calls the “eternal Thou.” The I-It relations provide the basis for orientation in the world and outer life, including outer religion. At the same time, other scholars of religion, such as Rudolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy and Friedrich Heiler in Prayer, focused on specific aspects of inner religious life, such as Otto’s various elements of the “numinous” state of mind. Furthermore, the nineteenth century, and even more so the twentieth century, saw increased interest in studies of mystical experience in various religions, especially in Indian and east Asian traditions. This trend should be viewed in the same context as the growth of interest in religion and the inner mental life of the individual. The research into Christian and Sufi mysticism focused on the inner world of mystics and the works that they produced following particular experiences. The increased Western interest in the Indian Upanishads, Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism is directly related to the idea that, in contrast with the major monotheistic religions, these religions are firmly based on inner experience. The Gnostic groups that existed throughout the Roman Empire in the first three centuries CE aroused special interest among German-speaking intellectuals in the first decades of the twentieth century. This interest started with the German theologian Adolf Harnack19 and continued with philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, psychologists like C. G. Jung, and scholars of religion such as Gershom Scholem, who searched for Gnostic parallels 18 My distinction between outer and inner religion is influenced by Simmel and Buber, but is not identical to their theses. Simmel and Buber’s concept of religiosity refers to the natural, unconditional sentiment within religious frameworks, which is also the source of institutionalized religious behaviors. The concept of “inner religion” is more expansive and includes various aspects of religions that are focused on the inner lives of their faithful. The distinction between inner and outer religion takes place within the religious realm itself, while the distinction between religion and religiosity tends, either consciously or unwittingly, to divide between the institutionalized and personal, emotional elements and to highlight the disparity between them. 19 Adolf Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, trans. John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma (Durham: Labyrinth Press, 1990).

11

12

Introduction

in Kabbalah. Hans Jonas’s book on Gnostic religion, based on a doctoral dissertation that he wrote under the guidance of Heidegger and Rudolf Bultman, inspired many twentieth-century studies on ancient Gnosticism. The draw of this phenomenon for the above thinkers is undoubtedly connected to the Gnostics’ extreme absorption with inner religious life. Gershom Scholem’s research activity, discussed in greater detail below, began with an examination of Sefer ha-Bahir,20 which he perceived as a work of a Gnostic disposition. Although Scholem devoted greater attention to the Kabbalists’ theosophic and esoteric teachings than to their inner experiences, his early interest in the Kabbalah was no doubt fed by his search for Jewish mystical experience. This quest for inner mystical experience intensified among Kabbalah researchers in the late twentieth century, foremost among whom was Moshe Idel. To summarize: developments in nineteenth-century philosophy, psychology, and sociology had profound implications for the Western conception of the human subject and, as result, prompted intense reflection among theologians on inner experience in religion.

The Difference between “Inner Religious Life” and the “Internalization of Religion” The search for religious subjectivity did not begin in the modern West. Evidence from the history of religions all over the world indicates that the distinction between outer and inner religious life and interiorization processes already existed in various religions during the first millennium BCE (see below). The Indian ascetic saint Ramakrishna (1833–1886) said: “The true religious man is he who does not do anything wrong or act impiously, when he is alone, i.e. when there is none to look after and blame him.”21 Outer religious life is conducted in public. Consequently, the motives behind public religious actions might be completely external. The rabbis define 20 Sefer ha-Bahir is a short book regarded by Gershom Scholem and others to be the first Kabbalistic work, since, for the first time, it describes the divine attributes, the ten Sefirot, that it calls the Ten Sayings, with which the world was created. It is constructed from a collection of short dicta put in the mouths of various Tannaim and Amoraim. It was first known in its extant form in the late twelfth century in southern France. 21 F. Max Muller, Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1905), 123, saying 110.

Introduction

such actions as performed “for other motives [shelo lishma].”22 The desire to impress, to curry favor, to avoid criticism and social censure, and the like, are inner motives for external behavior that loses its significance when the person is alone, away from society’s watchful eyes. Inner religious life can only be examined by looking at the religious conduct of a religious individual in solitude, when they are apart from their social environment. Ramakrishna analyzed the inner religious content of devotion [bakti] within his Hindu world. Evelyn Underhill identified inner religious life with the mystical aspects of religious experience, which she defined as the attempt by the soul to make contact with those eternal realities which are the subject matter of religion.23 Such a life, even in a social context, and especially in solitude, contains a broad range of sentiments and values, such as the devotion of which Ramakrishna spoke, the feelings of awe before God, love of God, fervor, a sense of thanksgiving, dependence, and the like. Some researchers who developed the concept of “inner religion” identified it with Kierkegaard’s religious existentialism, or with religious sentiments such as those described by James in The Varieties of Religious Experience. I will consider various theories of inner religion, but most importantly, this book will focus on practices that the religious individual perceives as means to stand before, or to make contact with, the divine. For example, prayer will be examined following Heiler, for whom it was the only direct expression of inner religious experiences such as awe, trust in God, submission, longing, and fervor, unlike those indirect expressions provided by other religious practices, including ceremonies, sacraments, or mortifications.24 Prayer in this book will be analyzed from an immanentist perspective, from the inner viewpoint of the worshiper, and not within the framework of religious traditions that regard prayer as a divine command, religious law, or a formal manner of addressing God (or gods). Seemingly, it could be argued that every religious system of beliefs and opinions is an integral part of the totality of inner religious life, since thoughts, like emotions, are part of the inner experience of the individual. However, adopting such a stance would harm our ability to distinguish between the inner and the outer components of religion. Our use of the 22 BT Sanhedrin 105b. 23 Evelyn Underhill, Concerning the Inner Life (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999), 28–34. 24 Friedrich Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion, trans. and ed. Samuel McComb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), XV.

13

14

Introduction

term “inner religious life” refers to its overt and conscious psychological aspects. Accordingly, we should concentrate on thoughts directly pertaining to religious self-perception and on understanding the relationship between thought and reality. Integral to the current book are the religious ideas that focus on the life of the psyche and the existential conceptions at the basis of these ideas, as well as the religious theories of consciousness. Abstract or general thoughts on the world of the divine or nature that do not relate to the individual’s inner world or directly reflect it lie beyond the purview of the current study. This is also the reason why I do not include myth in the realm of inner religious life. In myths, more than in any other cultural products, psychological contents are externalized, projected onto historical figures and events that occurred or occur in nature, in the world, or on the divine plane.25 Generally speaking, a myth is not a conscious expression of the religious individual’s psychological life. When emotional aspects are included in the subject matter of a myth, they are channeled into a historical hero, and their significance for the religious individual remains hidden in a narrative formulated in objective language. Myth is a result of the objectivization of inner psychological contents by means of narrative formulation, while the object of this study is subjective life and conscious thought about it. Religious interpretation becomes a component of inner religious life as examined in this book only when we can directly expose the psychological data underlying the narrative expression by psychological analysis or other means. The internal psychological data of religion frequently attest to internalization in religious life. As I noted in my book Human Temple,26 in modern colloquial language this term usually means “turning stimuli and external motives into an integral part of a person’s self-consciousness and personality,”27 in the accepted psychological and sociological sense: for example, internalizing the figure of a parent or revered person with whom a certain 25 See Ron Margolin, “The Various Faces of the Jewish Myth: From the Bible to Its Conceptual Interiorization in Hasidism” [Heb], Te‘uda 26 (2014): 137–219; Hans Jonas, Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 291–92. 26 See Ron Margolin, Human Temple: Religious Interiorization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism [Heb] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 58–59. 27 See Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Ninth Edition (Springfield: MerriamWebster, 1991), 632, and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition (Springfield: Merriam-Webster, 1999), 611, s.v. “internalize.”

Introduction

individual identifies. Sociologists speak of the child’s internalization of the social world as part of socialization, and the same process occurs whenever an adult is integrated within a new social context or group.28 In this book I will speak of interiorization (or inwardness) as the process of change that occurs within a given religious culture, when the center of attention is shifted from the “objective world” of nature or myth to the “subjective world” of the individual’s psyche. Ultimately, this movement can result in spiritualization and a negation of external reality.29 Interiorization processes exist in many religions and in diverse contexts, but the changed focus from events in the outer world to inner psychological meaning is common to them all. The term “interiorization” presumes a transition from outer to inner perception, but the assumed existence of a developmental transition does not necessarily mean the prevalence of inner perception. Often, both perceptions continue to coexist. For example, Yochanan Muffs, a scholar of biblical and rabbinic literature, saw the history of the Israelite moral sensibility concerning reward and punishment as clear evidence of religious interiorization with an inherent tension between outer and inner perceptions: In the first stage sin has an objective quality. It is like a physical ailment, like a cancer that can only be cured by fire or the scalpel. In this stage, repentance, good deeds, and even the merit of a father do not work. The sin inexorably brings about a punishment, which must be borne. There is no way to cancel this punishment or delay it. 28 See Peter L. Berger, Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 121, where he observed: “Only an understanding of internalization makes sense of the incredible fact that most external controls work most of the time for most of the people in society. Society not only controls our movements, but shapes our identity, our thought and our emotions. The structures of society become the structures of our own consciousness.” See also his full discussion in the chapter “Sociological Perspective—Society in Man,” 93–121. 29 “Interiorize”: “to make a part of one’s own inner being or mental structure” (MerriamWebster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Ninth Edition, 631). I am aware that not all the scholars currently occupied with the question of interiorization draw a distinction between the three terms “internalization,” “interiorization,” and “inwardness.” Charles Taylor, who was especially attentive to the role of interiorization in the fashioning of modern man’s ego, did not distinguish between them; see Taylor, Sources of the Self, 120. Halbertal and Margalit used the term “internalization” for Maimonides’s distinction in Guide of the Perplexed 1:50 between what a person says and what is “imagined in the mind”; see Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry, trans. Naomi Goldblum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 273 n. 1.

15

16

Introduction

In the third stage, the sin has a subjective nature. It is like a mental disease whose cure is achieved by the repentance of the sinner. Repentance is an inner, psychic process, a type of psychiatric therapy. A clear description of this process is found in Isa. 6:10, if we convert Isaiah’s negative formulation into a positive one: “And if he sees with his eyes and hears with his ears, his heart will understand, and as a result he will repent and thus cure himself.” It seems that if His sinner/patient takes the first step in the process of repentance, the Lord in His infinite mercy gives the penitent the strength to complete the process of repentance and to stabilize himself in his newlyfound self. “Repent, O backsliding children, I will cure your backsliding” (Jer. 3:22) or “And you shall take to heart all that has happened to you, as a result of which you will repent to the Lord . . . who will then return your exile . . . then the Lord will circumcise your heart and the heart of your children to permanently love the Lord.” (Deut. 30:1–6) The second stage of this development reflects the tension between stages one and three. The attribute of strict justice makes its demands, and the attribute of mercy makes its demands. Justice says, “There is an objective obligation here—punishment must be exacted.” Mercy says, “The sinner has repented, forgive him.” The resolution of this paradox is the following: The sinner himself is not punished. The exacting of the punishment is delayed, and it is exacted from his children, in most cases up to the fourth generation. See, for example, the story of Ahab’s repentance [I Kings 21:27–29].30

Muffs identifies three stages in the Biblical conception of reward and punishment. The third stage, that of repentance, is evidently characterized by religious interiorization. The outer objective perception of sin as an act that offends God and requires external punishment is replaced by the understanding of sin as psychological harm that the individual causes to himself. Accordingly, this damage is to be corrected by an inner psychic rectification, by changing the behavior of the sinner himself. The interiorization reflected in the biblical idea of repentance is conditional upon an inner change: “and you return to the Lord your God, and you and your children heed His command with all your heart and soul, just as I enjoin upon you this day” (Deut. 30:2). And yet, it does not necessarily entail the negation of the outer religious life. Indeed, the repentant are assured of returning to God: “then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and 30 Yochanan Muffs, Love & Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 17–18.

Introduction

take you back in love. He will bring you together again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you” (Deut. 30:3). Muffs’s depiction of biblical repentance as religious interiorization is fundamentally a process of the mind. Other types of religious interiorization are inspired by other aspects of religious life. For example, some interiorizations develop the ritual sphere and discover the intent behind the ritual act, while others, known as mystical experiences, emerge in the experiential realm.31 Each of these types will be examined separately below. Just as a distinction is to be drawn between inner religious life and religious interiorization, so too we should not confuse these notions with extroverted or introverted mysticism. These two kinds of mysticism do not originate in the study of religion. Rather, they appear in James’s theories and Jung’s work on the psychology of the unconscious.32 James describes two types of thinkers, with their differing personalities as the root of their philosophical disagreements. The first type is inclined to more refined thought, and prefers rationalism, optimism, and idealism. This thinker also supports religiosity. The second type prefers coarser thinking and empirical thought, leaning towards materialism, pessimism, and the absence of religiosity.33 Jung used this distinction to explore the disagreement between Freud and Adler regarding the central motivating factor of human behavior: Eros, or the urge to rule, which he made the basis for his theory of psychological types. According to Jung, introverted people are more hesitant, reflective, restrained, and defensive; while extroverts act first and think about their actions later, they are more popular and trusting of the others, and are more open and willing to act. However, each type also contains the traits of the other to some degree. William Stace adopted James’s and Jung’s typologies, and separated mysticism into the categories of “extroverted” and “introverted.” He stated that these distinct mysticisms were created by men and women of different psychological qualities.34 But this is not the place for 31 I based this on Berger’s definition of mysticism: “If mysticism is defined in the broad way suggested before—that is, as a religious quest turned inward, seeking the divine within the interiority of human consciousness. . . .” (Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation [Garden City: Anchor, 1979], 171). 32 Carl G. Jung, On the Psychology of the Unconscious, trans. R. F. C. Hull (New York: Pantheon, 1953), 40–63. 33 William James, Pragmatism, and Four Essays from the Meaning of Truth (New Delhi: Eurasia, 1975), 9–26, and esp. 12–13. 34 W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1961), 62–122.

17

18

Introduction

a lengthy discussion of Stace’s work.35 Suffice it to say that Stace uses the terms “extroverted” and “introverted” irrespective of the processes of externalization and interiorization. I maintain that the testimonies of so-called extroverted mystics could also originate in inner religious life, provided that they are not formulated in the external language of knowledge and myth.36

The Difference between the Psychologization and Phenomenology of Inner Religious Life By its very nature, the study of inner religious life concentrates on psychological life that finds expression in religious texts and mores. From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, this focus on religious immanentism raised fundamental questions about the psychological underpinnings of religion. This discussion led many scholars to identify religion with psychological mechanisms, and, consequently, religion was perceived merely as an expression of human desires. In turn, this understanding led to the conclusion that religion is only a creation of the human psyche and satisfies its desires by means of illusory beliefs. Ludwig Feuerbach wrote in The Essence of Christianity (1841) that man attributes to God an essential part of his own subjectivity which he denies as belonging to himself. His assertion that man projects his subjective reality onto religious belief influenced psychological and anthropological conceptions of religion in the second half of the nineteenth century. Feuerbach maintained that by projecting parts of the human psyche onto the divine, that is, onto objective reality, man turns himself into the object of imagery that he projected from within himself. In effect, Feuerbach proposes that man can free himself of his subjectivity through religious belief. Man can 35 Stace saw the difference between introversion and extroversion as the basis for Rudolf Otto’s distinction between introspective mysticism and that of the unifying vision (Otto, Mysticism East and West, trans. Bertha L. Bracey and Richenda C. Payne [New York: Macmillan, 1932], 38–69). What Stace writes about the connection between the two does not necessarily reflect Otto’s main conception, but rather Stace’s pronounced desire to demonstrate the universality of mysticism. Stace’s book indicates his belief that the two types of mysticism of knowledge, which is of special interest to Otto, share traits that originate in a universal nucleus (Stace, Mysticism, 62). Stace’s emphases might have distorted and blurred Otto’s particular stance, since the latter was more attentive to the differences between the various types of mysticism, with a special focus on the uniqueness of mystical intuition, on which the mysticism of knowledge is based. 36 See the extensive discussion below, chapter three, 238–239.

Introduction

objectivize traits and qualities that are present deep in his own self and identify them with the divine.37 Feuerbach’s religious philosophy was often understood, primarily by Karl Marx, as total atheism, necessitating the complete negation of religion.38 However, in contrast to Marx, Protestant theologians and modern religious thinkers, especially toward the end of the nineteenth century, also found this philosophy to be of great interest. Following Feuerbach, they understood religious belief as a mirror showing man his depths without claiming that their origins are inner only. This understanding required a positive attitude toward religion, which gave a hope of religious renewal. A highly atheistic atmosphere, justified by Feuerbach’s teachings, prevailed in the psychoanalytical circle that formed around Sigmund Freud at the beginning of the twentieth century. The analyses of religious texts conducted by this circle, first among them Freud’s Totem and Taboo, were characterized by a psychologizing approach that intentionally reduced the importance of religion. Religion was explained as a psychological and social mechanism meant to overcome the instincts at the basis of human conduct.39 Since biblical anthropomorphism was regarded as a projection of the human onto the divine, the commentaries by Freud and his followers on biblical and other religious texts, as well as anthropological findings such as those attesting to totemic cultures, became a means of confirming psychoanalytical theory itself. The most striking departure from Freud within psychoanalytical circles was led by C. G. Jung. As mentioned above, Jung disagreed with Freud’s understanding of religion. In practice, he arguably leaned toward understanding Feuerbach as supporting a reevaluation of religion. Although Jung himself was indifferent to the theological meanings of 37 Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 27–32. 38 Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der Klassischen deutschen Philosophie . . . Mit Anhang Karl Marx über Feuerbach von Jahre 1845 (Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy . . . With Notes on Feuerbach by Karl Marx 1845) (Berlin: Verlag von J. H. W. Dietz, 1888). 69–72. 39 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, in Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols., ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1955), 13:32–55. For an example of a research typical of this school, that was written by one of Freud’s close disciples, see Theodore Reik, Ritual: Four Psychoanalytic Studies, trans. Douglas Bryan (New York: Grove, 1962).

19

20

Introduction

the religious materials that he examined,40 the disparity between his and Freud’s interpretations of the meaning of inner religious life proves that the reductionist stance of the founder of psychoanalysis was not simply the product of Feuerbach’s ideas. Rather, Freud was in line with the negative philosophical comprehensive worldview and fundamental attitude to religion of his time. The subjectivization of religious content on which the psychoanalytic interpretation is founded tends to reduce the divine to the human in religious texts. The emphasis on conscious and, even more so, unconscious psychological motives for religion and religious experiences presupposes that religion is nothing more than one of many possible forms of expression for human subjectivity. When all is said and done, psychoanalytic approaches assume that the existence of the divine beyond man, on which religion is based, is a fiction, even if a necessary one. The deep-seated aversion to psychological discussion of religion, for fear of negating the idea of God itself, is no less problematic than apprehensions regarding subjectivization in psychological interpretation. Denying the psychological nature of important components of religious life can hinder the comprehension of religious phenomenon as such. For example, a discussion of Bible-based monotheistic religions cannot ignore the family model on which they are founded, even out of fear of a Freudian reduction to the all-encompassing Oedipal theory. The paternal figure of the biblical God, anchored in many texts, is not Freud’s invention. If commentators disregard the male longing for the female at the basis of the desire for mystical union or absorption, and the male anxiety that underpins separation from the commanding characteristics of God, they discard a useful tool for examining the nature of the relationship between man and God. While Freud exposed the religious dimension of the great father figure, Jung focused on the great mother figure. Psychoanalytical research demonstrates that the human psyche is marked by a profound longing for father or mother figures greater than an individual’s parents. For psychoanalysis, free from the religious prejudices of the late nineteenth century, God is seen as the great father or mother figure that is the driving force a subject’s life. This force was, of course, felt directly by many religious people even before 40 See above, n. 14, on the bitter dispute between Jung and Buber on this issue.

Introduction

the Enlightenment. Philosophical or theological discussion must acknowledge this. I shall further explore very briefly the importance of psychology for the subject of this book, and in the final chapter I will draw some conclusions on the matter. Regardless of the answers offered, I firmly believe that the psychological thought of the twentieth century provides scholars of religion with invaluable instruments—in addition to those drawn from literary criticism, historical research, and anthropology—with which to explore the complexity of inner religious life as reflected in religious texts and from observations of practices and experiences. The Phenomenological method can help to resolve any problematic preconceptions regarding the religious content underlying psychological approaches. For Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological method in philosophy, like Descartes, everything except the reality of the self was parenthetical. Husserl explains: It is of the essence of the physical world that no perception, however perfect, presents anything absolute in that realm; and essentially connected with this is the fact that any experience, however extensive, leaves open the possibility that what is given does not exist in spite of the continual consciousness of its own presence “in person.” According to eidetic law it is the case that physical existence is never required as necessary by the givenness of something physical, but is always in a certain manner contingent. This means: It can always be that the further course of experience necessitates giving up what has already been posited with a legitimacy derived from experience. Afterwards one says it was a mere illusion, a hallucination, merely a coherent dream, or the like. Furthermore, as a continuously open possibility in this sphere of givenness, there exists such a thing as alteration of construing, a sudden changing of one appearance into another which cannot be united harmoniously with it and thus an influx of the latter upon the earlier experiential positings owing to which the intentional object of these earlier positings suffer afterwards, so to speak, a transformation—occurrences all of which are essentially excluded from the sphere of mental processes. In this absolute sphere there is no room for conflict, illusion, or being otherwise. It is a sphere of absolute positing. Thus in every manner it is clear that whatever is there for me in the world of physical things is necessarily only a presumptive actuality and, on the other hand, that I myself, for whom it is there (I, when the “part of me” belonging to the world of physical things is excluded), am absolute actuality

21

22

Introduction

or that the present phase of my mental processes is an absolute actuality, given by an unconditional, absolutely indefeasible positing.41

Husserl received from his teacher Franz Brentano the concept of intentionality, that he developed from within scholastic thought:42 Looking at the world phenomenologically means looking at the world from within the inwardness of the consciousness, of the intention. . . . Phenomenology gives the reality of the consciousness precedence over the reality of the world, and seeks to explain the belief in the world. It does not, however, deny the tangible reality of the world. For it, the world is not imaginary. But at any rate, our belief in the world must be explained. Phenomenology’s task is to clarify the meaning of the reality of the world. That is, the meaning of our belief in its reality. The nonreality of the world is impossible. Its reality is absolute. The reality of the world is relative, it always relates to the consciousness that bears it, for its reality is only reality in intentionality, the object to which the consciousness intends and in which it believes. The world is only “intentionales Sinngebilde der tranzendentalen Subiektivität.” The subjectivity of the self is directed to it and bears it.43

Husserl sought to constitute his philosophy on Descartes in a new manner, that is, to establish scientific objectivity from within subjectivity. The concluding paragraphs of his book Cartesian Meditations attests to the interiorizing nature of his philosophy: The path leading to a knowledge absolutely grounded in the highest sense, or (this being the same thing) a philosophical knowledge, is necessarily the path of universal self-knowledge—first of all monadic, and then intermonadic. We can say also that a radical and universal continuation of Cartesian meditations, or (equivalently) a universal self-cognition, is philosophy itself and encompasses all self-accountable science. The Delphic motto, “Know thyself!” has gained a new signification. Positive science is a science lost in the world. I must lose the world by epoche, in order to regain it by a universal self-examination. “Noli foras ire,” 41 Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, book 1: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), 102. 42 Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Viewpoint, trans. Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terell, and Linda L. McAlister (London: Routledge, 1995). 43 Samuel Hugo Bergmann, Contemporary Thinkers [Heb] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984), 112–13.

Introduction

says Augustine, “in te redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas” [“Do not go outward; return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth”].44

The phenomenology of religion, as formulated by van der Leeuw requires that the data be separated from their meaning, and postpones clarification of said data’s theological and philosophical significance to a later phase, based on a broad deployment of all available information.45 Such careful analysis is usually missing in psychoanalytic readings of religious texts—readings that function simply to confirm psychoanalytic theory itself. I will therefore devote the closing pages of the book to a substantive review of immanent data, as opposed to making the kinds of metaphysical claims that emerge mainly from the writings of the major monotheistic religions. I will reserve for that closing section my discussion of the wide gap between those who argue that inner religious life attests to the subjective psychological character of religion and those who maintain the existence of tangible and external interaction between man and the divine world beyond. Martin Buber’s work demonstrates that inner religious life does not require the adoption of an atheistic subjective position. Buber, who published in Germany in the early twentieth century popular books about religious experience, including a collection of ecstatic confessions and Hasidic tales, was perceived by many young people in the early 1920s as encouraging and fostering interest in subjective religious experience from a patently secular stance. In the introduction to his book Reden über das Judentum [Speeches on Judaism], which was published in 1923, following the publication of I and Thou, Buber described how he had changed since he had delivered those speeches before the First World War: The psychologizing of God and the psychic effusiveness of the ego who has cut himself off from the totality of the actual world I find noteworthy only as spectacles, as a dance on a tightrope between two cliffs. What happens at the periphery, in the realm whose attraction and lure consist in assuming control over the giddy nothingness, is always noteworthy but never important. And lastly, I sense in this peculiar, eventless, experiencing a perversion that is more than a psychic one; it is a cosmic perversion. Intrinsically, what really 44 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 156–57. The translation of the citation from Augustine is taken from Taylor, Sources of the Self, 129. 45 See van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence, 671–78.

23

24

Introduction

matters is not the “experiencing” of life (Erleben)—the attached subjectivity— but life itself; not the religious experience, which is part of the psychic realm, but religious life itself, that is, the total life of an individual or of a people in their actual relationship to God and the world. To make the human element absolute means to tear it out of life’s totality, out of reality; and if I have at any time contributed to this “absolutizing”—so far as I know, unintentionally—I now feel duty-bound to point out all the more emphatically the dimensions of reality.46

This forthright objection to the preoccupation with religious experience and religious subjectivity could serve as a warning against a crucial misunderstanding liable to arise from a reading of the current book. A phenomenological discussion of the inner, psychological life of religion in general, and especially of Judaism, could be perceived as supporting the claim that religious reality is merely a structure built upon the subjectivity on which religious life is founded. A full description of the inner realm of religious life is only possible if we are aware of the disparity and nonidentity between outer and inner religious life. But we cannot argue that subjective religious life is detached from life in general, endorse subjective positions, or favor outer religious conceptions that aim to reduce or negate the existence of inner religion.

Judaism and Inwardness At the center of the Judaism fashioned by the rabbis in their interpretation of the Bible is the community committed to Jewish law. This orientation is evident in the principles of outer conduct that the Oral Law imposes on the Jewish people. It also raises questions regarding the place and importance of inner life in Judaism. The rabbis attach great importance to religious commandments, and their dicta such as “R. Hanina said, Greater is [the reward of] one who is commanded and performs than [that of] the one who is not commanded and performs”47 exalt the individual who acts in accordance with an outer command. This reinforces the general impression that in Judaism as formulated by the rabbis, inner, volitional life exists, at best, on the fringes of the mandated religious life. In other words, the heart of rabbinic Judaism is in the observance of the commands given by 46 Buber, On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1967), 8. 47 BT Bava Kamma 38a; 87a; Avodah Zarah 3a.

Introduction

God, who is beyond man, within the Jewish social context fashioned by the halakhah [Jewish law]. From this perspective, Judaism is an external, legal, ritual system, which is recognized by way of the halakhic lifestyle common to its members. In the modern period, the Torah was often identified with laws and commandments external to man, and the inner psychological dimensions of religious life—especially the volitional ones—were brushed to the fringes of Judaism. Baruch Spinoza, in his Political-Theological Treatise, was the first to define Judaism as a state constitution.48 This definition doubly limits Judaism: first, to a system of laws, and second, to a system of laws conditional upon the Jewish people dwelling in its own state. It was meant to give the Jews an opportunity to renounce Judaism when they were invited to become fully integrated into the life of the countries where they lived. It could be argued, paradoxically, that Spinoza’s first limitation of defining Judaism solely as a system of laws, was adopted after the emancipation even by those who continued to observe the commandments of Judaism. Emancipation and the equal rights enjoyed by Jews, first in western Europe and the United States, and then gradually throughout the world, enabled those who desired to cast off all commitment to the mandates of the Jewish religion, to commit to the laws of the state in which they lived. Others, either consciously or unconsciously, adopted the statement that Moses Mendelssohn made in Jerusalem: that Judaism is a revealed religion of laws and commandments, and not one of beliefs and dogmas. For them, the commandments were an additional system that did not contradict their commitment to the state.49 Mendelssohn himself took pains to argue that the laws of Judaism are not arbitrary, but practical commandments that help realize rational moral values consistent with the aims of the modern state.50 However, many Jews, observant and nonobservant, still viewed Judaism as a religion of internal social laws. This definition enabled Jews to maintain their separate existence by the outer observance of the 48 Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, trans. Samuel Shirley (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 88–94. 49 Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush, introduction and commentary by Alexander Altmann (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 97–98. 50 Ibid., 100–101, 102–103. Unlike Spinoza, and in contrast with the claim by several Mendelssohn scholars, Mendelssohn maintained that the singular purpose of religious societies is to arouse and elevate the soul in communal life, a goal that the state cannot impart to people (Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 74).

25

26

Introduction

Torah’s commandments and, at the same time, to enter the general society which opened its gates to them. Emancipation and equal rights for Jews contributed significantly to intensifying the outer aspect of Jewish life, that is, the perception of Jewish life as simply the outer observance of the halakhah, albeit in different degrees of strictness. In the twentieth century, many Jews saw no reason to maintain a separate way of life and preferred maximal integration into their surroundings. Others chose independent existence not as a community supported by religious commandments, but as a nation. After most Bundists were killed in the Holocaust, the Zionist movement attracted all Jews who wanted to live as part of a Jewish nation. The Zionist’s activity resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel.51 Nevertheless, even in the new state, many people who remained loyal to the observance of the Torah were inclined to regard the outer observance of the requirements of the halakhah as the main expression of their Jewish religiosity. The claim that Judaism has an outward orientation is supported by the separatist nature of many of its commandments. Following Maimonides’s historical explanations of the biblical laws concerning sacrifices,52 John Spenser, for example, argued that the ritual laws of the Mosaic code are the normative opposite of Egyptian laws.53 Spinoza maintained in the PoliticalTheological Treatise that the commandments insulating Jews from nonJews are the secret of the continued existence of the Jewish people in the abnormal conditions of dispersion.54 These arguments were of considerable significance in defining Judaism as an outer religion that emphasizes the communal or social. This emphasis was underscored by the creation of the restrictive measures [sayagim, literally, “fences”] that the rabbis developed to safeguard the observance of the commandments, such as the laws separating milk and meat or the prohibition against drinking the wine of the 51 The Jewish Workers’ Party of Russia, Poland, and Lithuania, known in short as the Bund, was founded in Vilna in 1897. After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, it existed as an independent party in Poland and Lithuania until the 1930s. The Bund was both a labor union and a major secular Jewish party that opposed Zionism territorial demands by the Jewish people. It promulgated Yiddish as the Jewish national language and built a Yiddish cultural system for the realization of cultural autonomy for the party’s members. 52 Maimonides, Guide 3:32 (for English translation, see The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963], 525–31). 53 See Jan Assman, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 57–69. 54 Spinoza, Tractatus, 62–65.

Introduction

Gentiles. In light of these facts, the study of the inner life in Judaism will reveal the data in Jewish sources that cannot be fully explained by sociological categories without the trivialization of their main contents. Many researchers into Jewish mysticism are indebted to Gershom Scholem’s fundamental and thorough studies of Kabbalah and early Jewish mysticism. To a large degree, Scholem’s work was based on his desire to uncover the experiential inner dimensions of the Jewish religion. In the beginning of my book Human Temple I observed that Scholem’s undertaking was influenced by the young Buber’s perception of Jewish mysticism, to which the latter had been exposed already in his youth in Germany.55 As mentioned above, Buber was interested in subjective religious experience and looked for it in Jewish sources. His study of Hasidism resulted from his understanding that the subjective elements of Judaism were amplified in the Hasidism of the Baal Shem Tov in Eastern Europe. Buber assumed that Hasidic religiosity was fed by the esoteric elements of Jewish religiosity (mystic trends, as he termed them), dating from the time of the Heikhalot literature and Sefer Yetzirah to the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah, rather than by other Jewish corpora, in particular the halakhic corpus, which supports institutionalized religion.56 In Human Temple, I agreed that the interiorizing trends of Jewish religious life reached their peak in Hasidism, as evidenced in Hasidic writings. However, the roots of the Hasidic orientation towards inner religious life are scattered throughout all sources of Judaism. I thereby laid the groundwork for my extensive questioning, in the current book, of Buber’s position in the first two decades of his literary activity and of Scholem’s stance throughout his career. Both assumed that the sources of inner religious life in Judaism were found primarily in what they called “the texts of Jewish mysticism.” Even if some components of these texts contributed to enriching the inner religious life of the Jewish people in the Middle Ages, we should not underestimate the 55 Margolin, Human Temple, 7–8; Boaz Huss, “Martin Buber’s introduction to the Stories of Rabbi Nachman and the Genealogy of Jewish Mysticism” [Heb], in By the Well: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and Halakhic Thought Presented to Gerald J. Blidstein, ed. Uri Ehrlich, Howard Kreisel, and Daniel J. Lasker (Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2008), 97–121. 56 See Buber’s introduction to his collection of the tales of R. Nahman: Martin Buber, “Jewish Mysticism,” in Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Avon, 1970), 3–17.; and idem, “Jewish Religiosity,” in Buber, On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1967), 79–94, an article based on his famous lecture to Jewish students in Prague in 1914.

27

28

Introduction

major importance of many other texts from the Bible, rabbinic thought, and medieval Jewish philosophy in this process. The choice of the term “mysticism” to describe the orientation of the medieval Jews known as “Kabbalists” is problematic for a number of reasons. Although Scholem identified the Kabbalah with mysticism, he also shared the conviction of late nineteenth-century researchers into mysticism that the object of their work was a concept with many meanings, shem meshutaf [“homonym”] in the language of medieval philosophers.57 McGinn’s comprehensive survey of modern scholarship on mysticism in the appendix to The Foundations of Mysticism shows that this situation has not noticeably improved since the middle of the twentieth century.58 What seemed to be accepted by many at the beginning of the century became the basis for stormy debates later on. The perception of mysticism as a universal religious phenomenon founded on the exceptional experience of contact, or even union, with the divine or the transcendent, which assumed particular expression in various cultures, is only one of the accepted scholarly conceptions today. Even if we do not agree with extreme contemporary critics who question the existence of such an experience and regard it as an essentialist conception,59 it is clear that the accepted use of the term “mysticism” in Jewish studies is extremely problematic. Questions about Scholem’s assertion that Kabbalah is the heart of Jewish mysticism were posed in his lifetime. Werblowsky, for instance, maintained that large parts of Kabbalistic literature are of a speculative,

57 “No word in our language—not even ‘Socialism’—has been employed more loosely than ‘mysticism’” (William Ralph Inge, Christian Mysticism: Delivered in Eight Lectures before the University of Oxford [London: Methuen, 1899], 3). In his Appendix A, Inge lists twenty-six different definitions for mysticism; see Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1961), 4. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Evelyn Underhill argued that the term “mysticism” has many contradictory meanings, and stated that, her own meaning was the science of the unification with the absolute, which is not concerned with knowledge about this unification, but only with experience of it (Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness [New York: Dutton, 1911], 72). On shem meshutaf, see Israel Efros, Philosophical Terms in the Moreh Nebukim (Philadelphia: Columbia University Press, 1924), 80–81. 58 Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, part 1: The Historical Roots of Western Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 265–343. 59 Boaz Huss, “The Theologies of Kabbalah Research,” Modern Judaism 34, no. 1 (2014): 3–26.

Introduction

theosophic nature, with no experiential dimension.60 Further, Moshe Idel’s work on the Abulafian prophetic ecstatic Kabbalah indicates the existence of disagreements within the Kabbalistic world about theosophic speculation: one group focuses on theosophy, while another opposes it and concentrates on attaining ecstatic experiences that originate in interpretations of the Maimonidean epistemology.61 In contrast with Werblowsky’s later position that the division between theosophy and theurgy, on the one hand, and ecstasy, on the other, should not be overemphasized,62 Erich Neumann argues—in my opinion, under the influence of Buber and, in some degree, Scholem—that true, fundamental mystical experience is, in fact, experience of the numinous and “cannot be other than anticonventional, anticollective, and antidogmatic, for the experience of the numinous is always new.”63 Consequently, writings that emerge from a tradition—Kabbalistic texts, for example—cannot reflect experiences of this sort. Yehuda Liebes recently argued, in response to my asserting the existence of interiorization lines in the Heikhalot literature, that this corpus, like most Kabbalistic literature, especially in recent generations, is characterized by the systematization and formalization of spiritual intuitions present in Talmudic literature. Liebes argues that these corpora are to be viewed as an expression of externalization tendencies.64 This corresponds with what I maintain concerning considerable portions of Kabbalistic literature: when speaking of inwardness, I referred to transferring the center of interest to inner experiences or to psychological contents, while theosophic Kabbalistic literature engages in systematic mythicizing, as it projects psychological contents onto the divine world beyond man. Expressions of religious interiorization and 60 R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, “On the Mystical Rejection of Mystical Illuminations: A Note on St. John of the Cross,” Religious Studies 1 (1966): 179; idem, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1977), 39–40. 61 Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 59–70, 112–22, 136–55. 62 Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 291. 63 Erich Neumann, ““Mystical Man,” in The Mystic Vision: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, ed. Joseph Campbell and trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 386. 64 See Yehuda Liebes, “De Natura Dei: On the Jewish Myth and Its Development” [Heb], in Massu’ot: Studies in Kabbalistic Literature and Jewish Philosophy in Memory of Prof. Ephraim Gottlieb, ed. Michal Oron and Amos Goldreich (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1994), 251–66; idem, “The Externalization of the Esoteric: From the Talmud to the Heikhalot Literature” [Heb], in Liebes, God’s Story: Collected Essays on the Jewish Myth (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2009), 163–75.

29

30

Introduction

psychological religious life appear in Kabbalistic literature alongside other considerably weighty elements characterized by schematization and externalization, just as in other types of Jewish sources such as midrash and even halakhah. Consequently, the corpus of Kabbalistic writings should not be identified with religious interiorization in general, and especially not with mystical experiences, even though the Kabbalah significantly contributed to the fashioning of inner religious life and the development of interiorization in Judaism. Since, as I argue, mythicization is a product of externalization, Scholem’s comments on the mythical nature of much Kabbalistic literature, especially the Zohar, strengthen this argument. Externalization as the opposite of interiorization is linked to the mythical nature of Kabbalistic writings more than to the systematization of Kabbalistic teachings.65 Scholars after Scholem perceived Kabbalah as the central stream of Jewish mysticism. It was commonly thought that all mysticism should be fundamentally separated from other Jewish literary genres, such as medieval philosophical literature and midrashic literature. This conception was also based on the Kabbalists’ perception of themselves as possessing a unique esoteric learning. This approach was adopted by modern commentators following the notion held by the anti-Kabbalists who saw Kabbalah as a foreign body within official Judaism, as well as the view of Kabbalah researchers who thought of it as a subversive and alternative element in medieval Judaism, even though most Kabbalists were patently halakhists, and only a few individuals, such as Sabbatai Tzevi, were inspired by Kabbalistic notions to exceed the bounds of halakha. In contrast, new research, such as Adam Afterman’s works on the concept of devekut in nascent Kabbalah, shows that the early Kabbalah was influenced by Platonic thought, along with Jewish medieval philosophy.66 The various justifications for cordoning off Kabbalah as an almost totally distinct field of Jewish studies do not compensate for the damage which this act has done. The identification of Kabbalah as the most fertile ground for religious and mystical experiences both intentionally and, for the most part, unwittingly limited the exploration of Jewish inner life expressed in other corpora. Furthermore, central areas in the world of the Kabbalists that were based on medieval science were hardly examined, or were removed from the general context in which they developed. 65 On myths as externalization of psychological contents, see above, 14, n. 25. 66 Adam Afterman, Devequt: Mystical Intimacy in Medieval Jewish Thought [Heb] (Los Angeles: Cherub, 2011).

Introduction

The artificial barrier erected between midrash and Kabbalah was partly removed by contemporary Kabbalah scholars, who demonstrated the close ties between midrashic and Kabbalistic literatures. Still, it seems that the ideas that led to the creation of this barrier were not dismantled. While midrashic ideas were recognized as the basis of many Kabbalistic concepts, its systemization and language, its scholarly tradition, and the distinct self-consciousness of the Kabbalists still reflect the separatist attitude of scholars—and Jewish culture as a whole—towards Kabbalah. Twentieth-century Kabbalah scholarship, which initially perceived it as an antiestablishment alternative and attempted to isolate Kabbalah from the other Jewish corpora, strengthened the modern widespread interest in Kabbalah but indirectly supported the lack of awareness of its midrashic and medieval context, and consquently the speculative nature of Kabbalistic theosophy. One of the goals of this book is to present an alternative to the descriptions given by Buber in his introduction to the tales of R. Nahman and by Scholem in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, with their assumption of a continuous and separate Jewish tradition that they called “Jewish mysticism.”67 The phenomenology of inner religious life can be found in all the various corpora of the Jewish sources—in the Bible, rabbinic literature, medieval philosophical and Kabbalistic literatures, and pietistic and Hasidic literatures. Together, these sources offer another, and in my opinion less artificial, view of the relationship between inner and the outer life in Judaism. This perspective enables us to see the parallel existence of the two planes, the inner and the outer, throughout Jewish history, while indicating that the inner plane was reinforced by interiorization processes in specific periods and circles, such as, for example, the early pietists in Tannaitic literature or the followers of the Baal Shem Tov in the second half of the eighteenth century in Eastern Europe. In Human Temple, I examined the major arguments against the study of the interiorization and inner religious life in Judaism based on the dichotomy between external legalism and inner spirituality. Religious interiorization was appropriated by Christianity, which led Jewish and non-Jewish researchers to believe that the claim of inner life in Judaism was the result of Christian influence and a denial of Judaism’s practical and legalist central track. I countered these arguments with the observations 67 See Buber, “Jewish Mysticism”; and see above, n. 55.

31

32

Introduction

made by Joshua Abelson, Solomon Schechter, Yitzhak Baer, Martin Buber, and David Flusser. Those opposed to the search for the meaning of the commandments [ta‘amei ha-mitzvot] and the defenders of the heteronomous nature of the halakhah frequently maintain that the preoccupation with inner life in Judaism serves antinomian propensities. This claim was refuted by historical reality: psychological elements in the world of the rabbis and the tremendous wealth of the medieval ta‘amei ha-mitzvot literature, whether philosophical or Kabbalistic, were almost invariably perceived as strengthening the halakhic way of life, not weakening it.68 I will raise an additional argument, formulated by Franz Rosenzweig in his article “Atheistic Theology.” He maintains, in essence, that Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah introduced an atheistic element into the heart of medieval Judaism. According to Rosenzweig, the interiorization of the conception of God under the influence of Neoplatonist ideas ran counter to the idea of prophetic revelation: But it is no coincidence that the famous key phrase of the master of the Kabbalah: “God speaks: if you do not bear witness to me, then I am not” is pronounced precisely as a Word of God and is projected into the written Word of God by means of an exegetical trick; God himself, not human presumption, makes Himself dependent upon the testimony of man; according to a profound parable, He “sells himself ” to man—yet He who could “sell” also has a claim to the purchase price. . . . That the light of God is the human soul and that only the rays of that light, which the soul needs for the illumination of its earthly ways, are visible—this fundamental idea of our philosophy—was and is just as susceptible as its mystical parallels to an atheistic stamp. . . . But the cleft, which is not to be filled in, between man as thought by both mysticism and rationalism, and man as he is receiver of revelation and, as such, an object of faith, this unfillable cleft, as it persists. . . .69

68 See Margolin, Human Temple, 118–22. 69 Franz Rosenzweig, “Atheistic Theology,” in Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings, trans. and ed. Paul W. Franks and Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), 23–24; this article was published only posthumously. In an unsent letter to Martin Buber, apparently from the end of August 1919 (Rosenzweig, Briefe, vol. 1 [Berlin: Schocken, 1935], 370), Rosenzweig explains that he wrote this “raw” article in 1914 after he had been requested to do so by Buber, who invited him to participate in the second annual Vom Judentum that Buber’s students in Prague were to publish. The article was returned by the editorial board of the Bar Kochba Association in Prague.

Introduction

The importance of this passage for our discussion lies in its fundamental statement that ideas reflective of religious interiorization are atheistic, since, as Rosenzweig writes in the same essay, they “might attempt to cover the whole of the religious world with half of this pair of fundamental ideas. If this half, namely man, were in himself to be simple and without inner contradiction, then the thinker, as well as the man of action, could dispense with God.” This reading of the Bible is fundamentalist. It argues for the necessary distance between man and God and suggests that the Bible, and afterwards the rabbis, describe man’s inner world as opposed to God’s total transcendence. Rosenzweig himself softened the radical position expressed in this quotation under the influence of his sustained dialogue with Martin Buber during the course of their partnership in translating the Bible into German. Towards the end of his life, Rosenzweig took a different stance on the question of the biblical anthropomorphism, which he termed the Bible’s “psychological element.”70 Quite possibly, his new position should be considered as the beginning of the change that occurred in the understanding of this issue in the research of biblical and rabbinic literature. Philological studies in these fields conducted in recent decades reinforce our awareness of the dialogic aspect of the Bible, which assumes a shared foundation between man and God. Muffs concludes his discussion of the prayer of the prophets drawing from Rav’s teaching in BT Sanhedrin 38: Humanity created in the image of the divine personality does not reach its completion without the creative leap of loving communication. It is a great mystery that psychologists have not understood the importance the Bible has for them. In the image of the biblical God we have a definition of personality that is remarkably close to the modern definition. It is a little known secret that the modern Western definition of personality has its roots in the biblical revolution. The new idea in the Bible is not the idea of one God, but rather the revelation of a new concept of personality. The divine personality is, to a great degree, the mirror image of man’s understanding of himself. And if you should react in horror, and say, “You are promulgating heresy,” I can reformulate the problem slightly and say, “God is defined as personality, and humanity is created in God’s image.” Judaism conquered nature and put in

70 Franz Rosenzweig, “Mit einer Anmerkung über Anthropomorphismus,” in Rosenzweig, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken, 1937), 525–33.

33

34

Introduction

its place the personality that revealed itself in an act of love. Everything that formerly had a natural quality to it took on, in Judaism, a personalistic cast.71

Muffs sees God, the concept at the heart of the Bible and afterwards of the world of the rabbis, as a whole personality by which man was created. This concept also underlies the new understanding of the terms “image of God” and “Adam,” both of which are basic concepts in rabbinic and Kabbalistic literatures.72 If the commanding God is seen not as distant and transcendental, but as resembling a father, similar to Freud’s claim, then we should reinterpret the concept of “the Commander,” fundamental to Judaism, and reexamine its combination of immanence and transcendence. The rabbis fashioned Judaism as an essentially outer religion, reinforcing its heteronomous element,73 and disregarded the human image of the commanding God. In the structure where the manifold aspects of the divine personality can be emphasized or downplayed, the transcendental element rests on an immanent foundation, as in all the religions of antiquity. Accordingly, the commanding element is one of the inner psychological aspects by means of which God is manifested to and perceived by the biblical man, and especially by the Talmudic Jew. In order to examine the nature and place of Jewish inner religion in relation to the outer, I will present a broad range of aspects of inner religious life depicted in the Jewish sources. This presentation will facilitate a reconsideration of the centrality of inner mental elements and of the religious interiorization in Judaism throughout the ages, in contrast to the claims that underscore its outer components and its social or legalistic nature. Moreover, our exploration will be based on a phenomenological comparison with other religions. Comparative research provides universal criteria for examining the depth and meaning of the various aspects of inner religious life in a specific religion. Since comparative methodology has come under severe criticism in recent years, I will refer further in this introductory chapter to a number of problems raised by this critique. But this discussion will be preceded by an examination of terms for inwardness in the Jewish sources, since a Hebrew word directly corresponding 71 Muffs, Love & Joy, 45. 72 See Yair Lorberbaum, In God’s Image: Myth, Theology and Law in Classical Judaism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 73 See, for example, Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, 2 vols., trans. Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), 1:315–42 (see footnote in 2:826–36).

Introduction

to the term “inwardness,” penimiut, only signifies the life of the psyche in late Jewish sources. This examination will bring the meaning of our central term into sharp focus.

Terms for Inwardness in Jewish Sources The Bible uses various forms of the words penim or penimiut [literally, “inside, innerness”] to depict a location, usually in the Tabernacle or the Temple.74 In addition, the Bible uses the word lev [literally, “heart”] to indicate man’s inner world, with a range of emotions, sensations, and thoughts, all of which are different expressions of human mentality.75 At times, this inner world is expressly contrasted with external behavior: “Because that people has approached [Me] with its mouth and honored Me with its lips, but has kept its heart far from Me” (Isa. 29:13). On other occasions it emphasizes the force of divine knowledge, which is not limited to the outer world and all that happens in it, but is also cognizant of what occurs within the depths of man’s soul: “Examine me, O God, and know my mind; probe me and know my thoughts” (Ps. 139:23)76 or “O Lord of Hosts, O just Judge, who test the thoughts and the mind” (Jer. 11:20). Rabbinic literature continues using the word “heart” [lev] as a general metaphor for inwardness. The rabbis assume that the heart is the domicile of the inclinations (human passions and intentions), as evident from rabbinic exposition: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart . . .’ [Deut. 6:5], ‘with all your heart’—with both your inclinations, with the good inclination and with the evil inclination.”77 Additionally, rabbinic literature frequently uses lev to refer to knowledge and thought. The Amoraim (postmishnaic Talmudic sages), seeking to attribute anonymous 74 Lev. 10:18; I Kings 6:19, 21, 27; Ezek. 40:15, 19. 75 On the term lev in the Bible, see H. Wheeler Robinson, “Hebrew Psychology,” in The People and the Book, ed. A. S. Peake (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), 362–64; Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew (Thesaurus Totius Hebraitatis et Veteris Recentioris) [Heb], vol. 5 (Tel Aviv: La’am, 1948), 2586–96, s.v. lev. 76 “A person senses that the place of his thoughts and emotions, his character traits, and the like, is within him, in a concealed place, while his actions and his words are done and heard outside; it is this inwardness of man that is called [in the Bible] lev . . . only this conception enables us to resolve the question of the word lev [referring] to inanimate objects, such as expressions: lev ha-shamayim [“the heart of heaven”] (Deut. 4:2) and lev ha-yam [“the heart of the sea”] (Exod. 15:8)” (Licht, “Lev, Levav [Heart]” [Heb], in Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. 4 [Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1962], col. 414). 77 M Berakhot 9:5.

35

36

Introduction

opinions to the holders of known views, ask: “Aliba de-man [(following) the heart of whom]?,” that is, “Whose opinion does this follow?”78 Enelow noted that the Talmudic term kavanah [usually rendered as “intent”] originated in Talmudic phrases that joined the root khaf-vav-nun with the word lev. See, for example, the verse “whose heart was inconsistent [lo hikhin libo]” (Ps. 78:8), and more.79 Discussions about the phrase kavanat ha-lev80 in the Babylonian Talmud show that its meaning lies in the realm of thought: it describes intellectual awareness of the observance of the commandment. Later, the word kavanah became a key term in the discussions of interiorization in Judaism, as Enelow argued.81 The word kavanah is a linguistic innovation of the Mishnah.82 According to Urbach, only the Amoraim make frequent use of this term as they discuss whether performance of the commandments requires intent. This term played an additional role in regard to transgressions.83 Beginning with the Mishnah, discussions of intent employ the terms maḥshavah [literally, “thought”],84 ratzon [“will”],85 and lishmah or she-lo lishmah [“for its own sake” and “not for its own sake”],86 along with kavanah. The Mishnah occasionally deals with questions of this sort by presenting a concrete instance without recourse to specific terms, when the case itself indicates

78 See below, chapter five, at the beginning of the discussion on the emphasis on inwardness as a guiding principle (before n. 163) and the study of Raba’s statement: “The Holy One, blessed be He, seeks the heart” (BT Sanhedrin 106b). See also chapter three, n. 80, for the discussion of the term avanta de-liba. 79 Heyman Gerson Enelow, “Kawwana: The Struggle for Inwardness in Judaism,” in Studies in Jewish Literature Issued in Honor of Professor Kaufmann Kohler, ed. D. Philipson, D. Neumark, and J. Morgenstern (Berlin: Reimer, 1913), 84–85. 80 See esp. BT Berakhot 13a; Rosh Hashanah 27b; and below, chapter one, for the discussion of intent in performance of the commandments. 81 “This struggle for inwardness in Judaism is reflected in the history of the doctrine of Kawwana. . . . It may mean intention, concentration, devotion; it may mean purpose and the right spirit; it may mean pondering, meditation, and mystery” (Enelow, “Kawwana,” 84). 82 M Eruvin 4:4; T Rosh Hashanah 3:7. 83 Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, The Halakhah: Its Sources and Development, trans. Raphael Posner (Jerusalem, Massada, 1986), 179. 84 M Bava Metzia 3:12; Makhshirin 6:1; T Menahot 5:5. 85 For example, M Makhshirin 1:1. 86 M Avot 2:12; Zevahim 1:1.

Introduction

the degree of intent.87 Lorberbaum attempted to systematically analyze the different meanings of kavanah in the world of the rabbis.88 The word panim is used by the rabbis, as in the Bible, to denote location; for example, lifnei u-lifnim for the Holy of Holies. R. Nathan of Rome maintained that this is a metaphorical use derived from the word referring to the external facial area.89 Following this explanation, he connects the expression lifnim mi-shurat ha-din [“going beyond the demands of strict law”] with the question mipnei mah [“why”]. These figurative usages refer to inner, but not necessarily psychological, content.90 Mipnei mah is a question about the cause; lifnim mi-shurat ha-din enters the realm of the inner meaning of the law: the right thing should be done not out of formal obligation under the law, but because the law’s inner justifications—which cannot be limited—mandate action even when the law’s ability to compel is limited.91 These exceptions expand the meaning of inwardness. The Hebrew vocabulary for inwardness was enriched in the medieval period. The words lev and penimiut were adopted as figurative expressions for the domicile of the intellect, that is, knowledge and thought:92 “‘Thus we allude to the intellect, and say that its seat is in the heart [lev] or brain.”93 87 For example, M Yoma 8:9. 88 Menachem Lorberbaum, “A Theory of Action in Halakhah: Intention in the Commandments” [Heb], Master’s thesis, Hebrew University, 1998, especially chaps. 2–3, 10–59. See the extensive discussion of this thesis in chapter one, in my discussions of intent in the performance of the commandments in the world of the rabbis. 89 Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome, Arukh ha-Shalem (Arukh Completum), ed. Alexander Kohut (Vienna, 1926), s.v. pan. 90 The view of Arukh ha-Shalem is supported by the following midrash: “‘That you shall set before them” [Exod. 21:1]—just as this inner essence [penimah] is not revealed to all human beings, likewise you do not have permission to submerse yourself in the words of Torah, except in the presence of suitable people” (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Sim‘on b. Jochai, ed. J. N. Epstein and E. Z. Melamed [Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1955], 158, on Exod. 21:1. This quotation is based on the English translation: Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, trans. W. David Nelson [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2006], 259). 91 See below, chapter four, for the discussion on interiorization of the law. 92 R. Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome, in his Talmudic dictionary Arukh ha-Shalem, stresses in his discussion of the term lev the conceptual-intellectual aspect of the term: “Used metaphorically as the place of the intellect: knowledge and thought.” This interpretation disregards its metaphoric uses for the various emotions, impulses, and sensations characteristic of Biblical and rabbinic language. It would not be wrong to state that this interpretation is more reflective of the spiritual world of R. Nathan than of the assemblage of meanings that this term has in the Talmudic literature itself. 93 Judah Halevi, Kuzari 4:3. For English translation, see Halevi, The Kuzari: An Argument for the Faith of Israel, trans. Hartwig Hirschfeld (New York: Schocken, 1964), 203.

37

38

Introduction

The figurative use of lev in the sense of intellectual knowledge frequently recurs in medieval poetry, as in the following poem by Moses Ibn Ezra: My thoughts arouse me, Thee to contemplate— To the mind’s eye [be-ein lev] they show Thy majesty; They teach my tongue Thy wonders to relate, When as Thy heavens, work of Thy hands, I see.94

With the identification of the lev and the intellect, a new use of the adjective penimi appears in medieval Hebrew. In response to a query on the meaning of the baraita [external Mishnah] “Four entered the Garden” in BT Hagigah 14b, R. Hai Gaon was, apparently, the first to use penimiut in a psychological, intellectual, or sensory meaning: We are of the opinion that the Holy One, blessed be He, performs miracles for the righteous and great wonders, it is not beyond His reach that He shows them in penimiut the wonders of His palaces and the realm of His angels.95

Wolfson showed the parallel use in medieval Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew literatures of the term ḥushim penimiim [literally, “inner senses”], as the array of inner forces responsible for human perception.96

94 Moses Ibn Ezra, “My Thoughts Arouse Me,” in Selected Poems of Moses Ibn Ezra, trans. Solomon Solis-Cohen, ed. Heinrich Brody (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1934), 124. Scheindlin writes on the “heart’s eye”: “But this ‘seeing’ is not the sight of the eyes; it is a seeing of the intellect, stimulated by thinking and performed with the ‘heart’s eye’; it is the application of reason to the phenomena of the universe, which leads to knowledge of God. This is exactly the conception of the true religious life embraced by philosophical-minded religious thinkers of the age. . . . Abraham Ibn Ezra regards this act of intellectual seeing as the highest religious duty” (Raymond P. Scheindlin, The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991], 123). See also the terms ayin ha-lev and pnei ha-lev [literally, the “face of the heart”] in Ibn Ezra’s commentary to Exod. 32:18; and also Elliot R. Wolfson, “Merkavah Traditions in Philosophical Garb: Judah Halevi Reconsidered,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 57 (1991): 207–208 n. 90; Israel Levin, Abraham Ibn Ezra: His Life and Poetry [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1976), 196–98, and his references to the poems of R. Judah Halevi, 228–29 nn. 156, 160–164. 95 Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 4: Tractate Jom-Tow, Chagiga and Maschin, ed. B. M. Lewin (Jerusalem: Vagshal, 1971), 14–15. For a detailed discussion of this issue, see below, chapter six, n. 85. 96 Harry Austryn Wolfson, “Maimonides on the Internal Senses,” Jewish Quarterly Review N. S. 25 (1935): 441–67.

Introduction

Goldreich understood the Arabic term alam al-batin in Duties of the Heart by Bahya ibn Paquda, usually rendered as “the teaching of conscience” or “the teaching of inwardness,” as referring to events that occurs within man’s heart and are not seen by others, that is, the “duties of the hearts” (the literal translation of the book’s title).97 In many Islamic sources, however, another meaning of this term is widespread: an esoteric teaching, revealed only to the worthy and learned from the inner, concealed stratum of the scriptures.98 The dual meaning of this term is also characteristic of medieval Jewish literature, especially the Kabbalistic (see below). Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon (the son of the renowned Jewish philosopher Maimonides) speaks in Sefer ha-Maspik le-Ovdei Hashem of “the worship of the Lord, may He be exalted, in the inner essence—in the heart.”99 The meaning of avodah be-lev in this book can be explained by the following passage by al-Gazali on the meaning of the term “heart” in the Sufi literature: . . . then know that which seeks to press toward God in order to attain a place in His neighborhood is the heart and not the body. And by the heart I do not mean the palpable matter of flesh but one of the mysteries [sing. sirr] of God which the bodily senses fail to perceive.100

Thus, “inwardness” was defined in the Jewish and Muslim Sufi circles as the profound intuition that is indefinable in material terms or even in regular intellectual terms.101 97 Amos Goldreich, “Possible Arabic Sources of the Distinction between ‘Duties of the Heart’ and ‘Duties of the Limbs’” [Heb], Te’uda 6 (1988): 179–208. 98 Ibid., 181 n. 9. 99 Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon, Sefer ha-Maspik Le-Ovdey Hashem, ed. Nissim Dana (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1989), chap. 25, 127. 100 Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad Al-Ghazali, Book of Knowledge, trans. Nabih Amin Faris (Lahore: Ashraf, 1962), 141. A. S. Yehudah, unlike his first thought concerning al-Ghazali’s influence on Bahya ibn Paquda, the author of Duties of the Heart, admitted that the two shared a common source. See David H. Baneth, “The Common Teleological Source of Bahye Ibn Paqoda and Ghazzali,” in Magnes Anniversary Book [Heb], edited by F. I Baer et al., Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1938), 23–30, for a discussion of the influence of the Muslim ascetic al-Muhasibi on Bahya and on al-Ghazali. 101 For many Sufi mystics, “the concept of intellect did not play a major role, and at times they censure philosophers for the excessive importance that they attribute to the intellect” (Shlomo Pines, Studies in the History of Jewish Philosophy [Heb] [Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1997], 82). Abu Talib al-Makki cites Abu Mauhammad Sahl al-Tustari in his book Qut al-qulub, vol. 1 ([Cairo, 1961], 310).

39

40

Introduction

The Concept of “Inwardness” in Kabbalah and Hasidism The conception of inner spheres and manifestations of the Divine Presence at the deepest stratum of divinity and the beginning of any differentiation recurred in the three Kabbalistic schools that flourished until the 1270s: the Kabbalah of Gerona and Provence, the Sefer ha-Iyyun circle, and the Castillian Kabbalists known as ha-aḥim ha-kohanim [“the priestly brothers”].102 The Sefer ha-Iyyun used the term penimiut for this stratum. R. Isaac the Blind writes in his commentary to Sefer Yetzirah: The wondrous routes are as tunnels within the stem of the tree, and wisdom is the root. These are inner [penimiot] and subtle entities; any creature can gaze, but merely [can] nurse from it. This is the manner of introspection, nursing from it, but not through knowledge.103

R. Jacob ben Sheshet wrote that both the Kabbalistic conception in the writings of R. Isaac the Blind and his circle and that of Maimonides were based on Platonic thought.104 Notably, as regards inwardness, the Sefer ha-Iyyun circle shifted its attention from human powers of the intellect to the divine arena.105 For them, “inwardness” referred to the study of the divine, that is, the study of Kabbalah and its texts, which are called “inner books.” 102 103

104

105

as stating that the intellect (‘aqal) is to be classified as “the doctrine of the external,” which is inferior to the “doctrine of the internal.” Moshe Idel, “The Sefirot above the Sefirot” [Heb], Tarbiz 51 (1981–1982): 259–60. Sefer Yetzirah: With the Commentary Or Yakar, the Commentaries of the Early Ones, R. Isaac the Blind, Nahmanides, and Rabbi Isaac of Acre (Jerusalem, 1989), 2. See Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, trans. Allan Arkush, ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987), 278–84; Idel, “Sefirot,” 241–42. See the formulation that recurs in the manuscripts of the Iyyun circle: “Sefer ha-Iyyun, this is Sefer ha-Iyyun composed by R. Hamai, the first of the speakers, on the topic of innerness.” See Mark Verman, The Books of Contemplation: Medieval Jewish Mystical Sources (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 34, 65, 90. “[F]or Plato uses literally the same expression, saying that God looks at the world of the intellects and that in consequence that which exists overflows from Him” (Maimonides, Guide 2:6 [trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 263]). See what Maimonides writes (1:47 [trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 105]): “Accordingly, the position with regard to the internal apprehensions is similar to that obtaining with regard to the external sensory apprehensions.” That is, Maimonides’s concept of innerness, that was common in his spiritual environment, referred to the assemblage of intellectual powers that enable connection to the inner speech, namely, the intellect itself, and that are called “inner” because they are not sensory. See Wolfson, “Maimonides.” The centrality of the term penima’ah as “divine inwardness” is pronounced in the Zohar, with at least 264 occurrences.

Introduction

Twersky demonstrated that R. Abraham ben Nathan ha-Yarhi of Lunel, a student of R. Abraham ben David of Posquieres, was the first to use the term “inner books.”106 In the following generations we find that R. Moses de Leon spoke of “the inner ways of wisdom” in the introduction to Ha-Nefesh ha-Ḥakhamah,107 and R. Joseph Gikatila wrote of the “inner wisdoms” in Sha‘arei Orah.108 It is not surprising that the transition to the use of the term penimiut for the contemplation of the Godhead also included its use to describe esoteric, hidden literature. This secrecy was already formulated by the Mishnah: “The forbidden sexual relationships may not be expounded before three persons, nor the act of Creation before two, nor the Merkavah [“Divine Chariot”] before one, unless he is a sage who understands of his own knowledge.”109 The term penimiut was now given two parallel meanings: the secret study of the Godhead, and esoterica. The writings of sixteenth-century Safed Kabbalists such as R. Moses Cordovero and R. Hayyim Vital (the student of R. Isaac Luria) made increasing use of the term penimiut.110 While Cordovero’s usage continued the existing tradition,111 a new meaning was added to the terms “inwardness” and “outwardness” in Lurianic Kabbalah, especially in Vital’s Etz Ḥayyim.

106 See Isadore Twersky, Rabad of Posquieres: A Twelfth Century Talmudist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 243 and n. 16. 107 Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon, Sefer ha-Nefesh ha-Ḥakhamah, Jerusalem, 1969, introduction, 1, col. b. 108 Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, Sha‘arei Orah, ed. Yosef ben Shlomo (Jerusalem, 1971), sha‘ar 1, 62. 109 M Hagigah 2:1. 110 The term penimiyut appears 461 times in Luria’s writings. 111 See, for example, Moses Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim (Jerusalem, 1962), sha‘ar 31: Sha‘ar ha-Neshamah 6. Cordovero states that the essence of Kabbalistic thought is expressed in the Zohar’s interpretation of Adam’s expulsion. According to the Zohar, in the Garden of Eden Adam was garbed in light, but after his expulsion he was clothed in leather garments. Kordovero perceives man as a soul (read: inwardness) that, for the sake of its life in this world, is attired in a physical outer garb. The literal meaning of the stories of the Torah and its commandments relates to man’s physical, outer garb and constitutes the Torah’s outer aspect. The Kabbalistic interpretation of the Torah’s narratives relates to the world of the Sefirot, which are the inner aspect of the world; the exploration of the intellectual Kabbalistic intent accompanying the observance of the commandments is concerned with the inner essence of the Torah, that is, man’s soul and the soul of the world.

41

42

Introduction

You are to understand from several expositions that the upper outwardness is much larger than the lower inwardness, and when the lower ascends to the upper, the inwardness of the lower becomes outwardness, to the upper outer. And the upper outwardness remains in the aspect of the inner, to the outwardness that is of the aspect of the lower inner.112

These terms did not refer to essence; they were place markers for finding one’s way in the Lurianic thicket of worlds. The depictions where these terms are used are mainly visual, denoting location in the spiritual expanse.113 Vital takes pains to strip them of the values they represent, and to transform them into technical terms, since their values change in accordance with the system they depict. The meanings that Cordovero assigned to makif and mukaf [literally, “surrounding” and “surrounded”]114 parallel Vital’s usage of penimiut and ḥitzoniut. In my opinion, the choice of terms shows the difference between Lurianic teachings and Cordovero’s thoughts.115Cordovero’s starting point 112 Hayyim Vital, Etz Ḥayyim, in Collected Writings of R. Isaac Luria (Jerusalem, 1988), Sha‘ar Penimiyut ve-Ḥitzoniyut, derush 3; see also derush 5, derush 14. 113 Idel observed that Cordovero incorporated two Kabbalistic models in his personality and writings: the theurgic-theosophic Kabbalistic model and the Eastern model of ecstatic Kabbalah. This is illustrated by what he writes in Shi‘ur Komah, fol. 10b. See Moshe Idel, “Universalization and Integration: Two Conceptions of Mystical Union in Jewish Mysticism,” in Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn, 27–57 (New York: Continuum, 1996), 37–38. According to Idel, the first model is based on structures that are comparable only to Gnostic approaches. By means of Kabbalistic intents, the Kabbalist is capable of infusing these structures with his energy and influencing them. The second, philosophical, model is influenced by Ibn Ezra’s commentaries to Gen. 2:3, Exod. 23:21, and Num. 20:8, and is based on a philosophical theology that defines God as totally spiritual and unified, without any subdivision into Sefirot. In this model, the Kabbalist seeks either union with God by means of the purification of the soul or the realization of the Active Intellect. These will allow him to leave the earthly world, also defined as the world of division, approach the supernal world, and unite with it. See Idel, “Universalization,” 50–51. This analysis helps understand Cordovero’s emphasis of the spatial aspect of the terms “inwardness” and “outerness” and of their significance in terms of Kabbalistic values. On earlier spatial conceptions of God in Jewish thought, see Idel, “Universalization,” n. 25. 114 See Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, sha‘ar 6: Sha‘ar Seder Amidatam 3. 115 The concepts of inwardness and outwardness in Cordovero’s doctrine relate mainly to values. “That we say something is above something else, this means that it is superior, and not that it is [spatially] higher, as will be explained. Let the reader place these words of ours before his eyes, and not be one having bad thoughts, and not to think that he possesses any place. To the contrary, He [God] is the place of the world, and He has no place; He created the place in which every placeholder came into being” (Pardes Rimmonim, sha‘ar 6: Sha‘ar Seder Amidatam, chap. 3, fol. 29a–b).

Introduction

is that the divine intellect creates place and does not occupy place.116 In contrast, Lurianic Kabbalah describes the Godhead as Ein-Sof, the fullness of all space that must make place for creation.117 Cordovero’s divinity has no actual spatial dimension, while Lurianic Godhead is perceived in terms of place. The former conception is characterized by its abstract intellectuality, while the latter is quite visual. For Cordovero, penimiut and ḥitzoniut have a symbolic meaning of “primal importance,” while the visual Lurianic notion imparts an additional locational meaning.118 The term nekudah penimit [“inner point”] in Vital’s writings refers to Keter within Malkhut, that is, the traces of the highest of the Sefirot—Keter within the lowest—Malkhut. It originated in Vital’s depiction of the creation of the worlds in Etz Ḥayyim: “And when it arose in His pristine will to create the worlds and emanate . . . Ein-Sof restricted Himself at the middle point.”119 The term “middle point” instead of “inner point” highlights the spatial aspect of this portrayal. Obviously, this appellation also echoes the original use of this term in the Sefer ha-Iyyun circle, namely, the most profound divine essence present in all the emanations.120 It should be stressed 116 What Cordovero writes in Or Yakar supports my argument. See Cordovero, Sifra de-Zeniuta with the Or Yakar commentary (MS. Modena 2a, on Zohar 2:176b; cited by Bracha Sack, Kabbalah of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero [Heb] [Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University Press, 1995], 82). Sack’s argument, that the Lurianic doctrine of tzimtzum has its roots in Cordovero’s Kabbalistic teachings (57–82), requires further attention. Like Luria, Cordovero also speaks of tzimtzum within God, but he does not understand it in a spatial sense, “for to those who know wisdom, it is known that in the [divine] world, there is no space at all” (77–78). The concept of place, according to Cordovero, is an abstraction. In contrast, the teachings of Luria’s disciples state that Ein-Sof limited Himself. 117 Vital, beginning of Etz Ḥayyim. 118 On the influence of Lurianic Kabbalah’s spatial-cosmogonic nature on scientific thought in Western Europe in the second half of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century, through the book Kabbala Denudata by Christin Knorr von Rosenroth, see Brian P. Copenhaver, “Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and Their Predecessors,” Annals of Science 37 (1980): 507–15. Copenhaver presents the spatial nature of Lurianic Kabbalah in light of the theory set forth by von Rosenroth. See Elliot Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 72–98. 119 Vital, Etz Hayyim, fol. 11b. 120 See Hayyim Vital, Sha‘arei Kedushah ha-Shalem, ed. Amnon Gross (Tel Aviv: Gross, 2005), section 3, sha‘ar 2. Werblowsky concluded from this that, according to Luria’s conception, “[t]he ‘lower’ is always also the ‘outer’ cover, garment, or shell, surrounding the preceding ‘higher’, viz. more ‘interior’, level of existence to which it is related like body to soul. . . . From the celestial anthropos down to earthly man the same structure infinitely repeats itself ” (Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 68).

43

44

Introduction

that the visual picture in Lurianic Kabbalah does not negate the common identification of inwardness with spirituality in all Kabbalistic literature. Just one example of many is this passage by Vital from Likkutei Torah: All things in the world possess vitality, as just as man is created with body and soul, so, too, all things. And now, the Torah itself has body and soul. Body, as in the matter of garb, that is mentioned in the words of the Rabbis: gufei ha-Torah [i.e., the literal meanings of the Torah; literally, the “bodies of the Torah”]. And the Torah has inwardness, this is the soul.121

The tension between the teachings of these two Kabbalists regarding inwardness and outwardness comes to the fore in R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto’s attempt to create a synthesis between the value-based and the technical aspects of Kabbalistic penimiut and ḥitzoniut.122 For Luzzatto, the “inner” and “outer” within the supernal worlds depict the relationships between their various components, as Vital emphasized. Despite this, the existence of outwardness, the activated vessels on which the bodies are dependent, is contingent upon the root of the soul, on the light within and around the vessels, which is the secret of the divine “inner.” The “outer” without the “inner” cannot exist, while the existence of inwardness is unconditional. To summarize our discussion of the medieval development of penimiut, it is noteworthy that the Bible and rabbis do not use this term, but speak mainly of the “heart” and “intent.” In the medieval period, penimiut described the world of the Godhead, and alternative terms came to depict inwardness in the sense of introspection aimed at communion with God or to denote inner aspects of religious life, including devekut,123 hitbodedut

121 Hayyim Vital, Likkutei Torah ve-Ta‘amei ha-Mitzvot , 245. 122 Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Sefer ha-Kelalim, ed. Hayyim Friedlander (Bnei Brak, 1975), 359; see the gloss by Friedlander ad loc. 123 Afterman, Devequt. On the question of the relationship of the meaning of devekut in medieval philosophical and Kabbalistic thought and its significance in the Bible and the rabbinic literature, see ibid., chap. 1, 15–37.

Introduction

[“seclusion”],124 ḥeshbon nefesh [a “spiritual accounting”],125and ruḥaniut [“spirituality”].126 In the Hasidism of the Baal Shem Tov, in the middle of the eighteenth century in Eastern Europe, the term penimiut was given a new meaning, which combined some of the Kabbalistic meanings described above and the original Biblical meaning of lev. This new meaning is the closest to my definition of the term “inwardness” in this book. This is the word of King David, may he rest in peace, who said [Ps. 109:22]: “And my heart is pierced within me.” This means, and my heart is my penimiut, for every inner thing is called “heart,” which is close to the meaning of the Zohar [2:128b], following [Ps. 27:8] “In your behalf my heart says,” for it is said of the Lord that He is his heart, since He is the penimiut [here: “the inner essence”] of everything.127

R. Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, one of the leading disciples of the Maggid of Mezeritch (the leading disciple of the Baal Shem Tov, whose students in turn established the main branches of Hasidism), supports the Zohar’s exposition of the verse “you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him” (Exod. 25:2), stating that the “heart” in this verse is that of God,128 and connects it with the verse in Psalms: “And my heart is pierced within me.” In other words, man’s inwardness when pierced, when free of physical desires (as Menahem Mendel explains in the continuation of the passage), is the divinity that resides within him. The focus on the divine is transferred to the inner arena within man, where God resides when place is made for Him by overcoming physical attractions and by consciously connecting with the inner divine vitality that sustains man. The Baal Shem Tov’s grandson, R. Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, 124 See Moshe Idel, “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Ecstatic Kabbalah,” in Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 69–103 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988). See also idem, “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Jewish Philosophy” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1988): 39–60. 125 See Bahya ben Joseph Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, trans. Judah ibn Tibbon (Jerusalem, 1978), Sha‘ar Ḥeshbon ha-Nefesh. English translation: The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, trans. Menahem Mansoor (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), “On Self-Reckoning for God’s Sake,” 354–401. 126 Shlomo Pines, “On the Term Ruḥaniyyot and Its Origin and on Judah Halevi’s Doctrine” [Heb], Tarbiz 57 (1988): 511–40. 127 Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, Peri ha-Aretz (Jerusalem, Zhitomyr, 1867), “Letters,” 58 (a letter from 1784). 128 On the Zohar’s exposition of this verse, see below, chapter four, n. 92.

45

46

Introduction

holds this idea as self-evident when he speaks of “the divinity inherent within him, within a person’s nefesh, ruaḥ, neshamah [all usually rendered as ‘soul’].”129 The “inner point” reappears in Sefat Emet, written by the founder of Gur Hasidism, R. Judah Aryeh Leib Alter. It derives from the same context, and refers to man’s inner desire for God: This is the meaning of the shekalim, to arouse generosity in Israel, for God’s undoubtedly does not desire the half-shekel, but only the arousing of the inner desire between Israel and their Father in heaven. For in every Israelite there is an inner point solely for the Lord Himself. . . . The inner will to devote all [in place of the shekalim] to the Lord, may He be praised, awakens in man because of our not having the holy Temple, by our many sins. The love of the Lord awakens in Israel by itself, and they are capable of repenting out of joy. Nisan is the new year for months, from the aspect of renewal that comes from joy and love of the Lord.130

Continuing the idea set forth in the Zohar, these passages indicate, once again, that where this inner will is directed to the divine, this will itself is the inner point, that is, the divine within man. The inner space within man’s soul is the dwelling place of the divine, which is manifest upon the removal of obstructions such as desire and personal interest. ***

This historical and philological survey of the terms used to denote the psychological aspects in Jewish thought charted the development of the differing meanings of these words and phrases. We saw that in the past the term penimiut and its derivatives were used not only in psychological contexts, but in completely different settings, such as the literary esoterica surrounding various scientific and pseudoscientific pursuits that burgeoned in

129 Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, Degel Maḥaneh Efrayim (Jeusalem, Books export enterprises, 1963), exposition for Shabbat Teshuvah, 266–69. 130 Judah Aryeh Leib Alter, Sefat Emet: Novellae on All the Sabbaths in the Year and the Festivals (Jerusalem, 1952), Parshat Shekalim (from 1871), 124. On the inner point in Gur and Alexander Hasidism, see Mendel Piekarz, “‘The Inner Point’ of the Admorim of Gur and Alexander as a Reflection of Their Ability to Adjust to Changing Times” [Heb], in Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby, ed. Joseph Dan and Joseph Hacker (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), 617–60.

Introduction

the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.131 In that period, the esoteric stratum became the basis of inner religious life, not necessarily in the psychological sense, but by enabling the religious elite to realize what it perceived as the inner goal of religion.132 Liebes suggested another possible understanding of esotericization when he discussed the relation between the Heikhalot and Talmudic literatures. Liebes maintained that for the rabbis, the sage’s knowledge of hidden things is not outer knowledge and has its source in inner intuition, not in tradition.133 For example, in the narrative “Vinegar, son of wine” in BT Bava Metzia 83b, R. Eleazar ben Simeon has the ability to recognize improper social behaviors conducted behind closed doors. In the Heikhalot literature, the intuitive knowledge of the sages of the Talmud is formalized and becomes a more technical, conscious, and secret matter, and therefore undergoes exteriorization. This understanding of esoteric teachings as exteriorization relates to intuitiveness (inwardness) as compared with the formalization (outwardness) of knowledge, regardless of the contents of this knowledge. An awareness of the development of the terms denoting the religious life of the psyche in the Jewish sources, from the Bible to Hasidism, is essential for our comprehension of the terms in the current work that relate to the psychological aspects of inwardness (and not to other meanings, such as secrecy, place in the “divine expanse,” or intuitiveness).

The Comparative Study of Religion In order to examine the existence and nature of inner religious life in the Jewish sources, I will employ comparative phenomenological methodology and map the diverse aspects of this life by comparing data from different religions. Despite the harsh attacks directed against this methodology in recent decades, I am convinced it is still fundamentally valid.134 131 See the extensive discussion in Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical Implications, trans. Jackie Feldman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 132 Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 39. For Ibn Ezra, for example, the astrologicalhermetic worldview became the inner meaning of Judaism. 133 Liebes, “Externalization.” 134 The researcher of religion Jonathan Z. Smith wrote in 1982 that religion is merely a scholarly construct (Smith, Imagining Religion from Babylon to Jonestown [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982], 11). See also Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: John Hopkins

47

48

Introduction

Scholars of religion must be attentive to this critique and correct the mistakes of the past accordingly, in order to provide a firmer basis for the comparative study of religions in the present and in the future. For example, one of the stinging criticisms directed against Mircea Eliade, the most important scholar of religion to adopt this methodology in the second half of the twentieth century, is the claim that “comparisons of phenomena that are insufficiently defined in culture A with phenomena lacking precise definition and analysis in culture B are not science.”135 If similar phenomena are discovered in different religions that are distant from one another, and the researcher is not aware of the unique contexts and traits of these phenomena, the comparison will become a worthless fad, as, for instance, Werblowsky claims regarding Eliade’s sweeping use of the term “shamanism.”136 Werblowsky argues that with broad generalizations of this sort Eliade descended to the absurd, “identify[ing] the ‘spirituality of Asia,’ as distinguished from that of the modern West, with that of the ‘archaic world,’ and the experience of a Buddhist monk with that of a Paleolithic hunter or with any ecstatic mysticism.”137 Notwithstanding my agreement with some aspects of this critique, in both this specific example and the general argument,138 I do not concur entirely with the sweeping conclusions that go to the opposite extreme and would do away with comparative phenomenological methodology. Similar University Press, 1993), 29, 40–43, 47–48; Russell T. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myth, Knowledge, and Ideology (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2003); Willie Braun, “Religion,” in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. Willie Braun and Russel T. McCutcheon (London: Cassell, 2000), 3–21; William E. Arnal, “Definition,” in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. Willie Braun and Russel T. McCutcheon (London: Cassell, 2000), 21–35. 135 R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, “Is There a Phenomenology of Religion?” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): 291. 136 See Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. William R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972). 137 Werblowsky, “Phenomenology,” 291–92. 138 See my opposition to the description of the Hasidic tzaddiq as a shaman, and the distinction that I draw between the perspective of the tzaddiq and that of the Hasid (Margolin, Human Temple, 420–25). Following Werblowsky’s critique of Eliade, I find it important to distinguish between the world of the pagan shamans and that of the Baal Shem Tov. Even if the perception of the tzaddiq’s activity by the Hasidic masses is shamanistic, the self-perception of the tzaddiq himself is different.

Introduction

religious phenomena occur in distant parts of the globe and in different historical periods. Even if their likeness is only partial because of contextual or essential differences, denying the existence of any similarity between them undercuts the very meaning of the term “religion” as denoting a universal phenomenon. In effect, this critique claims that scholars of religion are occupied with phenomena unique to the specific culture in which they arise. Consequently, such comprehensive criticism calls into question the possibility of using, in the scientific investigation of singular phenomena, universal terms and tools such as “religion,” “prayer,” “sacrifice,” and the like, because these phenomena are highly particular. Science is not only describing the phenomena, but also, based on optimal description, drawing conclusions as inclusive as possible concerning the nature of a described phenomenon. The denial of the ability to draw universal conclusions pertaining to more or less similar religious phenomena that occur all over the world and throughout human history is driven, inter alia, by political conceptions that criticize religious studies as a Western-biased remnant of the colonial period. Opposing these claims, Moshe Idel states that the complexity of religious phenomena is the cause of faults with general religious terms, since no single methodology can fully illuminate the world’s religions without being reductive. According to Idel, in light of unqualified criticism that totally invalidates universal terminology in religious studies, scholars must choose their eclectic research methods and consider the sociological differences responsible for the major features of the specific phenomena.139 My aim in this book is to highlight the common denominators of religious phenomena throughout the world. Thus, my fundamental assumption is that, despite the vast disparities between, for example, the types of rites in Hinduism and Judaism, for example, they both demonstrate interiorization: the attention of people performing Hindu and Jewish rites shifts from the (“objective”) world to the (“subjective”) mind and soul. In short, interiorization is common to the Indian and the Jewish worlds. Yet I do not argue for the position that this is necessarily the case under all conditions and in all situations. Rather, I aim to demonstrate the existence of a common universal element that underlies geographically diverse religious phenomena. 139 Moshe Idel, Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders (Budapest: Central European Academic Press, 2005), 1–4.

49

50

Introduction

Anyone wishing to predict future developments in the world’s religions would be well advised to consider the sociological data used by the early twentieth-century proponents of the theory of secularization. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind insights concerning the different religious developments that emerge from the universal phenomenon that I call “religious interiorization.” The comparative discussion of religions obviously requires greater caution and sensitivity than was shown by leading writers in the twentieth century. However, the hasty elimination of this important approach of comparative religion may result in the loss of the primary reason to engage in the study of religion at all. Moreover, although the need for greater sensitivity to differences is evident, excessive attention to subtleties and differences should not be demanded of any broad comparative phenomenological research. The greater the attention to these individual “trees,” the more difficult it will be for the researcher to see the shared “forest.” In this book I shall attempt to present a phenomenological description of the six dimensions of inner religious life that can be found in many religions. The facts are there, irrespective of whether philological and historical connections can be surmised or proven, or whether this is not possible, for substantive reasons, such as geographical or historical distance, or for technical reasons. Any indication of similarity always assumes that it does not suffice to rule out disparity. Even if it can be explained on historical or philological grounds, this likeness is based on the existence of common human characteristics that underlie different religious cultures. Each dimension described below will be illustrated by very different examples, yet a comparative discussion will reveal a fundamental shared infrastructure, according to which these examples will be grouped, at least for scholarly purposes. For example, Ramakrishna states that true piety is not dependent on outer circumstances, but exists only due to inner motives. This assertion, mentioned above,140 is not unique to Hinduism. This principle can also be found in Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, even though its object is sometimes different: it is not piety, but awe or self-submission. The conception that the highest form of worship is not performed due to outer social constraints, but is a result of man’s inner accounting, and may attest to the 140 See above, n. 21.

Introduction

meaning of life being independent of social matters. Religious activity free of outer considerations, which the rabbis define as actions “for the sake of Heaven,” is a metaprinciple in general religious thought, and expressed in different ways in accordance with differing cultural contexts. Common denominators of this sort are at the foundations of many different religions. Our discussion of inner life may pave the way for an examination of some other shared denominators, such as sacrifice and prayer, religious myths, and religious beliefs. Any scientific examination must establish a criterion outside the discussion. Research into inner religious in Judaism naturally leans toward synchronism, while being aware of developmental historical continuity. The distinctions between different historical periods or literary genres that substantially separate, for example, Talmudic and Kabbalistic literature, do not disappear, but become marginal in respect to the inner data present in all kinds of literary and religious sources that nourish the inner life of the Jews. Along with general questions regarding the raison d’être of the comparative study of religions, comparativist scholars themselves also point to problems. In the twentieth century, Rudolf Otto compared two spiritual figures who exhibit phenomenological affinity in his Mysticism East and West, the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart and the Indian mystic Shankara. Otto’s book became a model for comparisons between religious and philosophical life in the West the East, highlighting similarities and differences between the two worlds. In Crossing Horizons, Shlomo Biderman noted the centrality of interiorization in Indian civilization, and argued that inner religious life in the three monotheistic religions significantly differed from that characteristic of the Indian world. Indian interiorization is reflected in the change that Upanishads culture brought to the Vedic concept of the atman, and in Buddhist introspection. Biderman maintains that in Indian culture, inner religious life is infinitely more central and important than in Western religions. Western religiosity is mainly outer, while Indian religiosity is primarily inner. He traces this distinction to the Western focus on transcendence and contrasts it with the dominance of immanence in Indian culture. This emphasis on immanence enabled the development of Buddhist atheism, fostering man’s inner contemplation of emptiness. According to Biderman, the inner phenomena in the monotheistic religions, Western mysticisms, and other aspects of interiorization in the West are mainly reactions to Western transcendence and the characteristically

51

52

Introduction

Western preference for the outer over the inner.141 To his claim we should add the difference in the standing of the individual: Western culture is centered around the concepts of individuality and individual will as they developed in recent centuries.142 This raises obstacles for the examination of Jewish or Western religious innerness together with the Indian. I will now briefly touch on the question of whether it is possible to discuss the kind of religious innerness common to these worlds if they are separated by such a profound disparity with regard to their conception of God, as Biderman and others argue. The perspective on Western culture proposed by Biderman ascribes considerable weight to Greek philosophy’s interest in the transcendent— especially as found in the thought of Plato and Aristotle, which deeply influenced the monotheistic cultures of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the medieval period. The major commentaries on religious writings penned at that time were undoubtedly composed under the influence of the Greeks or while grappling with their ideas. In Judaism, Maimonides’s writings are the epitome of this process. Furthermore, as Scholem suggested, the writings of the Kabbalists can be viewed as a reaction to Maimonides’s transcendent interpretation. Unlike Scholem, who assumed that this response was fueled mainly by sources external to Judaism, contemporary Kabbalah scholars, with Moshe Idel as the leading proponent of this school, showed that the building blocks from which the Kabbalists constructed their alternative world of ideas are taken mainly from the midrashic world of the rabbis. Even the approach that places monotheistic transcendence at the very heart of the Bible, chiefly formulated by Yehezkel Kaufmann, is increasingly refuted by many contemporary Bible scholars.143 There is increasing agreement that transcendent and immanent viewpoints coexisted in the ancient Western world, and especially in the world of the Bible and the rabbis, with no clear prevalence of one or the other. Phenomena such as the anthropomorphic divine images that infuse biblical and rabbinic texts, the centrality of prayer that assumes the possibility of a dialogue between man and God, the perception of man as created in the image of God, and the like, attest that God’s immanence did not

141 Shlomo Biderman, Crossing Horizons: World, Self, and Language in Indian and Western Thought, trans. Ornan Rotem (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 45–54. 142 Ibid., 119–29. 143 See the passage by Muffs, cited above, n. 71.

Introduction

completely disappear in this world and did not free the stage for extreme transcendent notions. In light of the above, I propose viewing the disparity between East and West on this issue in a different light. Immanence was always present in Western culture. Moreover, it developed, and there is a continuity between early and later religious immanence in the West. However, in time, the transcendental elements intensified, limiting immanence and even seeking to cancel it, essentially creating Western religion as described by Biderman. I maintain that interiorization and the intensification of inner religious life in Western culture are not simply a reaction to the dominance of transcendence and objectivity. Rather, they rested on the immanent foundation already present there. However, the strengthening of transcendence in the West attenuated the force of religious immanence to the extent that it was seen as a psychological reduction and as God’s severance from the world. Indian culture experienced a different process: interiorization intensified, creating a ground for the kind of inner contemplation characteristic of Buddhist atheism. Indian culture chose immanence and religious interiorization, while the West took a different way. In the nineteenth century, the immanent element in Western culture was detached from its religious foundation, and individual will was placed at the center of existence, as in Nietzsche’s teachings. Hans Jonas portrayed the unique development that led to the intensification of individualism and individual will in Western culture not as a reaction to transcendence, but as a consequence of the dialectic between the transcendental and the immanent elements, between objectivity and subjectivity: Western metaphysics of the will, whose roots were Jewish-Christian . . . is a fruit of the encounter between the Jewish-Christian and the Greek standpoints: without the dialectical stress against the essentialistintellectualist parti pris of traditional philosophy, there would hardly have arisen a theory of the primacy of the will—with all the consequences such a theory entails. . . . [T]he road of this Western voluntarism . . . had, in fact, two distinct points of departure: on the one hand, Augustine’s stress on the will in man, as the ultimate locus of the drama of sin and salvation; on the other, the Jewish-Islamic stress on the will in God, as the first principle of creation and individual existence. It was the fusion, in later medieval thought, of these two strains, the theological and the anthropological, or, the

53

54

Introduction

metaphysical and the psychological, or, as we may also say, the objective and the subjective, which terminated in the powerful ascendency of voluntarism in the West.144

Jonas explained the gap that exists here between Jewish and Christian culture by pointing to the differences between various trends present in the monotheistic religions in the Middle Ages: It is not that the subjective aspect is missing on the Jewish side. The freedom of the human will, as the counterpart of divine justice, was consistently argued by the Jewish thinkers often in opposition to the determinism of their Islamic contemporaries. But freedom of the will need not mean its primacy; and on Jewish premises there is no reason for “radical” voluntarism, that is to say, for focusing the total essence of man in the unfathomable doings and events of his will . . . although both voluntarism and individualism, as we have seen, were native to the Jewish position in its confrontation with the Hellenic one, we find both—and the issues they posed—immeasurably sharpened in the Christian ambient.145

On the question of will, Jonas distinguished between the radical voluntarism in Catholicism and the moderate voluntarism of Judaism. However, he noted that this difference does not negate the existence of a common denominator in the treatment of this question by the two cultures. Similarly, I argue that the disparities between the Indian and Western cultures on the subject of religious interiorization should not call into question the fundamental existence of such a shared element. Western culture did not develop solely on the basis of transcendence and objectivity. Subjective and immanent data existed there from the beginning, just as in early Indian culture. Generally speaking, the transcendent and objective elements that were greatly enhanced in Western culture did not cancel out the other elements, which continued to exist in a dialectical relationship with the former ones. This is not the place for a scholarly discussion of the primacy of the immanent and subjective elements in early cultures, but clearly, in Indian culture and in Western culture, as well, the later interiorization trends drew upon the early immanence and subjectivity that were present in this cultures from the very beginning.

144 Jonas, Philosophical Essays, 39. 145 Ibid., 39–40.

Introduction

The comparative study of religion is one of the most impressive products of the humanist worldview and it provides the basis for the scientific study of the human spirit, namely, the humanities. Without fundamental humanist assumptions, it would not be possible to conduct a comparative study of religions that attribute their scriptures to the divine and consider them beyond human creation. By force of universalist humanistic thought, scholars seek the shared components among religions that emerge from an analysis of their differences. The comparative study of religion certainly has well-known limitations, as briefly mentioned above, but at times objections to such research, presented in the guise of scientific arguments, have hidden agendas, such as sectarian loyalty or even racism. The underlying reason for the dismissal of comparative religion is that emphasis on shared elements might weaken the alleged superiority of one of the compared belief systems. Against this, it should be stated that the phenomenological comparison of religions based on humanist thought contributes, even if only indirectly, to the strengthening of humanist values. Scientific thought cannot assume an absolute supernal source of values, institutions, and social structures, even if it is thought to possess them. Notwithstanding this, we must admit that the discovery of what is common to different religious phenomena, despite geographical distances and historical and social disparities between them, is a kind of objectivization based on a demonstration of the universal humanistic element shared by the different phenomena. Accordingly, our discussion of the different manifestations of religious interiorization and inner religious life using the tools of comparative phenomenology will be free of any metaphysical assumptions. Even so, uncovering the shared within the disparate imparts added force to the observed phenomena, due to their revealed universality.

55

Chapter One

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments

Ceremonialism, Intent, and Religious Interiorization in World Religions: Myth-Ritual Theory and the Study of Religion Ritual and ceremonial behavior are among the most prominent characteristics of religious phenomenon. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars concentrated on the relationship between ritual and myth, and developed what is known as myth-ritual theory.1 Less was written in those years about what ritual actually is,2 and even less has been written since then on the individual inner intents accompanying religious ritual acts. The discussion of the relationship between ritual and myth is grounded in the general conceptual sphere, while the examination of the believer’s intentionality during the performance of a ritual focuses on what happens within the psyche and draws upon religious literature dedicated to these matters. William Robertson Smith, who is considered to be the founder of myth-ritual theory, was convinced that ceremonialization precedes 1 For current surveys of myth and ritual theory, see Robert A. Segal (ed.), The Myth and Ritual Theory: An Anthology (Malden: Blackwell, 1998); Henk S. Versnel, Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 16–88. 2 Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 36. On developments in the twentieth century in the study of ritual, see below.

60

Part One: Ritual and Custom

conceptual significance and that, further, it is relatively unimportant to any ceremony itself. In his Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, Smith maintained that in ancient religions rituals were completely divorced from meaning.3 Scrupulous observance of ritual rules was associated with totally vague meanings, he argued, hence the simultaneous—and amicably coexisting—differing explanations for the same rite. This and other reasons led Smith to conclude that myths were derived from rites, and not vice versa. Smith’s two colleagues at Cambridge, James Frazer and Jane Ellen Harrison,4 generally supported his belief in the precedence of ritual. However, in her second book, Harrison described rituals as expressing basic and even primitive ideas concerning the spirits of fertility and growth.5 In her third book, on methodology,6 she listed three different forms of connection between myth and ritual: myth as ensuing from a ritual, myth and ritual as mutually derived, and myth as a scenario for a dramatic ritual.7 In the first half of the twentieth century, the study of ritual developed in various directions. In addition to Freud’s psychological approach, this period witnessed the rise of structuralism, the chief proponents of which were H. Huber, M. Mauss, A. Van Gennep, and C. Levi-Strauss.8 Research into rituals undertaken in recent decades, such as that of Catherine Bell, and Roy Rapaport and Ronald Grimes, for example, has developed new perspectives that I will not discuss here in depth.9 Some writers have 3 William Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, First Series: The Fundamental Institutions (Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1889), 18–21. See also Robert A. Segal, Myth: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 61–72. 4 Frazer published the first volume of his famous work The Golden Bough in 1890; see James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (London: Macmillan, 1890). In that year Harrison published her first book. See Jane E. Harrison, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens (London: Macmillan, 1890). 5 Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (New York: Meridian, 1955). 6 Jane E. Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (Cambridge: University Press, 1912). 7 Versnel, Transition and Reversal, 29. 8 Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, trans. W. D. Halls (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monike B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Cafee. (Chicago: Routledge & Paul, 1960); Claude Levi Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brook Grundfest Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963). 9 See Burkert, Structure and History, and his references to the scholarly literature that discusses the nature of ritual. See also Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

­ ostulated the existence of myths independent of rituals, and vice versa, p which suggests a more complex relationship between the two.10 These insights more forcefully raise questions concerning the primal nature of the ritual and the relationship between the ritual and the accompanying inner intentionality. Rituals are not merely religious ceremonies; they are assemblages of acts performed according to a predetermined order and at fixed and known times.11 The religious phenomenologist van der Leeuw explained, by means of an everyday example, the difference between a deed and a rite. He maintained that to leave the house in haste is a deed, while leaving every day at a set time and taking measured steps in the street is a solemn practice, a ritual act that slows down and intensifies the flow of life.12 The solemnity in his example might be misleading and cause us to conclude that every ritual act is accompanied by profound thought. But just as the fixed nature of the rite in question is an outer feature, solemnity, too, could be no more than a facial expression and outer form of behavior that impart a sense of gravity to the performance. Van der Leeuw emphasized the element of solemnity typical of ceremoniality but disregarded other features. Later attempts to define rite tended to favor general traits equally common to religious and secular, mundane rites. Goody, for instance, defined ritual as “a category of standardized behavior (custom) in which the relationship between the means and the end is not ‘intrinsic’, i.e. is either irrational or non-rational.”13 A definition of this sort completely ignores, for example, rites of passage and initiation rites in which the connection between means and goal is manifest.14 Walter Burkert, who studied Greek and Roman mythology, commented that this definition, which assumes that behavior must be clear and rational, connects means and goals, and overlooks the communicative Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and Ronald L. Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 10 Versnel, Transition and Reversal. 11 On repetition as a central characteristic of rituals, see J. Cazeneuve, “Le principe de repetition dans le rite,” Cahiers internationaux de sociologie 23 (1957): 42–62. 12 See van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence, 341. 13 Jack Goody, “Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem,” British Journal of Sociology 12 (1961): 159. 14 See Gennep, Rites of Passage; Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth, trans. William R. Trask (New York: Harper & Row, 1958); Victor Witter Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969).

61

62

Part One: Ritual and Custom

function of behavior.15 This observation is influenced by an awareness of the similarity between human and animal ritual behavior that grew in the second half of the twentieth century. This view of ritual behavior was also influenced by the work of the ethologists Julian Huxley and his student Konrad Lorenz. Shortly before the First World War, Huxley showed, by observing loons, that during the evolution of a species certain patterns of movement lose their initial unique functions and become purely “symbolic” rites in a process he called “ritualization.”16 In his book On Aggression, Lorenz brings examples of ritualization among animals and their different roles.17 Different types of animals that live in social contexts exhibit disparate forms of group behavior that were originally acquired as biological functions and later became independent from their origin, having acquired a new type of meaningful communication within the group. These ritual acts are stereotypical, repetitive, exaggerated, and at times are performed in dramatic fashion. The most impressive ritualization was observed among predators who create seemingly moral conduct. Lorenz learned that large predators that always live together, such as wolves or lions, have constant inhibiting mechanisms, which are independent of the animal’s changing moods. Paradoxically, the deadliest predators, such as wolves, possess effective inhibitions against murder. This prevents the strong from killing the weak. Specifically, when a strong wolf, for example, is superior to a weaker animal, inhibition intensifies and restrains the former from killing the later. Thus the species is preserved. The weaker wolf turns his head aside in the presence of his stronger rival, exposing the most vulnerable part of its neck. This submission suffices to deprive the stronger of his ability to press the attack. The stronger conducts the rite of attack but does not actually perform it.18 15 Burkert, Structure and History, 159 n. 13. 16 Julian Huxley, “The Courtship Habits of the Great Crested Grebe,” Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 35 (1914): 511–15. 17 Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, trans. Marjorie Latzke (London: Methuen, 1967); idem, “Evolution of Ritualization in the Biological and Cultural Aspects,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London series B 251 (1966): 273–84. 18 Lorenz, On Aggression, 110–14. At times the ceremony is the opening of the opposite of an attack. For example, a female’s threat to a strange male might become a manifestation of love. This love is created from anger, and the stranger becomes the female’s chosen mate. Lorenz argued that the aggressive instinct, which is stemmed and amasses in the animal, with no outlet or release, occasionally leads to neurosis. His observations teach that if an animal breaks the rules, it shows signs of remorse (Lorenz, On Aggression, 141–88).

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

Lorenz often drew analogies between rites that originated in the evolution of species in the animate world, that is, those of phylogenetic origin, and those with a cultural-historical origin to show the similarity of behavior in the animal kingdom and the human world, despite the disparate manners of their formation.19 Lorenz’s writings led researchers into ritual and myth to ask whether these analogies were a case of misleading linguistic usage or whether there were biological findings that could aid in understanding the human dimension of ritualization.20 Burkert sought to use Lorenz’s biological definitions in his pioneering examination of the study of rituals. He showed that in certain cases a biological explanation could shed light on a rites that could not be convincingly interpreted in another way. For example, the pouring of oil in the narrative of Jacob’s dream in Bethel (Gen. 28:18) is an example of a libation rite that has parallels in many diverse cultures. Burkert argued that this ceremony has its roots in the marking of territory practiced by animals.21 Burkert concluded that human rites should be examined from a biological perspective, which at times enables them to also be interpreted in a religious context, “as an action pattern redirected for demonstration, sometimes unaltered, sometimes transformed into a purely symbolic action, or even into an artifact. We understand the sign as evolving from an original, pragmatic behavior, and retaining its meaning even through some shifts of emphasis.”22 Burkert’s assumption of a biological source for ritual behavior in general, and especially in religious practice, makes it possible to argue against a necessary connection between myth and ritual. Furthermore, even in instances in which ritual is explained as the realization of a myth within the context of religious life, the individual who performs such a ritual could act independently of the myth; for example, someone compelled to act by the external motives of social circumstances, fears, and habits.

Rite and Religious Ritualization According to Freud, Lorenz, and Buber In his 1907 essay “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices,” Freud argued for the close similarity between a neurotic’s obsessive actions and the rituals 19 Ibid., 47–71. 20 Burkert, Structure and History, 36; see n. 17. 21 Ibid., 39–45. 22 Ibid., 45.

63

64

Part One: Ritual and Custom

of a religious person. Such religious actions, he asserted, serve to demonstrate the believer’s faith and religious piety.23 The likeness between the two is evident in the pangs of conscience aroused by mistakes, the distinct separation of obsessive and ritual actions from other actions by the prohibition of disturbance, and the punctilious performance of each and every detail. Freud also, however, noted the existence of significant differences between obsessive acts and religious practices. The former are personal and various, while religious deeds are stereotypical and therefore ritual; obsessive actions are conducted individually, and even in secret, while the latter are conducted publicly, with the participation of others; and finally, the former seem childish and illogical, while the latter are accompanied by logical and symbolic intents. The first two distinctions are irrefutable, but the third is less compelling. The disparity between obsessive and religious ritual acts dissipates to a great degree in light of an awareness of the religious context. Indeed, as Freud himself argued, most believers are unaware of the deep motives of religious rites, which are known only to religious teachers (and researchers); they perform these acts without wondering about their meaning, which is mainly symbolic.24 Freud assumed that religion has intellectual foundations but that the transferal of value from psychological motives to obsessive performances is characteristic of the behavior of the religious masses, just as is the case for obsessive actions.25 “[T]he petty ceremonials of religious practice gradually become the essential thing and push aside the underlying thoughts. That is why religions are subject to reforms which work retroactively and aim at re-establishing the original balance of values.”26 Both Freud and Smith maintained that, already in antiquity, religious rituals conduct by the believing masses were not directly dependent on an awareness of content. This is supported not only by the Biblical prophets’ critique of those who perform the commandments by rote (Isa. 29:13); Burkert, who studied the classical world, cites the Roman Seneca,

23 Sigmund Freud, “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices,” in Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1959), 9:115–27. 24 Ibid., 122–23. 25 Although Freud seems to have been deeply influenced by William Robertson Smith’s book (see Freud, Totem and Taboo, 132–55), he did not heed the latter’s warnings against the anachronistic modern habit of examining religion mainly from a perspective of the faithful. See Smith, Lectures, 17. 26 Freud, “Obsessive Actions,” 126.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

who claimed that most of those who believed in Roman religion did so without knowing why.27 Lorenz, who was acquainted with Freud’s essay, stressed the similarity between the ritual behavior of animals and the obsessive behavior present in a minor degree in many children, and indicated that both originated in a behavioral mechanism of obvious utility for the existence of the species. The less that man knows about causal connections, the more important it is for him to embrace any conduct that proved itself more than once and that he can trust as riskless and as leading to the goal. Adherence to minor details, no matter how enslaving, provides security and peace of mind. Lorenz therefore argued that even when rites become mandates of culture, tradition, or the superego—for example, when religiously commanded— the habit that has taken hold remains appealing. The important trait of both cultural and biological rites, then, is that they become active and independent elements that themselves influence social behavior. A Jew who is happy when he builds and decorates his sukkah [the “booth” that becomes a temporary residence on the Sukkot holiday] or a Christian who rejoices when decorating a Christmas tree attest that tradition is a habit about which its practitioners have grown fond. This warm feeling increases a person’s loyalty to his symbols and gives them a semblance of value.28 Lorenz gave the Freudian linkage between religious rite and obsessive behavior a biological underpinning explained primarily by the struggle for the preservation of the species. Lorenz totally reduced the religious rite, since, according to him, the basis of the warm feeling accompanying the rite is expressed in religious symbols and values inherent in biological needs similar to those seen in the ritual behavior of animals.29 27 Burkert, Structure and History, 38. 28 Lorenz, On Aggression, 59–63. 29 Among contemporary researchers of religious rituals, Burkert is definitely the most influenced by Lorenz’s reductive stance; see Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). Other researchers who acknowledge the biological element of ceremonialism placed greater emphasis on the behaviorist significance of the ritual phenomenon; see, for example, Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), especially his definition, 24; or Ithamar Gruenwald, Rituals and Ritual Theory in Ancient Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2003). The latter observed that ritual is a formational behavioral phenomenon that is not characteristic only of the religious and social aspect. It also gives expression to mental activity as a result of a special biological trait that enables communication with the reality; see Gruenwald, Rituals, 3–12.

65

66

Part One: Ritual and Custom

It is important at this juncture to consider a completely different response to Freud’s ideas, namely, Martin Buber’s stance regarding belief and religious rite. Unlike Freud, who asserted that religion has its origins in intellectual contents that metamorphosed into ritualization, Buber stated that religion has its source in the I-Thou relationship, which is singular in its nonverbal nature. The essence of this relationship is the encounter that befalls man and that cannot be understood as a subjective experience, but as a presence. “The Word of revelation is I am that I am. That which reveals is that which reveals. That which is is, and nothing more. The eternal source of strength streams, the eternal contact persists, the eternal voice sounds forth, and nothing more.”30 But like Freud, Buber also thought that institutionalized religion is characterized by the petrifaction of the element that established it, even though he viewed this element totally different than had Freud: Man desires to possess God: he desires a continuity in space and time of possession of God. He . . . wants to see this confirmation stretched out as something that can be continually taken up and handled, a continuum unbroken in space and time. . . . Thus God becomes an object of faith. At first faith, set in time, completes the acts of relation; but gradually it replaces them. . . . Further, man’s thirst for continuity is unsatisfied by the lifestructure of pure relations, the “solitude” of the I before the Thou. . . . He longs for extension in space, for the representation in which the community of the faithful is united with its God. Thus God becomes the object of a cult. The cult, too, completes at first the acts of relation, in adjusting in a spatial context of great formative power the living prayer, the immediate saying of the Thou, and in linking it with the life of the senses. It, too, gradually replaces the acts of relation, when the personal prayer is no longer supported, but displaced, by the communal prayer, and when the act of the being, since it admits no rule, is replaced by ordered devotional exercises.31

Faith and rite originate in the human desire for more than the moments of presence revealed in the encounter between I and Thou. Rite seeks to expand and ground the moments of encounter that emerge, first and foremost, from individual prayer, which is made possible due to the exchange

30 Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. R. G. Smith (New York: Scribner’s, 2000), 106. 31 Ibid., 107–8.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

of the divine as presence for human belief in God as a personality.32 Clearly, then, this belief, as necessary as it may be, is of a reductive nature, while ritual expansion, and especially ritual institutionalization, eventually become a substitute for the true encounter with the presence. What, therefore, is the factor that arouses the unease of the religious individual who rebels against routine ritual activity and demands conscious intentionality and personal meaning in the ritual act?

The Reasons for Religious Discomfort with Ritual Activity Freud described the person suffering from neurotic obsessive behavior as held captive by prohibitions and subject to guilt feelings about which he understand, nothing. Such feelings have their roots in prior psychological processes and they arise anew every time triggers prompt anxiety that is caused by the anticipation of disaster. Consequently, a personal rite begins as a defensive action or as a sort of cautionary measure. Freud compared this to religious rites: “the pious observances (such as prayers, invocations, etc.) with which such people preface every daily act, and in especial every unusual undertaking, seem to have the value of defensive or protective measures.”33 Such activity is imposed on man by guilt of which he is not aware. For Freud, the awareness of guilt always originates in the repression of the awakening of the sexual instinct at man’s core.34 Even if we assume the existence of diverse additional factors capable of arousing guilt, since these are unconscious and repressed, such behavior is to be regarded as conduct forced on a person from without. According to Aristotle, “an act is compulsory when its origin is from without, being of such a nature that the agent, who is really passive, contributes nothing to it: for example, when he is carried somewhere by stress of weather, or by people who have him in their power.”35 He distinguished between things done willingly and unwillingly, with the latter including matters performed under compulsion, by external forces, or out of a lack of 32 Ibid., 108. Heiler’s understanding that prayer is the heart and center of every religion, corresponds to Buber’s conception; see Heiler, Prayer, xv. 33 Freud, “Obsessive Actions,” 123–24. 34 Ibid., 124 35 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 3:1:3 (for English translation, see Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 268 [London: Heinemann, 1945], 116–17); see his further discussion of doubtful situations.

67

68

Part One: Ritual and Custom

knowledge, whether positive or negative. Aristotle’s discussion of compulsion discloses his thought regarding actions taken willingly and intentionally: “An involuntary action being one done under compulsion or through ignorance, a voluntary act would seem to be an act of which the origin lies in the agent, who knows the particular circumstances in which he is acting.”36 Aristotle defines a voluntary act as one that originates in man’s inner self, or as he puts it, “when the origin of an action is in oneself,”37 in contrast with actions that are external or unwitting. Aristotle’s distinction between an external and internal act is evident in the writings of the Stoics, who were inclined to differentiate between outer and inner experience.38 From an Aristotelian perspective, the human instinct for activity, understanding, and awareness is what motivates individuals not to be satisfied by automatic ritual activity forced upon them by factors of which they are unaware, as Freud and Lorenz demonstrated; and by pressures exerted by society, which owes its cohesiveness to the existence of rituals, as Emile Durkheim showed.39 According to Buber, the revolt against the fossilization of religious ritual is a rebellion of the spirit, which abhors the I-It relation that dominates religious life and which longs for the renewal of I-Thou relations. The question of personal intent that accompanies religious ritual behavior is bound up with the individual’s not being satisfied with knowledge of the rules of the religious act in question or, at best, also the knowledge of the mythical reason for the ritual. It has its source in an aspiration to transform ritual behavior, which is performed as a kind of automatic, external act, into conduct that is done out of a profound inner awareness. Imparting deep inner significance to an external ritual act need not develop from an actual ceremony. At times a social external ritual can be infused with inner meaning that comes from an intellectual cultural system totally 36 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 3:1:20 (trans.: 73:126–27). The conception set forth there is extremely broad, and includes among voluntary and intentional actions angers, desires, and the injustices man causes to others. 37 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 3:1:6 (trans.: 73:118–19). 38 See, for example, Epictetus, Discourses 1:1–2 (for English translation, see Epictetus, The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, trans. W. A. Oldfather, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 268 [London: Heinemann, 1979], 6–25). “I must go into exile: does anyone, then, keep me from going with a smile and cheerful and serene?” (1:1; trans.: 131:12–13). 39 Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 47; see above, in the introduction, n. 2. See also EvansPritchard, Religion, 62–63.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

unconnected to a specific ritual. An outstanding example of such an act is the Japanese tea ceremony, which is derived from a ceremony brought to Japan from China. This was originally a social ceremony indicating the exalted status of the participants, but in the fifteenth century it became a spiritual exercise focused on the proper accompanying inner intent, in accordance with the teachings of the Japanese Zen Buddhist masters.40 Sacred texts in various cultures attest that the ancients were already concerned with the question of intent. Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: He who offers to me in devotion a leaf, a flower, a fruit, water, I accept that devotional offering of a pious self. Make what you do, eat, offer in sacrifice, give in charity, and undergo as austerity, an offering to me, Son-of-Kunti.41

The divine spirit in which everything dwells is the purpose of religious activity. The fitting sacrifice is not distinguished by outer action, but by the inner intent of the one offering it. Performing the act with devotion, for the sake of the blessed divinity, is the required intent; and it can accompany both an official rite, the offering of sacrifices and charity, and any everyday activity dedicated as a sacrifice to the divine spirit.

Intent in Philosophy and in Religion Twentieth-century philosophical discussions of the concept of intent, which mainly elaborated on Wittgenstein’s examinations of this term as they were formulated in his Philosophical Investigations, freed intent from inwardness.42 “What is the natural expression of an intention?—Look at a cat when

40 See Paul Varley and Kumakura Isao (eds.), Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989); Soshitsu Sen, Tea Life, Tea Mind (New York: Uraseknke Foundation [by] Weatherhill, 1979); Patricia Jane Graham, Tea of the Sages: The Art of Sencha (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998); Tanaka Sen’o, The Tea Ceremony (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1998). 41 Bhagavad Gita, 9:26–27 (for English translation, see Bhagavad Gita, trans. Richard Gotshalk [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985], 36–37). 42 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 611–693 (for English translation, see Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe [Oxford: Blackwell, 1988], 159–72). See also para. 588–592 (trans.: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 154–55). See Bruce Aune, “Intention,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 4, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 198–200.

69

70

Part One: Ritual and Custom

it stalks a bird; or a beast when it wants to escape.”43 Wittgenstein seemingly negated innerness: “An ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria.”44 Wittgenstein continues by explaining that he does not mean to negate the link between inner intent and the outer world. Rather, he argues that this connection is not effected by means of any spiritual mechanism that joins the inner and the outer.45 Wittgenstein was especially interested in refuting metaphysical explanations by revealing linguistic structures and the ways of using an expression in a given language-game.46 He aimed to strip human language of the metaphysical dross that offered no real solutions to philosophical problems.47 A deeper investigation of “depth grammar,” as opposed to “surface grammar,” in Wittgenstein’s terminology, shows that his philosophical psychology denies the importance of turning inward if we wish to explore the nature of desires and intents.48 Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language teaches that the meaning of desires and intents is determined by the specific manner in which these expressions are used. The degree of their veracity and nature is examined by introspective contemplation.49 His successors, as well, spoke of the inner focus of the discussion of intent. Anscombe calls the reasons that determine the domain of terms such as 43 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 647 (trans.: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 165). See Gertrude Eizabeth Margaret Anscombe’s comment on this paragraph: Anscombe, Intention (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), 5. 44 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 580 (trans.: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 153). 45 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 689 (trans.: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 171). 46 See Norman Malcolm, “Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations,” The Philosophical Review 63, no. 4 (October 1954): 530–59, esp. 538 ff.; Rudolf Carnap, “The Rejection of Metaphysics,” in Carnap, Philosophy and Logical Syntax (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1935), 9–38. 47 “My aim is to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense” (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 464 [trans.: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 133]). 48 “‘I meant this by that word’ is a statement which is differently used from one about an affection of the mind. On the other hand: ‘When you were swearing just now, did you really mean it?’ This is perhaps as much as to say: ‘Were you really angry?’—And the answer may be given as a result of introspection and is often some such thing as: ‘I didn’t mean it very seriously’, ‘I meant it half jokingly’ and so on. There are differences of degree here” (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, paras. 676–677 [trans.: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 170]). 49 “It makes sense to ask: ‘Do I really love her, or am I only pretending to myself?’ and the process of introspection is the calling up of memories; of imagined possible situations, and of the feelings that one would have if . . . [!]” (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 587 [trans.: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 154]).

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

volition or intentionality “mental causes” (regarding both actions), as well as feelings and thoughts.50 The dividing line that Wittgenstein drew between the psychological and the logical, work by the founders of the new philosophy of logic, Frege and Husserl, should not be blurred. Nonetheless, the logical-linguistic treatment of intent patently does not negate its being active in the realm of the human psyche, and at times its examination requires introspective contemplation in order to learn of its existence and nature.51 ***

Religious life is replete with conventional ritual acts. The detachment of believers from conscious meaning in general and, especially, the meaning ascribed it by a specific religious tradition creates a conflict that arises from performance by rote. The religious person’s aim of reconnecting his outer action with the intentionality that should accompany it is an inward one. An objective of this type expresses a desire for unification between the outer act and the individual’s inner world, and is not necessarily dependent on preferring the inner to the outer. Emphasizing the intent in ritual acts does not require diminishing outer acts.52 Deepening personal intent, however, often results in opposition to traditional ritual acts, a lack of satisfaction with merely deepening their accompanying intents, as a sort of protest against the schematic nature of orthodox rites, and their replacement by more inward activity by the believer.

50 Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, “Intention,” in The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, vol. 2: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), 75–77. See also Anscombe, Intention, para. 11, 17–18; Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (London: Chatto and Windus, 1959), 92, 97. 51 For additional philosophical inquiries on this issue, see Jack W. Meiland, The Nature of Intention (London: Methuen, 1970); John R. Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). For the philosophical disagreements on the nature of human activity, the ways of describing it, and the nature of human thought, see Richard J. Bernstein, Praxis and Action: Philosophies of Human Activity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 230–304; Georg Henrick von Wright, Explanation and Understanding (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971). 52 This assertion could be supported by Wittgenstein’s statements (above).

71

72

Part One: Ritual and Custom

Ritual Interiorization in World Religions “Ritual interiorization” refers to the replacement of rites, such as the offering of sacrifices and libations, which are performed by rote within the tradition, by ones perceived by those performing them as more sublime. The preference for new rites generally results from the specific intent or exceptional inner efforts that accompany their performance and that impart to them their lofty worth. Mircea Eliade coined the term “ritual interiorization” in his book Yoga to describe physiological actions such as breathing and fasting, which substitute for the ritual objects of sacrifices and libations. Physical mortifications serve as an inner sacrifice that replaces an orthodox sacrifice.53 In Vedic myth, the offering of sacrifices in accordance with tradition’s law ensures that the sacrificer’s desires will be realized. This punctiliousness could be completely behavioral, and requires no inner intentionality beyond precision regarding the rules of the ceremony. In Eliade’s example of ritual interiorization, the yoga breathing exercise pranayama, which consists mainly of concentrating one’s attention on breathing, is compared with one of the best-known Vedic sacrifices, Agnihotra, the fire service that each family head is required to perform twice daily, before sunrise and after sunset: Next, the control of Pratardana, which is also called “the daily fire sacrifice offered internally”. Clearly, a man is unable to breathe while he is speaking. So, during that time he offers his breath in his speech. A man is, likewise, unable to speak while he is breathing. So, during that time he offers his speech in his breath. One offers two endless and deathless offerings without interruption, whether one is awake or asleep. All other offerings, on the other hand, are limited, for they consist of ritual activities. It is because they knew this that people in ancient times refrained from offering the daily fire sacrifice.54

In the Upanishads, the individual’s breath is compared to the priest’s offering of sacrifices. Constant awareness of breathing in and out is 53 Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, trans. William R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 111–14. For the sake of comparison, see on the fast in ancient and medieval Christianity in Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), esp. 33–47, 208–18. 54 Kausitaki Upaniṣad II, 5. For English translation see Upaniṣads, trans. Patrick Olivelle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 208.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

likened to the Brahmins’ singing of paeans while offering sacrifices. The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad tells of Janaka, king of Videha, who decided to give precious gifts to the Brahmin priests in an impressive sacrifice ceremony in the course of which he would determine who was the most learned priest. The profound erudition of Yajnavalkya was acknowledged after he compared the hymns with breathing.55 The seclusive authors of the Upanishads (middle of the first millennium BCE) preferred personal methods of self-control to the traditional ritual way of life. The emergence of seclusiveness in India was a protest against the collective nature of rites. In place of fixed, unbending public rituals, an ascetic would formulate a personal path of physical mortifications and purification of the soul.56 In nascent Christianity, the Letter to the Hebrews depicts a different type of ritual interiorization.57 As Flusser put it: “Jesus’ sacrifice not only introduces an element of atonement, according to the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, it also provides man with the possibility of the rectification of the spirit, conscience, something of which previous sacrifices were incapable.”58 Paul’s declaration reflects the culmination of his body-soul dichotomy—a dichotomy that led him to identify the commandments of the Torah as physical mandates59 that are contrary to the spirituality of the belief in Jesus and his atoning crucifixion through which the believer is redeemed. Christian faith, at least originally, aimed to replace the rites of the Torah with what it perceived as spiritual inwardness. Flusser argued that this Christian thought originated in a Dead Sea sect. Flusser found the direct influence of the sect—whose members regarded themselves as a holy 55 See Brhasaranyaka Upaniṣad III, 1. For English translation see Upaniṣads, 34–36. 56 Biderman, Crossing Horizons, 140–41. 57 “By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the sanctuary has not yet been disclosed as long as the first tent is still standing. This is a symbol of the present time, during which gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various baptisms, regulations for the body imposed until the time comes to set things right. But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption” (ESV, Hebrews 9:8–12). 58 David Flusser, Jewish Sources in Early Christianity [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1979), 367–68. 59 “For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law . . . making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (ESV Romans 7:22–23).

73

74

Part One: Ritual and Custom

congregation that constituted a sort of sanctuary of the spirit—in Peter’s phrase “spiritual sacrifices.”60 We have shown that one of the NT passages which express this concept is directly dependent on a Sectarian prototype; we have reason to believe that the concept itself came from Sectarian circles. This view, that the Church is a spiritual Temple, did not only mean for the Christians that the Church was a united body which contained holiness, but also that, being a spiritual temple, it was superior to the material Temple of the Jews.61

The medieval Christian mystical tradition contains many expressions of spiritual dissatisfaction with outer rites. Davis cites, for example, the writings of the German mystic Johannes Tauler (1300?-1361), who criticized religious asceticism that is not performed with the proper intent: In whatever they do, Pharisaic people think only of themselves. This is true also of some religious who think that they stand well with God. But if we examine their work rightly, we see that they love only themselves and think in essence only of themselves, whether it is a question of prayer or of anything else, but they are not aware of this . . . they pray and beat their breasts, contemplate the fine pictures in the churches, drop to their knees and run from one church to the next in the town. And for God it is all in vain, for their hearts and minds are not turned to him. They are turned rather to creatures, for it is there that they find their pleasure, their wellbeing or comfort, their desire or profit. . . . That is not the meaning of the commandment that we should love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind. And that is why God takes no notice of any of this.62

We can learn of ritual interiorization in Islam from, for instance, Avicenna’s Treatise on the Essence of Prayer.63 Pines showed that Avicenna set spiritual prayer in one’s thought against religiously mandated manifest prayer. The nature of this spiritual prayer will be discussed below; however, it can already be argued that, as regards Muslim prayer and ritual practices, 60 See I Peter 2:5. 61 David Flusser, Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988), 236. See below, on ritual interiorization in the Judean Desert sect. 62 Johannes Tauler, Predigten, ed. Georg Hofmann (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1979), 397, cited by Oliver Davies, God Within: The Mystical Tradition of Northern Europe (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 91. 63 Qsalah es-Salah, published in the collection Jami al-Badai, ed. Muhi al-Din Sabri Kurdi (Cairo, 1917), 2–14; see Pines, Studies, 144.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

that Avicenna patently called for ritual interiorization. Goldziher described the Sufi schools that were exacting in the observance of Islam’s commandments and formal laws, and that sought the perfection of religious life in the inner intensification of the formal commandments. Goldziher maintains that al-Ghazali’s major interest was in the interiorization of Islamic law and its spiritual revival, which, in his estimation, is the aim of al-Ghazali’s magnum opus Ihya Ulum al-Din (The Revival of Religious Science).64 The principle of muhasaba [self-examination of the soul], which is at the essence of Sufism, is bound up with the interiorization of ritual life. Sara Sviri explains in her discussion of muhasaba that scholars noted that, for the Sufi, the worship of God was not limited to the observance of the commandments, but entailed a meticulous examination of the soul’s motives in its actions, on the one hand, and inner intent, on the other. Even regarding a basic obligation such as the giving of charity, if self-examination reveals an improper ulterior motive, its performance should rightly be set aside. Muhasaba, therefore, is an important component of inner worship, the heart’s work, that developed in Sufism from its very inception, and which stands opposed to mechanical observance. The development of this practice is connected with al-Muhasibi, whose very name indicates that he was “the master of muhasaba.” I [the student] said, What is muhasaba? He said: To contemplate and to precisely examine the difference between what is hateful to God and what He loves. Muhasaba has two aspects: the one prior to the act, and that following it. Hasin [al-Basri] said: When a person wishes to fulfill the commandment of charity, he gazes [upon himself] and examines [himself], and [only] if [he finds] that the commandment is for the sake of God, may He be exalted, he is to fulfill it. Hasan further said: May God’s mercies be with the one who waits before he does what he desires to do. Let not the servant of God perform an action before he examines the matter in his thought: if he does this for himself, he should leave it [i.e., not do it]; and if out of his obligation to do so—then he should wait.

64 Ignaz Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, trans. Andras and Ruth Hamori (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 158–62.

75

76

Part One: Ritual and Custom

Hasan further said: May God’s mercies be with the early ones, who in their wisdom knew that there is no act that is not preceded by thought; thus, too, the believer, [before he acts,] he waits. The second type of muhasaba is the muhasaba after the act, that is, after the act that has already been done. God commanded that after the act, people are to examine their prior acts, regret their sins, and return to their Master in repentance.65

The most striking outer expression in Sufism of the interiorization of the Muslim rite, and especially of prayer, is the principle of dhikr—recollection. By placing remembrance of Allah in the center of religious activity, Sufi dhikr lessens the worth of other religious actions that now become secondary.66 Schimmel pointed out the distinction between the degrees of dhikr—a distinction based on differentiating between recollection with one’s tongue and inner remembrance in the heart.67 This hierarchy stresses the role of dhikr in the spiritualization of formal Islamic prayer, from removal of the time limitations of the set prayers to total inner immersion.68 The Sufi interiorization of Muslim rite obviously ensues from placing conceptual and meditative interiorizations (analyzed below) at the center of the believer’s life. Nonetheless, the importance of the discussion of these interiorizations is due to the fact that certain Sufi schools preferred to be freed from all ritual obligation.69 This example illustrates the nature of the connection between ritual interiorization and other interiorizations, which could lead to either ritual interiorization or the negation of all ritual. Ritual interiorization usually entails outer change in traditional rites that result from dissatisfaction with the character of said ritual tradition; but the intensification of the intent accompanying rites does not necessarily give rise to such changes. These are two different aspects of the same type of amplification of the individual’s inner life. These rituals, by their very nature, are based on outer behaviors that tend towards the theatrical and give external expression to inner unconscious motives and the existential needs of the collective to which the individual belongs. Anthropologists 65 Harith ibn Asad al-Muhasibi, Kitab al-Ri’āaya Lihukūuk Allāah, ed. Margaret Smith (London: Luzac & co., 1940), 10–15. 66 Sara Sviri, Sufis: An Anthology [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Mapa, 2008), 110–11. 67 Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 167–86, esp. 167–72. 68 For an additional discussion of Sufi prayer, see below, chapter three, 229–30. 69 Goldziher, Introduction, 147–48.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

and researchers on religion are divided in their explanations of the connection between technical magical thought and rational religious thinking; nonetheless, interiorization processes that focus on the intent that accompanies or refashions ritual activity are clearly nourished by the rationalization processes that called into question the myths underlying traditional rites, which they replaced by more rational symbolic explanations.70 These processes significantly contributed to the creation of interiorization processes and strengthened the individualistic element in religious life, since they diverted attention from social ceremonial activity to the inner arena of each participant in a rite. This does not necessarily mean the negation of the communal dimension, since a ceremony performed with personal intent often continues to be conducted within a social context, albeit with a certain weakening of the social dimension in favor of the personal. Deepening the intent accompanying a ritual act and the interiorization of a rite is usually related to rites connected with the individual and his personal life. Profound experiences associated with rites and ceremonies meant to explicitly mark changes or events in social life, such as coronations or rites of passage and initiation, are directly dependent upon the social character of such ceremonies.71 Durkheim showed that a rite that draws members of the sub-tribe closer to one another creates a spirit of social solidarity. The excitement that comes with ceremonial rites generates a feeling of collectivity that, in many instances, is bound up with a weakened sense of individuality. The repetition of ritual activity that renews solidarity therefore moderates the power of individualism.72

70 Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945), 72–108. 71 See above, 61 n. 14. The communitas experience described by Turner as a liminality offering an amalgam of humility and sanctity, homogeneity and fraternity, is not the consequence of human intentionality. Rather, it is the product of a ceremonial situation that, according to Turner, consists mainly of an awareness of the essential human bond without which society is impossible. For a limited time, the participants experience relations closer to the Buber’s I-Thou relationship than to hierarchically structured relations. The ceremony is meant to bring about change in the social positioning of those in its center, but something of the temporary submissiveness and formlessness passes on and moderates the pride of those who attained this new status (Turner, Ritual Process, 94–130). 72 Evans-Pritchard, Religion, 62–63.

77

78

Part One: Ritual and Custom

Intent in the Jewish Sources Act and Intent in the Bible Maimonides famously argued in his Guide of the Perplexed that the meaning of many Biblical commandments, and the reasons behind them, can be understood in light of the doctrine of the Sabians, the pagan sect mentioned in the Quran that lived at the time of the emergence of Islam in Harran in northern Iraq, close to the Euphrates River on the border of Syria and Asia Minor. Maimonides identified this sect with the family into which Abraham had been born and named all pagans after this sect.73 According to Maimonides, many of the Torah’s prohibitions are meant to negate pagan rites,74 and he interpreted many Temple laws and practices as alternatives to what was accepted among the Sabians.75 One of the developments of this idea is the argument that ritual practices in the Bible were frequently influenced by those of other religions, whether in the manner of acceptance (with new meanings attached) or on the basis of rejection and negation.76 The new reasons are the Biblical foundation for the inner meaning of the commandments imposed on the people of Israel. It was only in the time of the rabbis that the root khaf-vav-nun was given the meaning of intent, in terms of concentration, thought, and the direction inner attention to a certain matter. The verses in the Torah that already define certain commandments as “signs” and “reminders,” especially those teaching the ideal mindset required of those who fulfill the Torah, indicate the presence of a significant stratum of intentionality in the Bible itself. At Passover, and also with regard to all the other commandments of the Torah that are explicitly said to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt,77 every Israelite is mandated to actively arouse within himself the collective memory of this miraculous founding event of the people of Israel.78 The peoples' escape from Egypt and God’s divine guidance in the wilderness are among the pillars of Judaism. God demonstrated His providence and, consequently, 73 Maimonides, Guide 3:29 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 514). 74 Ibid., 3:37 (ibid., 540–50). 75 Ibid., 3:45 (ibid., 575–81). 76 Urbach, Sages, 1:59. 77 For example, Exod. 13:9; Lev. 23:42–43. 78 See Talmudic Encyclopedia [Heb], vol. 12, ed. Shlomo Josef Zevin (Jerusalem: Talmudic Encyclopedia Institute, 1967), s.v. “The Remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt,” cols. 209–10.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

He “expects” or “invites” the people to believe and trust in Him. The explicit verses of the Sabbath,79 Passover,80 tzitzit [ritual fringes], and mezuzah81— the sign on the hand and the symbol between the eyes (which the Oral Law understands as the commandment of tefilin)82—are understood to attest to the demands of consciousness made in order to impart meaning to specific rituals.83 Whenever the rite of the Paschal sacrifice is conducted or the Sabbath is observed without any inner identification with their contents,84 and without any conscious intent for the significance that the Torah imparted to the holiday and its attendant rite, we may presume the creation of a gap between the act and the inner intent that should accompany it. In addition to the principle of the sign and reminder as expressing a demand in the Torah for such intent, the verses in Deuteronomy that demand fear, love, and fidelity in the relationship between man and God85 require inner intentionality on both the emotional and epistemological levels, whether associated with specific ritual acts or not. Yochanan Muffs’s philological analysis of the wording of text about love and joy appearing in Deuteronomy and Chronicles, and afterwards in Ben Sira and in the writings of Philo, in the sermons of Paul, and in the early midrash and piyyut [liturgical poetry], revealed that they share the identical meaning with their Akkadian and Aramaic parallels used in legal documents. In these legal contexts they express the defined legal idea of free will, without compulsion, that is, they denote that the gift was granted or the property was sold of one’s free will.86 In Muff ’s words: . . . the religious covenant, exactly like its societal analogue, was created, sustained, and renewed by a continuous exchange of gifts and favors—the tangible signs of the mutual good will and loyalty of the parties . . . the gifts—in religious language, “the blessings”—of life and wealth, healing and 79 80 81 82 83

Exod. 31:13, 17. Exod. 12:14. Num. 15:37–41; Deut. 6:9. Exod. 13:9, 16; Deut. 6:8. The intent is to demands on the consciousness, and not to symbolic meanings. It includes an awareness that the arguments concerning the sign and the remembrance in the Torah are indications and not representative symbols. See Yosef Schaechter, Reflections on Dilemmas of Our Time: Essays [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1970), 61–66; Brevard S. Childs, Memory and Tradition in Israel (London: SCM Press, 1962). 84 For example, Amos 8:5. 85 Deut. 6:5; 10:12; 11:1, 13, 16, 18, 22; 13:4; 19:9; 30:6, 16, 20. 86 Muffs, Love & Joy, 122–24.

79

80

Part One: Ritual and Custom

assistance bestowed by divinity on everyman; the authority bestowed as a gift to kings, especially in Mesopotamia; and in Israel—at least according to the midrash—the gifts of the land, the Torah, and the Sabbath, granted to the people for all time. In return for these blessings, man reciprocated with his contributions to the temple and with the payment of his vows: in Mesopotamia with his food-offerings to the gods, and in Israel with his tithes, first-fruits and sacrifices, and later, with his prayers. And even if his sacrifices were formally considered as divine demands rather than spontaneous donations, nevertheless—at least according to a rabbinic tradition—if offered with a full heart and with enthusiasm, they were accepted as free-will offerings. Unlike the sale of an object, where the payment of a consideration effected the transfer of ownership, the validity of ancient Near Eastern donations was dependent to a great degree on the intention and good will of the donor.87

According to this explanation, the first test of religious intent in the Bible is that of the good will at the basis of giving to God. Another aspect of awareness of intent in the laws of the Torah can be found in the principle of shegagah [inadvertent act]. The shegagah sacrifices point to a clear distinction regarding a person’s motives. Sins that originate in doing evil and in conscious negation and denigration of the Torah’s commandments are distinguished from sins resulting from a lack of intent or knowledge.88 This distinction is fully expressed in the laws for capital crimes in the Torah.89 Can it be argued, despite the above, that the relatively small number of Biblical verses directly relating to inner intent demonstrates a Biblical inclination to exteriorization? I assume that this possibility is not indicative of the degree of Biblical interiorization or exteriorization, but of the lack of delineation typical of the world of Biblical thought between inner and outer—in other words, their entwinement. Deuteronomy’s “If, then, you obey” (Deut. 11:13–14) finely illustrates this characteristic incorporation of the inner and the outer.90 The demand for maximal love of God, which is the climax of Biblical interiorization, is reflected in completely outer 87 88 89 90

Ibid., 165–66. See Lev. 5:1–19; Num. 15:22–31. Exod. 21:13; and also the laws of the cities of refuge in Num. 35:11–28. See Henri Frankfort et al., Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954); Benjamin Uffenheimer, “Myth and Reality in Ancient Israel,” in The Origins and

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

reward and punishment. Likewise, Deuteronomy links the idea of repentance, which Muffs interprets as an expression of the interiorization of the Biblical conception of sin,91 with external reward: “and you return to the Lord your God . . . then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and take you back in love. He will bring you together again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you” (Deut. 30:2–3). At first glance, the Bible contains only a single express denunciation of the worship of God performed solely out of habit and therefore lacking inner intent: “Because that people has approached [Me] with its mouth and honored Me with its lips, but has kept its heart far from Me, and its worship of Me has been a commandment of men, learned by rote” (Isa. 29:13). Isaiah indicates that something is not right in the prayers recited by those ascending to the Temple, and possibly also in those recited by the priests and the Levites. This teaches that Isaiah meant that their fear of God was not worthy. Fixed prayer formulations already existed in the Biblical period,92 and therefore, since Isaiah does not deny that the people feared God in its heart (for he says “its worship [yiratam, lit., fear] of Me”), we may reasonably assume that his criticism is directed against a type of fear of God that he believed did not suit the content and purpose of the prayers. What was the original meaning of the phrase “a commandment of men, learned by rote” included in Isaiah’s rebuke? Rashi read the phrase in a specific ritual content: “And its worship of Me has not been wholehearted, but by the command of those who teach them, they show themselves to be submissive before Him, in order to beguile Him with your mouth.” Rashi apparently based his understanding on Ps. 78:36–37: “Yet they beguiled Him with their speech [be-fihem, lit., with their mouths], lied to Him with their words; their hearts were inconstant toward Him.”93 Verse 8 in the same chapter similarly speaks of the people of Israel’s denial that God was merciful when they were brought forth from Egypt and journeyed in the wilderness. The primary meaning of lack of faith is a lack of trust in God’s ability to care for His people and provide for their every want. This lack of belief is reflected by the people’s neglect of their faith and observance Diversity of Axial Ages Civilizations, ed. S. N. Eisenstadt (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986), 23–32. 91 See above, introduction, 16 n. 30. 92 Moshe Greenberg, On the Bible and Judaism [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1985), 179 n. 3 and 214–17. 93 See ibid., 197–98.

81

82

Part One: Ritual and Custom

of the Torah. Instead, they were more concerned with their physical needs. “Nonetheless, they went on sinning and had no faith in His wonders. He made their days end in futility, their years in sudden death” (Ps. 78:32–33). According to this interpretation, it cannot be argued that ritual activity is false because it is done out of obligation and habit without any true inner intent. The “beguiling” of God in prayer, which is based in the worshipers’ intent, ensues from a lack of faith and focus on ensuring their physical needs. Instead of expressing faith and trust in God, prayer becomes a request for fulfilling needs by “beguiling” God with words. Requesting the fulfillment of needs is posited here as contrary to faith in God’s wonders and miracles, and contrary to trusting in God to choose to help the people.94 The people fear God, but their fear is unworthy. This is not awe at the wonders of the Lord that leads to the observance of His commandments, but the peoples’ fear for its physical existence—and Rashi defines this as fear of God that is not wholehearted.95 For Buber, the leading Biblical expression of the nature of proper intent in the act of sacrificing appears in the story of Cain, and especially in the episode about the Binding of Isaac. God demands of Abraham the cruel sacrifice of his son, which also means the cancellation of His promise to Abraham. But God wants the intent and not the actual act. For the act itself, God sends the ram to Abraham—an animal sacrifice. The proper intent in the offering of a sacrifice is that the one offering it is prepared to give everything to God, in contrast to the person who heaps up sacrifices 94 Gruenwald noted that Ps. 78, and similarly Pss. 105 and 136, based on the narrative of the Exodus and the wanderings in the wilderness, make no mention of the Revelation at Sinai (Ithamar Gruenwald, “Myth in the Reality of Epistemology: History and Research” [Heb], Jewish Studies 38 [1998]: 207–208). This supports my argument concerning the nature of the belief in this Psalm. This belief is not in the Giving of the Torah, but in God’s providence and compassion, within the context of which He also transmits the commandments to His people. 95 The Hebrew expression: “One [thing] in the mouth, and another [thing] in the heart,” meaning something false, has its source in a late Talmudic interpretation: “R. Jose son of R. Judah said: What is taught by the verse [Lev. 19:36] ‘an honest hin’? Is not hin included in ‘an honest ephah’ [preceding this in the same verse; the ephah is a dry measure, and the hin, a liquid measure]? Rather, this is to teach you that your ‘yes’ [hen] should be just, and your ‘no’ should be just. Abbaye said: This means that one must not speak one thing with the mouth and another with the heart” (BT Bava Metzia 49a; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hil. De‘ot 2:6). The Biblical expression mitzvat anashim melumadah (Isa. 29:13, lit. “a commandment of men, learned by rote”) is used, in the world of the rabbis, to describe ritual activity that is defined as false, because the outer act has been separated from the inner intent. According to Ps. 97, supplication for one’s need is invalid behavior; while the rabbis find nothing wrong with such a request, if sincere.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

without proper intent.96 This analysis of the Binding narrative emphasizes the book of Genesis’s displeasure with outer, unconscious, technical, or utilitarian offerings of sacrifices that are not accompanied by an individual’s willingness to offer his soul to God, to be ready for any concession to His will. As mentioned, the Upanishads compare the sacrifice to breath, and the meaning of the sacrifice’s interiorization is the awareness that every physical breath must be as a sacrifice to God, that is, dedicated to Him. According to the Binding narrative, the one offering the sacrifice must have an inner intent of willingness to offer even his own soul, that is, a willingness in his inner being to dedicate his life to God, while not actually renouncing outer life. “God put Abraham to the test” (Gen. 22:1)—the test of intent. God does not desire the child’s death, which would mean cutting off Abraham’s progeny, since He told him: “Do not raise your hand against the boy” (Gen. 22:12), but rather, Abraham’s inner intent; that is, not that he actually forego the promise of descendants and the inheritance of the land, rather, that in his innermost self he is willing to direct all his actions to God without intending to receive reward. This conception that the crux of the sacrifice lies in the proper accompanying intent is based on the Biblical belief in God’s knowledge and interest in the secrets of man’s heart. This will be discussed below, in the chapter on ideational interiorization in the Bible.

The Concept of Intent and Its Development in Rabbinic Literature: Thought and Intent Regarding Consecrated Items and Civil Law The root khaf-vav-nun, meaning directing one’s focus to a precise point, first appears in Tannaitic literature.97 The question of the relationship between 96 See Martin Buber, “Cain,” in Buber, Darko shel Mikra [Heb] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1964), 60–64; idem, Torah of the Prophets [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Bialik Institute, 1942), 86–87; Ron Margolin, “Abraham the Seer—Martin Buber’s Interpretation of Abraham and the Hasidic Origins of His Interpretations” [Heb], in The Faith of Abraham, ed. Moshe Halamish, Hannah Kasher, and Yochanan Silman (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2002), 295–309. Compare this conception with: “And quite possibly the primary purpose of the Akedah story may have been only this: to attach to a real pillar of the folk and a revered reputation the new norm—abolish human sacrifice, substitute animals instead” (Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice, trans. Judah Goldin [New York: Pantheon, 1967], 64; see esp. 497–505). The contrasting view, which regards the Binding as an expression of events in God’s inner world, is presented by Yehuda Liebes, “The Love of God and His Jealousy” [Heb], Dimui 7 (1994): 30–36. 97 See Ben-Yehuda, Dictionary, 2294–2297, s.v. kon.

83

84

Part One: Ritual and Custom

act and thought was extensively discussed in the world of the Tannaim and Amoraim, by means of this root, as well as other linguistic expressions. In two halakhic realms, it is universally acknowledged that thought invalidates the ritual, just like outer acts: idolatry and sacrifices; I will expand on the latter.98 The fundamental principle regarding consecrated items is that an intent on the part of the sacrificer that diverges from the laws of sacrifices—even if such an intent was not executed—is liable to invalidate the sacrifice, or even turn it into pigul [an “abomination”]. The rabbis established exacting rules and laws regarding intent and gave them a central place in the assemblage of protocols governing consecrated items.99 “All animal-offerings that have been slaughtered under the name of some other offering remain valid (but they do not count to their owner in fulfillment of his obligation) excepting a Passover-offering and a Sin-offering.”100 “The Torah deemed thought regarding animal-offerings as more severe than their acts.”101 An instructive example of the manner in which the rabbis placed the dimension of the sacrificer’s intent at the heart of the laws of sacrifices, diverging from the literal meaning of the verse, is M Zevahim 4:6: An offering must be slaughtered while mindful of six things: of the offerings, of the offerer, of God, of the altar-fires, of the odour, and of the sweet savour; and if it is a Sin-offering or a Guilt-offering, also of the sin. R. Jose said: Even if a man was not mindful in his heart of one of these things, the offering is valid; for it is a condition enjoined by the court that the intention [which invalidates an offering] is dependent on him alone that performs the act.102 98 See the commentary of Keli Yakar to Lev. 19:4. The well-known dictum taught by R. Judah in the name of Rav: “[performance] not for its own sake leads to [performance] for its own sake” (see BT Sanhedrin 105b; Horayot 10b; Pesahim 50b; Arakhin 16b; Sotah 22b; 47a) highlights the exceptional importance of thought regarding sacrifices and idolatry in comparison with other commandments. 99 See Urbach, Halakhah, 191–93; Naftali Goldstein, “Worship in the Temple in Jerusalem: Rabbinic Interpretation and Influence” [Heb], PhD diss. (Hebrew University, 1977), 1–53. Goldstein asserted that “in the early period, extreme stringency was practiced in this regard; afterwards—apparently close to the destruction of the Temple—some leniencies were introduced. This apparently was due to the increase in population that led to an according increase in sacrifices” (5). See Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Human Will in Judaism: The Mishna’s Philosophy of Intention (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 145–80. 100 M Zevahim 1:1. For English translation, see The Mishnah, trans. Herbert Danby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933–), 469. 101 T Menahot 5:6. 102 For English translation, see Danby, The Mishnah, 473.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

The verse “and the priest shall turn the whole into smoke on the altar as a burnt offering, an offering of pleasing odor to the Lord” (Lev. 1:9) was not interpreted literally by the Tannaim. Rather, they read the verse as referring to the offerer: he must want to please the Lord, and is commanded to offer the animal sacrifice as a sin-offering, a guilt-offering, or the like. This change means that the act of sacrifice is not cardinal, unlike the accompanying thought and intent of the individual bringing the sacrifice—and there is biblical support: “R. Eliezer ben Jacob says: ‘And to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul’ [Deut. 11:13]—this is a warning to the priests not to be of two minds when serving (in the Temple).”103 The rabbis employed a nonliteral exposition of Biblical verses to derive the law that thought alone (without action) suffices to invalidate the sacrifice.104 This singular phenomenon that for sacrifices thought invalidates as much as actions ensued from the rabbinic conception that the quintessence of sacrifice lies in one’s inner intent, and not in the act of sacrificing. For the rabbis, the intent to act improperly regarding certain details, even if the act was later conducted properly, transforms the sacrifice from pleasing to invalid.105 Lev. Rabbah says, “Command the Israelite people and say to them: My offering, My food, for My fires” (Num. 28:2) as follows: “What is the meaning of ‘for My fires’? The Holy One, blessed be He, said: If you bring the offering willingly and cheerfully, it will be ‘My offering’; but if under compulsion, it will be [only] for My fires, and will not be for the Name of God.”106 Muffs states that this midrash stresses that even obligatory sacrifices must be offered with the proper intent, that is, willingly and wholeheartedly. A sacrifice that is offered without such intent is merely a fire on an altar.107 It seems that we can hear Buber’s interpretation of sacri103 Sifre on Deuteronomy, Ekev 41, ed. Louis Finkelstein (Berlin, 1939), 88. For English translation, see Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, trans. Reuven Hammer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 85. See also Goldstein, “Worship in the Temple,” 44–46. 104 Of especial interest is the way in which R. Akiva interpreted Lev. 7:18, as referring to pigul in thought. R. Akiva did not understand the verse literally, rather, pigul for him meant what is offensive is in the thought, and not the sacrifice’s consumption on the third day. See Sifre on Leviticus, ed. Louis Finkelstein (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1983–1992), Megillat Tzav 8:1 (and for a more problematic version, see BT Zevahim 29a). See the discussion in Goldstein, “Worship in the Temple,” 27–35. 105 Ibid., “Worship in the Temple,” 52. 106 Lev. Rabbah 27:10. 107 Muffs, Love & Joy, 179–80.

85

86

Part One: Ritual and Custom

fice in the Binding narrative in the rabbis’ conception. The latter endorse or invalidate a sacrifice in accordance with the intent of the one offering it. Eilberg-Schwartz devoted his book The Human Will in Judaism to an examination of the concept of intent in the Mishnah.108 He finds two types of the mishnaic preoccupation with the concepts of kavanah [intent] and mahshavah [thought]: one focuses on the question of responsibility for the act, that is, to determine whether or not a person transgressed the laws of the Torah in his specific behavior. The other concentrates on the classification of objects whose standing as valid or invalid, permitted or forbidden, cannot be established in advance on the basis of reasonable human conduct, but only in accordance with the specific intent employed with regard to them.109 In Eilberg-Schwartz’s view, the uniqueness of the Mishnah’s methodology is that it is not solely legal, but that it also brings theological thought to bear. The basis for this methodology is to be found in Biblical beliefs with two elements at their core: one, the parallel drawn between the divine Creation by means of speech and thought and human action that accords with the principle that all that exists began in divine thought; and the other, the belief that God is interested in, and knows what is hidden in, a person’s hear—a belief that is especially pronounced in Deuteronomy and Psalms.110 This notion is evident in verses such as “God would surely search it out, for He knows the secrets of the heart” (Ps. 44:22) and “Because you would not serve the Lord your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything” (Deut. 28:47). In civil law, the rabbis find a person liable for the consequences of his actions, such as the payment of compensation for direct damage that one

108 Eilberg-Schwartz, The Human Will in Judaism. Several major studies on this issue preceded Eilberg-Schwartz’s book: Enelow, “Kawwana”; Yitzhak D. Gilat, “Intent and Act in Tannaitic Teaching” [Heb], Bar-Ilan: Annual of Bar-Ilan University. Studies in Judaica and the Humanities 4–5 (1967; decennial volume 1955–1965): 104–16; Robert Goldenberg, “Commandment and Consciousness in Talmudic Thought,” Harvard Theological Review 68, no. 3–4 (1975): 261–71; Michael Higger, “Intention in Talmudic Law,” in Studies in Jewish Jurisprudence, vol. 1, ed. Edward M. Gerschfield, 293–342 (New York: Hermon, 1971); Max Kadushin, Worship and Ethics: A Study in Rabbinic Judaism (New York: Bloch, 1963), 186–93; Jacob Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1968), 332–46; Solomon Zeitlin, Studies in the Early History of Judaism, vol. 4: History of Early Talmudic Law (New York: Ktav, 1978). 109 Eilberg-Schwartz, The Human Will in Judaism, 7–9. 110 Ibid., 193.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

person causes another, even if committed unwittingly.111 As the Mishnah states: “Human kind is always an attested danger, whether [the damage is caused] by error or wantonly, whether awake or asleep.”112 Seemingly, therefore, no attention should be paid to the intent. A more careful reading, however, reveals not only that the importance of the intent is maintained, but that its scope is even extended. First, while one must offer basic compensation for unwittingly caused damages, a person is only liable for further damages caused to another, namely, pain, healing, loss of time, and indignity, if they result from willful injury. Furthermore, the civil law principle that “human kind is always an attested danger” is not the result of a devaluation of the importance of intent. Rather, it mainly highlights a person’s responsibility for his actions and his obligation to foresee damages liable to be caused by him, even those without intent (for instance, through negligence). Responsibility in this context means thinking ahead, that is, an expansion of the demand for intent during action.113

Intent and fulfilling Commandments in the World of the Rabbis The rabbis’ discussion of intent in the observance of the commandments must be understood against the backdrop of their general attitude to the issue of intent, which I discussed in the preceding section. The Mishnah 111 Ibid., 13–20. 112 M Bava Kamma 2:6 (trans.: Danby, The Mishnah, 334); and also 1:4. Generally speaking, the Biblical distinction between willful and unwitting sin became more complex in the world of the rabbis. “If a stone was lying in a person’s bosom and he was unaware of it, so that when he arose it fell: for damage due to depreciation he is liable, and for the four things he is exempt; regarding the Sabbath, it is only purposeful work that the Torah forbade; regarding exile [for manslaughter], he is exempt” (BT Bava Kamma 26b). 113 An exception is the obligation imposed by the School of Shammai for thought alone, as emerges from their disagreement with the School of Hillel regarding “putting to use what had been left in one’s keeping” in M Bava Metzia 3:12. Urbach opposed the attempts by researchers of halakhah to base this disagreement on the question of “whether the deed or the intention to perform the deed is the main factor in deciding the law” (Urbach, Halakhah, 190–205). The tendency of the Tannaim, and especially of the School of Hillel, to judge a person for actions and not for intents does not, in itself, attest to any diminishing of the importance of inner intent in their world. Instances in which the Tannaim refrain from obligating a person for his thoughts do not attest to their discounting the question of inner intentionality, they rather limit the legal ability to judge a person for his thoughts. The difficulty of legally obligating a person on the basis of his thoughts and intents is well-known; in moral terms, however, nothing prevents us from disqualifying thoughts of sin, since exemption in human law does not necessarily grant exemption in the eyes of Heaven.

87

88

Part One: Ritual and Custom

directly discusses the term kavanat lev [literally, “intent of the heart,” i.e., inner intent], as accompanying ritual acts other than the offering of sacrifices (which it discusses in the context of the thought specifying the sacrifice), in three contexts: the Reading of the Shema (“Hear, O Israel . . .),114 the blowing of the shofar [ram’s horn],115 and the reading of the Megillah (that is, the book of Esther).116 This is different from the mishnah in Tractate Berakhot that declares: “The pious men of old used to wait an hour before they said the Tefillah (that is, the Amidah prayer), that they might direct their heart to God.”117 The expression of “directing one’s heart” in this source means concentrating on God. According to Urbach, the Mishnah’s discussions of the intent of the heart in matters such as the Reading of the Shema, the blowing of the shofar, and the reading of the Megillah, which are applicable to all Jews do not exceed the legalistic character of civil law, consecrated objects, Sabbath observance and the Sabbath limit,118 or the Sabbatical year.119 In all these places, the roots het-shin-vav [relating to “thinking”] and khafvav-nun [relating to “intention”] mean planning, and these discussions are concerned with establishing the halakhic minimum that confirms the fulfillment of the law. That is, did the performer of the commandment act out of conscious planning, with intent, or not; and therefore did or did not fulfill the mandates of the religious law.120 Consequently, the concept kavanah or the phrase kiven libo [directed his heart] in the Mishnah in general, and specifically in the special context of blowing the shofar and reading the Megillah, do not amount to a demand for special focus on the contents of the commandment. Rather, they call for a basic awareness of its fulfillment. Since the continuation of the mishnah that requires kavanat ha-lev in hearing the sound of the shofar is explicitly said in Exod. 17:1 and Num. 2:8 114 M Berakhot 2:1. 115 “So, too, if a man was passing behind a synagogue, or if his house was near to a synagogue, and he heard the sound of the shofar or the reading of the Megillah, if he directed his heart he has fulfilled his obligation, but if he did not he has not fulfilled his obligation” (M Rosh Hashanah 3:7 [trans.: Danby, The Mishnah, 192]; T Rosh Hashanah 3:6). 116 M Megillah 2:2; Eruvin 4:4. 117 M Berakhot 5:1 (trans.: Danby, The Mishnah, 5). 118 M Eruvin 4:4. See also the Talmudic dictum permitting the dragging on the Sabbath of a bed, a chair, or a bench: “R. Simeon says: One may drag a bed, chair, or bench, provided that he does not intend to make a rut” (BT Shabbat 22a; 29a; 46a; Pesahim 21a; Betzah 23b; Menahot 41b; PT Kela’im 1:9). 119 See, for example. M Shevi’it 3:6. 120 On intent as fashioning reality, see below, chapter six, 462–67.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

to signify Israel’s looking upward and subjugating its heart to its Father in Heaven,121 we can argue, unlike Urbach, that the cases of hearing the shofar and the Megillah are exceptions that also require, in addition to the very hearing, additional inner intent: attention to the content that exceeds the listening itself. Urbach argued that the meaning of intent, as attentiveness to the significance of the act, was first developed in Amoraitic sources. It could, however, be argued, based on the above exceptional cases, that this meaning of the notion of intent was already present in the Mishnah.122 The preoccupation of the Amoraim with intent is formulated in the famous question of whether the commandments require intent.123 That is, whether intent must accompany the performance of all the commandments. The response of most of the Amoraim is that the commandments do not require intent in the sense of concentration and deep thought concerning the content of the commandment. The blower of the shofar need have intent only for the blowing, and the listener to the shofar must have intent only to hear.124 The case is different for prayer and the Reading of the Shema; this difference apparently is based on those Tannaitic dicta that assume intent in prayer, in terms of concentration on the prayer’s meaning 121 M Rosh Hashanah 3:7. Yosef Schaechter argues that since the redactor of the Mishnah made sparse use of aggadic material, then the citing of the midrashic aggadah on “Then, whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed” (Exod. 17:11) and “Make a seraph figure and mount it on a standard. And if anyone who is bitten looks at it, he shall recover” (Num. 21:8) is meant to emphasize that the intent of the heart, mentioned earlier regarding the hearing of the shofar outside the synagogue, is to Heaven (Schaechter, Gate to a Philosophical Creed: Essays [Heb] [Jerusalem: Neuman, 1972], 167). Shlomo Naeh argued, in opposition (in a lecture given in 2006 at the Shalom Hartman Institute) that the aggadah stresses that the inner intent of the one hearing the shofar is not identical to the subjugation of the heart to our Father in Heaven depicted in the midrash. He argues for the legal-formalistic coherency of the Mishnah. Its interest in the person who heard the shofar as he passed behind the synagogue is to determine the minimal intent required for a person to fulfill his obligation, as distinct from the person who has the intent not only of fulfilling his minimal obligations, but of forming a substantive bond with God, which requires that he subjugate his heart to his Father in Heaven. Naeh finds it unreasonable that the Mishnah would require deep religious inner intent for a commandment such as reading the Megillah, in contrast with the other commandments. 122 Urbach, Halakhah, 177–79; idem, Sages, 395–97. The discussions by the Amoraim as to whether “the commandments require intent” continue the Tannaitic dicta on “commandment for its own sake” or “not for its own sake” (see above, n. 98) and on the importance of “rejoicing in the performance of a commandment” (BT Berakhot 31a; Shabbat 30b; Pesaḥim 117a). See Urbach, Sages, 1:392–95. 123 See BT Berakhot 13a–b; Eruvin 95b-96a; Pesahim 114b; Rosh Hashanah 28a–29a. 124 See, for example, the opinion of Raba in BT Rosh Hashanah 28b.

89

90

Part One: Ritual and Custom

as a necessary condition for the proper performance of prayer.125 Different meanings of this intent are evident in the discussions of the Tannaim and Amoraim.126 The rabbis’ sensitivity to the fulfillment of intent in prayer, in the sense of inner concentration on its contents, is shown in the following dictum: One who recites the Tefillah so that it can be heard is of the little of faith. R. Huna said: This was meant to apply only if a person is capable of directing his heart when speaking in a whisper, but if he is not capable of directing his heart when speaking in a whisper, it is allowed. This is the case only regarding one praying alone, but in a congregation, this disturbs the public.127

We also find similar demands for kavanat ha-lev, in terms of concentration on content, regarding the Reading of the Shema.128 Regarding the other commandments, the rabbis seem to resign themselves to the inability to demand that the masses maintain intellectual and emotional concentration, but they nevertheless insist that prayer and the acceptance of the sovereignty of Heaven conducted out of habit and without intellectual intentionality is a sort of blasphemy. No doubt, 125 For example, “‘Loving the Lord your God and serving Him with all your heart’ [Deut. 11:13]—what is service in the heart? You must say, This is prayer” (BT Ta‘anit 2a); “R. Eleazar said: A person should always take his own measure, if he is capable of directing his mind, he should pray, and if no, he should not pray” (BT Berakhot 30b). See also Sifre on Deuteronomy, Ekev 41, ed. Finkelstein, 88; BT Megillah 20a; Urbach, Sages, 1:396–97; Gerald J. Blidstein, Prayer in Maimonidean Halakha [Heb] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1994), 106–9. 126 For example, Berakhot chaps. 4 and 8 speak of intent directed to the Holy of Holies. M Berakhot 5:1 states that “the pious of early times used to wait an hour before praying, that they might direct their heart to the Omnipresent,” while both Talmuds learn from Hannah’s prayer of the need to have contentual intent: “‘Now Hannah was praying in her heart [I Sam. 1:13]—from this we learn that one who prays must direct his heart” (BT Berakhot 31a; see also PT Berakhot 4:1). 127 BT Berakhot 24b. 128 BT Berakhot 15a. See the disagreement between the Schools of Shammai and Hillel on this issue in Israel Knohl, “‘A Parasha Concerned with Accepting the Kingdom of Heaven’” [Heb], Tarbiz 53 (1983): 11–31. Knohl agrees with the position of the School of Hillel, as follows: “The Reading of the Shema is described in these chapters as an event that is mainly an inner experience, and it requires neither detachment from routine active life nor various ceremonial trappings” (29). Knohl’s analysis is reminiscent of the division made by Heschel (see below) between intent for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He (the internalizing way of the School of Hillel, according to Knohl) and intent for the words of the prayer (which, for Knohl, is the ceremonial opinion of the School of Shammai).

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

the later grudging acceptance by the Geonim and the Rishonim [medieval authorities] of prayer and the Reading of the Shema without intent indicates processes of halakhic legitimization that lie beyond those implicit in the basic formalism of the Tannaitic and Amoraitic halakhah, of religious externalization to enable the continued existence of a religious way of life.129 Tishby asserted that even according to the opinion of the few Amoraim, who maintained that the commandments require intent, this referred only to the intent to fulfill a religious obligation. The rabbis do not demonstrate a clear tendency for the interiorization of religious life.130 He finds definite interiorization only in the rabbis’ demand for kavanat ha-lev in prayer [i.e., the Amidah] and the Reading of the Shema. Tishby found additional expressions of interiorization in exceptional dicta that require inner concentration and inner religious awakening in the performance of certain commandments, such as “The one who [sacrifices] much and the one who [sacrifices] little have the same [merit], provided that the heart is directed to Heaven.”131 This approach is not shared by other scholars, who regarded the term kavanah, in all its meanings as expressing the struggle for interiorization in Judaism.132 For Tishby, “interiorization” can be attributed only to intent in the sense of inner and intellectual concentration, similar to what is implicit in the demand for kavanat ha-lev in prayer. Unlike the scholars who justified the rabbis who supported the minimal intent of “fulfilling one’s obligation,”133 Tishby maintained those who claim that the commandments do not require intent adopt “an extremely formalistic view dispensing 129 Blidstein, Prayer, 109–14. “What we wrote, that if a person does not find himself with intentful thought that he should not pray, the great ones of the world ruled this was said only in the early generations, in which piety was inherent in their heart and intent was common among them; but in these generations, in which intent is not as common, a person should attempt to pray with as much intent as is possible for him, and be apprehensive of the punishment of judgment. At any rate, he should not exempt himself with the flimsy claim, saying that he cannot have intent; he rather should pray and have the intent possible for him. A person should always place the fear of Heaven before him, and if he did so, he will not speedily sin” (Menahem ben Solomon Meiri, Beit ha-Beḥirah [Jerusalem, 1961] on BT Berakhot 34b). 130 Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, 3 vols., trans. David Goldstein (Oxford: Littman Library, 1989), 3:942. 131 BT Berakhot 5b; 17a. See Urbach, Sages, 1:393–97. 132 Enelow, “Kawwana,” 84. Blidstein argues that “the sages of the Talmud held intent in high esteem, and it served as a code for internalization in general in all their teachings” (Blidstein, Prayer, 105). 133 See Urbach, Sages, 1:397–99; Enelow, “Kawwana,” 83–84.

91

92

Part One: Ritual and Custom

with the most elementary kind of conscientiousness, and regarding as valid the most perfunctory kind of religious acts.”134 Heschel, like Tishby, spoke of two sorts of intent in the thought of the rabbis; but unlike Tishby, he subsumed both attention to the act of the commandment (“fulfilling one’s obligation”) and attention to the words of the prayer beneath the concept of kavanat ha-lev. Heschel contrasted these two types of attention with “directing one’s heart to Heaven,” which he interpreted as attentiveness to the Holy One, blessed be He.135 Heschel argues that this second mode that emphasizes attention to God and not necessarily to the content of the words of the prayer, corresponds to R. Akiva’s idea of piety.136 He finds support for this characterization in a passage in tractate Berakhot on R. Akiva’s ecstatic private prayer.137 Thus, for Heschel R. Akiva’s prayer with the congregation was with intent of the first type, the intent of the words; while his private prayer was with intent of the second type, and directed to the Holy One, blessed be He.138 134 Tishby, Wisdom, 3:942. 135 See Abraham J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations, ed. and trans. Gordon Tucker with Leonard Levin (New York: Continuum, 2005), 204. Heschel distinguishes between the version of the Tosefta: “When praying, one must direct one’s thoughts” (T Berakhot 3:4) and that of the Babylonian Talmud: “When praying one must direct his thoughts to heaven” (BT Berakhot 31a). He interprets the latter dictum in the spirit of the report that the pious of early times “would devote one hour to contemplation before praying, in order to direct their thoughts to God” (M Berakhot 5:1), resembling R. Eliezer’s dictum (BT Berakhot 28b): “when you pray, know before whom you are standing,” and in light of R. Jonah\s commentary to Berakhot, beginning of chap. 5. Lorberbaum raised a fundamental objection to Heschel’s conception, arguing that the many variants cast doubt on the possibility of drawing a distinction between the different intents, in light of the differences in terminology: kiven libo [literally, “directed his heart”], kiven da‘ato [“directed his mind”], and so forth. He suggests analyzing the term kavanah in the context in which it appears. See Lorberbaum, “Theory of Action,” 14. 136 Heschel contrasted the school of R. Akiva with that of the school of R. Ishmael, and viewed the former as focusing on the inner intent, and the latter, on the act. For a critique of this approach, see the references in Ishai Rosen-Zvi, “The School of R. Ishmael and the Origins of the Concept of Yetzer Hara” [Heb], Tarbiz 76 (2006–2007): 76 n. 165. 137 BT Berakhot 31a. 138 This distinction, between kavanat ha-lev in prayer regarding the meaning of the words and full direction to God, is evident in the legal code literature. Tur, Oraḥ Ḥayyim, Hil. Tefilah 98 states: “As it is taught, the worshiper must direct his heart, as it is said ‘You will direct their heart; You will incline Your ear’ [Ps. 10:17]—the meaning is that he is to have the intent of the words that he brings forth from his lips, and he is to think that the Divine Presence is opposite him, as it is said, ‘I am ever mindful of the Lord’s presence’

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

Naeh suggested viewing R. Akiva’s prayer, as passive, like that of R. Hanina ben Dosa,139 basing this claim on R. Akiva’s dictum that “if his prayer is fluent [shagrah] in his mouth he should pray the Eighteen [= the Amidah prayer].”140 Naeh shows that the verb shagar is to be understood as flowing, fluency, thus, the more the prayer “flows,” the less its dependence on the worshiper’s intent and will. In his essay Naeh highlights the contrast between prayer with inner intent and “prayer of the lips.”141 It seems to me that Heschel’s distinction between two types of intent that of the words or of the commandment and intent directed to Heaven is compatible with Naeh’s suggestion. Intent focused on the words is an active process that demands of the worshiper an intellectual and emotional effort. As R. Samuel bar Nahmani comments in the Palestinian Talmud: “If you directed your heart in prayer, you are told that your prayer was heard. What is the reason? ‘You prepare their hearts, You will listen with Your ears’ [Ps. 10:17].”142 Like intent to fulfill one’s obligation pertaining to the com[Ps. 16:8]. He is to arouse this intent, and to remove all the thoughts that trouble him, until his thought and his intent remain pure in his prayer. . . . Thus would the pietists and the men of good deeds do: they would seclude themselves and have intent in their prayer until they would attain the shedding of corporeality and the predominance of the intellective spirit, until they would come close to the degree of prophecy” (see also Shulḥan Arukh, Oraḥ Ḥayyim 98:1). The beginning of this section speaks expressly of “the meaning of the words,” followed by an explanation in M Berakhot 5:1 of the early pietists who “used to wait an hour before they said the [Amidah] prayer, that they might direct their heart to their Father in Heaven.” According to the explanation given in the Tur and cited by R. Joseph Karo in Shulḥan Arukh, the ecstatic shedding of corporeality by the early pietists approached the degree of true prophecy. Heschel’s distinction is undoubtedly based on the double meaning of the intent in prayer indicated by the passages in Tur and Shulḥan Arukh. Rav’s dictum: “A person whose mind is not at ease must not pray, since it is said, ‘One who is in distress shall make no decisions’” (BT Eruvin 65a) is understandable in light of the demand for intent for the words, and even more so, on the background of the call for intent for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He. 139 Shlomo Naeh, “‘Creates the Fruit of the Lips’: A Phenomenological Study of Prayer according to Mishnah Berakhot 4:3, 5:5” [Heb], Tarbiz 63, no. 2 (1994): 185–218. See below, in chapter three on the discussion of introspective meditation in the world of the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud, 231–33. 140 M Berakhot 4:3. 141 Following PT Berakhot and the Tannaitic dictum in T Berakhot 3:3–4. Naeh, “‘Creates the Fruit of the Lips,’” 191–93. 142 PT Berakhot 5:6; Lev. Rabbah 16:9 (attributed to R. Joshua ben Levi, see Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah, ed. Mordecai Margulies [Jerusalem, 1953], 366–67). The scriptural support from Ps. 10:17 alludes to intent in the language of the hearing and understanding of what is uttered. God will listen when the one who calls in His name

93

94

Part One: Ritual and Custom

mandments entailing action, the intent of the words is mainly active and intellective, but total, since it is directed to the content of the words of the prayer. The higher intent portrayed in the dictum “directing their heart to their Father in Heaven and praying”143 reflects psychological and more passive intentionality. This does not require maximal attention to the content of the words, but consists mainly of attentiveness to the worshiper’s activatation by Heaven in his prayer, and his sense of fulfilling the verse: “O Lord, open my lips, and let my mouth declare Your praise” (Ps. 51:17). In Heschel’s understanding, a distinction is to be drawn between the performance of a commandment for its own sake, which includes the intent to fulfill one’s obligation and the intent of the words in prayer and the Reading of the Shema, and the performance of the commandments for Heaven’s sake. Lorberbaum distinguished between two essentially different aspects of intent for commandments.144 The first contains two elements: intent as concentration, alertness, or attentiveness,145 and intent as the desire to fulfill one’s obligation.146 The second aspect is expressed as another sort of intent that gives the commandments their purpose. For him, “the religious apex is not the action of gazing upon an object or its fulfillment, but the heart’s submission.”147 will himself understand his own words. Similar to the dictum of R. Judah in the name of R. Eleazar ben Azariah regarding the Reading of the Shema: “When one recites the Shema, he must hear what he says” (BT Berakhot 15a). 143 T Berakhot 3:16. See also M Rosh Hashanah 3:8; Berakhot 4:5–6; BT Yoma 76a, on directing one’s heart to the Holy of Holies. 144 Lorberbaum, “Theory of Action.” 145 Following T Berakhot 2:7; BT Berakhot 16a; M Rosh Hashanah 3:7. Lorberbaum maintains that the depictions of R. Akiva’s ecstatic prayer in BT Berakhot 31a and T Berakhot 3:7 express forgetting oneself, a higher degree of concentration than typically required for prayer (Lorberbaum, “Theory of Action,” 15–18). 146 For example, BT Berakhot 13a; M Pesahim 10:3; or the Talmud on this mishnah (Lorberbaum references to David Halivni, Sources and Traditions: A Source Critical Commentary of the Talmud, Tractates Erubin and Pesaḥim [Heb] [Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1982], 575–76). “The fundamental difference between intent as the desire to fulfill one’s obligation and the other types we mentioned is that all the others are outer preconditions for the act of the commandment; these are conditions that take care so a person will not perform his obligation carelessly. But intent as intentionality is constitutive to the action of the commandment in the sense that, without the fitting intent, the act lacks its particular identity or religious worth, and its performance could not be deemed the observance of the commandment” (Lorberbaum, “Theory of Action,” 36). 147 Lorberbaum, “Theory of Action,” 46. The example he brings to illustrate this aspect is T Rosh Hashanah 2:7 and M Rosh Hashanah 3:8. Similarly to the argument by Naeh cited above, Lorberbaum, too, interprets this mishnah’s statement on “Israel’s looking upward and subjugating their heart to their Father in Heaven” as a contrast to, and not

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

Lorberbaum believes that this phase reached full maturation in the writings of Maimonides, in his introduction to Perek Helek (chapter 10 of Tractate Sanhedrin) and at the end of the laws of Ritual Baths (11:12), in which he states: just as one who sets his heart on becoming clean becomes clean as soon as he has immersed himself, although nothing new has befallen his body, so, too, one who sets his heart on cleansing himself from the uncleannesses that beset men’s souls—namely, wrongful thoughts and false convictions— becomes clean as soon as he consents in his heart to shun those counsels and brings his soul into the waters of knowledge.148

Despite the obvious difference between the views of Heschel and Lorberbaum, both teach of the complexity of the term kavanat ha-lev in the world of the rabbis and of the necessity of distinguishing between its different meanings. Tishby’s understanding of interiorization is too narrow to comprise all of its elements. The first aspect described by Lorberbaum includes intents discussed in the current work both as ritual interiorization and for the commandments and as religious existentialism or inward focusing; the second aspect he discusses is described here as epistemological interiorization.149 The intent of R. Akiva and of R. Joshua ben Levi, who aspire to fluency in prayer, in the sense depicted by Naeh, is more passive and verges on abandoning the active dimension. Further, it approaches contemplative prayer or inward focusing, as is also indicated by Blidstein’s discussions of Maimonides’ intent in prayer.150

Intent in Medieval Thought and Mussar (Ethical and Pietist) Literature R. Bahya ibn Pequda is rightly thought to be the first exponent of the interiorization orientation in medieval Judaism.151 He tends to draw a sharp an explanation of, the preceding mishnah, which discussed the inner intent of the one indirectly hearing the blowing of the shofar or the reading of the Megillah. 148 Lorberbaum, “Theory of Action,” 42–43. Translation based on Moses ben Maimon, The Code of Maimonides, by Moses ben Maimon, book 10: The Book of Cleanness, trans. Herbert Danby (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), 535. 149 Maimonides links this intent to the laws of ritual baths, which directly results from the epistemological nature of the purity laws. See below, chapter six, 462-67. 150 On Maimonides’s introspective prayer, see Blidstein, Prayer, 83–85. I will discuss the interiorization inherent in this worship below, in chapter three. 151 See Joseph Dan, Ethical and Homiletical Literature: The Middle Ages and Early Modern Period [Heb] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), 47–68.

95

96

Part One: Ritual and Custom

distinction between duties of the heart, duties of the limbs, and duties that combine the two, such as prayer. This division reveals his minimalist conception of intent pertaining to the duties of the limbs.152 Tishby observed: A crucial distinction between prayer and the physical obligations [rendered elsewhere as the “duties of the limbs”] arises when Bahya explains kavvanah . . . intention here primarily means the acknowledgment that the divine commands are about to be fulfilled. With prayer, however, the stress is on the emotional side, the yearning of the soul to submit itself to God.153

According to the rigid hierarchy in Ḥovot ha-Levavot, intent, as regards the duties of the limbs, is merely the first stage in the ladder of religious ascent. As regards prayer, ibn Paquda stresses the essentiality of intent for words: . . . words are a matter of the tongue, but meaning is a matter of the heart. The words are like the body of the prayer, but the meaning is like its soul. When a man prays only with his tongue . . . then his prayer is like a body without a soul, or a shell without contents, for only his body is present; his heart is absent from his prayer.154

And this is not enough; he declares: “You must know, O my brother, that the purpose of prayer is the heart’s contrition for God’s sake and its submission to Him.”155 The scholar of Sufism Sara Sviri maintains that, typologically, ibn Paquda represents devout spirituality that stems from Sufism, and is characterized by inwardness more than outwardness, and that it favors the spiritual to the physical. Here, spiritual energy is focused on inward-directed techniques, such as silent inner meditation, prayer, and meditative contemplation. She contrasts this spirituality with that of R. Judah Halevi,

152 Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar Ḥeshbon ha-Nefesh, chap. 3. English translation: The Book of Direction, “On Self-Reckoning for God’s Sake,” C, 364, 366–68. Goldreich showed that Bahya’s distinction between the duties of the limbs and the duties of the heart, with the clear preference for the latter over the former, has its source in the Sufi literature, and especially in the writings of the Baghdad Muslim mystic ibn Assad al-Muhasibi (Goldreich, “Possible Arabic Sources,” 189). 153 Tishby, Wisdom, 2:943. 154 Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar Ḥeshbon ha-Nefesh, chap. 3. English translation: The Book of Direction, “On Self-Reckoning for God’s Sake,” C, 365. 155 Ibid., 366.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

who placed inner intents on a lower level than outer religious action.156 Ibn Paquda’s distinction between duties of the limbs and duties of the heart and prayer, and the grading of the former as inferior, apparently led him to disregard dimensions of innerness and intent present in the world of the rabbis on manners concerned mainly with the array of the Jew’s behaviors, and especially their social behaviors. As I showed, the rabbis’ discussions of the question of intent and act in civil law and in capital cases, for example, can be placed within the context of their aim of increased importance of the inner dimension within the entire legal system of their fashioning. The expansion of the concept of intent by Maimonides is especially fascinating in light of the above, since he was both a decisor of Jewish law and influenced by the internalizing Sufi school.157 In his Guide of the Perplexed he expounds the verse “You are present in their mouths, but far from their thoughts” (Jer. 12:2) as the obligation to infuse monotheistic belief with inner epistemological meaning: . . . belief is not the notion that is uttered, but the notion that is represented in the soul when it has been averred of it that it is in fact just as it has been represented. . . . If, however, you belong to those whose aspirations are directed to ascending to that high rank which is the rank of speculation, and to gaining certain knowledge with regard to God’s being One by virtue of a true Oneness, so that no composition whatever is to be found in Him and no possibility of division in any way whatever—then you must know that He, may He be exalted, has in no way and in no mode any essential attributes. . . . If, however, someone believes that He is one, but possesses a certain number of essential attributes. . . . This resembles what the Christians say: namely, that He is one but also three, and that the three are one . . . as if what we aimed at and investigated were what we should say and not what we should believe. For there is no belief except after a representation; belief is the affirmation that what has been represented is outside the mind just as it has been represented in the mind. . . . When you shall have cast off desires and habits. . . . you shall necessarily achieve certain knowledge of it. Then you shall be one of those who represent to themselves the unity of the Name and not one of these who merely proclaim it with their mouth without representing to themselves that it has a meaning. With regard to men of this 156 Sara Sviri, “Spiritual Trends in Pre-Kabbalistic Judeo-Spanish Literature: The Case of Bahya Ibn Paquda and Judah Halevi,” Donaire 6 (1996): 82. 157 Ibid., 83.

97

98

Part One: Ritual and Custom

category, it is said: “Thou art near in their mouth, and far from their reins” [Jer. 12:2].158

Maimonides’ singular position, expressed in the perception of God’s unity that denies the ascribing of any essential attribute [to’ar] to Him, is fundamentally opposed to the Kabbalistic notions that developed and intensified during the medieval period. Paradoxically, however, Maimonides’ maximalist demands regarding intent are clearly heard once again in Kabbalistic Mussar literature. In the sixteenth century Elijah De-Vidas, in the spirit of his teacher R. Moses Cordovero, gave a most expansive interpretation to the teachings of the rabbis as to whether the commandments require intent: For we previously were occupied, in the preceding chapter, with the matter of the sanctity of thought, which is the main thing in the divine service: that a person adheres to his Maker and draw down holiness to him, as the dictum of R. Simeon bar Yohai, may he rest in peace, that we copied [earlier], that all sanctity is drawn by good thought.159 And in this vein, [the rabbis,] of blessed memory, said that the commandments require intent, and this is the ruling of most of the decisors. Consequently, if one performed a commandment or engaged in Torah [study] without intent, it is as if he did nothing, and he must do this again. Several mishnayot prove this: “If one was reading in the Torah [the passage of the Shema] when the time for the reading [of the Shema] arrived, if he had intent [literally, “directed his heart”], he has fulfilled his obligation”;160 similarly, regarding one’s [Amidah] prayer: “The early pious men would wait an hour [before praying], that they might direct their hearts to the Omnipresent”;161 and similarly, if one immersed but did not have any purpose in mind, it is as if he did not immerse;162 additionally, the Rabbis said that if he did not have intent in [the blessing of] Avot [= the first blessing of the Amidah], he must return to the beginning [of the

158 Maimonides, Guide 1:50 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 111–12). See Halbertal and Margalit, Idolatry, 109 n. 1. On the connection between this conception and Ḥovot ha-Levavot, see Blidstein, Prayer, 34. 159 The reference is to the Zoharic dictum brought in Elijah ben Moses De-Vidas, Reshit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Kedushah 5:24, ed. Hayyim Yosef Waldman, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Or Hamusar, 1984), 249. 160 BT Berakhot 13a. 161 Following BT Berakhot 30b. 162 BT Ḥullin 31b.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

Amidah], etc.;163 and all these are fixed halakhot. Consequently, a person rectifies his thought by intent.164

The concept of intent assumes a far-reaching meaning in the book Re’shit Ḥokhmah, based on the Zoharic teaching that “Everything in the world follows the thought.”165 This perception of the term “intent” shatters the conceptual framework that directly and exclusively links intent and the act. From then on, “intent” is the proper thought that should accompany a person at every moment, when he performs a commandment, when he studies Torah, or when he is engaged in other worldly pursuits. This passage from Re’shit Ḥokhmah obviously follows the conception reflected in the extensive Kabbalistic literature on the reasons for the commandments that centered on the doctrine of Kabbalistic kavanot.166 Due to its theurgic nature, this system was unique in its existential characteristics, as I will argue below.167

Intent in Hasidism The expanded extent of the concept of intent in Kabbalistic Mussar literature of the sixteenth century greatly influenced the unique development of this concept in late eighteenth-century Hasidism.168 The teachings of the Hasidic masters give expression to the views of the authors of Ḥovot 163 BT Berakhot 30b; see Arba‘ah Turim, Oraḥ Ḥayyim 101. 164 Vidas, Re’shit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Kedushah 6:1, ed. Waldman, 81. 165 Sitrei Torah on Zohar 1:155a. 166 Ephaim Gottlieb, Studies in the Kabbala Literature [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1976), 31–32; Idel, New Perspectives, 173–99. On the rabbinic literature’s ambivalent attitude to the Kabbalistic requirement of kavanot, see Moshe Halamish, “The Confrontation with the Duty of Kawwana” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): 217–57. 167 See below, chapter five, the discussion of the reasons for the commandments and the Kabbalistic teaching of kavanot, 420–23. 168 On the Kabbalistic teaching of kavanot in nascent Hasidism, see Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietist Elements in Eighteenth-Century Hasidic Thought, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993), 215–41. Halamish argued that the composition and printing of Lurianic prayer books in the period of Hasidism’s emergence created a frustrating gap between the entire community of worshipers and the elite who prayed in accordance with the complicated Lurianic Kabbalistic prayer intents. This frustration directed attention to the emotional-religious element in prayer that emphasized enthusiasm and direct contact with God during prayer and during the performance of the commandments (Halamish, “Confrontation with the Duty,” 250–51).

99

100

Part One: Ritual and Custom

ha-Levavot and Re’shit Ḥokhmah. R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, a disciple of the Maggid of Mezeritch (who, as Hasidic legend has it, met the Baal Shem Tov in his youth) expands on this point: And similarly, as regards the commandment: we must perform the act of the commandment, which is the revealed; and the concealed, that is the secret of the commandment, is its soul and its vitality, which is His essence, may He be blessed. Consequently, when one performs [the commandment] without intent, this is as a body without a soul.169 For the act of the commandment is the body, and intent is the secret that is the soul and the vitality of the commandment. The body must be united with the soul, and this is called “the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shekhinah,” for he unites the act, which is the body, with the soul and vitality, which is the Lord, may He be blessed, Himself, and unification is effected in all the worlds. Consequently, the letters vav-heh in [the word for commandment] mitzvah [spelled mem-tzaddi-vav-heh] are revealed, for the vav is the Written Torah, and the heh is the Oral Torah. The two primal letters, which are the letters yud-heh, are concealed in atbash; mem-tzaddi, which is the soul and the vitality, that is, the secret, which is His essence, may He be blessed.170 This is the meaning of “the reward for a commandment is a commandment,” that one cleaves to the Lord [in the aspect of] yud-heh-vav-heh, may He be blessed, and there is no greater reward than this. Now, the Rabbis, of blessed memory, said, following “she has hewn her seven pillars” [Prov. 9:1], that the Torah is divided into seven parts, for the verse “When the Ark was to set out” [Num. 10:35] divides the book [of Numbers] into three books.171 And it 169 This imagery, recurring in the medieval period, apparently first appeared in the writings of ibn Shuaib. See the expositions on the Torah by R. Joshua ibn Shu‘eib, in Shraga Abramson, “Introduction,” in Rabbi Joshua ibn Shu‘eib: Sefer Derashot al Ha-Torah [Heb], ed. Shraga Abramson (Jerusalem: Makor, 1969), 36. See the formulation of this idea by R. Hayyim Vital in Likkutei Torah (above, introduction, n. 115). 170 A common Hasidic exegetical technique reverses the order of letters in words: the letter alef (the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet) becomes taf (the last letter), bet (the second letter) becomes shin, the next to last letter, and so forth. In this method, the first two letters of the word mitzvah (commandment, spelled mem-tzadi-vav-heh) become mem > yud; tzadi > heh. Leaving the last two letters unchanged (vav-heh), the word for “commandment” thus conceals the Tetragrammaton: yud-heh-vav-heh. 171 See BT Shabbat 115b–116a on the view of R. Judah ha-Nasi, cited following the Talmud’s question: “A Torah scroll in which eighty-five letters cannot be gathered, such as the section ‘When the Ark was to set out’ [Num. 10:35–36], may it be saved from a fire [on the Sabbath], or not?” According to this view, the Torah comprises seven books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, the book of Numbers until “When the Ark was to

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

is known that the commandments are called “lamp,” as Scripture says, “For the commandment is a lamp” [Prov. 6:23]. This is the meaning of “When you elevate the lamps” [Num. 8:2—and the following two quotations], that is to say, when you wish to elevate yourself with the lamps (that is, the commandments) “at the front of the lampstead,” “let the seven lamps give light,” that is, the seven parts of the Torah, which are all the commandments, shall give light at the front of the lampstead, which is the inner essence and the vitality. That is, the body, which is the revealed, will unite with the soul and the life-force, which is the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shekhinah, and unification is effected in all the worlds, as above. This is called [the performance of the commandment] for its own sake, as the teaching of the Rabbis, of blessed memory, “It is preferable to live together than to dwell in widowhood.”172 For it is known that the female receives from the male, and the female . . . has none of her own, only what the male emanates to her . . . when one performs [a commandment] without intent, this is as a body without a soul, that is, as a widow, for the female does not receive from the male. This is the meaning of “for its own sake”—for the sake of the female, for the aforementioned unification of the body and the soul, which is the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shekhinah, and the aforementioned unification of all the worlds is effected.173

According to R. Menahem Nahum, all of the commandments, including the “duties of the limbs” (by the classification of Ḥovot ha-Levavot) are meant to be a means for elevating oneself. This ascent is performed by means of intent, which is the proper attitude towards the act of fulfillment of the command, since, for him, every commandment is compared to coupling with God. In Hasidism, the Kabbalistic formulation “for the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shekhinah” is not a preparatory formula for a theosophic action occurring in the upper worlds, as it is in the Kabbalistic kavanot . It rather was perceived as the goal of proper religious activity, the coupling of the earthly physical element, the act of the commandment itself (that is analogous to the divine female and is symbolized in the word Shekhinah), with the inner intent, which is the soul and the vitality (that is analogous to the male, that is symbolized by the term “the set out,” the section of “When the Ark was to set out,” the book of Numbers after this passage, and Deuteronomy. 172 BT Ketubot 75a; Kiddushin 7a, and more. 173 Menahem Mendel of Chernobyl, Me’or Einayim (Jerusalem, Yeshivat “Meor Enaim,” 1975), Beha‘alotekha, 156.

101

102

Part One: Ritual and Custom

Holy One, blessed be He”). In this conception, ritual life becomes an existential means by the spiritual goal it imparts to life. The commandment is now seen as enabling man to perform acts infused with spiritual awareness of the divine vitality in all. Thus, the performance of the commandment elevates life to a higher plane than the corporeal one that lacks this awareness.174 This fundamental notion regarding the centrality of inner intent in the performance of all of Judaism’s commandments recurs in the writings of the early Hasidic masters. Individuals such as R. Menahem Mendel of Chernobyl thought—unlike the established halakhah with which they were familiar—that the commandments require intent, seeking thereby to correct what they viewed as the flawed interpretation of most of the halakhic authorities throughout the ages. R. Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk offers an innovative explanation for the nature of the proper intent for all Torah study and the fulfillment of the commandments: “The decrees of the Lord are enduring, making the simple wise” [Ps. 19:8]. Fundamentally, engagement with Torah [study] and the commandments requires intent, to understand how one is inferior and simple, and intertwined with materiality. A person [made] of earth will follow vanity, and he will act in vanity as his materiality befouls his perceptions, his desires, his attributes, and his pleasure—all is vanity when confronted with the knowledge that EinSof is greater than him and he will never fulfill his yearning, desire, and will to adhere to Him, may He be blessed. When he comprehends the vastness of the distance from Him, and he understands that he is thoughtless, devoid of sense [following Prov. 9:4], and does not understand His supreme wisdom, may He be blessed and exalted, his entire inclination will be to exert himself in his occupation with Torah [study] and the commandments, which are counsels and the knowledge of God, so that he will see with his eyes and his heart will understand, by means of occupation with the commandments that they are counsels, as is brought in the Zohar [2:82b]. . . . This is the meaning of “The decrees of the Lord are enduring,” that they are the letters of 174 In chapter five I will expand the discussion of this aspect with an analysis of the Hasidic teachings on avodah be-gashmiyut. In the current chapter I focus on the intent accompanying ritual acts in nascent Hasidism. In order to oppose Martin Buber’s existentialist interpretation of Hasidism, Gershom Scholem and some of his students ignored this central aspect of Hasidic teachings, which resulted in a distorted understanding of Hasidism. For more on yiḥud in the teaching of R. Jacob Joseph, see Margolin, Human Temple, 224–41.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

the knowledge of the Lord. For the commandments are the knowledge that connects to the holy. This is not so for the one who is wise in his own eyes— the commandments do not impart wisdom to him, for they impart wisdom only to one who is simple in his own eyes and seeks wisdom. One, however, who is wise and righteous in his own eyes, [and thinks] he lacks nothing, does not seek for occupation with Torah [study] and the commandments to enlighten him from his foolishness, to walk by its light. Consequently, what shall it illuminate for him and what is the guidance given by the commandment? If he does not ask for counsel, what will the commandment give him and what will it add for him, for counsel is given only to the one who asks properly.175

The Zohar (Yitro, 82b) describes the commandments of the Torah as counsels that keep sins from man and teach him ways to return to his Lord. R. Menahem Mendel develops this idea in an original manner, based on the Hasidic conception, similar to what was cited above from Meor Einayim. The commandments are meant to form a connection between the material world and the divine one. In Peri ha-Aretz R. Menahem Mendel states this explicitly: “The meaning of commandment [mitzvah] is the wording of unification, as ‘to be a companion [Li-tzvot] to Him’” (Berakhot 6b).”176 The attainment of this connection, however, is supremely difficult. R. Menahem Mendel finds the source of this difficulty in the material nature of the acts of the fulfillment of the commandments with the according difficulty in perceiving them as godly acts. He offers the following advice to overcome this obstacle: The root of the matter: that there is awe of the commandment, for when a person contemplates, that the act of the commandment be of the godly, as is known (see Zohar 3:228b), and he begins to perform it with his material limbs, and the objects used for the performance of commandments, too, are material—he becomes alarmed and his spirit becomes excited, how could he be turning something godly into something material—and is God material, Heaven forbid? After he became excited time after time, he nevertheless becomes stronger in his faith in Him, may He be blessed, that the commandment is connection and the words of the living God, from the supernal will. For He spoke and His will is done from the very end of the 175 Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, Peri ha-Aretz, Vayishlaḥ (Jerusalem: Peri ha-Aretz Institute, 2014), Vayishlaḥ, 129–131. 176 Ibid., Vayeshev, 157. See the similar sentiments in the teachings cited below.

103

104

Part One: Ritual and Custom

level of the debased. He understands the matter of the Shekhinah’s being enclothed in that commandment, for it is known that every commandment is for the sake of the Shekhinah (following Zohar 1:24a), and the enclothing of the Shekhinah in the material is for the purpose of the connection of all the base corporeal beings by his limbs that are engaged in the act of the commandment, and connect through the concatenation of the attributes and the knowledge of His understanding, the root of their origin, and their coming to Ein Sof, with God’s help. This is the meaning of (Prov. 6:23) “the commandment is a lamp,” for the commandment is a lamp by the light of the Torah, since wisdom and understanding are called the light of Torah. Interpretation: by means of the wisdom and understanding [Binah] with which a person infuses the commandment, to illuminate it, which is the meaning of the Torah is light, by this the commandment is a lamp and illuminates, too. But in any case the commandment is materiality and discrete, and how can there be connection with Him, may He be blessed, through it? For it is called mitzvah, which is the language of “li-tzvat [to be a companion] to him” (Berakhot 6b),” which is the language of connection. But by the intellect and understanding that he introduces into the commandment due to the fear and trembling that seized him, not to make the godly material, with that fear he did not allow his faith to draw down love and joy, which refers to the [divine] attributes and contemplation of His greatness, may He be blessed, and His great mercies, to send branches from Ein Sof, may He be blessed, and the supernal will is the enclothing of the Shekhinah in the lower [realms], to connect them and unite them with Him, and to be united in complete devotion.177

The paradox inherent in the commandment—that it is a material act, while at the same time it is perceived, as the Zohar states, as the enclothing of the Shekhinah, as a ladder for a person who connects through it with the godly—arouses thought and contemplation. The very contemplation of the godliness attributed to the material act generates within man, within his inner self, this connection, unification, and devekut [adherence] to the godly. It is the contemplative awareness of the disparity between the godly as Ein Sof and the material reality in which man is active and in the context of which he fulfills the commandment, that forges the human connection with Ein Sof, imbues the lower reality with the thought of Ein Sof, and connects them into a single unity. 177 Ibid., Noah, 31–35.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

The Hasidic literature devotes more attention to the issue of intent in prayer than to any other realm of Jewish life with demands for introspective contemplation during prayer, while clarifying the ways to attain this state of mind and overcoming obstacles to it, central among which are “alien thoughts.” The meaning in Hasidism of prayer with intent will be discussed at length in the continuation of this chapter, and in additional chapters, below.

Ritual Interiorization in the Jewish Sources The Combination of Rite and Ethics in the Bible as Interiorization of the Biblical Sacrificial Rite Understanding the Binding of Isaac as a directive for proper intent, as was discussed above, means that the Binding effected the ritual interiorization of human sacrifice that was accompanied by the substitution of animal sacrifices for human beings. This was the first in a series of episodes that can be described as different types of the interiorization of the Biblical sacrificial rite. Moral criticism of the sacrificial rite, which culminated in its total negation, is one of the outstanding features of classical prophecy, especially the prophecies of Amos, Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. I loath, I spurn your festivals, I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies. If you offer Me burnt offerings—or your meal offerings—I will not accept them; I will pay no heed to your gifts of fatlings. Spare Me the sound of your hymns, and let Me not hear the music of your lutes. But let justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream. Did you offer sacrifice and oblation to Me those forty years in the wilderness, O House of Israel?178

This orientation of the prophetic literature is also expressed in the wisdom literature: “To do what is right and just is more desired by the Lord than sacrifice” (Prov. 21:3); “The sacrifice of the wicked man is an abomination, the more so as he offers it in depravity” (Prov. 21:27).179 In the Second

178 Amos 5:21–25. See also Isa. 1:1–17; Jer. 7:21–23; Mic. 6:6–8; Ps. 51:19. 179 Greenberg asserted that the prophetical reproaches are the development of this verse from the Jewish wisdom literature that has parallels in the ancient Egyptian wisdom literature: “Man’s integrity is preferable to the oxen of a wicked man” (Greenberg, Bible and Judaism, 198–99).

105

106

Part One: Ritual and Custom

Temple period apocryphal literature, these ideas were formulated with greater clarity in terms of exchanging the sacrificial rite with the moral act: He who keeps the law multiplies offerings. One who makes a sacrifice for deliverance is he who pays heed to the commandments. One who repays a kindness is one who offers the finest flour, and he who does an act of charity is one who makes a sacrifice of praise. A good pleasure to the Lord it is to withdraw from wickedness, and it is atonement to withdraw from injustice.180

Ernst Cassirer, influenced by his teacher Hermann Cohen, argued that In the prophetic books of the Old Testament we find an entirely new direction of thought and feeling. The ideal of purity means something quite different from all the former mythical conceptions. To seek for purity or impurity in an object, in a material thing, has become impossible. Even human actions, as such, are no longer regarded as pure or impure. The only purity that has a religious significance and dignity is purity of the heart.181

The prophetic opposition to the sacrificial rite, claiming that a rite conducted without commitment to the ethical commandments should not be maintained, was usually not perceived by scholars as the total negation of this rite but as relative criticism which was the product of social and historical circumstances.182 Hermann Cohen explains that the term kippurim [“atonement”] itself has its roots in myth and polytheism: The anger of the gods, which is based on envy, has to be appeased. . . . The sin, which subjectively is the sacrifice, has only the objective goal of this atonement before the gods. The holy God, on the contrary, can be angry with men only because of their injustice. And the zeal of the prophets against sacrifices is sufficiently explained by their opposition to the false gods, who could accept atonement apart from human morality.183

180 Ben-Sira 35:1–5. For English translation, see Sirach, in A New English Translation of the Septuagint, ed. Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 747. 181 Cassirer, Essay on Man, 107. 182 Yehezkel Kaufmann, History of the Religion of Israel [Heb] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1960), vol. 3, book 1, 71–81; Buber, Torah of the Prophets, 143–67; Greenberg, Bible and Judaism, 198–99. 183 Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972), 188.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

Another explanation of the connection between the rite and the ethical critique was offered by Knohl who noted the existence of a direct link between the criticism by the prophets and the Holiness School (H—one of whose outstanding appearances is in Leviticus 19), and that drew into question the barrier that the Priestly stratum (P) erected between the rite and man’s existential needs.184 According to Knohl, this school flourished parallel to the appearance of classical prophecy.185 The linkage between the ritual and the ethical that appears in the Holiness School gave rise to new demands. P assigns the sacrifice, the Sabbath, and the festival to God; but according to the Holiness School, this God also wants justice and righteousness. Knohl asserts that the prophets’ claim that the immorality of priests and those offering sacrifices invalidated their rite influenced the joining of the moral and the ritual that is characteristic of the Holiness School. We therefore can argue in light of Knohl’s research that the chapters of the Torah that incorporate the moral and the ritual, such as Lev. 19, constitute ritual interiorization, if only from the aspect of their correcting the ritual degeneration that the prophets attacked.186 Consequently, the chapters of the Torah that join morality and rite might possibly express ritual interiorization, since the independent nature of the rite is limited here by means of inner psychological contents that are based on the sense of mercy and compassion for one’s fellow.

Ritual Interiorization in the Judean Desert Sect The processes of the interiorization of the sacrificial rite in the Bible are further developed in the Second Temple period apocryphal literature. The Testament of Levi contains a strongly worded formulation emphasizing the spiritual substitute for the sacrifice, which is similar to the approach of the Judean Desert sect, and especially its Community Rule: “the archangels. . . . They present to the Lord a pleasing odor, a rational and bloodless oblation.”187 The Damascus Document of the sect cites Prov. 15:8: “for it is writ184 Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School, trans. Jackie Feldman and Peretz Rodman (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 175–86, 204–14. 185 Ibid., 214. 186 Ibid., 216–18. 187 Testament of Levi 3:6. For English translation, see The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), 789.

107

108

Part One: Ritual and Custom

ten, ‘the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination, but the prayer of the just is like an agreeable offering.’”188 The ritual interiorization of the Judean Desert sect is an example of criticism that does not negate sacrifices per se, it rather rejects the specific atmosphere that enveloped the sacrificial rite in the Temple. The sect members apparently cherished the sacrificial service in itself, but since they regarded the Temple service as it was conducted in their time to be impure and in error, they preferred to substitute it with a rite that lacked animal sacrifices, which was deemed more spiritual. According to Flusser, the sect members, who tended to isolationism, maintained that their more spiritual rite and their strict observance of the purity laws, which came in place of the sacrifices, were preferable to the invalid manner in which the sacrificial rite was conducted in the Jerusalem Temple. The contrast between stringent devotion to the purity of the rite and their tendency to seclusion, on the one hand, and, on the other, the belief in the importance of the sacrifices, was resolved by the conception that a pure rite is better than an impure sacrifice service.189 As the Qumran covenanters thought that the Jerusalem Temple was polluted, they could not take part in the Temple service of their time. The inability to offer real sacrifices engendered an ambivalent attitude to the sacrificial rites. On the one hand the sect hoped to offer sacrifices according to its own rites and by its own priests in a purified future Temple; on the other they believed that their non-sacrificial rites (lustration, prayers, strict observance of the Law) could serve as a full substitute for Temple service, This belief led them to speculation about the equality of the two services, to the use of symbols taken from the Temple ritual when describing Sectarian rite, and, finally, to the view that the sect itself was a kind of spiritual Temple.190

Unlike Christianity, in which the Pauline interiorization of the sacrifice and the central sacrificial crucifixion of Jesus completely replaced the sacrificial rite in the Roman world, for the Jewish people the cessation of the physical sacrifices and their replacement by substitutes did not put an end to the wish for their renewal. Just as the Dead Sea sect members kept 188 CD11:20–21, in Dead Sea Scrolls Translated, trans. by Willfred G. E. Watson and ed. Florentino Garcia Martinez (London: Brill, 1994), 42. 189 Flusser, Judaism, 37–38. Flusser finds a similar situation in the world of the rabbis: “The religious mind finds no contradiction between the view that a nonsacrificial worship is a substitute for sacrifices and the expectation of future sacrifices” (37 n. 51). 190 Ibid., 43–44.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

the ideal of the Biblical law of sacrifices in spite of the transmutation of the sacrificial rite, in late Judaism, Jews pray for the renewal of the service of the sacrifices, despite the notion that prayer replaces the sacrifice. This finds striking expression in, for instance, the Mussaf service of the Festival prayers: “May our entreaty be as pleasing to You as a burnt-offering and as a sacrifice. Please, Compassionate One, in your abundant mercy restore Your Presence to Zion Your city, and the order of the Temple service to Jerusalem, that we may worship You there.”

The Rabbis’ Interiorization of the Significance of the Sacrificial Rite In our discussion (above) on thought during the sacrificial rite according to the rabbis191 we emphasized the proper intent at the time the sacrifice was offered. Some of the midrashim relating to this issue, however, reveal an additional orientation of ritual interiorization, as reflected in the attitude of the Tannaim to the meaning of the sacrifice: If you were to say, He needs it for food, Scripture teaches: “Were I hungry, I would not tell you, for Mine is the world and all it holds” [Ps. 50:12]. It also says: “For Mine is every animal of the forest, the beasts on a thousand mountains. I know every bird of the mountains, the creatures of the field are subject to Me. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of he-goats?” [Ps. 50: 10–11, 13]. I did not tell you to sacrifice so that you would say, I will do His will that He may do my will. You do not sacrifice for My sake, but for your own sakes, as it is said: “sacrifice it at your will” [Lev. 19:5].”192

The innovation of this baraita [external Mishnah] becomes clear when the sense of the Biblical wording in Lev. 19:5 “li-rtzonkhem tizbahahu” [“sacrifice it at your will”] is compared with the meaning it is given in the baraita. On the Biblical wording va-tirtzeni (Gen. 33:10), Rashi writes: “You are reconciled with me. And similarly every instance of ratzon in Scripture”; and in his commentary to Lev. 19:5 he interprets: “Apaisement [in Old French]; this is the literal meaning of the verse. Our rabbis, however, deduced from this that if one who is engaged with a sacrifice [without intent for the act of the commandment], it is invalid, because it is required that he intend to 191 See above, 83–6. 192 BT Menaḥot 110a; see also Sifre on Numbers, Pinḥas 143, ed. H. S. Horovitz (Leipzig, 1917), 191–96.

109

110

Part One: Ritual and Custom

slaughter it.” That is, the original meaning of ratzon is appeasing God,193 but the rabbis, who stressed the will [ratzon] of the sacrificer, thereby changed the significance of the sacrifice. One possible understanding of the changed meaning of the act of sacrifice is that it is an expression of the individual’s intent and not a response to God’s needs. Rashi states expressly in his commentary to the baraita in Menahot: “For your own needs, to fulfill commandments, so that this will effect atonement for you.”194 According to the continuation of Lev. 19, in verses 6–8, delaying the consumption of the sacrifice is an affront to “what is sacred to the Lord”; consequently, a sacrifice offered to please God but that, in practice, meets the needs of the one offering it “is an offensive thing, it will not be acceptable” (v. 7). In the world of the rabbis, wherein the pleasing and placating of God receded to the background, it became necessary to give a new meaning to the “offensive thing,” which therefore shifted from disrespect to or scorn of God, to the flawed intent of the sacrificer. Another interpretation: “Sacrifice it at your will”—sacrifice it of your own free will, sacrifice it with the proper intent. As Samuel once asked of R. Huna, Whence do we know that the offering is invalid if one engages with a sacrifice [without intent for the act of the commandment], it is invalid? As it is said: “The bull shall be slaughtered” [Lev. 1:5]—the slaughtering should be intended for the bull. He said to him: This we already know, but whence do we know that [this condition] is indispensable? [He replied:] Scripture teaches: “Sacrifice it at your will”—sacrifice it with the proper intent.195

Rashi writes on this passage in Menahot: “For it is mandatory for him to have [the proper] intent.” Thus, the ritual interiorization directly results from the intensification of the rational direction that is especially evident 193 The term ratzon, in the sense of desire, appears only in the late Biblical language, as in mishnaic Hebrew. See Ben-Yehuda, Dictionary, 6707 n. 2. See also Nahmanides’s commentary to Lev. 19:5: “. . . in order that your worship should be acceptable to Him and that He should be pleased with you, even as a servant reconciles himself to his master by doing all that he commands him to do, the expression [lirtzonḥem] being similar to: ‘v’nirtzah’ (and it shall be accepted) for him to make atonement for him; but by the light of Thy countenance, because ‘retzithan’ [should be: retzithem] (Thou was favorable unto them).” For English translation, see Moses ben Nahman, Commentary on the Torah: Ramban (Nahmanides), vol. 3, trans. Charles B. Chavel (New York: Shilo, 1971), 287. 194 See a proximate, but different, formulation in Goldstein, “Worship in the Temple,” 40. 195 BT Menaḥot 110a.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

in the perception of God; this already began in the Bible196 and was further developed in the thought of the rabbis concerning sacrifices. This process is conditional upon the highlighting of epistemological intentionality,197 and continued by focusing religious attention on the mental and emotional processes that occur within the religious person’s inner self. The shift in emphasis, from the ritual act itself (the offering of a sacrifice to the Lord) to the quality of the inner process accompanying the act, is not an expression of man’s increased interest in himself for his own sake. To the contrary, the sacrifice as ratzon-appeasement is an act of human benefit, since the sacrificer believes that his ritual acts will ensure him of God’s protection and the granting of his needs. The offering of a sacrifice out of inward intentionality that realizes the individual’s psychological and spiritual need to give expression to his thoughts and feelings regarding God, is somewhat of a sublimation of the straightforward utilitarian rite and should certainly not be condemned on the claim that its internalizing nature increases human egotism. The ritual interiorization in this context joins together with interiorization of intent and religious existentialism, which will be discussed in chapters five and six.

Prayer as Ritual Interiorization Hermann Cohen formulated the special connection in Judaism between prayer and sacrifice as follows: “If there were no prayer, worship would consist only in sacrifice. It is therefore possible to say that sacrifice could not have ceased if prayer had not originated in sacrifice and from sacrifice.”198 The first formulation of this bond, including a clearly enunciated rationale, appears in Solomon’s prayer during the dedication of the First Temple: “But will God really dwell on earth? Even the heavens to their uttermost reaches cannot contain You, how much less this House that I have built! Yet turn, O Lord my God, to the prayer and supplication of Your servant, and hear the cry and prayer which Your servant offers before You this day. May Your eyes be open day and night toward this House, toward the place of which You have said, ‘My name shall abide there’; may You heed 196 See Ps. 50, and Solomon’s prayer in I Kings 8:27–40 (that will be discussed below). 197 As described above in the discussion of thought concerning consecrated items see above, 83–6. 198 Cohen, Religion of Reason, 371.

111

112

Part One: Ritual and Custom

the prayers which Your servant will offer toward this place. And when You hear the supplications which Your servant and Your people Israel offer toward this place, give heed in Your heavenly abode—give heed and pardon. Whenever one man commits an offense against another, and the latter utters an imprecation to bring a curse upon him, and comes with his imprecation before Your altar in this House, oh, hear in heaven and take action to judge Your servants, condemning him who is in the wrong and bringing down the punishment of his conduct on his head, vindicating him who is in the right by rewarding him according to his righteousness.”199

Although the offering of sacrifices in the House of God occupies center stage in the Temple dedicated by Solomon, in essence it is a house of prayer, in the spirit of Isaiah’s prophecy: “I will bring them to My sacred mount and let them rejoice in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices shall be welcome on My altar; for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa. 56:7). According to this conception, prayer is the fundamental action undertaken in the Temple, although in practice prayer is adjunctive to the offering of sacrifices. Solomon in beginning his prayer with the patent rationalization that “Even the heavens to their uttermost reaches cannot contain You,” and in contrast with the mythic element in the term “House of the Lord,” attests that placing prayer at the center of the Temple activity is an integral part of that same rationalization.200 Taking exception to the basic meanings of the sacrifice as food given to God who dwells in the Temple, as “an offering by fire of pleasing odor to the Lord” (Lev. 1:9), prayer is presented as the primary justification for the building of the Temple, which in this sophisticated manner changes from the House of God to a house of prayer. In the account in I Kings 8, Solomon is aware that the Temple is a symbolic structure, a place of assembly for prayer; God does not physically dwell in it, but from Heaven answers the prayers directed to Him from the Temple. 199 I Kings 8:27–32 200 Finkelstein argues that, from an archaeological perspective, the narrative in I Kings regarding the Solomonic kingdom could more plausibly be attributed to scribes who lived in the seventh century, close to the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom. See Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York: Free Press, 2006). In this period, the inhabitants of Judah and Samaria might have been exposed to Assyria’s wealth and culture, in a process that might have stimulated rationalization efforts.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

A different process took place in the late Second Temple period, when the fixed prayers were fashioned and gradually came in place of the personal prayers; and, to an even greater degree, following the destruction of the Temple when these fixed prayers replaced the sacrificial service.201 The fashioning of a ritual prayer service alongside the sacrificial rite202 intensified the ritual nature of the fixed prayers and set them as parallels to the sacrificial rite itself. It is difficult to determine the degree of ritual interiorization by means of prayer in this period. Tishby wrote that the identification of prayer with the service of the heart could be interpreted in two different ways: prayer as a temporary substitute for the sacrifices; or prayer as worship in man’s inner self, independent of a material and outer rite, and therefore superior to such a rite.203 Tishby based this on the rabbinic teaching: “The Holy One, blessed be He, says to Israel: I shall not receive from you, My children, whole-offerings, sin-offerings, guilt-offerings, or offerings of grain. But you can please Me with prayer, with supplications, and with the devotion of the heart [u-ve-kavanat ha-lev].”204 The personal prayers by the Sages recorded in Tractate Berakhot and the unconventional nature of the prayers of rabbis such as R. Akiva (which will be examined below, in the discussions of existential and inward-focused interiorizations) could offer a partial positive answer to this question. In contrast, certain conceptions in medieval thought—especially those of the author of Ḥovot ha-Levavot and Maimonides—clearly attest to the ritual interiorization of prayer.205 The writings of R. Abraham son of Maimonides, who headed the pietist movement in thirteenth-century Egypt, reflect one of the pinnacles of medieval Jewish ritual interiorization.206 201 Joseph Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud: Forms and Patterns (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1977), 13–17. 202 See Sifre on Deuteronomy, Ekev 41, ed. Finkelstein, 87–88; BT Berakhot 15a; 26b; PT Berakhot 4:7. 203 Tishby, Wisdom, 2:941. 204 Pesikta Rabbati, ed. Meir Friedmann (Vienna, 1880), 198b. See Tishby, Wisdom, 2:868. 205 Prayer in Ḥovot ha-Levavot and in Maimonides’s writings will be discussed below, in the chapters on introspective contemplation (chapter three) and on epistemological interiorization (chapter six). 206 Paul B. Fenton, “Introduction” [Heb], in David b. Joshua b. Abraham Maimonides, Doctor ad Solitudinem et Ductor ad Simplicitatem (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1987), 13–19. On the Jewish Sufi movement, see Samuel Rosenblatt, The High Ways to Perfection of Abraham Maimonides, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927); S. D. Goitein, “Documents on Abraham Maimonides and His Pietist Circle” [Heb], Tarbiz 33 (1963): 181–97; Naphtali Wieder, Islamic Influences on the Jewish Worship [Heb] (Oxford: East and West Library, 1947).

113

114

Part One: Ritual and Custom

In chapter 25 of Sefer ha-Maspik Le-Ovdey Hashem, which discusses the obligations to pray in general and the specific terms berikhah [kneeling], keri’ah [genuflection], kidah [bowing], and hishtahaviyah [prostration], R. Abraham speaks of the levels in the worship of the Lord: After defining these names and understanding their meanings, I say that you should know that these forms of service of the Lord are of [different] levels in the service of the Lord. The explanation for this is that what is suitable for him is that the service of the Lord, may He be exalted, might be in the inner essence solely, by it being exclusively in kavanat ha-lev and thought. Such service of the Lord is attained only by “everyone who invokes the name of the Lord shall escape’ [Joel 3:5], for a person does not depart from Him, may He be exalted, not even while sleeping. . . . The service of the Lord might possibly be in the inner essence—in the heart; and in outer fashion—in the limbs. The prophet says regarding this: “My heart and my flesh shout for joy to the living God” [Ps. 84:3]. The service of the Lord in this outer fashion in the limbs might be only by speech with the tongue, and reflects the potential for the heart’s action as possible in every situation and in every place, and it is also very distinguished, but to lesser degree than the service of the Lord in thought alone . . . and the service of the Lord might be in the outer form—in the form of sitting toward Him may He be exalted, to arouse the existence of kavanat ha-lev. This is done by the sitter sitting with his limbs enfolded, facing the “Mizrah” [i.e., the eastern wall, facing Jerusalem]. It is preferable that nothing intervene between him and the wall, and that his sitting be sitting in service of the Lord. My intent is to the berikhah form that we explained above; this is the first level in the form of the service of the Lord for prayer. Know that there is no special situation for that distinguished form, nor is any certain speech reserved for it. It ensues from the purity of the reality in the heart, and the reality in the heart precedes it. It is possible that what is spoken within him then is the holy spirit or close to that. Regarding this form of the service of the Lord, my intent is that the sitting and what follows it is preparation for the realization of kavanat ha-lev and its refinement. Kavanat ha-lev is awakened and is purified in him until it comes, in its culmination, to the one who exerts himself and is whole-heartedly devoted—and becomes increasingly sanctified in his heart—and its companion is the godly providence, until the great condition that we previously indicated.207 207 Abraham ben Maimon, Sefer ha-Maspik, chap. 25, fol. 32b-34b, ed. Dana, 126–28.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

I will discuss the nature of the inner worship portrayed at the beginning of this passage in the chapter on epistemological interiorization (chapter six), in which I will also relate to Maimonidean contemplative prayer. This passage is important for its presentation of levels in prayer, some of which are open to a broader public of worshipers. According to R. Abraham, the less perceptible prayer is in the outer realms, and the more it is conducted totally in a person’s thought, with neither external expression nor dependence on outer ritual formulations, the higher and more exalted it is deemed; but there are intermediate ways of prayer on levels higher than the purely external that are accessible to the public at large. The advice he gives here to a relatively broad stratum that aspires to interiorization in prayer, namely, to prepare the heart by meditative sitting, “leg on thigh—as [the shape of] a pool,” is meant to enable a person to concentrate and sharply focus his inward intentionality before engaging in ritual prayer. The patent influence of Muslim prayer attests to an attempt to adopt its advantages in order to enable greater concentration. This innovation was proposed by R. Abraham and was not accepted by the Jewish world, but nevertheless attests to this endeavor to interiorize the rite of prayer by introducing changes in the physical postures of prayer.

The Ritual Interiorization of Prayer in Kabbalah Gottlieb distinguished between two trends evident in Kabbalistic prayer: devotion [devekut] to the Godhead and the rectification of the divine world.208 At times, these orientations are completely separate from each other, while in other instances they are incorporated with one another.209 The devotional orientation will be discussed below, in chapter three. The 208 Ephraim Gottlieb, “The Meaning of Prayer in the Kabbala” [Heb], in Gottlieb, Studies in the Kabbala Literature, 38–55 (Tel Aviv: Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1976). Haviva Pedaya (“‘Possessed by Speech’: Towards an Understanding of the Prophetic-Ecstatic Pattern among Early Kabbalists” [Heb], Tarbiz 65, no. 4 [1996]: 588) distinguished between the two trends, arguing that in the theurgic context the worshiper’s thought adheres to the Godhead with an awareness of the unification between the different elements in the Godhead; and in the context of devekut (that scholarly research terms the mystical-ecstatic context), the worshiper’s thought adheres to the Godhead out of an awareness of its connection with the Godhead, in an attempt to draw the holy spirit into itself. 209 Tishbi, Wisdom of the Zohar, 1:240–41; Idel, New Perspectives, 103. Pedaya finely illustrated the combination of these two orientations by the early Kabbalists; see Pedaya, “‘Possessed by Speech.’”

115

116

Part One: Ritual and Custom

other trend, which was expressed in the Kabbalistic teaching of kavanot, and especially in that of R. Isaac Luria,210 was identified by scholars as ­theurgy.211 Enelow regarded the theurgic Kabbalistic kavanot as a spiritual regression by Judaism, since their aim was to influence the Godhead in order to attain changes in the world in accordance with human desires, similar to the Biblical conception of sacrifices.212 The Kabbalists themselves, however, perceived these mystical intents as spiritual elevation since, unlike the supplicatory prayer, the worshiper is not interested in his personal benefit but in the strengthening and rectification of the godly world. Ritual interiorization is the exchange of traditional rites by those perceived by their founders as more lofty or spiritual; therefore, at least from the viewpoint of the Kabbalists themselves, the Kabbalistic kavanot are a type of ritual interiorization of halakhic prayer. R. Meir ibn Gabbai emphasizes that these kavanot elevate religious worship, since they are not done for the worshiper’s private needs: The intent that he makes in his worship wholly ascends on high, that is, for a sublime need, and he does not intend it for his utility at all. Rather, the faithful servant must have the intent in his service for the unification of the great Name, for His glory, for this is the meaning of directing his words above, that his service will be for a lofty aim. But beside this, the entire intent for unification must be [only] for His own sake, and not for any other.213

From this perspective, which emphasizes that prayer with kavanot is “for a sublime need,” in contrast with material supplicatory prayers, “theurgic” intents too can be regarded as a sort of religious interiorization. The purpose of prayer does not lie in its outer verbal content but in its hidden inner role that is created by the worshiper’s intellective process. The worshiper with these kavanot is actually introspectively contemplating God’s various names, which are identified with God’s sundry powers,

210 See Tishbi, Wisdom of the Zohar, 3:962–74; Hayyim Vital, Sha‘ar ha-Kavanot. 211 On Kabbalistic theurgy and its sources, see Idel, New Perspectives, 156–99; Charles Mopsik, Les grands textes de la Cabale: Le rites qui font Dieu (Paris: Verdier, 1993). 212 Enelow, “Kawwana,” 103–105. 213 Meir ibn Gabbai, Avodat ha-Kodesh, Ha-Avodah, chap. 13, fol. 33c (Jerusalem, 1954). In this context see the discussion by Halamish on the question of the obligation of Kabbalistic kavanot: Halamish, “Confrontation with the Duty,” 224.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

in accordance with the Kabbalistic teaching of the Sefirot; and he seeks to effect their unification and to raise them to their source in Ein Sof:214 With these secrets a person can adhere to his Lord, and know the perfection of wisdom in the supernal secret when he worships his Lord in prayer, with ratzon. With the intent of the heart he causes his will to adhere as fire to the ember, to unite those lower firmaments from the aspect of holiness, to adorn them—the lower ones—with one Name, and proceeding from there; to unify those inner supernal firmaments, so that they will all be in that uppermost firmament, that stands over them. While his mouth and lips are moving, he is to direct his heart, and his will will ascend higher and higher, to unify all with the secret of secrets, where all the desires and thoughts lodge, which is in the secret of Ein Sof. He is to have this intent in each and every prayer each and every day, to adorn all his days with the secret of the supernal days in his worship.215

The intent of prayer, for the Zohar, is the worshiper’s intellective intent for the unification of the divine worlds [the Sefirot], from the lowest, Malkhut, to the highest, Binah, to Ein Sof, the supernal source of reality. This is presumably directed exclusively to what happens within the Sefirot but the rectification of these supernal worlds is also the building of the lower worlds and the world of man. The elevation of thought in prayer also elevates man since the Zohar is based on the principle that man bears responsibility for the world’s existence with his acts and intentions. Improper acts and intents are easily liable to disturb the inner-divine balance that maintains the world. This, of course, is not ritual interiorization by physiological function such as fasts or changing one’s manner of sitting, as mentioned above; but these intents unquestionably generate spiritual-religious sublimation from the perspective of the worshiper. The Kabbalist’s intellectual awareness, which focuses on the intents accompanying each word of his prayer and every act of the religious rite and which he directs “for a lofty aim,” must bear a profound meaning in the Kabbalist’s inner self and not only relate to the theurgic aim of changing the external reality.216 I will discuss the existential meanings of Kabbalistic prayer as prayer “for a 214 See my discussion of epistemological interiorization in chapter six, which examines the conception at the basis of this idea. See below, 496–500. 215 Zohar 2:213b. 216 See Abraham J. Heschel, “The Mystical Element in Judaism,” in The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion, vol. 2, ed. Louis Finkelstein (New York: Harper, 1960), 932–53

117

118

Part One: Ritual and Custom

lofty aim” in chapter five within the context of the existential aspects of the Jewish sources.

The Interiorization of Prayer in Hasidism and the Struggle against Alien Thoughts Lurianic prayer intents are based on a multitude of divine names in which the regular words of prayer are enclothed and on which the Kabbalist concentrates while praying. Nascent Hasidism explicitly rejected a considerable portion of these complex intents. It turned to what Gottlieb described as the devotional orientation in Kabbalistic prayer and rejected the intents of names and the traditional Kabbalistic meaning of yihudim [unifications].217 The Baal Shem Tov’s grandson, the author of Degel Mahaneh Ephraim, formulated the fundamental Hasidic conception of this issue when he shifted the Kabbalistic focus on the Sefirot to a direct focus on God and His vitality: For the speech that issues forth from a person with the intent of his heart and his thought in fear and love is called speech, but when he speaks without intent and without fear and love, this is not called speech at all, there is neither speech nor words. See the Tikkunim, and he is called dumb [aleflamed-mem], for this speech does not contain the letters [of the divine Name] yud-heh, which are the aspect of mohin [mind, i.e., divine consciousness], that it would become the word Elohim [alef-lamed-heh-yud-mem, God], and remains the letters alef-lamed-mem, which is not deemed to be speech. This is the meaning of what is written [Ps. 39:3]: “I was dumb [ne’elamti], silent [dumiyah = dumi-yud-heh]”—ne’eleamti: I became as dumb. And the explanation of dum-yud-heh: one who speaks without the letters yud-heh— which is mohin—speaks without intent, and without fear and love.218

According to the scholar of Hasidism Mendel Piekarz when Hasidism began to be a mass movement, R. Elimelech of Lyzhansk, as is evident in his book Noam Elimelekh, developed a new ideational-social orientation in Hasidism: from worship directed to the supernal worlds and the redemption of the Shekhinah to prayer for the salvation of Israel, in the material 217 See Kalonymus Kalman Epstein, Ma’or va-Shemesh on Deut. 30:11. 218 Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, Degel Maḥaneh Efrayim, Noah, s.v. “O.” On the meaning of the term deḥilu ve-reḥimu [“fear and love”] in this context and on its Kabbalistic origins, see Margolin, Human Temple, 160–64, 201–204; and below, 259 n. 145.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

sense of the word. This shift focused the inner world of the Hasidim on their belief in the tzaddiq [Hasidic rabbi] and designated the latter’s religious activity to attain worldly abundance for his Hasidim. In practice, most of the community would no longer be required to have maximal intent in the performance of all the commandments and so even the nature of the ­tzaddiq’s intent underwent change:219 According to what is taught in the Talmud, a person should always study Torah and [observe the] commandments, even not for their own sake, for [by engaging in the commandments] not for their own sake, one will come [to engage in them] for their own sake. It seems that the interpretation is that all Torah and commandments performed without intent is like a body without a soul. Accordingly, when a person studies Torah or performs a commandment not for its own sake, only the body is born from this, but not the soul. This is not so for the holy tzaddiq who learns for its own sake, who is created by 248 spiritual limbs. The tzaddiq who studies for its own sake is capable of raising the Torah and commandments of the one who studied not for its own sake, for he is capable of drawing a soul to the study of the one who made only a body. This is the meaning of [by engaging in the commandments] not for their own sake, one will come [to engage in them] for their own sake: this means that the Torah will come to the one who studies for its own sake, and he will correct [yetakneh] it [i.e., its study without intent] by the limbs of the soul. This could also be the intent of the verse “A prayer of the lowly man when he is faint [and pours forth his plea before the Lord]” [Ps. 102:1]—the meaning of the “lowly man” [ani, literally, “poor”] is that he is called lowly in consciousness, and cannot have intent in his prayer; his remedial measure is that he joins himself with the complete tzaddiq who has intent in prayer, who elevates the prayer of the lowly man with his pure prayer, for the prayer of the lowly man remains without a soul, the tzaddiq gives it vitality, and by this his prayer ascends. How can the prayer of the lowly man be accepted by the Divine will? The interpretation of the verse, “when he is faint [ya`atof]” is that he joins with the complete tzaddiq, and ya`atof is the language of connection, which is

219 Mendel Piekarz, The Hasidic Leadership: Authority and Faith in Tzadiqim [Heb] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1999), 136–90.

119

120

Part One: Ritual and Custom

“before the Lord.” “Pours forth his plea” means that the tzaddiq will pour forth the lowly man’s plea before the Lord, that it may be accepted in love.220

A study of Hasidic writings from the early nineteenth century shows that R. Elimelech’s new direction did not cancel the demand by the tzaddiqim of their congregation for intent in their performance of the commandments; now, however, they focused on prayer and this demand was more firmly grounded in the halakhic orientation regarding intent. In nascent Hasidism, the Hasidic masters taught that prayer with intent means ecstatic prayer, especially by inward contemplation. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the focus on intent consisted mainly in the ritual interiorization of prayer but not necessarily in the introspective meditative method of the Maggid of Mezeritch and his disciples. This is plainly evident in the writings of R. Elimelech’s disciple, R. Menahem Mendel of Rymanow (died 1815), who feared rote in worship and especially in prayer: The Torah teaches us what is good and right in the service of our Creator, may He be blessed, how a person will be wise and contemplate every day before his prayer, and think of the sublimity of God, may He be blessed and His greatness; he is to be wise [to choose] with what mind he will stand to pray before the awesome and holy King, and which interpretations and intents he will renew in his prayer. For anyone who has a brain in his head can know that even before a flesh-and-blood king it is not fitting to stand, and every day say the same song, without anything new; and certainly so before the King who enthrones kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, who probes the mind and the conscience, how much more so we must renew every day, always, the intent of the heart. . . . Man stands to pray in the befouled body that separates him and confuses his mind with alien thoughts. He must exert himself and overcome with all his strength, to remove the physical power and bolster the intellective power, until his face appears red as a man of war. Afterwards, when he overcomes his desire and bests it, then he becomes a bit whiter because he rests from his toil. Then he will be able to pray with the intent of the heart, in quiet and repose, without trouble and labor.221

220 Elimelech of Lyzhansk, Noam Elimelekh, Balak (Rishon Lezion: Agudat Hasidei Kalibnoam, 1973). 221 Menahem Mendel of Rymanow, Divrei Menaḥem (New York: Moishe Torim, 1985), 17–18.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

For R. Menahem Mendel, the central problem in attaining inward intent in prayer is that of routine. To resist routine, one must renew interpretations and intents in prayer that can afford it the freshness it lacks. The alien thoughts with which Hasidism contended from its inception are mainly physical urges, thoughts of which attack man with greater intensity during prayer. Actual physical effort must be exerted against them when beginning to pray. In the end, this endeavor will result in a respite that will enable deep inner concentration, a process that is evident in the transition from a loud vocal prayer to a quiet and focused one. The teaching of the struggle against alien thoughts during prayer occupied a central place in the world of the Hasidim, already on the basis of traditions ascribed to the Baal Shem Tov. This struggle clearly expresses the efforts by the early Hasidic masters not to surrender to outer prayer, in which the mouth utters while one’s thought roams to distant places. In Likkutei Moharan R. Nahman of Bratslav casts the question of intent in prayer in an original light: The soul is most precious. One must be careful with it and guard it well. One must therefore be very cautious when some new honor and glory come one’s way. This is because glory is “the mother of all living things” (Genesis 3:20) and the root of all souls. When the soul passes away, it is taken up into glory, its root, as in “the glory of God will gather you in” (Isaiah 58:8). The souls pass away and are gathered into glory because that is their root. . . . Occasionally, the soul becomes weary on account of its having grown distant from its mother, namely the glory. One must then revive it and heal it by means of cool water, as in “Cool water over a weary soul” (Proverbs 25:25). When we pray without the heart, the soul is distanced from glory, as in “with their lips they honor Me, but their heart is distant . . .” (Isaiah 29:13). For the intention of the heart corresponds to the soul, as it is written (Psalms 25:1), “O God, I lift up my soul to You”—and Rashi explains: I direct the intention of my heart. But when the heart is distant from the words of prayer, then the soul, which corresponds to the heart, is distant from glory. . . . Cool water is gotten through the aspect of thunder, which in turn is made by honoring an elderly sage who has forgotten his studies. As our Sages, of blessed memory, taught: Take heed of the elderly sage who has forgotten his studies (Berakhot 8b). One must take heed and honor him. . . . Praying without the intention of the heart, which makes the soul weary, blemishes the bones. While praying, a person has to feel the words of prayer in all his bones, as in “All my bones proclaim” (ibid. 35:10). Thus the cool

121

122

Part One: Ritual and Custom

water that revives the soul, revives the bones, as in “and the marrow of his bones made moist” (Job 21:24).222

R. Nahman writes that prayer with inward intent constitutes a mental connection between the worshiper and the content of his prayer. The soul’s source is godly223 and therefore a person who prays with an inner distance between himself and the prayer itself causes the soul to be separated from its godly source. Consequently, the “intent of the heart” means prayer with the heart, that is, connection to the godly. The feeling of weariness and fatigue felt by one who prays without intent is understood by R. Nahman as a direct consequence of his inner self being distanced from the godly. Healing will be effected by reviving the soul by passion and renewal of the worshiper’s link with the content of his prayer. R. Nahman presents two images as ways of reviving the soul in prayer, that is, of enabling the connection between the contents of the prayer and the worshiper’s inner self. One is the metaphor of cool water which is received from thunder. The other (which is given priority in this teaching) is honoring an elderly person who has forgotten his studies. In order to understand the content of these images, we must look at other instances of their use in Likkutei Moharan. In Teaching 5:3 he writes: It is impossible for the heart to rejoice unless one removes the crookedness within it, so that he might have a “straight heart.” Then he will merit joy, as is written, “And for the straight of heart, joy” (Psalms 97:11). The crookedness of the heart is straightened by means of “thunder.” As the Rabbis teach: “Thunder was only created to straighten the crookedness of the heart” (Berakhot 59a). Thunder is the “aspect” of the powerful sound a person releases while praying. For it is this [voice] which generates “thunder.”224

Prayer in a loud voice, which is like the sound of thunder, is a means for straightening the heart and overcoming all the inner obstacles that distract a person from his prayer. This surmounting enables the worshiper to

222 Nahman of Bratzlav, Likkutei Moharan 1:67(1 and 8). For English translation see Likutey Moharan, vol. 8, trans. Moshe Mykoff, Symchah Bergman, Chaim Kramer (Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 2005), 166–215. 223 On the origin of this notion in the Zohar, see below, 296–99. 224 Likkutei Moharan 1:5(3). For English translation see Likutey Moharan, vol. 1, trans. Simcha Bergman (Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 1986), 86–87.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

directly connect with the godly glory without disturbances and to serve the Lord in joy.225 The second metaphor is explicitly explained in another teaching: This is the explanation of the three warnings that Rabbi Yehudah the son of Beteira of Netzivin issued: Be mindful of the elderly sage who has forgotten his studies due to hardships; be mindful of the veins, in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Yehudah; be mindful of the sons of the ignorant, for Torah will issue from them (Sanhedrin 96a). For all these three aspects allude to the soul’s ascent, the intellect, the Torah and the memory. The elderly sage who forgot his studies due to his hardships corresponds to death and foolishness due to forgetfulness. However, the Torah pardons one who is under duress, and Rabbi Yehudah warned that he be honored. For through honor, his forgetfulness is eliminated and the soul is revealed—i.e., the Torah is recalled. This is because the root of the Torah is God’s glory, as in, “whom I have created for My glory . . . “ And as our Sages taught: Honor is due only for Torah (Avot 6:3).226

For R. Nahman, the elderly sage who has forgotten his learning exemplifies the reviving of the soul in instances of a loss of inner intention. When a person is in a state of spiritual death, he recalls the times in which his situation was different; times in which he sensed that God dwells within him. The very memory returns him to the inner joy that he has lost. He revives himself by force of the recollection of what was and with this power he prays in a loud voice, thus bringing joy and vitality into his prayer, thereby invigorating it.

Repentance and the Interiorization of the Biblical Concept of Atonement The Palestinian Amora R. Phinehas maintained the superiority of repentance to the atonement effected by sacrifices and to the doctrine of reward and punishment: 225 Based on this teaching, in his Likkutei Tefilot, R. Nathan composed the supplication: “May I merit to bring forth the sound and speech of prayer with great force. May I merit that my voice be heard like the thunder of Your powers. May this voice arouse the intent of my heart, that my heart may hear and understand well what I pray before You. That I merit to pray with intent of the heart” (Nathan of Nemirov, Likkutei Tefilot 5 [Jerusalem: Hasidei Brasla,1957], 10). 226 Likkutei Moharan 1:37(5). For English translation see Likutey Moharan, vol. 5, trans. Moshe Mykoff (Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 1997), 202–205.

123

124

Part One: Ritual and Custom

It is written: “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore doth He instruct sinners in the way” (Psalms 25:8). Why is He good? Because He is upright. The Torah was asked: “What is the sinner’s punishment?” It replied: “Let him bring a sacrifice and he shall win atonement.” Prophecy was asked: “What is the sinner’s punishment?” It replied: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). David was asked: “What is the sinner’s punishment?” He replied: “Let sinners cease out of the earth” etc. (Psalms 104:25). Wisdom was asked: “What is the sinner’s punishment?” It replied: “Evil pursueth sinners” etc. (Proverbs 13:21). The Holy One, blessed be He, was asked: “What is the sinner’s punishment?” He answered them: “Let him repent and I shall accept him,” for it is written: “Good and upright is the Lord.”227

Other midrashim use the verses of repentance in Psalms 51 as scriptural support for the argument that repentance is of equivalent worth to the sacrifices, and comes in their stead: Whence [is it derived] that if one repents, it is accounted as if he went up to Jerusalem, built the Temple, and offered in it all the sacrifices in the Torah? This is derived from the following verse: “True sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit, etc.” [Ps. 51:19].228

It could be claimed that the historical circumstances were the background of this development. Arguing, however, that only the abrogation of sacrifices due to the destruction of the Second Temple led to alternatives such as repentance, which until the Destruction had been marginal to religious life, cannot withstand critical scrutiny. Admittedly, the idea of repentance reaches full maturity in the Bible in the prophecy of Ezekiel, that is, in the Babylonian exile that followed the destruction of the First Temple; but it was Ezekiel, specifically, who prophesied of both the renewal of sacrifices and repentance. Hermann Cohen, who argued that “through Ezekiel, particularly, repentance became the inward substitute for 227 PT Makkot 2:7, according to a Genizah fragment published by Solomon Wieder, Tarbiz 17 (1946): 133 (quoted by Urbach, Sages, 1:463–64). See Urbach, Sages, 2:892 n. 70 for textual variants of this passage. 228 Lev. Rabbah 7:2, ed. Margulies, 151. And similarly: “Come and see how great are the humble of spirit before the Holy One, blessed be He: when the Temple stood, a man brought a burnt-offering and received the reward for a burnt-offering . . . but regarding the one whose mind is humble, Scripture ascribes it to him as if he had offered every one of the sacrifices, as it is said: True sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit, etc.” (BT Sotah 5b; Sanhedrin 43b).

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

sacrifice,”229 also noted that Ezekiel did not invalidate sacrifices but called for internal rectification and change.230 The Destruction possibly expedited and brought into sharper focus the superiority of personal repentance but Deutero-Isaiah’s criticism of the fast of atonement231 already stresses the worth of the behavioral, inner change without which repentance is meaningless. Hermann Cohen maintains that the book of Ezekiel marks a shift in the prophets’ conception of repentance. He understands the verse “Cast away all the transgressions by which you have offended, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezek. 18:31) as a leap forward in the Biblical interiorization processes. He asserts that this verse emphasizes awareness and admission, two types of inward thought that require an outer manifestation, namely, an action. The sacrifice is a symbol, while repentance is to be more than that: it must be an actual act, the realization of the will.232 Ezekiel is not satisfied with the prophecy of the new heart and the new spirit that God will give the people of Israel after He has forged a new covenant with the people, as Jeremiah prophesied in Jer. 31; he goes further, and calls to make a new heart and a new spirit: “This possibility of self-transformation makes the individual an I.”233 The doctrine of repentance developed by the prophets did not focus exclusively on a critique of sacrifices, it also expressed opposition to outer fasts that did not entail actual repentance. Ben-Sira develops the criticism of fasts in Isaiah 58 as follows: “When one bathes due to a corpse and when one touches it again—what did he gain by his washing? So is a person when he fasts for his sins and goes again and does the same things; who will listen to his prayer, and what did he gain by humbling himself?”234 The Tosefta prescribes that on a public fast the elder recites Isa. 58:3–8, and adds: If a person had a reptile in his hand, even if he immerses in the Shiloah [= Siloam] or in all the waters of Creation, he will never be clean. If he cast the reptile from his hand, then the immersion is accounted for him [only] in forty seah of water. And so it says: “He who confesses and gives them up will

229 Cohen, Religion of Reason, 27. 230 Ibid., 174–77. 231 Isa. 58:6–7. 232 Cohen, Religion of Reason, 202–203. 233 Ibid., 193. 234 Ben-Sira 34:30–31 (trans.: Sirach, 747).

125

126

Part One: Ritual and Custom

find mercy” [Prov. 28:13], and it says, “Let us lift up our hearts as well as our hands to God in heaven” [Lam. 3:41].”235

The parables of ineffective immersion highlight the need for an inner decision and actual behavioral change that originates in a person’s inwardness. The development of the idea of repentance in rabbinic thought, and especially in M Yoma 8:9: “for transgressions that are between a man and his fellow the Day of Atonement effects atonement only if he has appeased his fellow,” substitutes ritual atonement by personal inner repentance that is to be expressed in the individual’s conduct. I will expand on the existential inner meanings of this topic in chapter five, which discusses existential aspects of inner religious life.

The Fast as Ritual Interiorization Eliade applied the term “ritual interiorization” to ritual acts performed by means of the body as a replacement for traditional sacrifices and libations.236 As well as representing criticism of the fast as an outer rite accompanying the atonement sacrifices, the fast is regarded elsewhere in the Torah and the Prophets as an integral part of the process of repentance and atonement.237 If by the act of sacrifice the sins are, in effect, projected onto the sacrificed animal (an act of a clearly externalized nature), in the act of fasting the sinner employs personal efforts to focus on himself, in order, inter alia, to underline his acceptance of personal responsibility for his actions. Just as the destruction of the Second Temple enhanced the value of repentance as remorse and inner acceptance, it also led to a parallel rise in the significance of the fast as an inner sacrifice:238 235 T Ta‘anit 1:8 (see Tosefta, vol. 2: The Order of Mo‘ed, ed. Saul Lieberman [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962], 325–26). See Tosefta ki-Fshutah, part 5: Order Mo‘ed, ed. Saul Lieberman (Newark: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 1072, with mention of parallels. See also BT Ta‘anit 16a. 236 See above, 72 n. 53. 237 Lev. 16:29, 31; Jonah 3:5. On the fast as effecting atonement, see Jacob Licht, “Tzom [Fast]” [Heb], in Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. 6 (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1971), cols. 692–95. 238 In his discussion of asceticism in the world of the rabbis, Ephraim Elimelech Urbach stresses that historical factors could strengthen or decline the ascetic elements in Judaism, while admitting the existence of such elements prior to the destruction of the Second Temple (Urbach, “Ascesis and Suffering in Talmudic and Midrashic Sources” [Heb], in Yitzhak F. Baer Jubilee Volume, ed. S. W. Baron et al. [Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1960], 48–68, esp. 445–47). In contrast to Urbach, Baer argued that

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

When R. Sheshet observed a fast, on completing his prayer he said: “Master of the Universe, It is known to You that when the Temple stood, if a man sinned he would bring a sacrifice, and although all that was offered of it was its fat and its blood, it atoned for him. Now I have observed a fast and my fat and my blood have diminished. May it be Your will that my fat and my blood that have diminished be accounted as if I had offered them before You on the altar, and may I be acceptable before You.”239

The fast was perceived by R. Sheshet as self-sacrifice that exceeded the worth of the regular offering of sacrifices. The individual engaging in a fast voluntarily forgoes one of his most basic instincts, and it is more difficult, inwardly, to disregard this waiver than to relinquish that which accompanies the regular sacrifice.240 the sages of the Second Temple period and the Mishnah were fundamentally inclined toward asceticism and abstinence (Yitzhak Baer, Israel among the Nations: An Essay on the History of the Period of the Second Temple and the Mishna and on the Foundations of the Halacha and Jewish Religion [Heb] [Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1955], 22). Do historical events generate spiritual changes, or do they influence already existing factors? If this asceticism existed, even latently, in the culture of the rabbis, what was its source? For differing approaches to this question, see Urbach, Sages, 1:444–48; Goldstein, “Worship in the Temple,” 193–202; Steven D. Fraade, “Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism,” in Jewish Spirituality, ed. Arthur Green, vol. 1: From the Bible through the Middle Ages (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 253–88; S. Lowy, “The Motivation of Fasting in Talmudic Literature,” Journal of Jewish Studies 9 (1958): 19–38. For a current discussion on fasting and asceticism in the rabbinic culture, see Eliezer Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 239 BT Berakhot 17a. 240 See the development of R. Sheshet’s prayer in Sabbatean circles: “May it be Your will, the Cause of all causes . . . , that by force of the diminishing of my fat and my blood that diminish in the fifty hours of two days, which are the count of the two names yudalef-heh-heh and vav-yud-heh-heh [two variants of the Tetragrammaton], with their two total sums and the sum of both together, with the numerical value of fifty, may my nefesh-ruaḥ-neshamah [each usually translated as “soul” or “spirit”] ascend to the fiftieth of the fifty gates of Binah . . .” (the version of Tikkunei Teshuvah by Nathan of Gaza, “Intent for Fast,” in the manuscript of Yemot Mashiaḥ, 175; cited by Abraham Elqayam, “The Mystery of Faith in the Writings of Nathan of Gaza” [Heb], PhD diss., [Hebrew University, 1993], 67–68. R. Sheshet’s experience of the physical loss while fasting is present in great force also in the following medieval piyyut for Yom Kippur: “My words before Thee shall be savours sweet, / O everlasting Rock; and all the waste / Of strength and body spent in this my fast / Shall seem to Thee a sacrifice complete. / Take mine heart’s prayer, which, these ten days within” (Mordechai ben Shabbetai [in trans.: Mordecai b. Sabbattai], cited by Flusser, Judaism, 42, n. 69. For English translation see Service of the Synagogue, vol. 3: Day of Atonement, Part II [London:

127

128

Part One: Ritual and Custom

The fast as waiver and affliction of the soul is directly related to the idea of atonement through suffering.241 The pinnacle of this conception in the world of the rabbis is connected to the notion of death as atonement.242 This thought gained force in the medieval period among the conceptions that created the idealization of martyrdom, beyond what had been current in the world of the rabbis. Baer noted the presence of a new spirit in Jewish martyrology in the medieval period when the leading halakhic authorities attempted to resolve it with the Talmudic law that imposed restrictions on asceticism.243 The limits on rabbinic asceticism were exceeded and extreme Routledge, 1946], 224–25). Fasting and prayer in the synagogue are perceived as a substitute for the sacrifices that were offered in the Temple. 241 “R. Nehemiah says: Tribulations are beloved, just as sacrifices appease, so, too, tribulations appease . . . furthermore, tribulations appease more than sacrifices, for sacrifices [affect] money, while tribulations [affect] the body. He also says: ‘Skin for skin—all that a man has he will give up for his life’ [Job 2:4]” (Sifre on Deuteronomy, Ve’ethanan 32, ed. Finkelstein, 57, see also the parallels he mentions. On “affliction of the soul” in the Torah, see Lev. 23:27. 242 “R. Jeremiah ben Eleazar said: . . . When a person is liable the death [penalty] for [an offense against] the Omnipresent, he keeps silent, as it is said, ‘Toward You silence is praise’ [Ps. 65:2]; and, furthermore, he offers praise, for it is stated ‘praise’; and not only this: it seems to him as if he is offering a sacrifice, for it is said, ‘vows are paid to You’ [Ps. 65:2]” (BT Eruvin 19a). See also Urbach, Sages, 1:432–36. 243 See Urbach, Sages, 1:447–48. The rabbis’ complex attitude to mortifications and fasts emerges from the Talmudic discussion of fasting: “Samuel said: Whoever fasts is called a sinner” (BT Ta‘anit 11a-b). The Talmud compares Samuel’s unequivocal stand against fasting with a baraita in the name of R. Eleazar ha-Kappar. Going beyond the view of Samuel, R. Eleazar ha-Kappar deems any ascetic act a sin. The Talmud then brings another dictum attributed to R. Eleazar that the Talmudic redactors perceive as contradicting the first dictum by R. Eleazar ha-Kappar and an additional (third) dictum by R. Eleazar that negates fasting: “A person should always consider himself as if the Holy One dwells within him” (see also below, the following page). The attempt by the redactors of the Talmud to reconcile the contradictory views of the rabbis is of great importance for understanding later Jewish views regarding asceticism. According to the redactors, R. Eleazar’s opposition to fasts is not absolute. Rather, he refers to the inner state of the individual engaged in a fast: “This is not a contradiction, one speaks of a person who is able to bear self-affliction, and the other, of one who is not able.” When a fast is accompanied by mental suffering, it is invalid, but when a fast is conducted without causing suffering to a person’s psyche, then it is positive. The positive fast is observed without paying attention to the bodily affliction. The Talmud does not explain the purpose of self-afflictions that are not sensed as such. In my opinion, the explanation is provided by Rashi’s commentary to Resh Lakish’s dictum by in the same Talmudic passage: “Resh Lakish says, He is called ‘pious [ḥasid],’ for it is said, ‘A kindly [ḥesed] man weans [gomel] himself, a cruel man makes trouble for himself ’ [Prov. 11:17].” Rashi writes: “The one engaging in a fast: as it is written, ‘A kindly man weans himself ’—he separates himself from food and drink, as on the day

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

asceticism entered the Jewish communities in Ashkenaz (the medieval Franco-German center).244 This culture and its derivatives in the repentance methods of the sages of Ashkenaz and medieval Poland were examined in detail by Elbaum in his book Repentance and Self-Flagellation.245

The Replacement of the Sacrifice by Sacred Eating “R. Johanan and R. Eleazar both said: While the Temple still stood the altar would atone for a person, but now that the Temple no longer stands a person’s table atones for him.”246 The transformation of eating in general—and especially that of eating on Sabbaths and holidays—into a sacred act capable of atoning for a person’s transgressions no less than the atonement by sacrifices247 reflects an orientation opposite to that of the asceticism discussed above. Similar to asceticism, the sanctity of eating, was based on the substitution of the traditional rite by physiological activities. Unlike, however, asceticism’s negative attitude to the body, the sanctity of eating means the mandating and sanctification of eating, exctly because it maintains the body. The dicta cited in the name of R. Eleazar in Ta‘anit, further to the discussion of Samuel’s dictum that “whoever fasts is called a

Isaac was weaned [Gen. 21], sevrer in Old French. From my teacher, alternatively, gomel is the language of tigmul [recompense], for he pays his life to his Maker. ‘A cruel man makes trouble’—the one who engages in a fast and denies his flesh is called cruel.” Resh Lakish expounds the verse in Proverbs as referring to the person himself. According to Resh Lakish, this verse denounces the person who is cruel to his flesh, that is, who denies the flesh of his body, and praises the one who nourishes himself, portraying him as one who acts kindly towards himself. Rashi’s commentary was inspired by the Talmud’s effort to resolve the two contradictory dicta of R. Eleazar. Rashi found it difficult to completely negate fasting, so he preferred to reject the fast that is accompanied by an improper inner intent. For the one who fasts with positive intent, to be weaned of his dependence on food like an infant who is weaned from his mother’s breast, this affliction is like a kindness for his soul, which is released from the bonds of the material. However, if a person fasts with negative intent, to deny his body, his action is disapproved. 244 Yitzhak Baer, “Introduction,” in A. M. Habermann, The Persecutions of Germany and France: Memoirs by Those from the Generations of the Crusades and a Selection of Their Poems [Heb] (Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1945), 2. See Abraham ben Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, ed. Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1939–1963), 222. 245 Jacob Elbaum, Repentance and Self-Flagellation in the Writings of the Sages of Germany and Poland 1348–1648 [Heb] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993), esp. 152–76. 246 BT Menahot 97a. 247 See BT Shabbat 118a–b.

129

130

Part One: Ritual and Custom

sinner”248 reveal the conceptual foundations on which the position of R. Johanan and R. Eleazar is based. “A person should always consider himself as if the Holy One dwells within him, as it is said, ‘’The Holy One in your midst: I will not come be-ir [Hos. 11:9].”249 In the original verse in Hosea, the wording “the Holy One in your midst” refers to God dwelling amongst His people. Despite Israel’s sins, God’s mercy will overcome His fury and He will cause Himself to dwell among the people to prevent the destruction of Ephraim.250 R. Eleazar expounds “the holy (one) among you” as referring to man:251 “the holy among you” = the holy that is within man.252 And as the Tosafists interpreted this: “As if the holy is within his innards—the Holy One, blessed be He.”253 In light of the continuation of the discussion in the Talmud, and as is indicated by Rashi’s commentary, this dictum patently forbids fasting, since denying the body means harming the Holy One, blessed be He, who dwells within man. In opposition to the ascetic trends that view eating as a necessity that is to be limited to the greatest extent possible, this dictum expresses the contrary, and regards eating as a holy act.254 248 BT Ta‘anit 11a–b. 249 Ibid. 250 The later commentary commonly understands the phrase “I will not come be-ir [literally, in the city],” identifying ir with ar (enemy, adversary), similar to the meaning of this wording in I Sam. 28:16; Jer. 15:8; Ps. 137:7; 139:20. Cf. R. Nahman’s wonder in Ta‘anit 5a, when he asks R. Isaac about the meaning of this verse: “Because the Holy One is in your midst I shall not come into the city?” R. Johanan replied: “I will not enter the heavenly Jerusalem until I enter the earthly Jerusalem.” That is, R. Johanan understood the words “the Holy One in your midst” as referring to the building of the earthly Jerusalem and the renewal of the Temple, which means the return of the Holy One, blessed be He, to the city and the people. 251 A later manifestation of this conception, not specifically within the context of the sanctification of eating, was set forth by R. Eleazar Azikri in Milei de-Shemaya, para. 87 (see chapter four, 313, below). On this teaching as reflecting potential and not a given situation, see Milei de-Shemaya by R. Eleazar Azikri, ed. M. Pachter (Tel Aviv: Mifalim Universitayim, 1991), 80–81. 252 On the ideational basis for this conception in Hillel, R. Akiva, and R. Meir’s understanding of creation in the image of God, see below, chapter four, the discussion on the interiorization of the myth of creation in the divine image in rabbinic teachings (286–90.) 253 The interpretation of Tosafot emphasizes that this is the intent of the teaching, in opposition to Rashi’s interpretation, which blurs the materializing nature of the dictum, apparently in the spirit of the corruption in MS. Munich: “R. Eleazar said: A person should always comport himself as if the holy dwells within him.” See the proposal by Lorberbaum, Image of God, 313 n. 118. 254 Lorberbaum joins this dictum with other midrashic sources that are attributed to Hillel and that he maintains express the iconic relationship between man and his Creator.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

Just as the sacrifice that ascends to heaven is “an offering by fire of pleasing odor to the Lord,” so too, the food that a person eats nourishes the divine within him. This notion is expressed in Hillel’s stance in the narrative of Hillel and Shammai in Tractate Betzah: It was taught: They said of Shammai the Elder that all his life he ate in honor of the Sabbath. If he found an admirable animal, He said, “This is for the Sabbath.” If he found another more excellent, he put aside the second for the Sabbath and ate the first. Hillel the Elder, however, had a different trait, for all his actions were for the sake of Heaven, as it is said, “Blessed be the Lord, day by day” [Ps. 68:20].255

As Lorberbaum showed, Hillel’s eating “for the sake of Heaven” meant it was “for the sake of the commandment,” that is, for God’s sake.256 Hillel considered every act of eating to be a religious act of maintaining the divine presence in the body and soul of a person who was created in the image of God. The sanctity of eating, that apparently has its roots in the Biblical sacred meals,257 was expressed in the world of the rabbis in various aspects of the sanctification of food and especially in their institution of Kiddush over wine and the seudot mitzvah [religiously ordained meals] on Sabbath and holiday. The idea of the sanctity of eating was developed in singular fashion in Kabbalistic literature by its incorporation with new Kabbalistic notions. In Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit R. Isaiah Horowitz combines the writings of the schools of R. Moses Cordovero and R. Isaac Luria on this topic: It is written in Re’shit Ḥokhmah that the spirit from the aspect of sanctity and purity rests on the food from permitted things that is eaten for Heaven’s sake. (The intent is that man’s creation in the image of God teaches that God’s likeness is reflected in man’s form and likeness, and therefore is present in man.) According to Lorberbaum, the dicta by Hillel referring to the worship of the figures of kings, especially that related in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, version B, chap. 30 (trans.: Danby, The Mishnah, 179), presume such a relationship between God and man; see Lorberbaum, Image of God, 313–14, and his entire discussion in chap. 6 (“Image, Representation, and Presence,” in both the Hebrew and English editions). Alternately, this dictum could be understood as reflecting a Stoic conception, that food sustains the divine soul that is present within man. (Cf. these notions with Bynum’s discussion in her essay on holy feasts in Christianity: Bynum, Holy Feast, 73–112.) 255 BT Betzah 16a. 256 Lorberbaum, Image of God, 312–14. 257 See I Sam. 9:12–24.

131

132

Part One: Ritual and Custom

The soul derives benefit from that eating from the aspect of sanctity within it, and this is “the righteous man eats to his soul’s content” [Prov. 13:25]. For according to its simple meaning, it is difficult: what is his soul’s content, since the soul is spiritual. Rather, the matter is this: eating itself has an aspect of sanctity, and the soul is satiated from that aspect of sanctity.258 I found this better explained in the name of the godly R. Isaac Luria, of blessed memory, who interpreted the verse “man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that comes from the mouth of the Lord” [Deut. 8:3].259 Philosophers already investigated to learn the connection of the soul to the body in eating, and whether the soul itself can eat. But they could not discover the reason. The above-mentioned rabbi, of blessed memory, however, said that you have nothing that does not have an aspect of sanctity, as the Rabbis, of blessed memory said, “There is no type of vegetation below that does not have a mazal [= guardian angel] that strikes it and says, ‘Grow!’” [see Gen. Rabbah 10:6]. The intent is to the influential power that comes from above, as it is said, “declares the Lord—I will respond to the sky, and it shall respond to the earth” [Hos. 2:23]. Consequently, every food in the world is a mixture of body and soul. The revealed food is the body, and the sanctity of the influence from above that strikes it, to say, “Grow!,” this is its soul. And when a person eats it, then by the eating, his body and soul remain connected, for the soul derives benefit from the soul of the food, and the body, from the body [of the food]. As for what was said, “that man does not live on bread alone” [Deut. 8:3], this means that man does not live on the bread that is revealed to us, for what benefit would there be to the soul from this, rather, “that man [may live] on anything that the Lord decrees” [Deut. 8:3], that is, bread is what the Lord decrees, that is, the influence that strikes it and says to it that it come forth and grow—by this man lives. And this interpretation is a wondrous interpretation.260

258 De-Vidas, Reshit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Kedushah 15:2–3, ed. Waldman, 375. 259 Vital, Likkutei Torah, Ta‘amei ha-Mitzvot, Ekev, 240–50: “For the vitality of the soul does not come from food, ‘that man may live on anything that comes from the mouth of the Lord’ [Deut. 8:3]; the blessing that he brings forth with his mouth brings forth the holy sparks from the impurity, and is sifted by the mouth of the Lord by the chewing of lamed-bet [= 32; also spelling lev = heart], which are the lev of God, lamed-bet [= 32] paths” (247). 260 Isaiah Horowitz, Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit (n.p., 1963), Sha‘ar ha-Otiyot, Ot Kuf: Kedushah, fol. 54 col. a. See also the copying of the passage in Elijah ben Abraham Solomon Ha-Kohen, Sefer Shevet Musar (Jerusalem, 1975), chap. 36, 290–91.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

By juxtaposing R. Moses Cordovero’s conception of the sanctity of eating with R. Isaac Luria’s original thought on this theme, the author of Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit laid the groundwork for a broader synthesis of the thinking of the two on the sanctity of eating that characterized the way of the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples. As Ronit Meroz has shown, what Horowitz cites in the name of Luria is an exposition that an unknown student of Luria by the name of R. Joseph Don Don heard and was included in the Likkutim of Ephraim Penzieri.261 According to this student, Luria said: For a person effects tikkun [supernal rectification] in all that he does, even in eating. One should not think that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants a person to eat in this world for the benefit of his body and to fill his stomach, rather, this is to effect tikkun. For when Adam mixed good and evil, everything was spoiled, even the stones and the vegetation. This mingling is that the sparks of holiness were intermingled in the entire world, even in the inanimate, as it is said, “Cursed be the ground because of you” (Gen. 3:17). The Holy One, blessed be He, according ordered in His world that the vegetation would come forth from the inanimate, and the animals will be sustained from the vegetation by eating it, and when an animal is eaten by man it is spiritualized. The sparks that were lost at the time of Adam return to him on these levels. Therefore, by eating he gains and adds power to his soul. . . . Man, who is of the first level, close to the Lord, may He be blessed, has a living soul, as it is said, “you who held fast” [Deut. 4:4], etc. If a person conducts himself in piety, and fulfills all the Torah and the commandments, when he dies he will ascend to a superior level and he will rise higher. If, Heaven forbid, the opposite will be the case, and he will engage in bestial actions, and follow eating and fornication, when this man dies he will return to his [base] element, and his soul will enter an animal. If he will be more evil he will descend to the vegetation, if he will be even more evil, to the inanimate. Another person who is close to him [i.e., whose souls are close], who has affinity with his soul, rectifies him and extricates him from these straits, either from the vegetation or from the animal, in which he is imprisoned.262

261 See Ronit Meroz, “Selections from Ephraim Penzieri: Luria’s Sermon in Jerusalem and the Kawanah in Taking Food” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 10 (1992): 214–16, for additional details regarding R. Joseph Don Don. 262 Meroz, “Penzieri,” 247, 250. In this article Meroz surveys the Kabbalistic building blocks from which R. Isaac Luria wove his original conception.

133

134

Part One: Ritual and Custom

According to a tradition of the rabbis of Komarno Hasidism, the Lurianic conception of the elevation of the sparks has its basis in a story about R. Moses Galante, a disciple of Luria: I heard from my lord, my father, my teacher, my master, may his remembrance be for the World to Come, that this story is brought in holy books, that the holy rabbi, the righteous one, our master, the rabbi, R. M[oses] Galante, was exceedingly wealthy. Once he came before the Ari [= R. Isaac Luria], may his remembrance be for the World to Come, and he asked him why [his soul] had come to this world, and what rectification he must perform. The Ari replied, You came in this incarnation to raise the holy sparks that were left for you to rectify from an incarnation preceding this one. For then, too, you were a Torah scholar, but you engaged in several mortifications, and you ate only a tiny bit, and you had to eat much then, for you had many sparks to rectify, in accordance with the root of your soul that your soul had to rectify. But you did not want to eat so much. Accordingly, after you had ascended from the previous incarnation to this higher [incarnation], all those sparks came and brought suit against you in the Heavenly Court, why did you leave them without rectification. The Heavenly Court ruled that you must come to this world again in another reincarnation, and you would be extremely wealthy, so that you could bring all the sparks to you by eating and drinking. This is your rectification, that you will take delight in good foods, in sanctity and purity.263

The thought of R. Elijah de De-Vidas, a disciple of R. Moses Cordovero and the author of Re’shit Ḥokhmah, gives prominence to the possibility of a person attaining sanctity in his lifetime by sacred eating, independent of the idea of the holy sparks, and certainly independent of the belief in gilgul [transmigration]. In contrast, in an exposition cited in the name of R. Isaac Luria, the purpose of elevating the sparks is to release a person from transmigration in the lower worlds. The sparks of holiness that were dispersed throughout the world due to Adam’s sin long for their rectification by being raised from their captivity in the turbid material world. The Lurianic conception, despite the objection to mortifications that might be learned from the story of R. Moses Galante, is more dualistic; while the thought of R.

263 Eliezer Zvi (Safrin) of Komarno, Zkan Beto al Pirkei Avot (Jerusalem, 1973), Ofen Yad, 175. (My thanks to Prof. Moshe Idel for drawing my attention to this source.)

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

Moses Cordovero tends to view the presence of holiness in the material as the realization of the purpose of the holy. Hasidism created a unique synthesis of these two approaches. The Lurianic notion of tikkun by the elevation of the sparks was directed, under the influence of the writings of Cordovero’s disciples, to the inner arena within man. In Hasidism, the elevation of the sparks during eating is an inner thought process that occurs then and enables the realization of the Hasidic ideal of “In all your ways acknowledge Him” (Prov. 3:6).264 Hasidism expanded R. Isaac Luria’s wondrous idea (as Horowitz portrayed it) by relating it to the very act of eating with intent, which was perceived as enabling connection with the godly sparks and reinforcing the spiritualgodly within man that resides in the physical. The Hasid is given the difficult task of directing his thought while eating to the presence of the holy sparks, the kernels of vitality in the food, and in this manner to connect with them. The Hasid, by means of his intent while eating, thereby rectifies the damages caused by Adam’s sin that led to the separation of the physical from the spiritual. Hasidic literature frequently cites the passage concerning eating from the commentary to Ps. 107 attributed to the Baal Shem Tov:265 “Hungry and thirsty, their spirit failed” [Ps. 107:5]—The interpretation: there is a great and awesome secret here, which is, why did the Holy One, blessed be He, create matters of food and drink that a person desires to eat and drink? The reason is that they are actually sparks of Adam, that are enclothed in the inanimate, the vegetative, the living, and the speaking [= man], and they long to adhere to holiness. They arouse the female waters in this secret, no drop descends from above without two drops correspondingly ascending from below. Every food and drink that a person eats and drinks is really part of his sparks, that he is to rectify.266

The act of eating with the proper intent is, in practice, coupling, by an awareness of the sanctity in the food with the aggregate sanctity in a person. This redeems the sparks from their captivity, that is, from their distance 264 See Margolin, Human Temple, 231–42; Tsippi Kaufmann, In All Your Ways Know Him: The Concept of God and Avodah be-Gashmiyut in the Early Stages of Hasidism [Heb] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2009), 165–392. 265 Margolin, Human Temple, 293 n. 22. 266 Israel Baal Shem Tov, Ba‘al Shem Tov al ha-Torah, vol. 2, ed. Szymon Menahem Mendel Wodnik (Jerusalem, n.d.), 45. See also Keter Shem Tov hashalem (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2004), 110.

135

136

Part One: Ritual and Custom

from the source of holiness. Hasidic interpretation strikingly emphasizes the inner process, which imparts to eating as well as other material matters, the nature of a religious intellective effort. The process of ritual interiorization is meant to gradually encompass all everyday activities. R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev explains this notion by using de Vidas’s distinction between two types of sanctity:267 For the main thing in a person’s eating is that he must think that he has to have strength for the service of the Creator, may He be blessed, in Torah and prayer. Accordingly, this eating itself is [divine] service, since it is for the purpose of this service. In truth, however, at any rate while eating he does not worship the Lord, and this eating is of benefit only afterwards, when he engages in study. But there are tzaddiqim who eat in sanctity, and while eating have holy thoughts and speak Torah during their eating. Therefore, while eating he serves the Creator, may He be blessed, and this is called “eating.” This is not so regarding the former state, while eating this is not called “eating,” since he did not act [in sanctity] at the time, but only after the action [of eating].268

In another passage, R. Levi Isaac explains the meaning of the elevation of the holy sparks: When you desire to eat and drink, or [engage in] any other of this world’s desires, and your intent is to love of Him, may He be blessed, then you elevate the material desire to the spiritual desire, and by this you sift the holy spark that is in this food or in other things. . . . This is the secret of [the blessing] “Who brings forth bread from the earth” [recited before eating bread], for “bread” alludes to the sanctity by the secret of bread [lehem], which is 3 Names of God [i.e., the numerical value of lehem, 78 = 3 X 26, the numerical value of the Tetragrammaton], and “earth” alludes to earthliness and materiality. The person brings forth bread, that is, the holy sparks, from the earth—from earthliness and from the outer realms [i.e., those belonging to the domain of evil]. Consequently, when a person acts in this way, he shows the fierce and tremendous love that he has for Him, may He be blessed. There is no greater way than this wherever a person goes and whatever he 267 De-Vidas, Reshit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Kedushah 4:21, ed. Waldman, 53. See Margolin, Human Temple, 148–50. 268 Levi Isaac of Berdichev, Kedushat Levi ha-Shalem (Jerusalem, Urbach 1978), Likkutim, 287–88.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

does; even in external things in this world he worships his Creator, may He be blessed.269

Eating in sanctity usually refers to religiously mandated holy meals, such as Sabbath and holiday meals, while Hasidism expanded this to include everyday eating as well. Not only did Hasidism demand intent, in the most profound sense of the word, in the performance of all the commandments, it expanded the intentional element to everyday material life. The Hasidic ideal connected thought in every situation to the godly that vivifies all. By means of inner thought, man connects with God and by imparting godly spiritual meaning to material reality, he redeems matter and elevates both reality and himself. The existential meaning of avodah be-gashmiyut [the worship of God through corporeality] will be discussed at length at the end of chapter five.

Kabbalistic Ritual Interiorization as Manifesting God in Man and as the Way of His Rectification Tikkun 70, which concludes Tikkunei ha-Zohar, is one of the most important sources for the conception of the observance of the commandments as manifesting God in man and as the way of his rectification, which was discussed extensively by the early Hasidic masters:270 With each and every limb (which is a lamp for every commandment) a person must proclaim the kingship of the Holy One, blessed be He, and prepare for Him a pure and clean place in which to dwell. To this end a person must eliminate from himself, from each and every limb, all bad thoughts and fleeting notions of filths that are kelipot [husks], and he must burn them by all the good commandments that rest on each and every limb, that are lamps. . . . For every commandment is called a lamp, which is the meaning of what is written, “For the commandment is a lamp” [Prov. 6:23], “The soul of man is the lamp of the Lord” [Prov. 20:27]. . . . For every commandment that rests on each and every limb has a known name. And all the hosts and camps of angels that derive from it all gather to that limb and they protect it from every scourge. If anyone exchanges them or summons them to a limb other 269 Ibid., Vayeshev, 61. 270 See, for example, Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef (Jerusalem: Agudat Beit Wilyafili, 1973), Terumah, para. 2, 234–36. For a discussion of this teaching, see Margolin, Human Temple, 325–27.

137

138

Part One: Ritual and Custom

than theirs, and for which they are not responsible, he denies the order of Creation and they do not gather to him. [This is comparable to] a king who appointed officials over his kingdom, and designated them for each place. He said to them, “You will be responsible for such-and-such a place, and you, such-and-such.” He designated him for a known place, and for a known thing. No other place can be substituted for him. But the Holy One, blessed be He, whose rule is everywhere, like the soul that rules over each and every limb, “His presence fills all the earth” [Isa. 6:3], every place where a person calls Him, He responds. But if the place of that limb is flawed by a sin committed by the person, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not dwell in that limb, of which it is said, “No man at all who has a defect shall approach” [Lev. 21:18].271

The author of Tikkunei ha-Zohar breaks new ground in the perception of the performance of the commandments. Since a person’s limbs are compared to the image of God, the way to rectify them is by means of the commandments which cause God to dwell within man. The midrash learns by analogy from the two verses in Proverbs, which compare the lamp to the commandment and man’s soul that the commandment is man’s soul, that is, the godly essence itself. Since in Zoharic thought the soul in the body is as God in the world,272 the performance of any commandment proclaims God’s kingship, introduces His presence, and in the wording of Tikkunei ha-Zohar, His dwelling, or manifesting, in man. The Mishnah asks, “Why does the section ‘Hear, O Israel’ [Deut. 6:4-] precede ‘And it shall come to pass if ye shall hearken’ [Deut. 11:13-]?—so that a man may first take upon him the yoke of the kingdom of heaven and afterward take upon him the yoke of the commandments” (M Berakhot 2:2).273 According to Tikkun 70 there is no longer any room for such a separation, since each commandment is an actual coronation—introducing the godly presence in the human body, and not merely the acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of heaven. The dictum of R. Simlai—“Six hundred and thirteen commandments were related to Moses, three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions, corresponding to the number of solar days [in the year], and two hundred and forty-eight positive commandments, corresponding to a person’s limbs” (BT Makkot 23b)—now assumes a new meaning. The commandments are performed 271 Tikkunei Zohar, Tikkun 70, fol. 130b. 272 See below, chapter four, 304–5. 273 Trans.: Danby, The Mishnah, 3. See Knohl, “Accepting the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

by the limbs and through them rectify the sins committed by these very limbs. These sins threaten to blemish the godly presence in man, a presence indicated by the verse “His presence fills all the earth.” That is, His presence is in man, just as it is in the world. By his flawed behavior man banishes the godliness within him. The commission of the commandments effects rectification, the removal of the flaw, and its replacement by the constantly renewed act of coronation. The performance of the commandments is a continual act of prayer. In every such act man calls upon God to dwell within him, to which God, who is present in all, responds. Man, by sinning, removes God from himself, and by the commission of a commandment he “brings” God closer to him. The perception of Torah and commandments as a means of attaining devotion, which is characteristic of the teachings of the early Hasidic masters, apparently is based on the thought developed in Tikkun 70:274 All of a person’s limbs are arranged by the order of Creation, and because of this a person is called a small world. And whoever proclaims the kingship of the Holy One, blessed be He, over each and every limb is as if he proclaims His kingship over the whole world. The reward of the person who declares His kingship over each and every limb may not be revealed. For these are the reasons for the commandments, which may not be revealed, so that a person would not worship the Holy One, blessed be He, for the sake of receiving a reward. But my son, let these things that need not be revealed be concealed in your heart; of them it is said “that they may eat their fill and clothe themselves elegantly” [Isa. 23:18]. Let the elegant things that were not given over to be revealed be concealed in your heart. Come see, when a person engarbs himself in the cloak of a commandment, puts on tefilin, and reads the Reading of the Shema, then he prepares for himself a throne in the engarbing of the commandment, and he establishes it: “And a throne shall be established in goodness” [Isa. 16:5]. And with tefilin he adorns it, this is the meaning of what is written, “Put on your turban” [Ezek. 24:17]. And he reads a verse for Him to rest on the throne that he prepared with “Hear, O Israel.” Thus the Holy One, blessed be He, prepares for Himself in that world a throne and a crown. And just as he brings Him down there [i.e., in this world], it stands because of him, and he proclaims His kingship over each and every limb of his, so too, for the Holy One, blessed be He: he makes for Himself in the world a throne and royal 274 See the extensive discussion in Margolin, Human Temple, 288–342.

139

140

Part One: Ritual and Custom

crown, and proclaims His kingship over all the angels [textual variant: hosts] and camps there. This is the meaning of what is written, “They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky” [Gen. 1:26]. This is the esoteric meaning of the matter: “I honor those who honor Me, but those who spurn Me shall be dishonored” [I Sam. 2:30].275

The Zoharic text concludes from the midrashic statements about man being a small world276 that the perception of the commandments as proclaiming God’s kingship and introducing His presence in man is the same as proclaiming God’s kingship in the world. Since, in the world of the Zohar, “the awakening below results in the awakening above,”277 any performance of a commandment is a theurgic act that intensifies the divine presence in the earthly realm and arouses that presence in the supernal orbs. The theurgic reasons for the commandments are a great secret, in which great danger is inherent. One who knows the secret could easily fall to the level of one who worships not for its own sake. Such a one could become haughty and lose all. The concealment in the heart proposed by the author of Tikkunei ha-Zohar is manifestly paradoxical: know, although it is preferable not to know. This situation cannot be resolved, for if this secret is not made explicit, a person will lose the profound, fundamental reason for performing the commandments and he will sink in the passive conception of the one “who is commanded and does.” This passivity is a common cause of a lack of vitality in the observance of the commandments and their rote performance. Vitality and power are inherent in Kabbalistic reasons for the commandments. The commandments infuse the religious rite with substantive meaning by their interiorization, which imparts personal inner meaning to each action. In this conception the notion of imitatio Dei, which is most prominently expressed in the world of the rabbis by Abba Saul’s dictum: “Be like Him: just as He is gracious and merciful, so be 275 Tikkunei Zohar, Tikkun 70, fol. 130b. 276 On man as a microcosm, and the world as a macroanthropos, see M. Stein, “Mother Earth in Old Hebrew Literature” [Heb], Tarbiz 9 (1938): 257–77. This notion originated in Plato, Timaeus 44–46. For English translation, see Plato, Timaeus, trans. R. G. Bury, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 234 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 96–107. Its central expressions in the midrashic literature appear in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, version A, chap. 31; Tanḥuma, Pekudei 3; Eccl. Rabbah 1:4; Midrash Tehillim (Schocher Tov) 19:1, ed. Salomon Buber (Vilna: Romm, 1891), 163; Yalkut Tehillim 672. See also Adolph Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrasch, section 5, Aggadat Olam Katan (Jerusalem: Bamberger & Wahrmann, 1938), 57–59. 277 Zohar, 1:88a.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

thou also gracious and merciful,”278 became much broader and more meaningful. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world for Him to dwell in, thus man, by performing the 248 positive commandments (which correspond to his 248 limbs), prepares a throne for Him within his body and enables Him to dwell within. The daring idea of man as temple, which was cautiously formulated by R. Moses Alshekh in his commentary to the verse “And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them” (Exod. 25:8),279 was transformed in Hasidism into the idea of the tzaddiq, while fundamentally assuming that every Jew could become a human temple by observing the commandments.280 The depth of this idea’s influence on Hasidic thought is attested by the following attack by R. Elimelech of Lyzhansk concerning a phenomenon that had spread within the Hasidic public, namely, exaggerated movements during prayer or the performance of ritual commandments that were not spontaneous, but rather imitative, born of social motives: “Do not turn to idols” [Lev. 19:4]—the Talmud states, “[How is that taught? R. Hanin said:] Do not turn out God from your own mind” [BT Shabbat 149a]. It seems that their interpretation [was based] on what was written in books, that the soul rests in every limb or movement with which a person performs a commandment or holy matter. Then the soul rests in that limb, and when the soul rests in that limb, then the limb moves by force of it, and by force of it the movement is seen externally. This varies by person, according to his actions, which are his movements. For this reason, the movements of the tzaddiqim are sweet and good to those who see them, for the movement is by force of the soul, and the soul is part of God above, and all good is in this. To the contrary, when a person does [i.e., imitates] the movements of his fellow, no person’s [soul] receives [this godly part], because it is not his [movement], his soul was not in that limb when he made that movement, and it is without sanctity; it is, Heaven forbid, like idolatry, for he makes a movement that is not part of the godly, but rather because he liked the movement that he saw from his fellow and it found favor in his eyes. This one does not know that this was due to the godly part that rests in 278 Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ismael, Shirata 3, on Exod. 15:2, ed. H. S. Horovitz and I. A. Rabin (Frankfurt, 1931), 127. For English translation, see Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, trans. Jacob Z. Lauterbach, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976), 25. 279 Moses Alshekh, Torat Moshe, Terumah (Warsaw, 1861), fol. 148a. 280 See Margolin, Human Temple, 127–38.

141

142

Part One: Ritual and Custom

the limb. This is why the taste of the movement is sweet and it finds favor in his eyes. But this is not because of the movement itself, but rather by force of the soul that rests in it; he does everything without comprehension and without intent, rather because of the beauty of the movement. Consequently, he worships the movement, and makes the limb that does the movement as a molten image, to worship that limb. This is the meaning of “Do not turn to idols—do not turn to what is conceived in your own mind, etc.” For your godliness that God apportioned to You in His mercy is the holy soul, do not turn out from yourselves: “Do not make molten gods [masekhah] for yourselves” [Lev. 19:4]—this means, do not make yourselves as a mask [masekhah] with false motions that do not possess godly vitality, but rather conceive them in your own minds and with [your] intent. This is “I am the Lord your God”—that is, by force of the godliness which is the holy soul that rests within you.281

This passage is reminiscent of the statement by R. Phinehas of Koretz that “when a person’s arms go up by themselves during prayer, this is a sign that his prayer is heard and accepted.”282 Spontaneous movements of this type were deemed by the early Hasidic masters as signifying the divinity that is present in man. R. Elimelech struggled against the vacuous mimicry that stems from the conscious desire to impress with behavior perceived by the Hasidim as reflecting a high level of spirituality. A worshiper who adopts the tzaddiq’s movements while praying, by merely imitating them is comparable to an idolater. The thought of a true servant of the Lord is concentrated solely on the Lord and his movements come from his inwardness with no outer intention to impress other worshipers.

Observing the Torah before It Was Given, as Ritual Interiorization The Mishnah in Tractate Kiddushin declares: “We find that Abraham our father had performed the whole Law before it was given, for it is written ‘Because that Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws’ [Gen. 26:5].”283 This concept is formulated in Tractate Yoma as follows: “[Rav] or R. Ashi said: Abraham our father kept even the law of eruvei tavshilin [the procedure permitting preparation on 281 Elimelech of Lyzhansk, Noam Elimelekh, Kedoshim, 123. 282 Phinehas of Koretz, Imrei Pinḥas (Ramat Gan, 1988), 1:106, 61. 283 M Kiddushin 4:14.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

a Festival of food to be consumed on the immediately following Sabbath], as it is said, ‘My Torahs’ [Gen. 26:5]—one being the written Torah, and the other, the oral Torah.”284 It seems that Rav was not troubled by the question of how the Patriarchs were familiar with the Torah before it was given.285 Beyond the general tendency of the aggadic midrashim to portray Biblical characters in the prism of the world of the rabbis, which is evident in this midrash, as well, we also have here an echo of another midrash relating to Abraham: “A father did not teach him, he did not have a teacher, whence did he learn the Torah? . . . R. Levi said: From himself he learned Torah.”286 Unlike the rabbis, the medieval sages were troubled by the problematic nature of the verse, since observance of the Torah, which was given later to Moses, could not be attributed to the earlier Abraham. They accordingly interpreted the mishnah in Kiddushin differently. R. David Kimhi and Ibn Ezra did not accept the opinion of Rav in Yoma. In his commentary to Gen. 26:5, Ibn Ezra explains: Mishmarti (my charge) is a general term for all that Abraham was obliged to observe from the commandments (mitzvot), statutes (chukkim) and laws (torot). It is possible that the commandments spoken of in our verse refer to “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred” etc. (Gen. 12:1), and “Take now thy son . . . even Isaac . . . and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains” etc. (Gen. 22:2). The statutes spoken of in our text pertain to the works of God that a man should uphold. These statutes are based on logic. I will elaborate on this term (chukkim) in my comments on the verse dealing with the prohibition of wearing “a garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together” (Lev. 19:19). These laws are implanted in the heart. The torot (laws) mentioned in our verse relate to Abraham’s circumcision of himself, his children and his servants.287 284 BT Yoma 28b; see also Gen. Rabbah 65:5; Midrash Tehillim 1:13, ed. Buber, 13. For a detailed discussion of the evolution of this dictum in Jewish thought, see Arthur Green, Devotion and Commandment: The Faith of Abraham in the Hasidic Imagination (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1989). 285 Rav apparently applied here the principle that there is no chronological order in the Torah. See the view of Urbach, Sages, 1:318–20; and the opposing opinion of Green, Devotion and Commandment, 31. 286 Gen. Rabbah 61:1; 95:3. On the correspondence of this dictum’s praise of autodidactism to the praise heaped on autodidactism in antiquity, see Elimelech Epstein Halevi, The World of the Aggadah [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1972), 71–72. 287 English translation based on Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, vol. 1: Genesis, trans. H. N. Strickman and A. M. Silver (New York:

143

144

Part One: Ritual and Custom

And in his commentary on the passage on kila’im [forbidden mixtures] (Lev. 19:19) he writes: “I will hint to you here at a secret. Know that ‘the complete is very complete.’ Scripture therefore says with regard to Abraham, ‘and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws’ (Gen. 26:5).”288 Unlike Rashi, who argued that “these laws are a decree of the King, with no [rational] reason,”289 Ibn Ezra implies that “law” [hok] is a matter of perfection. In his explanation of the meaning of the law of forbidden mixtures, Ibn Ezra, in opposition to the claim that the hukim are inexplicable decrees, maintains that they have a known reason. The aim of the prohibition of forbidden mixtures is “each species is to be preserved. A kind is not to interbreed with another kind” (commentary to Lev. 19:19),290 in order to preserve the perfection of the original divine Creation: “you must also not do anything to an animal which entails changing God’s work.”291 In his commentary to “Noah was a man righteous and whole-hearted” (Gen. 6:9), he presents the distinction: “’A man righteous’—in his deeds”; “And whole-hearted’—In his heart,”292 to which R. Solomon ben Eliezer Lippman Cohen of Lissa writes in his Avi Ezer supercommentary on Ibn Ezra for this verse: “The rabbi said: righteous in his deeds before all, blameless in his heart, in secret.” That is, for Ibn Ezra, hukim in general, and specifically the law of forbidden mixtures, come to emphasize the perfection of the commanded act, that is conditional on the unification of the external act with the inner thought and intent of the one who is commanded (as he puts it: “the laws implanted in the heart”). The essence of the hukim is the inner will not to harm the order of Creation. It may be concluded from this that, according to Ibn Ezra, Abraham observed the commandments which he had been mandated and those that he understood with his own intellect, all of which he observed fully.293 Menorah, 1988), 255. 288 English translation based on Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, vol. 3: Leviticus, trans. H. N. Strickman and A. M. Silver (New York: Menorah, 2004), 162–63. 289 Rashi, commentary to Lev. 19:19. 290 English translation based on Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, vol. 3: Leviticus, 162. 291 Ibid. 292 English translation based on Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, vol. 1: Genesis, 98 293 “Note that all of the commandments fall into one of the following two categories. One category consists of rational laws which God implanted into the minds of all intelligent human beings. There are many such commandments. The only one of the

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

Nahmanides argues in his commentary to Gen. 26:5: “Now it appears to me that Abraham our father learned the entire Torah by Ruach Hakodesh [the “holy spirit”] and occupied himself with its study and the reason for its commandments and its secrets, and he observed it in its entirety as ‘one who is not commanded but nevertheless observes it.’”294 Unlike Ibn Ezra, Nahmanides has Abraham observing the entire Torah, and not only parts of it, but he observed it as one who is not commanded and does, as BT Kiddushin 31a relates of R. Joseph, who being blind was exempt from the commandments but nevertheless fulfilled them. What is important here is the claim that Abraham learned the Torah by the spirit of divine inspiration, despite his not having been commanded. In his commentary on Gen. 26:5, R. Bahya ben Asher ben Hlava of Saragossa cites at length Nahmanides’ commentary, and adds: “But it is the view of the rabbis, of blessed memory, that he observed the entire Torah even before it was given, and he fulfilled the 613 commandments by his intellect.”295 Abraham could reveal the Torah by his own powers, aided by the spirit of divine inspiration, before it was given to Moses. This conception fundamentally resembles Philo’s explanation in his book on Abraham, in which he writes that Abraham observed the as-yet unwritten Torah in its entirety.296 R. Bahya also alludes to the ideational observance of the Torah that enabled the Patriarchs to fulfill it in their thought alone, similar to the epistemological interiorization of which I will speak in chapter six.

Ten Statements [usually rendered as in English as the Ten Commandments] which does not fall into this category is the command to observe the Sabbath. Hence every intelligent human being of every nation and of every tongue assents to them, for they are implanted in the human mind by reason. There is nothing to add to them or to subtract from them. Abraham observed them along with additional precepts” (Ibn Ezra on Exod. 20:1). English translation based on Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, vol. 2: Exodus, trans. H. N. Strickman and A. M. Silver (New York: Menorah, 1996), 407–8. 294 English translation based on Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, vol. 1: Genesis, 331. 295 Bahya ben Asher ben Hlava of Saragossa, Rabbenu Bahya al ha-Torah, ed. Hayyim Dov Chavel, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1971), 228. On R. Bahya’s Kabbalistic sources for his commentary, see ibid., 15–17. 296 Philo, De Abrahamo (On Abraham), trans. Francis Henry Colson, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935), section 5, 6–7; section 60, 34–35; section 275, 132–35. See Green, Devotion and Commandment, 26–28.

145

146

Part One: Ritual and Custom

“Preparation,” Torah Study, and the Observance of the Commandments, according to R. Isaiah Horowitz In his Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, R. Isaiah Horowitz discussed the issue of Abraham’s observance of the Torah.297 He then asked how the Talmudic idea (as he formulated it) that “a person is not complete until he has completed all the 613 [commandments”298 can accord with the fact that a person is not capable of performing all 613 commandments.299 He writes: Accordingly, who is he and where is he [based on Esth. 7:5] who observes all 613 [commandments]? Even Moses, may he rest in peace, did not observe them [all], and behold, “the Patriarchs themselves are the Merkabah,”300 yet they did not observe the commandments. As regards it being said that they observed the entire Torah,301 nonetheless they were not commanded to do so, and “one who is commanded and fulfills is greater than one who fulfills it though not commanded.”302 . . . And if you were to ask, accordingly, the Patriarchs and the early pious ones of the world did not actualize the whole [Torah]? Know that they did, and they did so by force of their preparation. I wish to say that they perfectly adhered to the Creator, may He be blessed, and they were rejoicing and glad to do the will of their Creator in all that He commanded them. They were perfectly ready for this, joyfully and gladhearted, and this preparation is like the actual act. I wish to say that, at any rate, all the 613 were included in the commandments that they observed, but there was no chair [i.e., the concrete vehicle of the Torah] below [i.e., in

297 For medieval interpretations of the mishnaic dictum on Abraham’s observance of the Torah prior to its being given, interpretations that underlie this notion in Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, see Green, Devotion and Commandment, 34–50. 298 See, for example, BT Makkot 23b. 299 Horowitz lists four causes for this limitation: (1) some commandments are incumbent only on groups within the Jewish people, such as the priests and the Levites; (2) some commandments relate to exceptional situations that do not happen to every individual, such as the commandments of yibum (levirate marriage) and ḥalitzah (see Deut. 25:9); (3) some commandments can be generally observed, but are not incumbent upon each Jew in every case, such the obligation of mezuzah, from which a person living in a tent is exempt; (4) some commandments are dependent upon the Temple and the sanctity of the Land of Israel and are not applicable outside the Land, or even were abrogated upon the destruction of the Temple. See Horowitz, Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, section 3, “Written Torah,” 1 col. b. 300 Gen. Rabbah 47:6; 69:3; 82:6; trans.: Scholem, Origins, 146. 301 M Kiddushin 4:14; BT Yoma 28b. 302 BT Kiddushin 31a.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

this world] for their actualization, rather, the chair below is the greatness of their preparation, that is as the act.303

We could conclude from R. Bahya’s supercommentary on Nahmanides that the observance of the commandments in one’s mind is a completely abstract matter since it has no expression in outer life. According, however, to R. Isaiah Horowitz, the core of the observance of the commandments is preparation, that is, the inner desire and longing that must accompany the actual fulfillment of God’s will as expressed in His commandments. It is by means of this longing that a person adheres to God. In principle, there is no difference between a person who is commanded to perform a single commandment and one mandated for all 613. In terms of a person’s inner self, the number of commandments is not significant, what matters is the nature and force of the desire to fulfill them. This desire is not an abstract quality and anyone possessing it realizes, through it, the observance of the commandments in the world. Horowitz understands that this is not meant to release the one commanded from the fulfillment of all the commandments that he is capable of observing; but his protesting this so greatly is significant. Further support for the notion that this concept of preparation is a prime example of ritual interiorization can be found in Horowitz’s comparison of “preparation” with rabbinic dicta on Torah study as a substitute for the offering of sacrifices:304 The explanation of preparation is that he observes all that he is capable of observing. That is to say, regarding that which is impossible for him to observe, nevertheless, he will do what is possible for him to do regarding this commandment: he will study this commandment. This is in accordance with what our Rabbis, of blessed memory, said: “Whoever is occupied with

303 Horowitz, Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, section 3, “Written Torah,” 1 col. b. There might be an internal connection between the Horowitz’s statement that the one or the few commandments, which the Patriarchs observed, included all 613 commandments and the principle that was developed in the medieval period, according to which a person should adopt a single commandment to observe fully. For the development of this notion, which had its beginnings in the mishnaic dictum: “If a man performs but a single commandment it shall be well with him and he shall have length of days and shall inherit the Land” (M Kiddushin 1:10), see Moshe Halamish, “One Commandment” [Heb], in From Enslavement to Redemption: From Passover to Shavuot, ed. Yossi Barukhi, Hayyim Halperin, and Yair Milo (Merkaz Shapira: Or Etzion Torah Institute, 1996), 222–35. (my thanks to Avi Ben-Amitai for this reference). 304 Tanḥuma, Tzav, para. 14.

147

148

Part One: Ritual and Custom

the passage of sacrifices, it is as if he offers sacrifices.”305 Even if the Holy One, blessed be He, gave him wisdom and graces him with knowledge, understanding, and discernment [from the Amidah prayer], the reason of the commandment is that, even though he cannot observe the commandment in actuality, he will observe it in his mind,306 to discern and understand it; even if this commandment happens to come to his fellow, he will aid his fellow, urge him, and cause him to observe it. This will complete the quality of preparation, and it will be accounted for him as if he actually observed it.307

Torah study in one’s mouth and mind can substitute the observance of the studied commandment when it cannot be actually performed. This conception therefore views all Torah study as the realization of the commandment in one’s mind. The fact that this notion is not perceived by Horowitz as an exemption from the actual performance of the commandment whenever possible should not lead us to erroneously underestimate the significance of this idea. A person who studies Torah with this understanding feels throughout his studying that he is adhering to the Lord by his observing the commandment in his mind. This principle applies, whether referring to a commandment that cannot be observed at all or not at a specific time, or to the study of commandments that, along with their study, will be observed by the studier at the proper time. This notion of the interiorization of Jewish rites by Torah study significantly contributed to the intensification of Torah study for its own sake in Jewish society in recent centuries.

The Spiritualization of Torah Study and the Commandments in Regard to the Possibility of Their Cancellation in Hasidism Medieval and Kabbalistic discussions of the mishnaic dictum about Abraham having observed the Torah before it was given nurtured many diverse Hasidic teachings, all sharing the understanding that he fulfilled the commandments in an inner, spiritual manner different from the material

305 Ibid. 306 See above, 145, n. 296. 307 Horowitz, Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, section 3, “Written Torah,” 1 col. b.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

way in which Jews observe the commandments of the Torah.308 Scholars disagree regarding the significance of the intensive Hasidic occupation with this question. Rivka Shatz-Uffenheimer interpreted the discussion of the issue by R. Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk as expressing the spiritually problematic ensuing from the mandate for activism. Unlike the manner in which I explained the position of R. Menahem Mendel above,309 ShatzUffenheimer argued that he was forced to accept the halakhah but projected his spiritual longings onto the eschatalogical.310 Green asserted that the concern with Abraham’s spiritual observance of the commandments enabled the Hasidic masters to give expression to what they felt, without openly attacking the halakhic observance of the commandments. In this manner they could justify their hidden wish for a higher Jewish existence, for direct adherence to God that was not conditional on the observance of specific commandments.311 Gellman questioned the latter interpretations and noted the presence of theological radicalism in the Hasidic teachings, but the Hasidic masters did not perceive this as requiring ritual radicalism, that is, the negation of the commandments themselves.312 My discussions in Human Temple of the observance of the commandments with devekut indicate that most of the early Hasidic masters anchored commitment to the strictures of the halakhah in conscious theological thought.313 What, then, is the pivotal Hasidic motif for such discussion of spiritual devotion? To answer this question, I will examine a number of key examples: And here, the Rabbis, of blessed memory, said [BT Yoma 28b]: “Inasmuch as Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, etc.” [Gen. 26:5]—this teaches that our father Abraham observed even the law of eruv tavshilin, which is seemingly puzzling: whence did he know this? If you were to say that he grasped the performance of the commandments and the rules [mishpatim] that the intellect requires, nonetheless, the question remains, how did he grasp the laws [hukim] that have no [rational] reason, and are not mandated by the intellect, such as the red heifer and other laws. But it will be understood 308 For an extensive discussion of these teachings, see Green, Devotion and Commandment, 9–24. 309 See above, 104, after the reference to n. 177. 310 Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, 115. 311 Green, Devotion and Commandment, 50–51. 312 Jerome I. Gellman, “The Figure of Abraham in Hasidic Literature,” Harvard Theological Review 91 (1998): 288–93. 313 Margolin, Human Temple, 288–342.

149

150

Part One: Ritual and Custom

by our words, as our Rabbis, of blessed memory, said [Num. Rabbah 19:4], for He said to Moses, To you I will reveal the reasons for the heifer, but for others this is an inexplicable law, for all the hukim have a supernal reason and root in the order of Creation, for the Creation was in accordance with the Torah. Rather, not every mind is capable [of understanding] this, therefore, for others this is an inexplicable law. But the Torah did not speak of the great ones, such as Moses and our father Abraham, of blessed memory, for there was nothing that stood before them [i.e., without reason] to be an inexplicable law, rather, all the hukim were for them commandments for their knowledge and grasp of their reason and root. But this could be, that the hukim would be transformed into commandments for him [i.e., one of the great ones], only if the commandments were to cease to exist for him because of their irrelevance for him. By way of comparison: all the negative commandments: “Thou shalt not murder,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” “Thou shalt not steal”—these prohibitions are not suitable for him because of the shattering of his desire, with all the material traits that he does not use for his needs, except for [the service of] the Lord alone, and he is disgusted by the filling of any of his needs, [as by] the filth of mud and excrement, which no man need be warned to keep away from, because he would do so anyway, out of disgust. In a similar vein, King David of blessed memory, said [Ps. 109:22]: “My heart is pierced within me.” Now, for such a person, for whom these commandments are irrelevant, the reasons for the hukim are revealed to him, and the hukim become commandments for him. This is the meaning of what our Rabbis, of blessed memory, said [BT Niddah 61b], that the commandments will be abolished in the messianic period, for [Isa. 11:9] “For the land shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord,” and they will have a different Torah, instead of the hukim there will be commandments. And when he goes from strength to strength, and is only high above, until he reaches the root of the entire Torah and commandments, which is “I am the Lord your God”—[God, for him, is] pure, limitless, unity. As [his comprehension] stands there, the wings of all the commandments [that are needed to bear him to the heights] will cease to beat, and [for such a person] all the hukim and commandments will cease, for the Evil Inclination shall cease. He will stand above, before [the beginning of] the Creation, and then, where will the Evil Inclination be?314

314 Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, Peri ha-Aretz, Toledot (Jerusalem, 2014), 99–101.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

R. Menahem Mendel’s basic assumption is that the commandments were meant in order to connect with God. They are holy counsels aimed at attaining connection with and adherence to Him. For R. Menahem Mendel, it is materiality that precludes man’s direct connection to boundless godly reality. Consequently, in the material world in which we live the commandments are bridging counsels that connect to the divine. The more a person is freed from his desires and from his material instincts, the less he needs the commandments: they become less relevant for him. He is capable of connecting with God in pure unity, which is the meaning of the first Commandment: “I am the Lord your God.” Abraham the Believer adhered to the meaning of this commandment. By his devotion and connection with God, which was proven by his famous self-sacrifice, he observed all the commandments at their root. Just as the Indian yogi exchanges sacrifices with constant awareness of breathing that makes possible his direct devotion, so too did Abraham, according to the teaching of R. Menahem Mendel, fulfil the rite—that is, the laws of the Torah—in his inner being by his living in constant adherence to God. For R. Menahem Mendel, the main problem is not with the commandments, since for him they are not heteronomous mandates but advice for connection with the godly; it is the hukim that are problematic, that is, the existence of inexplicable laws that have no spiritual significance for those observing them. The greatness of Moses and Abraham consisted of everything, for them, being commandments (and not laws), that is, ways of connecting with God. The ideal posed by R. Menahem Mendel in the character of Abraham is that of the perfect interiorization of the rite, as can be seen from the following passage, as well: And here, the Rabbis, of blessed memory, said [following BT Nedarim 22b]: If Israel had not merited, all that would have been given them would have been the book of the Torah, the book of Joshua, and Chronicles. Since they were not meritorious, there were many prophets, since for Adam, the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, a single commandment sufficed for him, to adhere to Him, may He be blessed, and similarly for our father Abraham, of blessed memory: with a single attribute, namely, love, he fulfilled the entire Torah, and even eruvei tavshilin, as the teaching of [the rabbis], of blessed memory [BT Yoma 28b]. This is the meaning of what we pray: “Instill in our hearts to lovingly fulfill all the teachings of Your Torah.” For the sayagim [rabbinic restrictive measures] are combinations of traits

151

152

Part One: Ritual and Custom

and counsels for adherence to the Creator, may He be blessed, as in the teaching of the Zohar [2:82b], that calls all the commandments counsels and conduits for drawing down the [divine] attributes [i.e., the Sefirot]. Because of the paucity of human intellect, they all are necessary. This is the meaning of what Scripture writes [Eccl. 7:29]: “God made men plain, but they have engaged in too much reasoning.”315

R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev employs similar reasoning in his discussion of this issue: Our not attaining the Torah by ourselves and our reason is due to materiality, which is a partition [preventing us] from attaining the light of spirituality. A person who has stripped himself of materiality and whose spirituality dominates is capable of attaining Torah by his mind’s eye by himself. For the 248 spiritual limbs themselves are positive commandments, and the 365 sinews themselves are negative commandments. Consequently, our father Abraham whose material[ity] was refined, attained by his 248 limbs and 365 sinews all the spirituality of the Torah in its entirety, before it was given.316

These two renowned disciples of the Maggid of Mezeritch presumably subscribe to a dualistic conception. Their ideal is stripping away materiality, so that man voids himself of his materiality. The closer a person comes to this ideal, the greater his ability to interiorize the Torah, to attain it with his mind’s eye, in his inner self, and to fulfill it in a spiritual manner. What is the nature of spiritual existence of this sort? A comparison of their writings with the conception of R. Hayyim Vital in Sha‘arei Qedushah on the topic of the 613 limbs reveals a vast disparity between them: The spiritual food of the holy soul is drawn to it by the fulfillment of the Torah, that is comprised of 613 commandments, analogous to the 613 limbs of the soul, that are called “bread,” as it is written, “Come, eat of my bread” [Prov. 9:5]. And each of the 248 limbs is nourished by the specific commandment that relates to that limb, and when a person lacks the fulfillment of a certain commandment, then the specific limb that relates to the commandment will lack its food, that is drawn to it from the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, as it is written, “You keep them all alive” [Neh. 9:6]. All the commandments

315 Ibid., “Letters,” 64 (letter from April 19, 1787). 316 Levi Isaac of Berdichev, Qedushat Levi, part 2: “First Sanctity,” 335.

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

are dependent upon them, as our Rabbis, of blessed memory said: [the numerical value of the first two letters of the Tetregrammaton] yud-heh [10 + 5] with shin-mem-yud [“My Name” = 300 + 40 + 10] [has the numerical value of] 365 [= the number of negative commandments and the number of sinews in the human body], [the numerical value of the last two letters of the Tetregrammaton] vav-heh [6 + 5] with zayin-khaf-resh-yud [“My remembrance” = 7 + 20 + 200 + 10] [has the numerical value of] 248 [= the number of positive commandments and the number of limbs in the human body].317

According to Vital, the commandments spiritually sustain the body. The godly element, the intellective soul that is enclothed in the body, is nourished from the commandments and therefore the human service of the commandments is essential for the Divine Presence in the world. The above Hasidic conception reverses this: the commandments are counsels for man in his aspiration to connect to the godly. The more distant he is, the more he needs the commandments, while the closer he is, the more capable he is of connecting with their inner essence and has less need for their outer actualization. A person on the level of Abraham does not need them, unlike other people, who are immersed in the reality of this world. The ritual interiorization indicated by this approach is not the result of the negation of physical existence, but of inner liberation from the weight of dependence upon material existence. When spiritual effort is directed to contact with the divine, the power of the material wanes. As R. Menahem Mendel explains, it is actually the disparity between the desire to adhere to Ein-Sof and material reality in which man lives that enables him to overcome the latter in his inner self and adhere to the godly. Materiality is a basic fact of life, and the cardinal question that troubled the Hasidic masters was not how to negate it but how to neutralize its innate antispiritual aspect. Against this background we can understand R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev’s comparison between Abraham and King Melchizedek of Salem: “And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High” [Gen. 14:18]—speaking generally: there are two servants of the Creator, one worships the Creator with self-sacrifice, and the other worships the Creator with commandments and good deeds. This 317 Vital, Sha‘arei Qedushah, part 1, sha‘ar 1 (introduction to the Tikkunim), 9.

153

154

Part One: Ritual and Custom

is the difference: the one who worships the Creator in self-sacrifice, not by commandments and good deeds, is actually like Ayin [i.e., actually like EinSof; literally, “nothingness”]; and the one who worships the Lord by means of commandments worships something in Yesh [being—the antithesis of Ayin], since the commandments relate to Yesh. Consequently, the one who worships by self-sacrifice, he is like Ayin, [and accordingly] cannot draw down the divine emanation, because he is nothing, only, he adheres himself to the Lord, may He be blessed, while the one who worships by means of commandments and good deeds, this is by something Yesh [i.e., substantial]; accordingly, he can draw down to himself the divine emanation from the Lord, may He be blessed. And behold, the one who worships by means of commandments and good deeds—these also have aspects of Ayin, that is, what pleases the Creator is of the aspect of Ayin. One who draws down to him the divine emanation and blessing by means of commandments causes himself to adhere to Ayin and Yesh, because, since his intent is to please the Creator, while he is nothing, he causes himself to adhere to Ayin; and by performing commandments and good deeds, he causes himself to adhere to Yesh, for the commandments are Yesh; and by performing the commandments, he brings down to himself divine emanation from the Lord, may He be blessed. Consequently, at times there is a person who provides livelihood for himself by his deeds. And behold, our Sages, of blessed memory, said [BT KIddushin 82(a)]: our father Abraham, fulfilled the entire Torah, even eruvei tavshilin, before it was given. To approach the meaning: how did he knew the entire Torah? Since our father Abraham separated himself from materiality, he saw his 248 limbs, that each limb’s vitality comes from a commandment, and each and every limb has a commandment that vivifies it. For that commandment, that corresponds to the limb, is the life-force of the limb; and without the commandment, the limb would have no vitality. He understood that the life-force of the head is from the tefilin, and similarly for the other commandments. Because of this, he perceived [the spiritual meaning of] all the commandments, before it [= the Torah] was given, for he saw the lifeforce of his limbs, that each limb has its life-force from a commandment. Consequently, Abraham could not worship the Creator outside the Land [of Israel] by means of the commandments, because outside the Land it was not possible to fulfill the commandments dependent upon the Land; he could not fulfill several commandments that correspond to his limbs, and he would be lacking several limbs, because their life-force is from their corresponding

Ritual Interiorization and Intent for Commandments  •  CHAPTER ONE

commandments. Outside the Land he was not capable of fulfilling the commandments dependent upon the Land; accordingly, as long as Abraham was outside the Land he would worship the Lord by his self-sacrifice. Upon, however, his arrival in the Land he could fulfill all the commandments, each of his limbs was fully elevated by means of the commandment, and he accordingly worshiped by means of the commandment. Consequently, we find that his engaging in self-sacrifice and hurling himself into the fiery furnace, and similarly, several tests that Abraham underwent with selfsacrifice, they all were outside the Land, for outside the Land he worshiped through self-sacrifice, while in the Land of Israel there was no need of this, for he worshiped by means of the commandment. Regarding his bringing Isaac up to the Binding in the Land of Israel: this was the decree of the Creator, who commanded him. Consequently, outside the Land, when he worshiped by means of self-sacrifice, he adhered to the Ayin, and could not draw down to him the divine emanation. In the Land of Israel, however, where he worshiped by means of the commandments, this was of the aspect of Yesh, and he could draw down the emanation from the Creator. This is the meaning of the verse “Go forth from your land” [Gen. 12:1]—Rashi, of blessed memory, interpreted: “for your own benefit, for your own good,” meaning, for your own good go to the Land of Israel, for there you will worship by means of commandments, and you will be able to draw down to you the divine emanation; but outside the Land, where you worship by self-sacrifice, adhering to the Ayin, it is not possible for you to draw down to you the emanation.318

This teaching clearly demonstrates R. Levi Isaac’s preference for the observance of the commandments to the self-negation of self-sacrifice, since Abraham’s greatness lies in his adherence to God by means of the commandments, even though the Torah had yet to be given. Extreme self-sacrifice was the way of Melchizedek, and, implicitly, that of the Christian mystics who lived in the environment of the early Hasidic masters. The path of the commandments that serve as counsels for connection and the realization of the mandate for love was unquestionably preferred by the early Hasidic masters. Despite the ideal of self-negation that emerges from some of their teachings, their intensive occupation with ritual interiorization did not lead them to cancel the rite out of quietist considerations. They attack the rabbinic formalistic conceptions, which 318 Levi Isaac of Berdichev, Qedushat Levi, Lekh Lekha, 15–16.

155

156

Part One: Ritual and Custom

assume that the commandments do not require intent, by imparting inner content to the halakhah. The reason for maintaining a halakhic life lies in the commandments’ potential to bridge the material and godly worlds. An inner turmoil about this question is especially evident in the teachings of the disciples of the Maggid of Mezeritch. On the one hand, they exalt the ideal model of Abraham’s self-sacrifice, while, on the other, they definitely chose the path of commandments. This choice testifies to their perception of themselves, and certainly their disciples, as bound to the material, as well as their awareness of the danger of immersion in it; and they undertook to contend with the personal and general material reality by means of the commandments. The method of ritual interiorization adopted by the early Hasidic masters maintained the external religious ritual while infusing the fulfillment of the commandments with inner meaning.

Introduction: The Meaning of Ecstatic Experience and Mystical Experience in the Study of Religion

In the preceding chapter I distinguished between two facets of religious ritual life: the outer aspect, which can often exist independent of the inner meanings that the religious traditions themselves ascribe to these rituals, and the inner one, which is evident in the processes of ritual Interiorization and the deepening of the intent behind these rites. Moshe Idel noted that the praxis of various religions alternates between two poles: that of routine ritual and belief by rote, on the one hand, and that of ecstatic practices, on the other. This oscillation is responsible for the effort to intensify religious life, in order to strengthen the connection with the heavenly entity or entities, and reaches its climax in the life of the mystic.1 According to Idel, personal, direct religious experiences are not detached from the life of religious praxis, they rather originate in the ecstatic implementation of the institutionalized rites that intensifies the religious experience. Idel, however, narrowly defines the term “ecstasy” in his books; for example: “We shall use the term ecstasy to mean the temporary effacement of one’s own personality, during which time one is possessed by the divine power or presence or divine spirit. This experience is sought after in Hasidism, but it is also one that does not occur, in general, without prior preparation.”2 In many religions, and especially in Judaism, praxis and spiritual life 1 Idel, Ascensions, 23. 2 Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 61.

160

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

are intimately related. An overly restrictive definition of ecstasy, however, defeats the reasoning of Idel’s general argument since all the facets of inner religious life are plainly not directed to the attainment of ecstasy, in the sense that he gives to it. On the other hand, the undefined use of the term “ecstasy” is also problematic, and will likely lead to meaningless formulations since a wide variety of differing meanings could be attributed to this term, as is often the case with regard to “mysticism.” “Ecstasy” might denote, inter alia, excitement, enthusiasm, an extracorporeal experience, altered consciousness, liberation from the self. Dodds and others realized that the goal of Dionysian ecstasy could be anything from a person leaving his self all the way to a profound personality change. There are grounds to argue that the term “ecstasy” did not originally include the idea of the soul leaving the body: it simply referred to any sudden change of consciousness or state of mind, and was attributed in antiquity to the intervention of the gods.3 “Ecstatic practices” is therefore a vague term that could include various exercises directed to what is perceived by the experiencer as external intervention by the god(s), or distinctly inner experiences that knowingly intend to effect a change in the religious individual’s consciousness or in his attitude to religious life. The practices themselves are essential for an understanding of some aspects of religious life but they do not suffice to explain the meaning of the diverse facets of inner religious life. In the preceding chapter, I presented a broad range of religious rituals that are accompanied by directives for inner intentionality. Inner ways, some of a clearly intentional nature, are bound up with the praxis of religious rituals. Unlike this conception, however, the discussion in the coming chapters will not necessarily be based on the discussion in chapter one, even if in some instances the experience is directly linked to religious practice, which in some cases might even enable the experience. We will examine the various aspects of what is usually subsumed under the term “religious ecstasy,” without assuming the existence of a Gordian knot binding these two aspects. My starting point in the next two chapters is closer to that underlying The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, who refrained from examining the relationship between praxis and experience that I explored in chapter one.

3 Eric Robertson Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 77 and n. 84.

Introduction: The Meaning of Ecstatic Experience  •  CHAPTER ONE

According to James, who separated personal, direct religious experiences from theology and institutionalized religious organizations that are based on inert beliefs and routine practices, there is a state of mind, known to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God. . . . Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the Subject’s range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outer world disowns him, it redeems and vivifies an interior world which otherwise would be an empty waste. . . . This sort of happiness in the absolute and everlasting is what we find nowhere but in religion.4

James asserts that adding the adjective “mystic” to this emotional experience means using this technical terminology to stress the existence of an experience of especially intensive piety for a certain amount of time.5 James bolsters the position taken by thinkers who preceded him, such as Solomon Maimon and Friedrich Schleiermacher, who, following up on their knowledge of Kantian philosophy, anchored religion in the emotional sphere. Much has been written about this predilection, which is connected to the Romanticism of the early nineteenth century. Its importance lies primarily in shifting the center of interest in religion from the metaphysical to man’s inner world. James argues that . . . in a world in which no religious feeling had ever existed, I doubt whether any philosophic theology could ever have been framed. I doubt if dispassionate intellectual contemplation of the universe, apart from inner unhappiness and need of deliverance on the one hand and mystical emotion on the other, would ever have resulted in religious philosophies such as we now possess.6

James thereby strengthens the argument that all religious life originates in a specific type of emotion, that may be called “religious,” and that creates a special inner world that cannot be fully reduced to other contents that fill the individual’s inner world. Thus, from a personal experiential viewpoint, direct experience cannot be connected only to specific practices or 4 James, Varieties, Lecture Two, 47–48. 5 Ibid., Lecture Three, 69. 6 Ibid., 431.

161

162

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

to arbitrary definitions of broad concepts such as “ecstasy,” even if in some instances such definitions clarify the religious experience. In his definition cited above, Idel chose one of the possible definitions for “ecstasy,” similar to other scholars of religion who picked other partial definitions, such as Eliade, Couliano, and Lewis,7 and unlike Marghanita Laski, who presented various types of ecstasy based on an analytical analysis.8 Hollenback adopted a different approach, one closer to Laski’s attempt to link religious phenomena and those thought to be ecstatic in the secularized world. He observed that paranormal experiences described in the literature as mystical experiences are of the same nature as parapsychological experiences reported in the twentieth century by nonreligious individuals. He maintains that both mystic and paranormal experiences are of an ecstatic nature: Ecstasy often appears in mystical literature to refer to an intense state of exaltation, bliss, and thrilling excitement that is often of such intensity that the mystic loses awareness of both his or her physical environment and body. . . . Ecstasy also has a second connotation that implies an even more radical process of abstraction from the body and the physical world. This is what I call its etymological sense, “ecstasy” in the sense of “ex-stasis,” that sensation or feeling that mystics, psychics, mediums, and other specialists in the paranormal often have of literally seeming to stand outside of themselves as though they were looking at their bodies from a vantage point exterior to it.9 7 See Moshe Idel, “On the Language of Ecstatic Experience in Jewish Mysticism,” in Religionen—Religiose Erfahrung; Religions—The Religious Experience, ed. Tilo Schabert and Matthias Riedl (Wurzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2008), 49–50. Idel contrasts his definition of ecstasy with those of Eliade and Culianu, which can both be summarized as “the ascent of the soul to other realms for a variety of aims.” See Eliade, Shamanism, 223; idem, Rites and Symbols, pp. 100–101, see also Mircea Eliade, Zalmoxis: The Vanishing God: Comparative Studies in the Religion and Folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe, trans. William R. Trask (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 34–44; Ioan Petru Culianu, Out of This World: Otherworldly Journeys from Gilgamesh to Albert Einstein (Boston: Shambala, 1991); idem, Psychanodia: A Survey of the Evidence Concerning the Ascension of the Soul and Its Relevance (Leiden: Brill, 1983). I. M. Lewis, in contrast, ties his definition to the sociological aspects of possession, which demarcate his definition. See his Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (London: Routledge, 2003), 15–31. 8 Marghanita Laski, Ecstasy: A Study of Some Secular and Religious Experiences (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968). 9 Jess Byron Hollenback, Mysticism: Experience, Response, and Empowerment (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 136–37. For Hollenback’s main sources for describing contemporary paranormal experiences, see Robert A. Monroe, Journeys

Introduction: The Meaning of Ecstatic Experience  •  CHAPTER ONE

Following Monroe, Hollenback positions the phenomena that he calls “ecstatic” close to the situation that modern research calls “half-asleep” dreams (hypnagogic illusions)10 with a shared characteristic. Both occur in an incorporeal environment but relate to the material world, and both possess an aspect of the fulfillment of wishes and the production of unconscious contents.11 The scholarly literature on ecstasy tends to group together both trance states wherein directives for the solution of life’s problems are received, similar to she’eilat halom [a request to be answered in a dream], as well as inner experiences of the negation of the self and the substantiality of outer reality by the application of proper techniques.12 Hollenback, too, consciously takes such a stance in order to explain the fundamental connection between noncontentual mystical experiences, that are usually perceived as being more sublime, and paranormal phenomena13—both of which, he maintains, are bound up with recollective situations or techniques. I disagree with this orientation and prefer to avoid using the term “ecstatic experiences” to describe out-of-body experiences, even though they are often perceived as such by those experiencing them, since, in the final analysis, we must not forget that these events are experienced in man’s inner self. Hollenback himself, who calls paranormal phenomena “exteriorizations,” stated that these are revelations perceived in a person’s inner self: “They are revelations as well, that is to say, because they are means of insight into matters of ultimate concern, one cannot experience them indifferently but rather must respond to them with one’s whole being.”14 Personal religious experiences, including those that bring the individual to an ecstatic state, in terms of detachment from corporeality, too, are Out of the Body (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971); Sylvan Muldoon and Carrington Hereward, The Projection of the Astral Body (New York: Weiser, 1974); Gerda Walther, “On the Psychology of Telepathy,” American Society for Psychical Research 25 (1931): 438–46; idem, “Some Experiences Concerning the Human Aura,” American Society for Psychical Research 26 (1932): 339–46. 10 Peretz Lavie, Lectures on Sleep and Dreaming [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1981), 12–16. 11 Hollenback, Mysticism, 153–54. 12 Laski, Ecstasy; Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Penguin, 1992); Felicitas D. Goodman, Where the Spirits Ride the Winds: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Culiano, Out of This World; Lewis, Ecstatic Religion. 13 On the tendency of researchers of mysticism to differentiate between the two types of ecstasy, see Hollenback, Mysticism, 276 n. 1. 14 Hollenback, Mysticism, 139–40.

163

164

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

inner experiences. We tend to forget that ecstatic experiences thought to be spiritual, since they include a sensation of being somewhat detached from normal corporeality, have a common denominator with experiences—also called “ecstatic”—that are linked to clearly inner sensations that exceed the normal sense of self. In sexual activity, in the imbibing of alcoholic beverages, and in the ingesting of hallucinogens, all humans experience different forms of freedom from themselves. This liberation is based on sensations of self-forgetfulness resulting from physical experiences or from the influence of chemical substances. Scholars of religion and intellectuals are inclined to sharply divide experiences entailing corporeality from those with various types of release from it; however, even if this distinction is based on the assignment of different values to the two sorts of experiences, we cannot ignore their shared inner trait that originates in the universal human aspiration for freedom from everyday angst. I do not intend to reduce ecstatic and religious experiences and place them in the same realm as physical experiences, as opposed to the emphatic statements of many who have experienced them; but I do not think that it is by chance that the term “ecstatic,” which denotes leaving the body, is also applied to conditions dependent upon the corporeal, such as ecstatic sexuality. Dionysian rites in the Greek world that found their way to the mystery rites in the Hellenistic and Roman world, employed sexual orgies and intoxication in order to attain ecstatic states.15 The discussion of ecstatic states in the monotheistic religions, which is deeply influenced by the Enneads of Plotinus, is usually divorced from the more material contexts of the term, which now, as in the past, is associated with the sensorial intoxication and temporary release from regular self-consciousness. This detachment led some scholars to disregard the mental element common to all “ecstatic” phenomena, which denote, diverse levels of self-forgetfulness attained by a broad, and even opposing, range of means. I do not intend to limit the yawning gap between the most spiritual phenomena and the most material, but we should acknowledge the basic human element common to them all, namely, the urge to be freed from the earthly, everyday, gray experience of the self that so many individuals find oppressive. Thus, as we seek to separate routine experiences attained by physical sensory overload or dependent on material changes, such as experiences caused by ingesting alcoholic drinks or hallucinogens, from exceptional 15 See Euripides, Bacchae, ed. Eric Robertson Dodds (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), esp. Dodd’s discussion in the introduction; Harrison, Prolegomena, 359–453.

Introduction: The Meaning of Ecstatic Experience  •  CHAPTER ONE

spiritual experiences that are not related to such physical means, we should not forget that the latter, as well, are experienced in man’s inner consciousness. Unusual dreams, prophetic revelations and visions, trances, and outof-body experiences, extrasensory perception or clairvoyance, telepathy and vision beyond the boundaries of space, automatic writing or speech— all are personal experiences that occur in man’s inner world unassisted by regular sensory activity.16 By the same token, profound experiences of unification or contact with God, or release from the regular state of consciousness that frequently take place with the aid of specific techniques, that are experienced as contact with the absolute—such as prophesying, revelation, or divine inspiration—are sensed and experienced in the individual’s inner consciousness, albeit with changes in his outer physical appearance.17 The attention of those undergoing such experiences is drawn by their exceptional content, and their inner intensity is the basis for their assumed authenticity. From a religious perspective, these contents are seen as coming from divine sources, while from a secular viewpoint, many are considered to be paranormal phenomena. The different answers given regarding the essence of these phenomena cannot refute the inward direction taken by the individual who undergoes such experiences, and does not dismiss them as mere illusions or as being misled by his senses. Even when the individual claims that the source of his inner visions is external and transcendental,18 this is still an inner phenomenon. Their authenticity and tangibility in the eyes of the one experiencing them are founded solely on inner, psychological events, and not on the claimed existence of an identical experience undergone by another person. Paranormal experiences are verified by the individual’s inner conversation with himself. This is different 16 See Joseph Banks Rhine and Joseph Gaither Pratt, Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind (Springfield: Thomas, 1957); Joseph Banks Rhine, The Reach of the Mind (New York: Sloan, 1947); Aaron Zeitlin, The Other Reality: Parapsychology and Parapsychic Phenomena [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1973); Amos Goldreich, Automatic Writing in Zoharic Literature and Modernism [Heb] (Los Angeles: Cherub, 2010). 17 See, for example, Underhill, Mysticism, part 1, chap. 1, 3–25. Underhill herself reserved the term “ecstasy,” using it to describe the climax of the mystical contemplative experience described by mystics as the attainment of God, a contemplative process based on concentration that leads to the transferal of the consciousness from the outer world to the extent of detachment from it (ibid., 358–79). 18 See Isaac Lewin’s concise distinction between outer and inner approaches in his “The Meaning of the Dream in Modern Psychology and in Judaism” [Heb], in The Spectrum of Opinions and Worldviews on Dreams in Jewish Culture, ed. Dror Kerem (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1995), 17–20.

165

166

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

from the regular absorption of sensory data, which is confirmed also by means of mutual reporting by different people of identical sensations experienced by each at different times in response to the same external stimuli. Unlike the experiences discussed here, sensory absorption is confirmed and verified externally through human discourse. Since sensory perceptions, too, are absorbed by means of man’s inner consciousness, we presumably could question the fundamental distinction between sensory perceptions and the inner perceptions described as religious or aesthetic experiences. Wittgenstein explained the difference between sensory and other perceptions by distinguishing between “seeing” and “seeing as something”: Two uses of the word “see”. The one: “What do you see there?”—“I see this” (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: “I see a likeness between these two faces”—let the man I tell this to be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself.19

Based on this fundamental linguistic distinction, Wittgenstein sought to separate the perception of objects (such as colors) that are independent of the will, and that of different aspects (such as beauty or courage) that are contingent on the will: An aspect is subject to the will. If something appears blue to me, I cannot see it red, and it makes no sense to say “See it red”; whereas it does make sense to say “See it as . . .”. And that the aspect is voluntary (at least to a certain extent) seems to be essential to it, as it is essential to imagining that it is voluntary.20

Thus, the sensory perception of objects is fundamentally different from what is based on will and imagination, such as love, bravery, or God. This explains Wittgenstein’s statement that “[y]ou can’t hear God speak to someone else, you can hear him only if you are being addressed.”21 Those who differ as to whether the source of experiences is outer or inner nevertheless concur on the substantiality of inner experiences.22 I argue that recognizing the existence of such experiences says nothing about 19 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, part 2, 193. 20 Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, vol. 1 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), no. 899. 21 Wittgenstein, Zettel, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), no. 717. 22 See Underhill, Mysticism, part 2, chap. 5: “Voices and Visions,” where she lists various types of paranormal phenomena that are ascribed to the transcendental perceived within a person’s psyche.

Introduction: The Meaning of Ecstatic Experience  •  CHAPTER ONE

their source. I will discuss this issue at length in the Afterword, including the question of source. The position of modern scholars, psychologists, and philosophers that religious paranormal experiences are inner expressions that occur within the human psyche is obviously far removed from the view, characteristic of past and present religious conceptions, that such experiences attest to outer divine intervention. Dodds showed that when the Greeks spoke of Apollonian prophetic madness, the madness of the Dionysian rite, the poetic madness that originated in the muses, or the erotic madness that was traced to Aphrodite and Eros, they meant that the spirit of the gods entered man.23 If so, perhaps the phenomena of change attributed to external intervention should not be included in our phenomenological discussion of inner religion, but should rather be placed within the context of modern psychological and ideational analyses of these phenomena. Since, however, the sources themselves exhibit different degrees of awareness of the inner nature of these experiences, the present discussion of these experiences will be directed mainly to that inner aspect. To draw into sharper focus the question of awareness of the singular inner character of the experiences examined in the following chapters, I prefer a methodology that distinguishes between two experiential types: tangible experiences, which are visual or aural, symbolic, and verbal, on the one hand, and, on the other, those that are intangible and therefore lacking defined content. Several attempts have been made in the study of religion to distinguish between trances and the contemplative, meditative states that we term “inward focusing.” Rudolf Otto was careful to separate the mystical knowledge that for mystics such as the German Meister Eckhart and the Indian Shankara was a synthesis of two types of mystical knowledge, the introspective and that of the “unifying vision,” from other types of mysticism, including illumination, emotional mysticism, and nature mysticism.24 Heschel, following Underhill, also distinguished between two types of ecstasy: 23 Dodds, Greeks, 64–101. 24 Otto, East and West, 70–76. For newer distinctions, see, for example, C. Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation (Boston: Shambhala, 1988); Marjorie Schoman, “A Psychophysiological Model of Meditation and Altered States of Consciousness: A Critical Review,” in The Psychobiology of Consciousness, ed. Julian M. Davidson and Richard J. Davidson (New York: Plenum, 1980), 333–78. McGinn attacked the tendency of psychologists (such as Daniel Merkur) to identify all forms of mystical union with trances or with experiences meant to enter a trance; see Idel and

167

168

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

the wild and fervid type, which is a state of frenzy arising from overstimulation and emotional tension; and the sober or contemplative type, which is a rapture of the soul in a state of complete calmness, enabling a person to rise beyond the confines of consciousness.25

For Heschel, Dionysian ecstasy is representative of the first type, and Neoplatonism, especially the depiction of ecstasy in the Enneads, the second. The first is enthusiasm, a state in which God dwells within man, while the second type is characterized by the separation of body and soul and the latter’s aspiration to ascend the spiritual ladder to the seven gates of Heaven to unification with God, as is known from the liturgy once attributed to the Mithraic religion.26 From a phenomenological perspective, I find that various religious sources support such a distinction, even if I am not committed to their hierarchizing and providing an explanation of these different types of experiences. In his Ascent of Mount Carmel, Saint John of the Cross, for instance, separates supernatural revelations and visions and spiritual revelations of incorporeal content from the spiritual elevation in love of God that leads to unification with Him. He states explicitly regarding the former:

McGinn, Mystical Union, 191–92. Stace, following James and Jung, developed Otto’s distinction in a clearly psychological direction centered around the differentiation between the introverted and extroverted types, with which he explains the essential differences between ecstatic experiences. For my objection to the psychologistic reductionism at the basis of this distinction, see above, introduction, 18 n. 35. Haviva Pedaya, following Stace (and in effect, James as well), uses the distinction between these two types to construct a new paradigm in the study of Jewish mysticism. See, for example, her “Two Types of Ecstatic Experience in Hasidism” [Heb], Daat 55 (2005): 73–108. Such approaches emphasize the importance of personality differences between the founders of disparate ways in mysticism and necessarily reduce the meaning of the ideational differences between their spiritual schools. Even if the personality component contributed to the fashioning of diverse mystical paths, religious research is mainly concerned with the fundamental contentual differences resulting from different theoretical approaches, since it is highly doubtful whether personality differences are significant when we speak of large groups of followers of each of these ways. See also below, chapter three, 238–40. 25 Heschel, Prophets, 325. See also Underhill, Mysticism, 363. 26 Albrecht Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie (Darmstadt, 1966), 183–84. Cf. the proposal by the researcher of Sufism Paul Nwyia, to view Sufi states of illumination [wajd] as “instatic” states and not ecstatic ones, since the mystic does not leave himself, but rather penetrates into the depths of his self (Paul Nwyia, Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah (m. 709/1309) et la Naissance de la confrerie sadilite [Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1972], 276).

Introduction: The Meaning of Ecstatic Experience  •  CHAPTER ONE

With respect to Divine visions and revelations and locutions, God is not wont to reveal them, for He is ever desirous that men should make such use of their own reason as is possible, and all such things have to be governed by reason, save those that are of faith . . . although these are not contrary to faith.27

Buddhism, as well, draws a sharp line between the two types of states. Indeed, Buddhist meditative techniques of concentration can lead to special trancelike states. Buddhism, however, differentiates between such states and its supreme purpose.28 Shinzen (Steven) Young wrote in this context: The meditator may experience warm, blissful energy flowing in parts of the body, see dazzling light, hear symphonies of internal sound, seem to float out of the body, and the like. Or one may encounter what appears to be archetypal entities: gods, goddesses, sages, and demons. In most traditions of Buddhism, such experiences are denigrated as stray paths and impediments along the “main line” to liberation. Zen teachers usually dismiss them as makyo [obstructive hallucination] and recommend simply ignoring them.29

My distinction between the types of paranormal experiences and inward focusing (see below) is based on a distinguishing principle different from that described above. Paranormal experiences have visual or verbal-aural content like that found in dreams, trancelike states of verbal content, visions, prophesying, and the prophetic statements and revelations of angels and soothsayers. I, however, prefer to use the terms “meditation” and “inward focusing” to portray experiential occurrences whose content, according to the testimony of those undergoing them, is not verbal or tangible but is closer to ineffable states of consciousness.30 27 John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, in The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, vol. 1, trans. E. Allison Peers (London; Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1953), chap. 22, 169–70. 28 “The first, called śamatha in Sanskrit, is the step-by-step development of mental and physical calmness. The second, vipaśyanā, is the step-by-step heightening of awareness, sensitivity, and clarity of things [. . .] Śamatha, if taken to an extreme, leads to special trance states; these may be of value, but they are not the ultimate goal of Buddhism” (Shinzen Young, “Buddhist Meditation.” Appendix to The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction, edited by Richard H. Robinson and Willard L. Johnson [Belmont: Wadsworth, 1982], 226–227). 29 Young, “Buddhist Meditation,” 233. 30 See Ben-Ami Scharfstein, Ineffability: The Failure of Words in Philosophy and Religion (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993); James, Varieties, 380–381.

169

170

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

We can illustrate the difference between these two experience types with two varying Sufi depictions of epiphanies by the ninth-century Sufi teacher al-Abu `Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ali al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi. He speaks of dreams and divine revelations: A dream is mainly true, and it comes to transmit [to humans] information from the world of secrecy. God seeks to aid his servants with this information with good tidings, a warning, or a rebuke, so that they will use them to perform the matters that God calls [upon them] to do. The angel who compounds parables from [the divine] wisdom is appointed over dreams: he sees the happenings of men in a [hidden] tablet, which he copies and presents as a parable. When a man sleeps, his soul goes forth [and ascends on high]. These things, that are derived from [the divine] wisdom, appear before it, as good tidings, as a warning, or as a rebuke, so that people will see their matters with open eyes.31

A comparison of this passage with al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s personal testimony of what he experienced after participating in a Sufi dhikr ceremony draws into closer focus the difference between contentual revelations and experiences that cannot be described verbally or contentually, which we describe as inward focusing: . . . one night we gathered as guests at one of our brethren to perform dhikr recitations. When a certain amount of the night had passed, I set out for home. Along the way my heart [suddenly] became open in a manner which I am unable to describe. It was if something happened in my heart and I became happy and took delight in it. I felt joyful as I walked on, and nothing that I met with caused me fear, not even the dogs that barked at me. I liked their barking because of a pleasure I experienced in my heart. . . until the sky with its stars and its moon came down close to the earth. And while this was taking place, I invoked my Lord. I felt as if something was made upright in my heart, and when I experienced this sweetness, my interior twisted itself and contracted, and one part of it was twisted over the other because of the force of the pleasure and it was pressed together. This sweetness spread

31 Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ali al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, Nawadir al-usul fi ma’rifat ahadith al-Rasul (Beirut, 1876), chap. 77, 116.

Introduction: The Meaning of Ecstatic Experience  •  CHAPTER ONE

through my loins and through my veins. It seemed to me that I was close to the location of God’s Throne (makan al-`arsh).32

The distinction between profound religious experiences of visual and/ or verbal content and those of nonverbal or nonsymbolic content is not only a convenient means to arrange the material before us; in actuality, they are two disparate spiritual orientations, even if at times they coexist. One requires the existence of a sensual and/or verbal bond with God, while the other, either knowingly or unconsciously, denies such a connection. The rejection of the possibility of a verbal, symbolic tie with the divine sphere which the individual’s soul is to meet, as in the instance of John of the Cross or in medieval Jewish philosophy, exhibits religious rationalization. These two contradictory trends often are to be found in the same religious framework, as is the case of Hasidism. Such coexistence, however, cannot detract from the seeming rationalist domination of the second trend’s sources. Placing contentual and verbal religious experiences, both active and passive, on one side of the balance, and active or passive experiences without contentuality or verbality on the other, is meant to replace the distinction between rational religious experiences and mystic experiences as nonrational ones. The usual use of the terms “mysticism” or “mystic experience” to denote an inner occurrence that cannot be understood rationally is misleading, confusing, and superfluous. Seemingly rational religious phenomena which assume some penetration of the divine into man, such as Biblical prophecy, essentially make a nonrational assumption, since divine revelation is inconceivable in terms of rationalist thought. In contrast, nonverbal inner experiences, which are deemed in the world’s religions to be the mystical climax, can be given a rational explanation.33

32 Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ali Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, “The Autobiography of the Theosophist of Tirmidh: The Beginning of the Affair of Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (Bad’ sha’n Abi ‘Abd Allah Muhammad al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi),” in The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism: Two Works by al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, trans. Bernd Radke and John O’Kane (Richmond: Curzon, 1996), 21–22. 33 See, for example, David R. Blumenthal, Philosophic Mysticism: Studies in Rational Religion (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2006). See also Robert K. C. Forman’s distinction between two types of mysticism: apophatic and kataphatic. The first type entails the voiding of the consciousness, and is independent of sensory language, while the second is characterized by the filling of the consciousness with sensory images and conceptions. See Forman, ““What Does Mysticism Have to Teach Us about Consciousness?,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 5, no. 2 (1998): 185–201.

171

Chapter Two

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences

Verbal and Visual Paranormal Experiences in World Religions The world religions are replete with examples of paranormal experiences perceived by those undergoing them as various types of divine revelation. The revelation dreams known to us from the Bible have parallels in the Ancient Near East.1 The nature of Apollonian prophecy in Greece has already been described above.2 Biblical prophecy (discussed below) profoundly influenced Christian and Islamic thought. The Biblical expression kum lekh [“Arise, go”], which appears a number of times in prophetical contexts (Num. 22:2; I Kings 17:9; Jer. 3:6; Jonah 1:2, and more), can be heard in the words of Jesus in his revelation to Saul of Tarsus (Paul the Apostle): Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and 1 Ruth Fidler, “Dreams Speak Falsely”? Dream Theophanies in the Bible: Their Place in Ancient Israelite Faith and Tradition [Heb] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 340–60. 2 See above, introduction to part two, 167.

174

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. (Acts 9:3–9).

Although it is stated that the people with Saul heard a voice but saw no one, his own experience is described as occurring when falling to the ground with closed eyes.3 In both spontaneous experiences attributed to an external cause and trance states intentionally reached in order to retrieve contents otherwise perceived as unavailable, the event itself takes place within the one experiencing it. The assumed existence of a supersensory reality alongside or within the normal reality facilitates the paranormal experience. The Quran in its entirety is perceived as a prophetic revelation to Muhammad. Medieval Arabic philosophy made great efforts to explain the nature of prophecy, which is understood as the inner activity of the imaginative power set in force by the active intellect, the Tenth Intellect, which was perceived as the lowest of the ten discrete intellects. These intellects are nonmaterial entities which emanate from God and control the cosmos and our world. Abu Nasr al-Farabi, who lived in Iraq (d. 950), defined prophecy as the highest level of imaginative power: It is not impossible, then, that when a man’s faculty of representation reaches its utmost perfection he will receive in his waking life from the Active Intellect present and future particulars of their imitations in the form of sensibles, and receive the imitations of the transcendent intelligibles and the other glorious existents and see them. This man will obtain through the particulars which he receives ‘prophecy’ (supernatural awareness) of present and future events, and through the intelligibles which he receives prophecy of things divine. This is the highest rank of perfection which the faculty of representation can reach.4

3 On the identification of possession with epilepsy since antiquity, see Dodds, Greeks, 83 n. 10. 4 Abu Nasr Al-Farabi, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State: Abu Nasr al-Farabi’s Mabadi’ Ara’ Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila, trans. Richard Walzer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 224–25.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

The Sufi philosopher al-Ghazzali (d. 1111), following al-Farabi, spoke of the centrality of imaginative power in revelation dreams: Know that the secrets of the [godly] kingdom are revealed to those of [pious] mind, whether by inspiration, that is, when something previously unknown to them comes down to them, or by a true dream or a waking dream, when the spiritual entities are revealed to them by means of images, similar to what happens while sleeping. [The revelation of secrets] is the highest level [on this path], and it is part of the highest levels of prophecy, just as a true dream is one [part] of the forty-six of prophecy.5

A fine example that aids in understanding the shamanist nature of paranormal phenomena is brought by Eliade in the report from 1648 by the archbishop Marcus Bandinus to Pope Innocent X. The archbishop portrayed “shamanist” phenomena among the villages of Moldavia at the time. Using incantations, the “sorcerer” brought himself to an ecstatic state which was expressed in physical trembling, resulting in unconsciousness that lasted for one, or even many, hours. Afterwards, in a lengthy process of awakening, which, too, was accompanied by physical trembling, the “sorcerer” regained his consciousness and related the dreams that he had seen, as if he were an oracle.6 As Bandinus attests, this technique was intentionally applied to aid people with assorted health, social, financial, and other problems. The “shaman” intentionally put himself into a trance so that his inner self, by means of intensive dreaming, could communicate with other worlds that would help in finding a solution to human distresses. This example shows that trances, which result from a conscious action to communicate with contents that, the shaman believed, could not be otherwise attained, are a form of interiorization. The shaman took actions meant to open him to a paranormal experience so that he could report on it to those around him, who were incapable of sharing such experiences with him. In the depths of the sources of the Amazon in Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil, an entire Indian culture exists which is based on imbibing ayahuasca brew, a concoction prepared by cooking the air roots and leaves of a tree by this name that grows in the jungle. The indigenous Indians conduct ceremonies that consist of immersion in the river, fasting, and singing before drinking the potion at night. After this they fall asleep and experience intense 5 Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad Al-Ghazzali, Ilya’ Ulum al-Din (The Resurrection of the Science of Religion), end of chap. 6. 6 Eliade, Zalmoxis, 191–94.

175

176

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

dreams—visions whose meanings are defined by the culture. The content of the dreams is interpreted by means of the Indians’ knowledge of the significance of the various sights revealed under the influence of the brew. Studies of ayahuasca culture have been conducted in recent decades and the psychologist Benny Shanon charted a methodological phenomenology of the ayahuasca experience.7 Like other hallucinogenic experiences, drinking ayahuasca is part of structured religious shamanist cultures such as those of the Amazon Indians. These experiences are expressed by inner symbolic visualization which guides the participant throughout his life.8 From the dawn of the history of religion, much attention has been given to the interpretation of dreams which were regarded as divine messages revealed in the inner soul of the dreamer. The content of symbolic-visual or verbal paranormal experiences, although reflecting supernatural states, is similarly linked to human life in this world. Prophecies, by their very nature, are of verbal, visual content directed to life in the world. Shamen in the Carpathian mountains used trances to help people in physical and mental distress. Jesus’ revelation to Paul completely changes the latter’s life and plans. Exceptional dreams usually relate to living or dead individuals with some connection to the world of the dreamer, and the dream messages usually pertain to the latter’s personal life.

Prophecy in the Bible and Religious Experience Various attempts have been made by Biblical scholars to explain Biblical prophecy as a type of ecstasy.9 Heschel, like Heiler,10 insisted that this claim ignores the unique nature of prophecy, which is always bound up with God’s interest in the world and in man. Ecstasy that implies a departure from the world, to the extent of intentional detachment from it such as Neoplatonic ecstasy, is directed from man outward; however, Biblical prophecy, so the opponents of its identification with ecstasy maintain, is from the outside Benny Shanon, The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 8 On the sociological functions of the ecstatic experience, see Lewis, Ecstatic Religion. 9 See the survey of the scholarly literature in Benjamin Uffenheimer, “Prolegomena to the Problem of Prophecy and Ecstasy” [Heb], Bar-Ilan: Annual of Bar-Ilan University. Studies in Judaica and the Humanities 22–23 (1987): 45–62. 10 Heschel, Prophets, 24–66. Heiler differentiated between mystical and prophetic religion in Prayer, 135–71 and 227–85. 7

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

inward.11 Gershom Scholem adopted a similar stance: he totally divided the world of the Bible and Biblical prophecy from Jewish mysticism in the following periods.12 Idel, as well, despite his awareness of the objections raised by scholars such as Uffenheimer and others to the sharp Biblical prophecy-ecstasy division of Heschel, Heiler, and others,13 remained loyal to this approach. Idel, like many scholars before him, maintained that the Biblical God is a heavenly divinity who descends to humans to be revealed to them; He does not permit them to ascend to Him: [t]he biblical apprehension of the revelation is based upon the assumption that man as a psychosomatic entity cannot transcend his mundane situation and penetrate the divine realm, while God is able to adapt himself, and perhaps also his message, to human capacity. While the way down is open, the way up is basically closed.14

This understanding assumes, from the outset, that God-man relations in the Bible are an external relationship with no possibility of a breach from the inner to the outer, as happens in ecstatic states. The Biblical relationship between God and man can also be conceived in term of an encounter. God descends to man, and man ascends to God, and this meeting is enabled by the blurring of the boundaries between inner and outer that is typical of the Bible, and, indeed, all of the ancient world. What ancient man and the Biblical figure sensed in his inner soul was always perceived by him as an outer occurrence, whether this was a revelation that he saw as a natural event, or a voice speaking to him from within. Biblical thought, like that of ancient thought in general, does not assume different qualities for each of these dimensions. Meeting God in a dream is presented as tangibly as a waking encounter with Him. The Bible attests to nonecstatic inner experiences, in the sense of experiences that break out of the inner to the outer that also constitute a sort of meeting with God. 11 The citation from Dodds, Greeks, on the original sense of ecstasy (above, introduction to part two n. 3) reveals the limited nature of the position taken by Heschel and others, who mainly defined ecstasy in the sense of Plotinus’s writings, and not based on all the meanings this term was given in antiquity. 12 Scholem, Major Trends, 7–14; Joseph Dan, On Sanctity: Religion, Ethics and Mysticism in Judaism and Other Religions [Heb] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997), 31–34. My treatment of the subject of this chapter differs completely from that of Dan. 13 Idel, “Language of Ecstatic Experience,” 54. 14 Idel, Ascensions, 24.

177

178

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

Unlike these scholars, Henry Wheeler Robinson argued that even though the concept of ecstasy that is borrowed from Greek psychology does not suit the psychology of the Bible, it would be incorrect to detach Biblical prophecy from paranormal phenomena.15 After Saul’s anointment by Samuel, the latter tells him: “There, as you enter the town, you will encounter a band of prophets coming down from the shrine, preceded by lyres, timbrels, flutes, and harps, and they will prophesy. The spirit of the Lord will grip you, and you will speak in ecstasy along with them; you will become another man” (I Sam. 10:5–6). The exceptional ecstatic portrayal of the music players assumes that their prophesying results from the divine spirit which dwells within them and affects their inwardness. The importance of this description lies in its depiction of the act of prophesying as the entry of an external element (the spirit of the Lord) into man’s inner world. The prophesying of the sons of the prophets in the Bible is an act of an external spirit resting on man, as in the case of Saul, but this prophesying takes place with the playing of music, and perhaps also with the imbibing of intoxicants or hallucinogens that alter normal consciousness. Most of the prophetic chapters in the Bible are not of an ecstatic nature, as Heschel argued, in the sense that there was no breach exceeding the world, but rather an explicit divine revelation that befalls man. In at least one famous instance, the prophet’s self-depiction indicates that the prophecy occurs within: “I thought, ‘I will not mention Him, no more will I speak in His name’ but [His word] was like a raging fire in my heart, shut up in my bones; I could not keep it in, I was helpless” (Jer. 20:9). Jeremiah declares that the words of prophecy burst forth from within and that when he attempts to silence them because of the suffering they cause him, he feels an inner fire that compels him to break his silence. Interestingly, this prophecy ends with Jeremiah’s declaration: “O Lord of Hosts, You who test the righteous, who examine the heart and the mid, let me see Your retribution upon them, for I lay my case before You.”16 Similar to what God says of Himself in I Sam. 16:7: “man sees only what is visible; but the Lord sees into the heart,” Jeremiah consoles himself with the knowledge that God knows inner truth and therefore the correctness of his prophecy and this gives him the strength to stand against his opponents and enemies. The divine view

15 Robinson, “Hebrew Psychology,” 372–75. 16 Jer. 20:12; see also Jer. 11:20.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

is the inner one, and therefore the more correct, in contrast with the outer, and misleading, perception. Revelation dreams provide additional support for the concept of inner prophecy in the Bible.17 Dreams occur within the psyche and the religious dream, in which God is revealed to the dreamer, is perceived in the Bible as an interim state between regular dreams and an outer message from the divine world. For the dreamer, this is a dream like any other, though it is one in which he encounters entities existent beyond himself.

The Dream, Prophecy, and Paranormal Experience in Jewish Sources The meaning of symbolic dreams has always been of interest to Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis, which appear to characterize all dreams as inherently illogical and symbolic. Zvi Giora showed that Freud and Jung were aware of the existence of “logical and understandable” dreams but denied their existence. He maintained that Freud yielded to the accepted dream stereotype that assumes that thought while asleep is completely different from waking thought, and ignored the existence of different types of dreaming.18 According to Giora: Many are troubled by the contradiction between the ancient dream stereotype and the knowledge that a considerable portion of dreams are no different from the products of waking thought, but no one has consented to define the dream stereotype as it is, as an obstacle and stumbling block to the psychology of dreams. But this was well-known, implicitly and without official recognition.19

If so, then revelation dreams of realistic, nonsymbolic content can be regarded as psychologically intelligible. Unlike all psychological approaches, the perception of dreams in the Bible, as well as in various tribal cultures,20 assumes that a dream contains a message sent from above, 17 On dreams and prophecy in Bible research, see Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, Der Traum im Alten Testament (Berlin: Topelmann, 1953); Robert Karl Gnuse, The Dream Theophany of Samuel: Its Structure in Relation to Ancient Near Eastern Dreams and Its Theological Significance (Lanham: University Press of America, 1984); Fidler, “Dreams.” 18 Zvi Giora, The Dream and Human Nature [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Papyrus, 1982), 9–20. 19 Ibid., 18–19. 20 See esp. Lucien Levy-Bruhl, The Notebooks on Primitive Mentality, trans. Peter Riviere (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), 5 ff.; idem, Primitive Mentality, trans. L. A. Clare (New York: AMS Press, 1978), 8 ff.; Frankfort et al., Before Philosophy, 19–20.

179

180

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

and that it enables nonmundane experiences which are centered around the encounter with the divine. Moreover, what occurs and is spoken in the dream is deemed no less tangible than waking events. Nonetheless, it could be argued that a Biblical individual was aware that the dream occurs within him, although—unlike modern man, and similar to the ancient world— inner occurrences were not thought to be of different value from external events. The distinct boundaries between the objective and the subjective characteristic of modern thought did not exist for Biblical people. The fact that the ladder was revealed to Jacob in his dream at Bethel did not cause him to question his understanding that the place where he slept was the gate of Heaven, nor did he imagine that his dream was merely an expression of his inner thoughts. Just, however, as we cannot assume that in the Biblical and ancient worlds the inner negated the substantiality of the external revealed in it, there is no justification to surmise that in those worlds the dreamer did not acknowledge that the revealed happened within him. The very fact that the Biblical narrator emphasizes that these are revelation dreams, and not waking messages, attests to the distinction drawn between dream and waking episodes. An exceptionally fascinating instance is the hypnagogic dream in the narrative of Samuel and Eli in I Sam. 3.21 Uriel Simon wrote that this chapter is actually the story of Samuel’s consecration for prophecy, even though it differs from the usual features of consecration in the Bible.22 The description of the revelation to Samuel is not ecstatic, but depicts a state of hypnagogic dreaming. Samuel is merely drowsing and not fully asleep,23 and awakens upon hearing his name being called; he thinks that it is Eli who is calling him.24 The latter knows that he did not call Samuel and understands that what Samuel heard is an inner voice, that is, a voice that only Samuel can hear, which he therefore identifies as the word of the Lord. He teaches the youth to heed the divine voice by engaging Him in conversation. Unlike the youth’s running to Eli, that each time terminated his ability to listen to 21 Gnuse, Dream Theophany; Fidler, “Dreams,” 273–335. 22 Uriel Simon, “I Sam. III: A Youth’s Call to Prophecy” [Heb], in Proceedings of the Seventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. 2: Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, ed. David Krone (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1981), 85–93. 23 Isaac Lewin, The Psychology of Dream [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Dekel, 1980), 22–23. 24 Ruth Fidler, “The Shiloh Theophany (I Samuel 3)—A Case Study of the Liminal Report” [Heb], in Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies, division A: The Bible and Its World, ed. Ron Margolin (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1999), 99–107.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

the voice, with Eli’s help he learns to “know God,” that is, to know how to listen to the voice of God speaking to him.25 The unequivocal distinctions drawn by scholars such as Heschel and Heiler, who rejected any possibility of ascribing an inner aspect to Biblical prophecy, do not accord with modern studies that present a more complex picture, especially as regards Biblical revelation dreams. In “Dreams Speak Falsely”, Ruth Fidler examines Biblical revelation dreams in a comprehensive, up-to-date, and fundamental manner, focusing on Jacob’s salvation dreams (Gen. 28:10–12; 31:10–13; 46:1–5), the weak revelation to the nations model (Abimelech’s dream—Gen. 20:3–7; Laban’s dream—Gen. 31:24; the revelation to Balaam in Num. 22:9–20), and Solomon’s dream at Gibeon (I Kings 3:5–14). Fidler writes in the afterword of her book that, despite prophetic objections to dreams, prophetic strategies for relating to dream heritage are not uniform. She maintains that the appearance of revelation dreams in Biblical literature entails a belief in the possibility of bridging the distance between the divine and man, as well as a belief in dreams as a means of such bridging, similar to that seen in depictions of revelation dreams in the literature of the Ancient Near East.26 Fidler’s comparative research shows that the revelation dream, although directed to the public role of the dreamer, is unique in its personal guidance from God (thus, especially, in Jacob’s dreams) or in its granting (Solomon’s dream), that is delivered in personal terms and not in a national or dynastic sense, and that concentrates on the personal trait (wisdom) that the candidate himself chooses. The connection between God and His elect is portrayed as a personal, dynamic, and developing relationship. The valuation of dreams, and especially of these traditions, underwent changes in the circles of the prophets and sages. These prophets are not described in the Bible as dreamers, and they, for their part, direct the harshest rhetoric against the perception of dreams as the word of the Lord (such as Jer. 23:23–32; Zech. 10:2; Eccl. 4:17–5:6; Ben Sira 34:1–8; 40:7–9). Although this rhetoric appears consistent, in practice, the prophetic and wisdom literatures are fundamentally equivocal regarding dreams. This is evident from, for example, the dream of Samuel’s consecration, or certain literary descriptions of Abraham and Balaam as prophets, both of which reflect the 25 See I Sam. 3:7. 26 On such dreams, see Fidler, “Dreams,” 344–52 and 358–60.

181

182

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

forms and contents of the revelation. The nocturnal or dreamlike revelation is frequently the means for an intimate tête-à-tête between God and the prophet meant solely for the receiving of personal directives (Balaam, Elijah at Horeb) and seems to continue the nature of the revelation dream as such guidance. In other instances, as in II Sam. 7:4, a prophetic message of national, religious, or political significance is delivered. Thus, the personal directive is expanded to public affairs.27 In summation, Fidler states: In essence, the direct rhetoric and the marginal description seem to be opposing ways for prophetic engagement with the dream heritage. For the former, the dream is the “straw” that grows in the same place as the “grain” (Jer. 23:28), but it should be separated from it and recognized for what it is, as something lacking in worth, as falsehood and delusion. In contrast, the marginal description—in prophecy, but also in wisdom and in apocalypse, affirms the revelation dream, at times combined with the dramatic prophetic revelation (Gen. 15:9–18; Job 4:12–21; Dan. 10:8–12:4; as contrasted with Jer. 23:29), for a multitude of new situations and roles in the literature and faith of Israel.28

According to Num. 12:6, a vision of God in dreams is the routine way by which God is revealed to the prophet: “When a prophet of the Lord arises among you, I make Myself known to him in a vision, I speak to him in a dream.”29 Moses’s dream is exceptional in that it is based on God’s speaking directly to Moses while awake and not in a dream: “Not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted throughout my household. With Him I speak mouth to mouth, plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds the likeness of the Lord” (vv. 7–8). The contents of the revelation dream are realistic but the fact that they are brought as the word of the Lord transforms it into an exceptional dream of tremendous force, whose nature is to be known from an inner awareness that enables one to be cognizant of its prophetic content. The fact that most of the written prophecies are written as direct, waking revelation attests that they and their scribes perceived themselves as close to Moses’ prophetic level as portrayed in Num. 12. This does not negate the Biblical 27 Ibid., 338–40. 28 Ibid., 340. 29 On the prophecy models connected with visions in the Bible and in the apocalyptic literature, see Haviva Pedaya, “Seeing, Falling, Song and Longing—Seeing God and the Spiritual Element in Early Jewish Mysticism” [Heb], Asufot 9 (1995): 239–59.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

connection between prophecy and the development of attentiveness to the dream as a means of revelation as in the case of Samuel, since his initial prophecy and consecration occurred in his dream at Shiloh.30 The speech by Elihu son of Barachel in the book of Job, as well, expresses the central understanding at the basis of this perception: “For God speaks time and again—though man does not perceive it—in a dream, a night vision, when deep sleep falls on men, while they slumber on their beds. Then He opens men’s understanding, and by disciplining them leaves His signature” (Job 33:14–16). Revelation as a personal event that occurs in a dream in which God opens the person’s understanding reflects the perception of the dream experience as a tangible event taking place in the individual’s psyche which conducts a dialogue with God while in a dream state. The question of God’s location is secondary here. We gain the impression that in the worldview of the Biblical character, God can enter into man’s inner self and speak from it. This possibility is perceived in the Bible, as in the portrayal of Saul’s prophesying, as (Joel 3:1) “I will pour out My spirit on all flesh.” The various Biblical passages that object to dreams do not necessarily invalidate the revelation dream.31 These verses could be doubtful and critical of the identification of plain dreams as revelatory, on the one hand, while, on the other, they can be seen as being generally negative toward dreams. From this latter perspective, the perception of the dream as inner revelation is patently not self-understood and accepted in every case in the Bible. Nonetheless, there is a certain continuity between the Biblical dream and the waking prophecy. By the same coin, we can speak of a connection between prophecy and the ecstatic phenomena in the Bible.32 Moses voices his positive 30 Moshe Elat brings an example from the Akkadian culture that parallels the dream of Samuel: Sargon, the cup-bearer in the temple of the goddess Ezina, dreams that the goddess drowns the king Ur-Zababa, whom he served, in a river of blood. See Elat, Samuel and the Foundation of Kingship in Ancient Israel [Heb] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1998), 30–31. Sargon prophesies about his dream to his own benefit, that is, so he can succeed the king. In contrast, the primary importance of Samuel’s dream lies in Eli’s acceptance of the revelation, marking the beginning of Samuel’s prophetic career. “Samuel grew up and the Lord was with him: He did not leave any of Samuel’s predictions unfulfilled. All Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was trustworthy as a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord continued to appear at Shiloh: the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel at Shiloh with the word of the Lord” (I Sam. 3:19–21). 31 See Deut. 13:2–6; Jer. 23:26–27; Zech. 10:2; Eccl. 5:6. 32 Hollenback attributes Moses’s initial prophecy to a distinctly paranormal state: “An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there

183

184

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

stance regarding ecstasy in the episode of Eldad and Medad.33 The narrative of the band of prophets with Samuel standing by them is not the only example in the Bible of the evident ecstatic nature of this group.34 Classical prophecy’s assumption of direct speech between God and the prophet, as in Moses’ prophecy, requires further explication but it does not negate the fundamental connection between prophecy and revelation dreams and the ecstatic states mentioned above. Maimonides, similar to al-Farabi, assumed that prophecy is an emanation coming from God by means of the Active Intellect, initially on the rational faculty and afterwards on the imaginative faculty.35 He devoted an extensive discussion to the prophecy-dream connection: As for a vision—as in “I do make Myself known unto him in a vision” [Num. 12:6]—it is that which is called a “vision of prophecy” and likewise called the “hand of the Lord” and “sight” [mahazeh]. It is a fearful terrifying state, which comes to a prophet when he is awake. . . . In a state such as this the senses too cease to function, and the overflow in question comes to the rational faculty and overflows from it to the imaginative faculty so that the latter becomes perfect and performs its function. Prophetic revelation begins sometimes with a vision of prophecy. Thereupon the terror and the strong affection consequent upon the perfection of the action of the imaginative faculty become intensified and then prophetic revelation comes, as is recounted of Abraham. . . . Know with regard to all the prophets, concerning whom it is mentioned that prophetic revelation has come to them, that some ascribe it to an angel while others ascribe it to God, though indubitably it was produced through the agency of an angel. The Sages, may their memory be blessed, have expressed this by saying: “’And the Lord said unto her’ [Gen. 25:23]—through the agency of an angel.”36 Know again that in the case of everyone about whom exists a scriptural text that an angel talked to him or

was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed” (Exod. 3:2); see Hollenback, Mysticism, 56–57. 33 Num. 11:24–29. 34 I Sam. 19:19–24. See also the episode with Micaiah son of Imlah and the prophets in I Kings 22:5–28. 35 Maimonides, Guide 2:36 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 369) 36 Gen. Rabbah 63:7. See Bereshit Rabbah, ed. Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck (Jerusalem, 1996), 684.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

that speech came to him from God, this did not occur in any other way than in a dream or in a vision of prophecy.37

Symbolic Dreams in the Bible, the Apocrypha, and Rabbinic Literature While the divine contents of Biblical revelation dreams are perceived as external intervention that is absorbed in the individual’s inner world, interiorization plays a greater role in regular symbolic dreams. According to the researcher of the psychology of dreams Isaac Lewin, the Bible adopts an interiorizing approach to the normal dream, since it views dreams as an expression of the dreamer’s inner desires. The response of Jacob and his sons to Joseph’s dreams supports this argument, since they dismissively call Joseph “that dreamer” (Gen. 37:19).38 The dreams discussed up to now are revelatory. Symbolic dreams, which appear mainly in Genesis, Judges, and Daniel,39 and in the Apocrypha, especially in II Apocalypse of Baruch and IV Ezra,40 should be examined as part of the broad culture of dream interpretation that was quite common throughout the ancient world. Jung explained symbolic dreams, not only by means of the causal observation developed by Freud, but also with purposive observation. According to Jung, intent stands behind overt behavior in all psychological phenomena. He therefore asked, what role does the dream play and what does it come to achieve, and not only what were its causes and which repressed desires it answers, as Freud sought to discover. Jung deepened and expanded Freud’s conception regarding the compensatory nature of dreams. He describes Nebuchadnezzar’s dream depicted in Dan. 4:7–10 as an unequivocal attempt to compensate for the king’s megalomania, which would later descend into actual madness. For Jung, Daniel’s explanation confirms the existence of ancient knowledge on the

37 Maimonides, Guide 2:41, (see Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted within a Dream, 109–142 ). 38 See Lewin, “Meaning of the Dream,” 22–23. Lewin finds support for his argument in Isa. 29:8: “Like one who is hungry and dreams he is eating, but wakes to find himself empty.” 39 Gen. 37:5–6; 39:9–13, 16–19; 41:1–7; Judg. 7:13–14; Dan. 2:4. 40 IV Ezra 9–11 (in Vulgate: 11–13); II Apocalypse of Baruch 1:36–43, 53, 56–74. On visions in the Apocrypha, see Urbach, Sages, 1:14.

185

186

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

compensatory nature of dreams.41 Unlike Freud’s narrow interpretation of dreams, Jung revealed the internalizing nature of dream resolution that had begun in antiquity. At times the ancient world’s explanation of symbolic dreams was based on clearly technical means, as we can also see from some of the dicta in BT Berakhot 55a-57b that are devoted to dreams.42 This might possibly explain some of the reasons for rejecting any attempt to interpret symbolic dreams (in contrast with revelation dreams), which is precisely what Ben-Sira does: He who seeketh vanity findeth delusion, And dreams elate fools. As one catching at a shadow and pursuing the wind, So is he that trusteth in dreams. Alike are mirror and dream, The likeness of a face opposite a face. From the unclean what can be clean, And from the false what can be true? Divinations and soothsayings and dreams are vain; Even as thou hopest (so) seeth thy heart. If they be not sent from the Most High providentally, Do thou pay them no heed. For many there are that have been led astray by dreams, And through placing their hopes thereon have fallen. Without deceit shall the Law be fulfilled, And Wisdom is perfect in a mouth that is faithful.43

Gen. Rabbah sets R. Abbahu’s negative position that “dreams have no importance one way or the other”44 next to the Biblical verses depicting

41 Carl G. Jung, “General Aspects of Dream Psychology,” in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 237–80. 42 On the rabbis’ understanding of dreams, see Abraham Arzi, “Dreams in the Talmud,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Keter), vol. 6 ( col. 9). 43 Ben-Sira 34:1–8 (trans.: Sirach, 433–34). 44 Gen. Rabbah 68:12; T Ma‘aser Sheni 5:9; PT Ma‘aser Sheni 4:9; BT Sanhedrin 30a; Gittin 52a; Horayot 13b; Lam. Rabbah 1:17.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

Jacob’s dream. This juxtaposition might be meant to highlight the difference between revelation dreams45 and symbolic ones.

Positions Favorable to Dreams in Rabbinic Literature As a general rule, the criticisms of dream interpretation in the rabbinic literature are to be read in their cultural-historical context,46 not necessarily as opposing the psychological interiorization orientation, and perhaps even as supportive of it. A study of the views that seem to tend to skepticism, such as the statements by R. Hisda and R. Samuel bar Nahmani in the name of R. Jonathan in BT Berakhot, teaches that, to the contrary, they could serve as the basis for psychological interiorization approaches as opposed to merely technical methods. In effect, these approaches encourage the interpretation of dreams as a gateway to man’s soul, in the spirit of the modern research of dreams. “R. Hisda said: A dream that is not interpreted is as a letter that is unread.”47 Rashi comments: “Neither good nor bad, for all dreams follow their interpretation,” but the metaphor of a dream as a letter attests to a deeper psychological conception. Although if a letter is unread, it is as if it had never been written, the perception of a dream as a letter means, in Jungian terms, that it has a purposive motive, and “wants to say something,” but this statement becomes meaningful only if deciphered. Accordingly, R. Hisda’s negativity undoubtedly differs from that expressed by the prophet Zechariah: “and dreamers speak lies” (Zech. 10:2). R. Samuel bar Nahmani said in the name of R. Jonathan: A man is shown in a dream only what is suggested by his own thoughts [hirhurei lev], as it is said [Dan. 2:29], “O king, your thoughts came into your mind on your bed.” Or if 45 “Raba said: The Holy One, blessed be He, said, Even though I have hidden My face from them, I shall speak in a dream” (BT Hagigah 5b); “A dream is one-sixtieth of prophecy” (BT Berakhot 57a; Gen. Rabbah 17:5; 44:17). See Urbach, “When Did Prophecy Cease” [Heb], Tarbiz 17 (1945): 1–11; idem, “Halakhah and Prophecy” [Heb], Tarbiz 18 (1947): 23–27 (the appendix on the Heavenly voice). 46 “There were twenty-four interpreters of dreams in Jerusalem. Once I dreamed a dream and I went about to all of them. They all gave different interpretations, and all were fulfilled, thus confirming what is said: All dreams follow the mouth” (BT Berakhot 55b). See also Avigdor Shinan, “The Dream in Midrash and the Midrash of the Dream” [Heb], in The Spectrum of Opinions and Worldviews on Dreams in Jewish Culture, ed. Dror Kerem (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1995), 48. 47 BT Berakhot 55b.

187

188

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

you like, I can derive this from here [v. 30]: “that you may know the thoughts of your mind.” Raba said: Know [i.e., this is proved by the fact] that a man is never shown in a dream a date palm of gold, or an elephant going through the eye of a needle.48

The statements by R. Jonathan and Raba seem quite close to Jung’s understanding of Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. This interpretation is based on the assumption that dreams, which originate in the psychological world of the dreamer, reveal repressed contents but also serve behavioral ends hidden by the subconscious. From this viewpoint, the interpretation of symbolic dreams (that, according to Jung, can be aided by the broad interpretation of archetypical symbols) is an act of interiorization meant to aid the dreamer in gleaning from his dream meanings that are essential for his existence, while being aware that this is not a distinctly revelatory or prophetic dream.49 Some of the rabbinic expositions of Jacob’s dream clearly demonstrate the interiorization of the paranormal experience in the world of the rabbis: “For the sun had set” [Gen. 28:11]—the Rabbis said: As the sun had set. This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, had caused the sun to set prematurely, in order to speak privately with our father Jacob. This is comparable to a king’s close friend who visits him occasionally. The king ordered: “Extinguish the lamps, that I may speak with my friend privately.” Thus the Holy One, blessed be He, caused the sun to set prematurely, in order to speak privately with our father Jacob.50

The comparison stresses the intimate and internalized nature of Jacob’s dream. The rabbis interpret the words “Va-yifga ba-makom” (v. 11—”and lay down in that place”; literally, “and he met/came into contact with the 48 Ibid. In the Zohar, hirhurei lev are not contrary to prophecies of the future: “What is the meaning of [Job 33:15]: ‘In a dream, a night vision’? When men lie on their beds and sleep, and one’s soul leaves him, this is the meaning of [vv. 15–16] ‘while they slumber on their beds. Then He open’s men’s understanding.’ The Holy One, blessed be He, informs the soul, in the level responsible for dreaming, what will happen in the future in the world. These are things that come from thoughts [hirhurei lev], so that a person will receive rebuke from things in the world” (Zohar, 1:183a). According to the Zohar, both prophecies of the future and thoughts are revealed in dreams, with the joint purpose of reproaching the individual so that he will mend his ways. 49 See a summation in a similar spirit in Lewin, “Meaning of the Dream,” 34. For additional examples of the rabbis’ attitude to dreams, see Shinan, “Dream in Midrash,” 43–61. 50 Gen. Rabbah 68:10.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

place”) as his coming into contact with God, who is called Ha-Makom [the Omnipresent, based on the belief that He is in every place]. This exegesis therefore presents Jacob’s dream as a model of the encounter between man and God in a dream, which is the fruit of man’s desire-prayer [Rashi: “’Va-yifga—our masters interpreted this as meaning prayer”].51 Unlike the simple reading that God’s revelation to Jacob in a dream is an external one-time event, the comparison presents a completely different state of affairs. The king and his close friend customarily speak together in an inner place that is hidden from people’s eyes. The darkness that enables the dream shows that the encounter between man and God occurs in an inner place that is hidden and intimate. It occurs on occasion, when the king’s friend comes to visit his beloved king who is always in his palace/world. The friend takes the initiative, and the beloved king responds with darkness and privacy, namely, the inner meeting in the dream.52 The meaning of the interiorization of the revelation in Jacob’s dream described in the preceding exegesis is amplified by an exposition that compares Ps. 63:2–3 with Jacob’s dream: “And the Lord was standing beside him” [Gen. 28:13]—R. Eleazar, in the name of R. Yose bar Zimra, commenced: “My soul thirsts for You, my body yearns for You” [Ps. 63:2]. R. Ibo said: Like mushrooms that yearn for rain. The Rabbis explained: As my soul thirsts for You, so too do the two hundred and forty-eight limbs which I possess thirst for You. Where? “In a parched and thirsty land that has no water” [ibid.]; “So I shall behold You in the sanctuary [ba-kodesh]” [v. 3]—so I shall behold You in sanctity [bi-kdushah]; “and see Your might” [ibid.]—this refers to Your heavenly retinue, “and angels of God” [Gen. 28:12]; “and Your glory [Ps. 63:3]—”And the Lord was standing beside him.”53

51 The presentation of the setting of the sun as changing the order of nature (a solar eclipse in the middle of the day: see Rashi, s.v. “Va-Yifga ba-Makom”) is meant to emphasize that sleeping in a holy place is an act of affinity between the righteous individual and God, which marks God’s granting of the man’s request. See also BT Sanhedrin 95b. 52 I offer a broader interpretation than Yitzhak Baer’s Platonic understanding, one that does not require such closeness to Platonic thought. According to Baer, “the aggadist speaks of revelation in the psyche of the one who awaits such revelation. The outer light fades, so that God’s true light can shine in the soul.” See Baer, “On the Problem of Eschatological Doctrine during the Period of the Second Temple: Dialectics and Mysticism in the Founding of the Halacha,” Zion 23–24 (1958–1959): 105. 53 Gen. Rabbah 69:1.

189

190

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

The comparison presents Jacob’s dream as the realization of his longing for living and tangible contact with God in the spirit of the Psalmist in Ps. 63, with the ladder dream being the answer to his yearnings.

Dream Requests and the Status of Dreams in the Kabbalistic World Dreams were of great interest in the world of the Kabbalists.54 The Zohar sees the dream as an event that occurs after the soul has departed from the body during sleep: “For a person is not informed while he [i.e., the soul] is [still] within the body, as we said, rather, the angel informs the soul, and the soul, the man, for the dream comes from above, when the souls depart from the bodies, and ascend, each according to its degree.”55 It would seem implausible to posit an inner conception of dreams when they are perceived as resulting from the soul’s departure from the body, but the Kabbalah’s occupation with dream requests, despite their magical nature,56 teaches of an inner dimension in the Kabbalistic understanding of dreams. The assumed capability of adjuring the angel of dreams to effect a dream that will include an answer to a troubling issue means that man, and especially his inner will, is capable of generating the desired dream. Inner attentiveness to revelation dreams, which originated in the Bible, developed in Kabbalism into a culture of “dream requests,” that reached its peak in the fifteenth century, as is reflected in the numerous manuscripts referring to Sefer ha-Meshiv.57 Idel maintains that this is a tremendous literary corpus mostly to be found in thousands of pages of manuscripts, that are only a small portion of a much more extensive literature that is not 54 See, for example, Hayyim Vital, Sefer ha-Hezyonot (Jerusalem: Machon ben Zvi, 1988); Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 41–46. For a survey of dreams in mystical thought, see Rachel Elior, “Reality in the Test of Fiction: Dreams in Mystical Thought—the Freedom of Disassociation and Combination” [Heb], in The Spectrum of Opinions and Worldviews on Dreams in Jewish Culture, ed. Dror Kerem, 63–79 (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1995), Also see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Weeping, Death, and Spiritual Ascent in Sixteenth Century Jewish Mysticism,” in Death, Ecstasy, and other Worldly Journeys, eds. J. J. Collins and M. Fishbane (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 210, 217–218, 231–233. 55 Zohar 1:183a. 56 Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 48. 57 See, inter alia, Gershom Scholem, “The ‘Divine Mentor’ of Rabbi Yosef Taitazak and the Revelations Attributed to Him” [Heb], Sefunot 11 (1971–1978): 69–112; Georges Vajda, “Passages antichretiens dans Kaf Ha-Qetoret,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 117 (1980): 45–58; Moshe Idel, “Inquiries into the Doctrine of Sefer Ha-Meshiv” [Heb], Sefunot 17 (1983): 185–266.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

extant. In Nocturnal Kabbalists, Idel describes the techniques employed by the members of this circle to persuade the Holy One, blessed be He, and the angels to reveal themselves in their dreams. He quotes R. Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi: For those who are knowledgeable regarding the discourse of the ministering angels about a dream request or a waking dream know that at times the responding angel replies with a sufficiently clear answer, at other times with an allusion (and the answer is doubtful and unclear), and at yet other times, there is no response. For the ministering angels are not required to respond to every querier, and certainly when the querier asks a question that should not be asked, or when the respondent does not have permission to reveal, or does not know [the answer], for not everything is known to the ministering angels.58

Sefer ha-Meshiv is based on the traditions known in Kabbalistic circles of Elijah revealing himself to the early righteous ones.59 In the following passage, the Holy One, blessed be He, describes the revelation process to the Kabbalist: The secret of God revealed by Elijah: when he ascended to Heaven, here was the spiritual power of the angel, to actually go and assume corporeality, and descend to this base world in which you dwell, to perform miracles or to reveal My strength and My might in the world. He brings down My strength by the force of My great name in which he is included. Despite [the knowledge of] this great secret [usually resulting in death], he did not die, so that he would reveal My secret by force of My names, which is called “for a bird of the air may carry the utterance” [Eccl. 10:20], and one should not think of this. [This great divine secret] was revealed to the early pious ones, actually in a spiritual body clothed and materialized in the material, and they would speak with him. Because of their piety, he [Elijah] would be revealed to them in body and soul. Consequently, my [i.e., Elijah’s] force descends to those who dream a dream by means of speech and voice. This is the [secret] meaning of “your wisdom and discernment to other peoples” [Deut. 4:6]. My strength is bound up with him [i.e., Elijah], who is bound up 58 Iggeret Sod ha-Geulah (Epistle of the Secret of Redemption), MS. Oxford, Bodleian Library 2569, fol. 47a (cited by Moshe Idel, Nocturnal Kabbalists [Heb], trans. Nir Ratskovski [Jerusalem: Carmel, 2006], 47–48). 59 On the appearance of Elijah [gilui Eliyahu], see Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 269.

191

192

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

with your souls, and reveals the secrets of the Torah to you without [divine] speech [= prophecy].60

As Idel explains, the Kabbalistic conception of the dream assumes the existence of two theologies, existing side by side: a transcendental theology, that is perceived as the source of the message, and an immanent one, that is regarded as what enables God and His message to penetrate reality and reach human consciousness. God’s direct presence in the world is not permanent, nor is it pantheistic. It is made possible in those moments of encounter that are not solely a divine initiative, but are also the result of human volition. Dreams are the venue for meetings that in the past would occur when awake. They are comparable to prophecy, which in the past provided knowledge; and the Kabbalists seek to restore this knowledge to the world by certain actions and by dream requests. According to Idel, The medieval practices of the exploration of the hidden, that replaced the early Hebrew prophecy, that was occupied with more moral and national issues, arose from anew in the fifteenth century and afterwards with amazing force . . . the anomic techniques, as they are expressed also in instructions to receive a predictive dream, came to occupy a place of importance in the Kabbalah as the centuries passed, and transformed the bodies of these individuals and the inner personal processes into “temples” in which to encounter God.61

Torah Study as Revelation and the Revelation of Secrets: Between the World of the Tannaim and Learning Experience in the Zohar The midrashic works Cant. Rabbah and Lev. Rabbah contain a portrayal of Ben Azzai enveloped in fire as he in engaged in Torah study: Ben Azzai would sit and expound, and the blazing fire was around him. They asked him: Perhaps you are engaged in the ways of the Merkabah [the Heavenly Chariot]? He replied: No, I rather draw parallels between the words of the Torah and the Prophets, and between the Prophets and the Hagiographa, and the words of the Torah are as joyful as the day that they

60 Sefer ha-Meshiv, MS. Jerusalem 147 8o, fol. 96b (cited by Idel, Nocturnal Kabbalists, 50–51); punctuation added—R. M. 61 Idel, Nocturnal Kabbalists, 79–80.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

were given at Sinai. Their heart was given in fire. This is what is written: “The mountain was ablaze with flames” [Deut. 4:11].62

In the picture painted by the midrashim, Ben Azzai’s study of Torah was experiential, and not routine, expressing a dimension of revelation in study; thus, the comparison between the fire at the Revelation at Sinai and the fire that glowed around Ben Azzai as he was engrossed in his study. The question “Perhaps you are engaged in the ways of the Merkabah?” hints at the tradition from tractate Hagigah of the Babylonian Talmud, which presents Ben Azzai as one of the four who entered the garden [pardes]. We may assume that the depiction of Ben Azzai’s study as a revelatory experience, as was evident from the fire enveloping the place of the revelation, expresses the desire to expand the revelatory experience ascribed to the esoteric occupation with the secrets of the Godhead to Torah study as a whole. It presumably could be argued that the mention of the Revelation at Sinai emphasizes the outer aspect of the description. Ben Azzai’s Torah study gladdens the Torah and its Giver, and the fire blazing around is a manifestation of divine joy, an external confirmation of the worth of Ben Azzai’s study that is not necessarily indicative of any special occurrence in his inner world, beyond the high value of his study. A closer look at the parallel narratives (that appear in tractate Hagigah before the tale of the four Tannaim who entered the garden) of Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai and his student R. Eleazar ben Arakh and of R. Joshua and R. Yose ha-Kohen, who studied Ma‘aseh Merkabah [the esoteric knowledge of the Divine Chariot] and fire descended from Heaven, shows that this depiction is not just outer: Our masters taught: Once Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai was riding on an ass when going on a journey, and R. Eleazar ben Arakh was driving the ass from behind. He [R. Eleazar] said to him, “My master, teach me a chapter of Ma‘aseh Merkabah.” He [Rabban Johanan] replied: “Did I not teach you thus: ‘Not the Merkabah in the presence of one, unless he be a sage who understands of his own knowledge’?” He [R. Eleazar] said to him: “My Master, permit me to say before you something that you have taught me.” He [Rabban Johanan] replied: “Say it.” Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai immediately dismounted from the ass, wrapped himself up [in his tallit], and sat on a stone beneath an olive tree. He [R. Eleazar] said to him, “My master, why did you dismount 62 Cant. Rabbah 1:11, on the verse “Your cheeks are comely with plaited wreaths, your neck with strings of pearls” (Cant. 1:10). Also see Lev. Rabbah 16:4, ed. Margulies, 354– 55. See Yehuda Liebes, The Sin of Elisha [Heb] (Jerusalem: Akademon, 1990), 107–109.

193

194

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

from the ass?” He [Rabban Johanan] replied: “Is it proper that while you are expounding Ma‘aseh Merkabah, with the Divine Presence with us, and ministering angels accompanying us, I should ride on the ass?” R. Eleazar ben Arakh immediately began his exposition of Ma‘aseh Merkabah, and fire descended from Heaven and encompassed all the trees in the field. They all began to utter song. What song did they utter? “Praise the Lord, O you who are on earth, all sea monsters and ocean depths” [Ps. 148:7], “all fruit trees and cedars” [v. 9], “Hallelujah.” An angel answered from the fire and said: This is the very Ma‘aseh Merkabah. Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai stood, kissed him on his head, and said: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who has given a son to Abraham our father, who is capable of understanding, investigating, and expounding Ma‘aseh Merkabah. There are some who preach well but do not act well, and others who act well but do not preach well. But you preach well and act well. Happy are you, Abraham our father, that R. Eleazar ben Arakh came forth from your loins.” When this was told to R. Joshua, he and R. Yose ha-Kohen were going on a journey. They said: “We, too, shall expound Ma‘aseh Merkabah.” R. Joshua commence and expounded, and that day was the summer solstice [literally, “the solstice of Tammuz,” when clouds were not expected]. The heavens became overcast with clouds, and a sort of rainbow appeared. The ministering angels assembled and came to listen, as people who assemble and come to see the musical entertainments for the groom and bride. R. Yose ha-Kohen went and related what had happened before R. Johanan ben Zakkai. He [R. Johanan] said: “Happy are you, and happy is she who bore you; happy are my eyes that have seen this. Moreover, in my dream I and you were reclining; we were on Mount Sinai, when a heavenly voice was sent to us, [saying]: Ascend hither, ascend hither. [Here are] great banquet chambers and fine dining couches prepared for you, you and your student, and your students’ students are invited to the third class.”63

The words of the angel: “This is the very Ma‘aseh Merkabah,” the comparison of R. Joshua’s exposition to musical wedding entertainments, and the dream of R. Johanan ben Zakkai in which the sages are invited to the heavenly banquet chamber—the meaning of all this is that the expounding of Ma‘aseh Merkabah is an act of communication and joining with the supernal world. The fire descending from Heaven is an expression of the divine response to the human attempt to approach God by studying His Torah and, especially, by studying His secrets, called “Ma‘aseh Merkabah” 63 BT Hagigah 14b.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

by the rabbis. The fire is not only external confirmation—it comes in response to the spiritual effort made by the sages who seek to enter into the secrets of the divine world. Their experience of revelation while uncovering the secret is reflected in the fire. In A River Flows from Eden, Melila Hellner-Eshed argues for the existence of a spiritual experience unique to the Zohar, which is not identical to what is described in the medieval mystical literature as a structured ascent on a spiritual ladder.64 She maintains that this singular experience is bound up with the Torah study of the Companions of the Zohar. She depicts it as a “experiential wave” that begins with the unique contemplation of biblical verses, undertaken with a special intention. Amid the exegetical process, in which the verses are expounded by different speakers, this contemplation intensifies. The accumulated tension generates moments of mystical ecstasy—moments of insight, innovation, exultation of the soul, powerful emotional responses, and sometimes even the experience of contact with the divine world. After these peak moments there follows a conscious closure, a quieting and sealing of the experience.65

Hellner-Eshed brings two examples from the Zohar to demonstrate this experience unique to it: the narrative of causing rain to fall in the portion of Aharei Mot (Zohar 3:62a), and that of Kfar Tarsha in Lekh Lekha (1:94b). She also includes in this context the ecstatic portrayals of studying the death of the three participants in the Idra Rabba [Great Assembly] and the manner of R. Simeon’s passing from the world. The Zohar relates in Aharei Mot: So it was, for that day the Companions saw the face of Shekhinah and were encompassed by fire. Rabbi Abba’s face blazed in fire from rapture of Torah.

64 See Judah ben Moses Albotini, Sulam ha-Aliyah. Cf., for example, John of the Cross’s depiction of the ladder of ascent at the end of his book Dark Night of the Soul, in The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, vol. 1, chaps. 19–25, 435–57. 65 Melila Hellner-Eshed, A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar, trans. Nathan Wolski (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 310. A different method of portraying the ecstatic or revelatory experiences in Kabbalistic writings, including the Zohar, is offered by Haviva Pedaya, Vision and Speech: Models of Revelatory Experience in Jewish Mysticism [Heb] (Los Angeles: Cherub, 2002), 91–136. See my discussion of Pedaya’s approach below, chapter three, 237–39.

195

196

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

It has been taught: All that day, none of them left the house, and the house was swathed in smoke. Words among them were fresh and ecstatic as if they were receiving Torah that very day from Mount Sinai! When they departed they did not know if it was day or night.66

For Hellner-Eshed, this is a prime example of Zoharic mystical experience, that is, a moderate experience resulting from the exegetical act of the Companions of the Zohar. The experience includes seeing the countenance of the Divine Presence, the appearance of the fire, radiant faces, experiencing the Revelation at Sinai, and the loss of a sense of time. Despite acknowledging some similarities between the Zoharic descriptions and those from the world of the rabbis,67 she tends to distinguish between the two. In my opinion, the spirit of the rabbinic narratives cited above reverberates throughout the Zohar. Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai’s dream in Tractate Hagigah that hints of a supernal coupling awaiting Torah scholars exerted tremendous influence on the style of the Zohar. The uniqueness of the Zoharic depictions in this example lies in the wording “Words among them were fresh and ecstatic as if they were receiving Torah that very day from Mount Sinai.” The Companions rejoiced because the revelation of these secrets in their study was, for them, like the Revelation at Sinai. While the venue of the occurrence is unclear in the rabbinic story, and could be understood as either an outer or inner event, the Zoharic tale is infused with an awareness that this experience is within the individual soul. In the Zohar’s account, R. Abba’s glowing face is linked to the preceding statement that that day the Companions saw the countenance of the Divine Presence and were encompassed by fire. This link alludes to the manner in which the Zohar understands the encircling fire. This is not external fire, but an inner one that enkindles the faces of those engaged in study. In the Ascent of Mount Carmel, John of the Cross speaks of a type of revelation that is the unveiling of mysteries and concealed secrets. Revelatory experience in the Zohar is portrayed in a unique manner, but it should be viewed as a specific case among the entire corpus of esoteric experiences to which the rabbis allude, and that are conveyed in other cultures as well, as in the work by John of the Cross. The Zohar’s use of the word raza [secret] to describe clearly verbal contents that contain information regarding God 66 Zohar 1:94b. For English translation see English edition: The Zohar, vol. 2, trans. Daniel C. Matt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 98. 67 See, for example, Hellner-Eshed, River Flows from Eden, 304–308.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

and man68 presents the Zoharic experience as accompanied by study. These verbal secrets, that expose the Kabbalistic theosophy of the Zohar, resemble the knowledge taught by the Gnostic sages, who ascribe to their study the ability to escape the enslavement of this world. Unlike, however, the Gnostics, the sages of the Zohar seek to use Kabbalistic secrets for theurgic ends, that is, the rectification of the supernal orbs in order to draw down the beneficial emanations to the lower worlds.69

Paranormal Phenomena in Judaism Diverse paranormal phenomena, including, on the one hand, angels revealing themselves and, on the other, possession and dybbuks, are documented in a broad range of sources from the Bible to the Hasidic literature. These phenomena are usually understood as involving man’s encounter with external entities, or these entities’ entry in to (or exit from) the human body. In the following discussion I will focus on the perception of some of these phenomena as occurring within the psyche.

Clairvoyance, Angelology, Maggidism, and Ibbur Clairvoyance “Elisha said to him, ‘Where have you been, Gehazi?’ He replied, ‘Your servant has not gone anywhere.’ Then [Elisha] said to him, ‘Did not my spirit go along when a man got down from his chariot to meet you? Is this a time to take money in order to buy clothing and olive groves and vineyards, sheep and oxen, and male and female slaves?’” (II Kings 5:25–27). Augustine expressly noted that the wording “Did not my spirit [literally, ‘heart’] go along” reflects Elisha’s ability to see temporally or spatially distant people or events.70 The clairvoyant, who reports seeing and sensing internally a 68 On the esoteric knowledge of physiognomy and palmistry in the Zohar, which classifies this as “most secret,” see Ron Margolin, “Physiognomy and Chiromancy: From Prediction and Diagnosis to Healing and Human Correction (Zohar 2, 70a-78a; Tiqqunei Zohar, Tiqqun 70)” [Heb], Te‘uda 21–22 (2007): 199–49. 69 On theurgy in Kabbalah, see Idel, New Perspectives, 173–99. 70 Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans 22:29. English translation based on Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, trans. David S. Wiesen, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 417 (London: Heinemann, 1968), 535. Compare also the Balaam episode, in light of what Balaam says of his paranormal sight: “As Balaam looked up and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe, the spirit of God came upon him. Taking up his theme,

197

198

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

physically distant event, definitely relies on the inner powers which only he possesses. The following anecdote attests to the presence of clairvoyance among the rabbis: From where is it derived, regarding the soul when it departs from the body? R. Samuel the brother of R. Phinehas bar Hama who was a poor man and died in Sepphoris. The Torah scholars were sitting before R. Phinehas, something humorous came before them, and they began to laugh. R. Phinehas said: How greatly does my brother’s soul suffer now. It breaks down cedars, it breaks down oaks, while you sit, unaware.71

Angels: from revelation to apotheosis In Angels of the Most High Reuben Margaliot charts a map, albeit incomplete, of the names of the angels mentioned in the Talmudic, midrashic, and Kabbalistic literatures.72 These literatures are replete with angels who are first named in the Bible and in the Apocrypha. Many of these angel names resemble those characteristic of Ancient Near East cultures and the Hellenistic world. Elior spoke of three different elements in the angelology of the Heikhalot literature: the mystical, the mythical, and the ritual-magical. The mystical dimension is most relevant to our discussion, but Elior demonstrates that even if the seeing of angels is conditional in the Heikhalot literature upon special inner abilities, angels themselves are not perceived as inner entities. The angels become heavenly creatures who are visible and audible to human beings. They are perceived as the denizens of the upper worlds with whom he said: Word of Balaam son of Beor, word of the man whose eye is true, word of him who hears God’s speech, who beholds visions from the Almighty, prostrate, but with eyes unveiled” (Num. 24:2–4; and similarly, 24:15–16). The wording: “Then the Lord unveiled Balaam’s eyes” (Num. 22:31) also explains Balaam’s testimony of his clairvoyance. The spirit of God gave Balaam inner vision, by means of which he saw what those with normal vision could not perceive. 71 Gen. Rabbah 6:7. 72 Reuben Margaliot, Angels of the Most High [Heb] (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1988). See also Meir Bar-Ilan, “The Names of Angels,” in These Are the Names: Studies in Jewish Onomastics, ed. Aaron Demsky, Joseph A. Reif, and Joseph Tabory, vol. 1 (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1997), Hebrew section, 33–48; Michael Mach, Entwicklungsstadien des jüdischen Engelglaubens in vorrabbinischer Zeit (Tubingen: Mohr, 1992).

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

one can converse, or as an accessible dimension of the divine world which is perceived by man in his mind’s eye after the earthly Temple had been destroyed, prophecy had ceased, and God had removed Himself from apprehension.73

Exceptional in this respect are the Kabbalistic perceptions of the angelic figure of Enoch-Metatron, that were described by Idel in his essay on Metatron and the development of myth in Judaism.74 He argues that Midrash Ne`elam on the Song of Songs75 portrays Enoch, whom the Heikhalot literature already identified with Metatron, as having received the supernal soul that Adam lost due to his sin; that is, a figure who underwent a transformation that raises man to another level of existence by the addition of a sort of shining halo. The development of ramified angelologic myths in Kabbalah after the thirteenth century was paralleled by ecstatic Kabbalah transforming Metatron from an angelic entity to the symbol of the highest mystical attainment.76

Maggidism, ibbur, and automatic speech and writing: paranormal phenomena intensified in the world of the Safed Kabbalists. Along with manifestations such as possession, which was perceived as the entry of an outer spirit into a person,77 Maggidism and ibbur [the “impregnation” of a spirit] are discussed in the Safed Kabbalah as a product of distinct inner intentionality. 73 Rachel Elior, “Mysticism, Magic, and Angelology—The Perception of Angels in Hekhalot Literature,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 1 (1993–1994): 27. 74 Moshe Idel, “Enoch Is Metatron,” Immanuel 24–25 (1990): 220–40; idem, “Metatron: Notes on the Development of the Myth in Judaism” [Heb], in Eshel Beer-Sheva, vol. 4: Myth in Judaism, ed. Havivah Pedayah (Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1996), 29–44 75 See Midrash Ne‘elam on Song of Songs, Zohar Ḥadash, ed. Reuben Margaliot (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 19940, fol. 69a-b; Idel, “Enoch Is Metatron,” 230–31. 76 Idel, “Metatron,” 43–44. Regarging angelic transformation see Wolfson, Speculum, 74–124. 77 See Gedalyah Nigal, “Dybbuk” Tales [Heb] (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1994); Yoram Bilu, “The Dibbuk in Judaism: Mental Disorder as Cultural Resource” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 2, no. 4 (1982–1983): 529–63; Jeffrey Howard Chajes, Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); idem, “In a Different Voice: The Non-Kabbalistic Women’s Mysticism of Early Modern Jewish Culture” [Heb], Zion 67 (2002): 139–62; Matt Goldish (ed.), Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003).

199

200

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

1. R. Hayyim Vital writes in Sha`ar Ru’ah ha-Kodesh on the appearance of the maggid: As regards the angels who are revealed to people, and tell them the future, and secrets, and who are called maggidim: they were created from man’s engaging in Torah study and the observance of the commandments. There are some people to whom these maggidim are not revealed, while to others they are revealed, all depending on the aspect of their souls, or according to their deeds, and we should not speak of this at length. . . . This is the secret of prophecy and the spirit of divine inspiration—it undoubtedly is a voice sent from above, to speak with that prophet, or with the one possessing the spirit of divine inspiration. This supernal spiritual voice, however, cannot alone [be heard], [but rather must] assume physicality [i.e., become a seemingly human voice] in order to enter the ears of the prophet, unless it is first garbed in the material voice that issues forth from that individual, as he now engages in Torah study, prayer, and the like. Then it is engarbed within [i.e., enters] him, connects with him, and comes to the ear of that prophet and he hears it. It cannot exist without the material voice of the individual himself now. The meaning of this is that the first [i.e., divine] voice that is manifested in angels and holy spirits, as mentioned before, they themselves are the voice of prophecy. When that voice comes to the man to tell him that prophecy, it comes and is garbed in this material voice, of the person from whom it issues, when that prophecy rests upon him.78 78 Hayyim Vital, Sha‘ar Ruaḥ ha-Kodesh, in Collected Writings of R. Isaac Luria (Jerusalem, 1988), vol. 10, derush 1, 9–10. Vital explains in the fourth section of his book Sha‘arei Qedushah (first published, from MS. BM 749, only in 2005), citing techniques described in Abulafia’s writings, how to attain the spirit of divine inspiration [ruaḥ ha-kodesh] and a maggid (on the influence of Abulafia’s writings on Vital, see Idel, “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Ecstatic Kabbalah” [Heb] in Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Academon, 1990), 84–111: “Meditate in a secluded house as above, and wrap yourself in a talit, and sit and close your eyes and remove yourself from the material world, as if your soul had left your body, and ascended into the heavens. And after this casting off, read one mishnah, whichever one you wish, many times, time after time, and intend that your soul commune with the soul of the tanna mentioned in that mishnah. Do so by having the intent that your lips are a vessel that issues the letters of the wording of that mishnah, and that the voice that you bring forth from within the vessel of the mouth is the sparks of your inner soul that go forth and read that mishnah; and your soul becomes a chariot [Merkabah] in which is engarbed the soul of the tanna of that mishnah, and his soul will be engarbed within your soul. And when you labor from reading that mishnah, if you will be worthy of this, the soul of that tanna might rest in your mouth, and will be engarbed there while you are still reading the mishnah. Then, while you are still reading the mishnah, he will speak from

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

In Vital’s conception of maggidism, the nature of the individual’s actions is all-important. Of greater importance for our discussion, however, is the notion that the voice sent from above can be revealed only through an individual’s own voice. This concept integrates inner and outer so closely that the external source of the “prophecy of the maggid” and the individual’s inner motives that actually create the maggid cannot be separated.79 According to Werblowsky, our knowledge concerning R. Joseph Caro, who became the premier halakhic authority in his time because of his rulings, his leadership ability, his many students, and his longevity and health, rules out the possibility of explaining the maggid who came to him by means of the usual medical diagnoses, which attribute such phenomena to paranoia, hysteria, or epilepsy. Caro himself most likely thought that the voice speaking through his mouth was that of prophecy. In Werblowsky’s psychoanalytical explanation, this maggid, whose appearances were documented by Caro in his book Maggid Mesharim, represents Caro’s conscience, that is, his superego.80 This psychoanalytic theory regarding the maggid phenomenon precludes its reduction to the realm of mental illness, while maintaining its inner nature. The phenomenon of the maggid is conditional upon the speaker’s unawareness of the externalization of a part of his personality,

your mouth, and he will greet you” (Vital, Sha‘arei Qedushah ha-Shalem, part 4, sha‘ar 3, 154; partially translated in Idel, “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Ecstatic Kabbalah” [English], 136). See also his description of letter combinations as the key to divestment from the material and from this world: “As if your soul has departed from your body . . . and imagine making your request from those combinations written there, and they will answer your question, or their spirit will rest in your mouth, or you will slumber and they will answer you as in a dream” (156). This directive patently confirms what was said above about Vital’s conception of the maggid and raises the possibility (that to the best of my knowledge has not yet been suggested) that this was how the Safed Kabbalists explained to themselves the identification of the characters in the Zohar with Tannaim. On the maggid phenomenon, see Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 257–86; Scholem, “‘Divine Mentor’”; Idel, “Sefer Ha-Meshiv,” esp. 201–32. Notwithstanding the above, this fourth part of Sha‘arei Qedushah teaches that in the reality of religious life it is not always possible to separate the verbal from the nonverbal. In this part of his book Vital collected dozens of quotations from Kabbalistic works containing directives for attaining the spirit of divine inspiration, usually depicted in abstract terms. Nonetheless, according to Vital, these methods lead to contentual knowledge of the type that R. Joseph Karo describes in Maggid Mesharim. 79 See Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 77–79. 80 Ibid., 279–86.

201

202

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

while the psychoanalytical explanation clarifies the inner nature of the phenomenon, without ascribing it to mental illness.81 2. R. Moses Cordovero writes on ibbur: A soul will pass into a person, at times holy, other times wicked. We have also seen that a demon or an evil spirit is enclothed in a person and frightens him. . . . R. Simeon ben Yohai, may he rest in peace, explains that at times Elijah is enclothed in man’s intellect and tells him secret things. This will seem to a person as if he thought of these things himself, and this new thing and matter appears in his intellect. It is the same regarding matters of Torah and worldly affairs, it tells him: this shall be, and this not. It will come in a hidden manner; the person will not feel that his head is heavy, his ears will not ring, nor as something new [i.e., alien] within himself, as would happen with a maggid. Rather, as one who tells this from himself. The manner of ibbur corresponds to this aspect, whether good because of some commandment that he performed, or bad because of some transgression that he committed. . . . And if a spirit shall possess his spirit, as we explained, in the neshamah, and certainly in the nefesh [both translated as “soul,” the former being higher than the latter]. The general rule that emerges from all these inquiries is that a person’s being on a supremely high level is dependent on his actions, that cause to rest upon him the divine force that descends to the earth, and rests upon him, as was the case with Metatron, the guardian angel of the world.82

According to Werblowsky, Cordovero assumed that, along with the possibility of demons or maggidim taking control of a person’s soul, manifesting themselves through automatic speech, there is also the prospect of the ibbur of other souls or of angels in a person’s soul. Although Cordovero does not claim that these are the individual’s own creations, much, in his opinion, depends on the level of the soul that receives the divine emanation.83 This paranormal phenomenon is marked by its inner nature, just as Vital explained the maggid phenomenon as occurring within a person’s psyche and expressing itself through his own voice. 81 On R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto’s maggid and its disappearance, see Meir Benayahu, “The ‘Maggid’ of R. Moses Hayyim Luzatto” [Heb], Sefunot 5 (1961): 297–336; idem, “The Vow of R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto to Abstain from Writing Works ‘Dictated by a Maggid’” [Heb], Zion 42 (1976–1977): 24–48. On automatic writing among the Kabbalists, see Goldreich, Automatic Writing. 82 Moses Cordovero, Derishot be-Inyanei ha-Mal’akhim, in Margaliot, Angels of the Most High, 64–65. See Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 80–81. 83 Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 80.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

Dreams and Paranormal Phenomena in Hasidism In Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, Idel surveys a series of central figures in Hasidism whom its literature portrays as having undergone what he calls ecstatic mystical experiences. Such experiences are mentioned in reference to the Baal Shem Tov, Dov Baer (the Maggid of Mezheritch), the Baal Shem Tov’s grandson R. Ephraim of Sudylkow, the Maggid of Kozinetz, R. Nahman of Bratslav, R. Isaac of Radzivilow, and others. Idel finds the Hasidic hagiographic literature from the time of the Baal Shem Tov to the later generations to be replete with descriptions of trance-like conditions, journeys to the heavens, and the like. He writes that “it seems that no movement in Judaism has ever emphasized the importance of pneumatic experience in its most intense and extreme forms, as much as in Hasidism.”84 I will use what is related of the Baal Shem Tov to distinguish between attentiveness to contentual dreams and paranormal experiences in the world of the Hasidim, that will be discussed here, and noncontentual experiences, to be examined at the end of the following chapter.

The Aliyat Neshamah of the Baal Shem Tov The three extant versions of the letter of the Baal Shem Tov’s aliyat neshamah [literally, “the ascent of the soul”] sent to his brother-in-law indicate that the Baal Shem Tov’s spiritual activity consisted primarily of yihudim85 [the effecting of mystical unions of the Sefirot] and ascents.86 The letter contains two different references to the term aliyat neshamah. The first tells that the Baal Shem Tov’s meeting with the Messiah took place in the upper worlds during his soul’s ascent. The second reference appears in the body of the statements attributed to the Messiah, who presents the Baal Shem Tov’s ability to perform aliyat neshamah as an educational goal: the Messiah will 84 Idel, Hasidism, 54. 85 In Hasidism, yiḥudim [unifications] refers to the unification of the divine in man with the Divinity. This is based on the Kabbalistic concept of the same name which, however, bears a different meaning: the unification of the Sefirot by human intentionality. 86 Shivḥei ha-Baal Shem Tov: A Facsimile of a Unique Manuscript, Variant Versions and Appendices, ed. Joshua Mondschein (Jerusalem, 1982), 229–37. For previous treatments of this letter, see Moshe Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 213–20; idem, Ascensions, 143–66; Margolin, Human Temple, 236–37, 338, 424–25. On the connection between the Heikhalot literature and the Baal Shem Tov’s spiritual ascents, see Naftali Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite: The Emergence of the Habad School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

203

204

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

come after the Baal Shem Tov will have succeeded in teaching others to perform aliyot neshamah as he does: On Rosh ha-Shanah of the year 5507 (1746), I performed an incantation for the ascent of the soul, known to you. And in that vision I saw wondrous things, which I had never seen until then from the day that I became spiritually aware. . . . I asked the Messiah: When do you come? And he answered: You will know [the time] which is when your doctrine will be revealed in public and it will be disclosed to the world, and “your fountains will well outside,” what I have taught you and you apprehended, and also they will be able to perform the unifications and the ascents [of the soul] as you do, and then the shells will be abolished, and then there will be a time of good-will and redemption. And this [answer] surprised me, and I was deeply sorrowful because of the length of time when this will be possible; however, from what I have learned, the three things, which are remedies and three divine names, it is easy to learn and to explain. [Then] my mind was calmed and I thought that it is possible for my contemporaries to attain this degree and aspect by these [practices], as I do, namely to be able to accomplish the ascents of souls, and they will be able to study and become like me. Permission was not granted all the days of my life to reveal this.87

This passage indicates that the Baal Shem Tov’s “contemporaries” (apparently the members of his close circle), as well, had the capacity to perform aliyot neshamah, and could therefore use the charms and divine names that he possessed to aid those in need of such extraordinary means upon their return from their soul journeys to the upper realms. In my opinion, we should distinguish between the contents revealed in such a spiritual ascent and the charms mentioned in the letter. For the charms and divine names to be effective, a person must be capable of performing aliyat neshamah. This claim is based on what Idel called the “mystico-magical” model.88 The first pages of Shivhei ha-Besht contain different depictions, attributed to members of the Baal Shem Tov’s intimate circle, of his prayer. The impression we gain from all these reports is that the Baal Shem Tov’s prayer was fervent, and at times he left a regular state of consciousness, and seemed to be not of this world: 87 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Ben Porat Yosef (Berditchev: Margaliot and Yadkis, n.d.), 254–55; mainly translated in Idel, Ascensions, 144–45. 88 Idel, Hasidism, 103–45.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

I heard this from our teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Falk, the famous Hasid from Chechelnik, who heard it from Rabbi Abraham, the head of the court in the holy community of Dubossary, who was formerly the cantor in the bethhamidrash of the holy community of Medzhibozh. Once they had to say the Hallel, since it was either the first of the month or during the intermediate days of Passover. Rabbi Abraham was reciting Shaharith before the ark, and the Besht was praying in his usual place. It was his custom to pray before the ark beginning with the Hallel. During the voiced eighteen benedictions, the Besht trembled greatly as he always did while praying. Everyone who looked at the Besth while he was praying noticed this trembling. When Rabbi Abraham finished the repetition of the prayer, the Besht was still standing at his place and he did not go to the ark. Rabbi Wolf Kotses, the Hasid, looked at his face. He saw that it was burning like a torch. The Besht’s eyes were bulging and fixed straight ahead like those of someone dying, God forbid. Rabbi Ze’ev motioned to Rabbi Abraham and each gave his hand to the Besht and led him to the ark. He went with them and stood before the ark. He trembled for a long time and they had to postpone the reading of the Torah until he stopped trembling.89

Thus it would seem that at times, even during public prayer, the Baal Shem Tov would enter an altered state of consciousness, or as the Maggid of Mezheritch put this: “The Maggid said that he realized that the Besht was inspired by the Shekhinah, and that he was not in this world.”90 A comparison of these two different sources teaches that each describes paranormal altered-consciousness states. The first source, however, shows that the aliyat neshamah which the Baal Shem Tov reported to his brother-in-law R. Gershon of Kitov had a distinct content of sights and words. In that event the Baal Shem Tov had a vision of an ascent to the heavens, to the palace of the Messiah, including a meaningful conversation with him. The content of this conversation is reminiscent of a sort of revelation dream. The description of the Baal Shem Tov’s prayer, in contrast, while based on the testimony of an external observer, seems to indicate that this was a nonverbal and noncontentual experience of detachment from the outer world 89 Shivḥei ha-Besht, ed. Avraham Rubinstein (Jerusalem, 1992), 85–86. For English translation, see In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov. Shivhei ha-Besht: The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, trans. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), 50. 90 Ibid., 87 (trans.: In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, 51).

205

206

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

resulting from intensive inner concentration while praying. According to the citation in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, his way of praying called for concentration on the sounds of the letters uttered by the worshiper. “In the book Ḥesed le-Avraham and in the collections of R. Baruch, of blessed memory, he wrote—and this is his wording—the Baal Shem Tov, blessed be his memory, said, that is, one is to enter into the word with all his body, his heart, and his thought.”91 It seems to me that the Baal Shem Tov himself did not differentiate between the two states, each of which he perceived as aliyat neshamah. According, however, to the citation in the name of the maggid, the states of trembling that the Baal Shem Tov entered were out-of-world experiences, that is, marked by a loss of regular consciousness. The Maggid of Mezheritch himself apparently did not think that his master’s prayer attested to his soul leaving his body, rather, the Baal Shem Tov’s fervent prayer brought him to a state wherein ordinary consciousness is disabled, a state which the maggid conceived of as the Divine Presence resting upon the Baal Shem Tov.92 Accordingly, a discussion of contentual aliyat neshamah states must relate to the standing of dreams in the Hasidic world.

Dreams in the World of Hasidism The following narrative of the Baal Shem Tov’s dream is the only narrative in Shivhei ha-Besht that originates with the Baal Shem Tov himself: I heard this story from Rabbi Moses, the son-in-law of the sister of the rabbi of the holy community of Polonnoye, who heard it himself from the Besht when he told it in the following words to the villagers in the holy community of Nemirov. “Once in a dream I was walking in a field, and in the distance I saw mist. I went on until I arrived at one side of the place where the mist was. The sun cast light on this side and also on the road, but opposite me it was foggy. It was as if I were standing on a long slope. I went on until I came to the end of the valley. For several years I had a gentile servant who had left me, I saw 91 Cited in Ba‘al Shem Tov al ha-Torah, ed. Wodnik, 122. “R. Baruch” is probably the Baal Shem Tov’s grandson, R. Baruch of Medzibezh, and therefore this version seems closest to what the Baal Shem Tov actually said. See all the sources that repeat these descriptions, ibid., 119–25; see also below, 252–56. 92 On the Hasidic perception of the Divine Presence resting in man and the Hasidic sources, see Margolin, Human Temple, 128–38, 277–80, 394–95.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

him there walking with a heavy load of wood on his shoulders. When he saw me he threw down the wood and fell at my feet, and he said: ‘When I served you, sir, I used to observe the Sabbath. When I left you I served an arrendator who made me work on the Sabbath. He used to order me to go to the forest on the Sabbath to bring wood. Now both of us are dead, and each Sabbath I have to bring wood to Gehenna until there is enough there for the arrendator for every day of the week. I ask you to wait for me until I return. Since you, sir, are very important in the world, I will show you, sir, the place where you can ask them to release me from my sentence. I cannot show it to you now because the attendants are just behind me.’ “The Besht said to him: ‘If I am important in this world, put down the wood and show me this place immediately.’ “He went with me and showed me a palace. I entered the palace. I pleaded for him and they released him from the sentence. When I pleaded for the gentile I pleaded for the Jew as well, and they released him also from the sentence.”93

Abraham Rubinstein notes that this dream levels harsh criticism at Jewish arrendators [leaseholders] who have non-Jews working for them on the Sabbath.94 The hagiographic and miraculous character of Shivhei ha-Besht raises numerous difficulties regarding the historical veracity of its narratives, but both this narrative and the Baal Shem Tov’s letter on aliyat neshamah relate to the actual reality. These dreams are not symbolic—they rather contain transparent content, and directly express the world of the dreamer, who is troubled by problems pertaining to the public. The Baal Shem Tov’s actions in his dream are a continuation of his worldview and his waking activity. They are not revelation dreams, but of activity facing the divine forces. His activist personality is expressed also in his dreams, in which he experiences success in influencing the world by means or by merit of his spiritual affinity to the divine world. An example of another realistic dream from nascent Hasidism is that of the wife of R. Abraham ha-Malakh [the Angel], the son of the Maggid of Mezheritch, which I analyzed in Human Temple.95

93 Shivḥei ha-Besht, ed. Rubinstein, 236–37 (trans.: In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, 183–84). 94 Ibid., 236–37 n. 12. 95 Margolin, Human Temple, 206–10.

207

208

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

A comparison of these dreams with those of the Baal Shem Tov’s great-grandson, R. Nahman of Bratslav, that are dated by the latter’s disciple and secretary R. Nathan Sternhartz, shows that the latter are more symbolic and therefore less clear. R. Nahman, however, assumed that his dreams could be interpreted, as is indicated by R. Nathan’s remark about a dream of R. Nahman on the fifth day of Tishrei, during the Ten Days of Repentance at the beginning of 5570 [=Fall 1809] in Bratslav, that “he told us that he dreamed but he did not know its meaning.”96 This exceptional statement proves the rule. The following example reflects the activity of the dreamer—R. Nahman—but also its inner difficulties due to its incomprehensibility. [5]569 [=1809]. He dreamed that there was a gathering of Jews with a single leader, who was very great in the world. A decree was promulgated to kill all the Jews. The leader devised a stratagem that he must change himself into a non-Jew, and he summoned a skilled [barber] to shave off his beard with the payyot [earlocks]. Afterwards, it was learned that this was false; no such decree had been issued. How ashamed was that leader! He certainly could not show himself before the world, and he had to uproot himself and escape. But how does one go out the door, and how does one hire a carriage, and the like? He undoubtedly was indescribably ashamed, and he undoubtedly had to dwell with a non-Jew for some time until his beard would grow back.97

We cannot know how R. Nahman himself understood this dream. Here, too, the character of the dreamer is reflected in the dream, but its content is not realistic and direct as in the dream of the Baal Shem Tov. It is clear from the narrative that R. Nahman, who saw himself as a leader of his followers and as worthy to be acknowledged as the leader of all Israel, realized that his inner thoughts did not necessarily correspond to the outer reality. This disparity caused him much unpleasantry and led him to temporarily hide from the world, which he might have understood as a hint from above of how he was to act. In this and other dreams that R. Nahman related to his followers, he applied an interpretive approach not far removed from that adopted by contemporary psychoanalysts, although he did think that the dream contents were divine messages to be interpreted.

96 Nathan of Nemirov, Ḥayei Moharan (Jerusalem, 1985), ot 101, 96. 97 Ibid., ot 86, 83.

Prophecy, Dreams, and Other Paranormal Contentual Experiences  •  CHAPTER TWO

The dreams of R. Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, the Baal Shem Tov’s grandson and R. Nahman’s uncle, that are brought at the end of his book Degel Mahaneh Efrayim, are different, but still display significant similarities. In his dreams R. Moses Hayyim Ephraim frequently saw his beloved grandfather. For the grandson, the Baal Shem Tov’s pronounced closeness to him in the dreams provided confirmation of his spiritual worth: Monday night, the Torah portion of [5]541 [= 1781], I saw my master, my grandfather, may his memory be for a blessing in the World to Come. I drew closer, face-to-face, we actually cleaved together. He hugged me with both hands and said to me as follows: “Your nature and my nature went forth into the world, my ba‘al shem [wonder worker] and your good name, that you will be a servant of the Lord, and study and say Torah in Israel.” One of the important guests who would come to the tzaddiqim to listen to them was standing there. My master, my grandfather, inclined his head to him and nodded his head, namely, this would surely come to pass. And I stood on the bench and saw the nodding of his head.98

This dream is reminiscent of the numerous dreams of R. Hayyim Vital of his teacher R. Isaac Luria reported in the former’s Sefer Ha-Hezyonot.99 The dream of the Baal Shem Tov’s grandson is characterized by its very strong emotional component and its striking visual force, that gives it a more realistic nature, one less fantastic than that of Vital’s dreams. The dream is where he meets his grandfather, who appears in it as if he is still alive. The end of the dream, however, reveals the grandson’s hidden desire for recognition, which attests to the dream’s psychological significance. This is not a symbolic dream but a realistic one, in which the dreamer sees himself standing on the side and watching his grandfather nodding his head, confirming his earlier statement about the good name shared by the grandson and his renowned grandfather, the Baal Shem Tov. In summation, these three examples of Hasidic dreams point to the seriousness with which dreams are taken in the Hasidic world. This, in and of itself, already emphasizes the importance of inner realities for them. The 98 Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, Degel Maḥaneh Efrayim, Likkutim, 284. 99 See, for example, “331. Rosh Ḥodesh [= the beginning of the month of] Iyyar. During the Minḥah [service] I read the mishnah 3 times, as is my known practice. I intended in my thought to ask: Who was my prior incarnation? I fell asleep and I saw my teacher, the Ari [= R. Isaac Luria], of blessed memory. He held my arm and said to me: Here is the man, this handsome young man who is standing with us is my brother-in-law, my sister’s husband, and you were his teacher. And I awoke” (Vital, Sefer Ha-Hezyonot, 81).

209

210

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

importance of these realities for the Hasidic masters, however, does not necessarily imply that they did not think that their dreams took them to realms beyond their selves or to actual encounters with exterior spirits, as is suggested by the dreams of the Baal Shem Tov and his grandson. Still, as is suggested by R. Nahman’s highly symbolic dream, early Hasidism exhibits signs of a burgeoning psychological stance regarding dreams. Accordingly, Hasidic masters such as R. Nahman, or the Maggid of Mezheritch before him, who display a clear focus on the psyche, emphasize to an even greater degree the importance and significance of the transformative effect on one’s consciousness of either dreams or phenomena such as the Baal Shem Tov’s aliyot neshamah.

Chapter Three

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing in World Religions Focusing consciousness by employing various concentration techniques produces an inward contemplative state and communion with deeper planes of human existence, to the extent of altering the normal perception of reality. A variety of religious writings describe the experiences accompanying these techniques in terms of making contact with God—and at times, in terms of a sense of unification with Him. Inward focusing is frequently portrayed as knowing one’s self. This knowledge could be interpreted as an awareness of the divine, which is typical of “mystic” writings, or as an enlightened awareness without God, as in Buddhist thought. This knowledge, that results from a turning inward, is frequently understood as somewhat of an answer to existential questions. In this respect, every mystic is also a seeker after answers to existential problems, even though the term “religious existentialism” is most closely associated with Kierkegaard, whose thought is based on Kantian philosophy, which assumes the impossibility of direct contact with the absolute realm of the divine. The accepted tendency to view every inward-focused and contemplative religious experience as a unio mystica limits, from the outset, the scope of the phenomena associated with inward focusing. A concept such as unio

212

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

mystica is not relevant for Buddhism, even though the Buddhist contemplative methods are based on introspective and inward focusing and inner concentration no less than the inward-looking methods of the monotheistic religions. The multifaceted context of monotheistic inner religious life includes inward focusing that emphasizes the aspiration to draw close to God and unite with Him, while other inner directions lead to standing before God. Each assumes that both union with and standing before God are dependent on what happens in the individual’s inner world when he focuses inwards. Simone Weil defined prayer as “absolutely unmixed attention.”1 Such a definition, that speaks of the situation in which man stands before God, assumes that the worshiper is not eager to set forth his requests, which reflect his life in the outer world, but rather makes room within himself for this attentiveness. The experiences illustrated in the preceding chapter were defined as being of verbal or visual content, but most of the following experiences are depicted as sensations lacking visual or aural-verbal content. Steven Katz argues against the existence of such noncontentual experiences. This argument is meant to counter William James’s influential approach, which stresses the experiential and universal nature common to the different aspects of the religious experience, and specifically, those of the mystic experience.2 1 Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Arthur Wills (New York: Putnam’s, 1952), 170–76. 2 “This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note” (James, Varieties, 419). This thought is seconded by Underhill: “whatever the place or period in which they have arisen, their aims, doctrines and methods have been substantially the same,” Mysticism, 3. The arguments concerning the constant dependence of mysticism on a certain type of universal human experience remained current throughout the twentieth century, and gained more force in recent decades. In the middle of the 1970s, Frits Staal attacked Underhill in his book Exploring Mysticism, claiming that she limited James’s general definitions. To a certain extent, Staal’s book is a scholarly continuation of Aldous Huxley’s literary work (Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell [New York: Harper and Row, 1956]). On the conceptual continuity between James and Huxley, see Robert Charles Zaehner, Zen, Drugs and Mysticism (New York: Pantheon, 1972). Staal maintains that mysticism is a consciousness-expanding experience independent of religious belief, and especially theistic belief. Rather, it is interpreted by believers in the context of their specific culture

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

According to Katz, “There are no pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences.  .  .  . That is to say, all experience is processed through, organized by, and makes itself available to us in extremely complex epistemological ways.”3 Thus, not only are the various mysticisms completely dependent on their disparate sociological and cultural backgrounds, their typical experiences are the product of epistemological processes contingent on that same sociological and cultural background, thereby precluding non-contentual experiences. The distinction drawn between verbal and visual experiences (discussed in the preceding chapter), on the one hand, and, on the other, non-contentual experiences (which we will discuss below) undermines Katz’s unequivocal determination and demonstrates that the religious literature itself distinguishes between the two experiential categories. A specific comparison between these two types within the same spiritual environment (as in our comparison within the Hasidic context) gives added force to my argument.4 Abstract ideas and mythic conceptions existed alongside one another in the complex world of the Baal Shem Tov, although the demythification orientation that was present to some extent among many of his disciples explains the disparity between how the Hasidic writings portray his experiences and those of his followers. These dissimilarities continued to exist among different Hasidic masters across the generations. The non-contentual and non-mythic characterization of the experiences described below are related to the weakening of the mythical component following the rise of rational elements in the thought of those undergoing them.5 Individuals engaged in contemplative states whose reli(Staal, Exploring Mysticism: A Methodological Essay [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975], 156–58, 195–96). 3 Steven T. Katz, Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 25–26. For a direct response to Katz’s arguments, see Robert K. C. Forman, The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 9–10. Forman devotes his entire book to countering Katz’s arguments. These two contradictory orientations in the study of mysticism are also discussed in three additional books edited by Katz: Mysticism and Religious Traditions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Mysticism and Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); and Mysticism and Sacred Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 4 Compare the descriptions of the nonverbal Hasidic prayer experiences at the end of the current chapter (in the discussion of prayer and inward contemplation in Hasidism) with the portrayals of the Baal Shem Tov’s spiritual ascents (above, 203–6.) 5 On the characteristic features of mythic thought from this point of view, see Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2: Mythical Thought, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955).

213

214

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

gious-mythical thought waned and collapsed due to rational thought or other cultural influences tend to portray their experiences as non-contentual and in general and universal terms, more so than those whose consciousness was fashioned by mythic religious thought. Not surprisingly, in the controversy aroused by Katz many of the universalists were scholars who had engaged in contemplative spiritual exercises.

Buddhist and Zen Buddhist Meditation Two different meditative directions appear in Buddhism: one is described by the Sanskrit term śamatha [samadhi], and the other, vipaŚyanā [in Pali: vipassana]. Śamatha meditation [with the literal meaning of “silence”], concentrates thought on a single object, in order to silence the stream of thoughts and inner sensations and to attain serenity of both mind and body. The second meditative path is that of insight: meditation meant to increase awareness of and sensitivity to the world perceived by the meditator.6 Both meditative systems, of concentration and insight, exist in Theravada Buddhism.7 As Griffiths showed, both these types of meditative practice are present in the Theravada canon, with a distinct awareness of the essential difference between them, as regards both their psychological influences and their differing goals. Griffiths argues that attempts by Theravada Buddhist teachers to resolve the tension between these two directions are fruitless. This lack of success can be explained by the differing psychological states induced by the two kinds of meditation. The insightful way leads to a redemptive state of mind based on discursive thought that adopts the Buddhist metaphysical categories, which focus on individual redemption. The path of concentration silences the consciousness and thereby overcomes all pain.8 The path suggested by Japanese Zen Buddhism, which stems from Mahayana Buddhism and Chinese Taoism, is different. Herrigel portrays the essence of teaching Zen by different skills: . . . all right doing is accomplished only in a state of true selflessness, in which the doer cannot be present any longer as “himself.” Only the spirit is present, 6 Young, “Buddhist Meditation.” See above 169 n. 28 7 The only Hinayana school that survived as a living religion, practiced in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. 8 Paul Griffith, “Concentration or Insight: The Problematic of Therevada Buddhist Meditation-Theory,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 49, no. 4 (1981): 605– 24; see esp. the summation, 618.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

a kind of awareness which shows no trace of egohood and for that reason ranges without limit through all distances and depths, with “eyes that hear and with ears that see.” . . . The pupil understands him [= the teacher] even when he keeps silent. The important thing is that an inward movement is thereby initiated. The teacher pursues it, and, without influencing its course with further instructions which would merely disturb it, helps the pupil in the most secret and intimate way he knows: by direct transference of the spirit, as it is called in Buddhist circles. “Just as one uses a burning candle to light others with,” so the teacher transfers the spirit of the right art from heart to heart, that it may be illumined. If such should be granted to the pupil, he remembers that more important than all outward works, however attractive, is the inward work which he has to accomplish if he is to fulfill his vocation as an artist. . . . The art of the inner work, which unlike the outer does not forsake the artist, which he does not “do” and can only “be,” springs from depths of which the day knows nothing.9

In contrast with Theravada Buddhism, the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, which was founded in the thirteenth century by the Buddhist monk Dogen, clearly choses between the two directions described above. Young explains that this Zen school does not regard meditation as a means to an end, nor does it distinguish between means and end. He writes: Soto Zen advocates something called “just sitting.” If meditation is a journey, it is a journey to where one is. The distance separating starting point and goal is zero. The mystic’s freedom is none other than noticing that the bonds do not exist to begin with. In ultimate terms, to create in people’s minds a solidified concept of enlightenment as a future goal is already to mislead them in some way. . . . Soto Zen is the ultimately simple form of vipaŚyanā practice in which one is simply totally aware from moment to moment of the fact of the body sitting.10

9 Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery, trans. R. F. C. Hull (New York: Pantheon, 1959), 67–69. This book, by a lecturer of philosophy in Heidelberg, who spent six years with his wife in the 1930s learning the art of archery and Japanese flower arrangement, made a considerable contribution to the dissemination of Zen teachings in the West. 10 Young, “Buddhist Meditation,” 233–34. Shunryu Suzuki was the leading Soto teacher in the United States in the 1960s until his death in 1971. On the way in which he taught Soto Zen in America, see Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, ed. Trudy Dixon (New York: Weatherhill, 1991).

215

216

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

As I mentioned in the preceding chapter, Otto defined the mysticism of knowledge as a synthesis between these two paths: what he called the “Mystik der Selbstversenkung” [introspective mysticism] and the “mysticism of unifying vision” that is based on an intuitive look at the multiplicity of the outer world.11 The inclusion of Buddhist meditative trends in our discussion seemingly confirms Otto’s distinction between the two aspects of mystical knowledge. These descriptions, which highlight the differences between the two worldviews, teach that basing these disparities in the differences between introverted and extroverted personality types (introspective mysticism and the mysticism of the unifying vision, respectively) trivializes the distinction, even if differences between the personalities of the founders of the different methods had some impact on their teachings. I find it more fruitful to speak of two types of introspection distinguished by the different purposes they serve, similar to the distinctions between the Buddhist meditative schools.

The Roots of Introspective Contemplation in Western Culture and Rudolf Otto’s Theory Plato plainly calls for inward contemplation: “And does not the purification consist in this which has been mentioned long ago in our discourse, in separating, so far as possible, the soul from the body and teaching the soul the habit of collecting and bringing itself together from all parts of the body, and living, so far as it can, both now and hereafter, alone by itself, freed from the body as from fetters?”12 Then if an eye is to see itself, it must look at an eye, and at that region of the eye in which the virtue of an eye is found to occur; and this, I presume, is sight. . . . And if the soul too, my dear Alcibiades, is to know herself, she must surely look at a soul, and especially at that region of it in which occurs the virtue of a soul—wisdom, and at any other part of a soul which resembles this?13

11 Otto, East and West, 38–43. 12 The words of Socrates in Plato, Phaedo, 67. For English translation, see Plato, Euthyphro, Apology, Phaedo, Phaedrus, trans. Harold North Fowler, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 36 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 232–33. 13 Plato, Alcibiades, trans. W. R. M. Lamb, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 201 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 210–11.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

Plato explicitly speaks of the inward focusing of the soul, with an increasing distancing from the body, as the soul seeks to be freed of its bonds. In the Enneads of Plotinus, Plato’s thoughts regarding the soul’s contemplation of itself become a description of what the classical and scholarly literatures perceive as a mystic experience: Often I have woken up out of the body to my self and have entered into myself, going out from all other things; I have seen a beauty wonderfully great and felt assurance that then most of all I belonged to the better part; I have actually lived the best life and come to identify with the divine; and set firm in it I have come to that supreme actuality, setting myself above all else in the realm of Intellect. Then after that rest in the divine, when I have come down from Intellect to discursive reasoning, I am puzzled how I ever came down, and how my soul has come to be in the body when it is what it has shown itself to be by itself, even when it is in the body.14

Brehier took note of the inner nature of Plotinus’ mystical experience: “In general, directing one’s self toward the higher principle is not coming out of one’s self but turning inward upon one’s self.”15 As Armstrong showed, Plotinus himself, who, too, was aware of the inward focus of this experience, did not assume the complete identity of the inner “I” and the One.16 . . . so that Intellect is at a loss to know whence it [= the light] has appeared, whether it has come from outside or within, and after it has gone away will say “It was within, and yet it was not within.” But one should not enquire whence it comes, for there is no “whence”: for it does not really come or go away anywhere, but appears or does not appear. So one must not chase after

14 Plotinus, Ennead IV.8: “On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies,” 1. For English translation, see Plotinus with an English Translation, trans. A. H. Armstrong, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 443 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 396–97. 15 Emile Brehier, The Philosophy of Plotinus, trans. Joseph Thomas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 163. Martin Buber wrote in a similar spirit. See his Ecstatic Confessions, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr, trans. Esther Cameron (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 3–5. 16 Arthur Hilary Armstrong, “Plotinus,” in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. Armstrong (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 261–63.

217

218

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

it, but wait quietly till it appears, preparing oneself to contemplate it, as the eye awaits the rising of the sun.17

Additionally, we see in these passages that Plotinus grappled with the question of the relationship between the inner and the cosmic divine, as was noted by Armstrong,18 thus raising the problematic of means and ends. Are human preparations a means to the occurrence of activity that is not dependent solely on man, or perhaps the means is completely identical with the full realization of the experience? Plotinus evidently stressed the unified nature of full inward focusing and also realized that this abstract experience is free of any form, including rational ones. The essence of this nature obligates the seeker of unification to detach himself from the outer reality: But if this is so, the soul must let go of all outward things and turn altogether to what is within, and not be inclined to any outward thing, but ignoring all things (as it did formerly in sense-perception, but then in the realm of Forms), and even ignoring itself, come to be in contemplation of that One, and having been in its company and had, so to put it, sufficient converse with it, come and announce, if it could, to another that transcendent union.19

Like Plato, Plotinus stresses the connection between meditation and retreat from outwardness, but he focuses, not on physicality, but on thought, in images of the outer world. Unio mystica is presented quite distinctly in the following passage from the sixth Ennead: And we shall no longer be surprised if that which produces these strangely powerful longings is altogether free from even intelligible shape; since the soul also, when it gets an intense love of it, puts away all the shape which it has, even whatever shape of the intelligible there may be in it. For it is not possible for one who has anything else and is actively occupied about it to see or to be fitted in. But one must not have evil, or any other good either, 17 Plotinus, Ennead V.5: “That the Intelligibles Are Not Outside the Intellect, and on the Good,” 7–8. For English translation, see Plotinus with an English Translation, trans. A. H. Armstrong, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 444 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 178–79. 18 Armstrong, “The Apprehension of the Divinity in the Self and Cosmos in Plotinus,” in The Significance of Neoplatonism, ed. R. Baine Harris (Norfolk: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 1976), 187–98. 19 Plotinus, Ennead VI.9: “On the Good or the One,” 7. For English translation, see Plotinus with an English Translation, trans. A. H. Armstrong, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 468 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 328–29.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

ready to hand, that the soul alone may receive it alone. But when the soul has good fortune with it, and it comes to it, or rather, being there already, appears, when that soul turns away from the things that are there . . . and it [= the soul] sees it in itself suddenly appearing (for there is nothing between, nor are there still two but both are one; nor could you still make a distinction while it is present; lovers and their beloveds here below imitate this in their will to be united).20

For Plotinus, the inward focusing that leads to unification is conditional on freeing one’s thought of all the positive and negative images that usually fill a person’s mind. At the height of this inward focusing, in which the mind detaches itself from all imagery, space is vacated within it for the presence of the One. The soul gazes upon a presence that is not of the intellect, and its voiding makes possible its unification with this presence. At the end of the sixth Ennead, Plotinus speaks of this state of unity: Since, then, there were not two, but the seer himself was one with the seen (for it was not really seen, but united to him), if he remembers who he became when he was united with that, he will have an image of that in himself. He was one himself, with no distinction in himself either in relation to himself or to other things—for there was no movement in himself either in relation to himself or to other things—for there was no movement in him and he had no emotion, no desire for anything else when he had made the ascent—but there was not even any reason or thought, and he himself was not there, if we must even say this; but he was as if carried away or possessed by a god, in a quiet solitude and a state of calm, not turning away anywhere in his being and not busy about himself, altogether at rest and having become a kind of rest. . . . But that other, perhaps, was not a contemplation but another kind of seeing, a being out of oneself [an ekstasis] and simplifying and giving oneself over and pressing towards contact and rest and a sustained thought leading to adaptation, if one is going to contemplate what is in the sanctuary.21

Plotinus uses the imagery of lovers as merely analogous to unification. It is only apparent unification, since it is actually a change that occurs in the individual’s inner consciousness, and the seer and the seen are one and the same. He portrays this inner state as being drawn upwards, something 20 Plotinus, Ennead VI:7: “How the Multitude of the Forms Came into Being, and on the Good,” 34 (trans.: Plotinus, 468:190–93). 21 Plotinus, Ennead VI:9: “On the Good or the One,” 11 (trans.: Plotinus, 468:340–43).

219

220

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

distinctly reminiscent of the Hebrew aliyat ha-neshamah [spiritual ascent; literally, “ascent of the soul”]. Plotinus specifies that he is not speaking of visions, but of ecstasy, that is, the individual’s leaving himself, which he also calls “simplifying,” “giving oneself over,” “rest,” or “adaptation” (all these terms will be discussed below, in relation to the Jewish sources). The ecstatic states described in the sixth Ennead result from inward focusing. This is a patently inner process, and all the passages in his writings that describe these experiences in seemingly external terms, such as vision and sight, ascent, or unification, are not to be understood literally, but as inner metaphors that allude to the experience, but do not attest to interaction with an outer entity. This draws into even sharper focus the question of the connection between the inner contemplative experience depicted by Plotinus in his writings and the theoretical framework in which he anchors such experiences. The basic assumption made by Rudolf Otto in Mysticism East and West is the immanence of the mystic’s God, unlike the transcendent personal God of the religious believer.22 For Otto, mysticism, when most intense, is consciously capable of incorporating the outer sight of the intellect (that of the unifying vision) with inner sight (introspective mysticism).23 Otto emphasized that introspective (inner) and unifying-vision (outer) mysticisms existed side by side for the great mystics, that is, Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, and Shankara. He nonetheless sharply distinguished between the 22 Otto, East and West, 140. 23 Ibid., 254–62. Otto’s understanding resembles the view of psychologists who study the brain and the differing functioning of its left and right lobes. Psychology maintains that the human brain possesses two different means of perceiving the reality, one intuitive and the other analytic. (Otto, however, argues that intuitiveness is characteristic of both the internalizing and the externalizing aspect.) The studies, beginning in the 1970s, of Robert Orenstein, who asserts the existence of two distinct sides in the human brain, the experiential, internalizing side (the intuitive), and the rational, externalizing side (the analytical), that are bridged by a ramified system of linkages, which explains how the thought processes of mystics take place, are noteworthy in this context (Robert E. Orenstein, The Psychology of Consciousness [San Francisco: Freeman, 1972], 135–40). Just as Otto’s book presents Shankara and Meister Eckhart as examples of praiseworthy individuals whose personality incorporates both aspects, the internalizing (introspective mysticism) and the externalizing (mysticism of the unifying vision), so too, researchers of the two sides of the brain see the connection and incorporation of both sides as the ideal model. Individuals with a one-sided personality definitely express one of these two aspects, reflected in their spiritual world and preferred features of mysticism. (Cf. Jung’s integrative conception, especially in relation to anima and animus: Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, 88–111.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

two: “It [the unifying vision] knows nothing of ‘inwardness.’”24 This assertion, that Stace developed into a consolidated theory of introverted and extroverted mysticisms,25 does not accord with the works by important scholars of neo-Platonism in the second half of the twentieth century.26 Wallis showed that Plotinus’ writings about the “NOUS,” the “intelligible world,” were based on an intuitive psychological experience, no less than what he said about personal introspection.27 Wallis grounds his argument with examples from Western culture and from Hindu and Buddhist mysticism. Any mystical teaching that, following Otto, can be classified as an extroverted mysticism of knowledge, contains inner testimony to the existence of personal experiences upon which its metaphysical-mystical formulation is founded.28 Otto’s attempt to erect a substantive barrier between inner mystical experience and outer mystical knowledge encounters formidable difficulties. It would be preferable to say, for instance, that Shankara and Meister Eckhart reflect a synthesis of different meditative aims and techniques, which might trace their origins to different personality traits. This notion is closer to Wallis’s conclusions regarding the connection between mystical experience and theory.

Plotinus and Philo The classical scholar E. R. Dodds maintained that Plotinus’ conception of unio mystica had two sources: Numenius of Apamea in Syria, and Philo 24 Otto, East and West, 42. 25 Above, in the introduction, 17 n. 34. 26 For example, Emile Brehier, “Mysticisme et doctrine chez Plotin,” Sophia 16 (1948): 122–85; idem, Philosophy of Plotinus, 146–63; Armstrong, “Plotinus,” 258–63; Richard T. Wallis, Neoplatonism (London: Duckworth, 1972), 1–15. See also Wallis, “NOUS as Experience,” in The Significance of Neoplatonism, ed. R. Baine Harris (Norfolk: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 1976), 143 n. 1. For another singular approach to the nature of Plotinus’s rational mysticism, see Philip Merlan, Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness: Problems of the Soul in the Neoaristotelian and Neoplatonic Traditions (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), 20–22. 27 Wallis, “NOUS,” 121–25. Wallis exemplifies his argument especially with the Sixth Ennead, 7:12, 15. Against the prominence given to mysticism in the philosophy of Plotinus, see Joseph Katz, Plotinus’ Search for the Good (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1950); Lloyd P. Gerson, Plotinus (London: Routledge, 1994), 203–24. Against Wallis’s argument on the primacy of the experience, see Gerson, Plotinus, 221 n. 42. 28 Wallis, “NOUS,” 126–43. The examples are taken from, inter alia, Homer, Philo, Plato’s Seventh Letter, Schopenhauer, and the letters of the Buddhist Lama Anagorika Govinda.

221

222

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

of Alexandria;29 but Dodds also was aware of the significant difference between Plotinus’ theory of the ecstatic experience and that espoused by Philo.30 He stated that Philo’s depictions, which are closer to the experience described by Plotinus, speak of a supernatural spirit that descends into a person’s body and not of a person who ascends, by his own powers, above his body. A different impression, however, is gained from Philo’s portrayal in De Vita Contemplativa of the “drunkenness in which there is no shame” of the members of the sect at the end of their sacred banquet: Then they sing hymns to God composed of many measures and set to many melodies, sometimes chanting together, sometimes taking up the harmony antiphonally, hands and feet keeping time in accompaniment, and rapt with enthusiasm reproduce sometimes the lyrics of the procession, sometimes of the halt and of the wheeling and counter-wheeling of a choric dance. Then when each choir has separately done its own part in the feast, having drunk as in the Bacchic rites of the strong wine of God’s love they mix and both together become a single choir, a copy of the choir set up of old beside the Red Sea in honour of the wonders there wrought. . . . Note in response to note and voice to voice, the treble of the women blending with the bass of the men, create an harmonious consent, music in the truest sense. Lovely are the thoughts, lovely the words and worthy of reverence the choristers, and the end and aim of thoughts, words and choristers alike in piety. Thus they continue till dawn, drunk with this drunkenness in which there is no shame, then not with heavy heads or drowsy eyes but more awake and wakeful than when they came to the banquet, they stand with their faces and whole body turned to the east and when they see the sun rising they stretch their hands up to heaven and pray for bright days and knowledge of the truth and the power of keen sighted thinking.31 29 Eric Robertson Dodds, “Numenius and Ammonius,” in Dodds, Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique, vol. 5: Les sources de Plotin (Vandoeuvres: Fondation Hardt, 1960), 17–18; idem, Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (New York: Norton, 1970), 93–96. On the affinity between Philo and Plotinus, see also Idel, New Perspectives, 39 and nn. 13–17. 30 Dodds, Pagans and Christians, 71–72. See also David Winston, “Philo and the Contemplative Life,” in Jewish Spirituality, vol. 1: From the Bible through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 223–26. 31 Philo, De Vita Contemplativa 84–85 and 88–89. For English translation, see Philo, De Vita Contemplativa (On the Contemplative Life, or Suppliants) trans. Francis Henry Colson, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 363 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), 164–65 and 166–69.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

Philo terms the ecstatic state of the sect members as “this drunkenness in which there is no shame,” and in other places, “the intoxication not of wine,” “sober intoxication,” or “the drunkenness which is soberness itself.”32 This spiritual intoxication is characterized by inner joy, mental clarity, and alertness, but not by an external spiritual entity penetrating the bodies of the celebrants. The state depicted by Philo results from a collective experience engendered by religious singing and dancing, but I do not find any reason to imagine that the term “drunkenness” points to the entrance of an external spirit into these individuals. This is a mental state that is the direct consequence of the singing and the special atmosphere that reigned the entire night. A comparison of the Plotinian inward-focused experience and that of the Therapeutae banquet is essential for understanding the similarities and contrasts between the various experiences that scholarly research lumps together as “ecstatic experience.” The former is the product of an inward focusing, while the latter is a collective experience brought about by singing and dancing rites that, according to Philo, originated in the Israelites’ Song at the Sea in Exodus 15. Although this does not present an inward-focused action as in the Enneads, Philo, too, paints a picture of the participants’ mental state that is achieved by religious ceremoniousness, on the background of the contents of the psalms.33 The descriptions by 32 Philo, De Vita Mosis I:187. For English translation, see Philo, De Vita Mosis (Moses), trans. Francis Henry Colson, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 289 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935), 372–73. Idem, De Opificio Mundi 71. For English translation, see idem, De Opificio Mundi (On the Account of the World’s Creation Given by Moses), trans. Francis Henry Colson and G. H. Whitaker, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 226 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), 56–57. Idem, Legum Allegoria I:84. For English translation, see idem, Legum Allegoria (Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis II., III.), trans. Francis Henry Colson and G. H. Whitaker, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 226 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), 202–203. Idem, De Fuga et Inventione 166. For English translation see idem, De Fuga et Inventione (On Flight and Finding), trans. Francis Henry Colson and G. H. Whitaker, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 275 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 100–101. Idem, Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit 13. For English translation, see idem, Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit (Every Good Man Is Free), trans. Francis Henry Colson, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 363 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), 16–19. 33 See the proposal by Pedaya, Vision and Speech, 31. Her use of the Hebrew word hitpa’amut instead of the usual Hebraization of “ecstasy” to describe the experience of seeing God does not take into account the difference between religious activity meant to attain inner spiritual awareness and that which uses trances and autosuggestion to attain divine visions. Consequently, the meaning she gives to this term is not helpful in distinguishing between these two very distinct spiritual states.

223

224

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

Philo and by Plotinus differ from one another: Philo’s enables the reader to sense that the inner nature of the sect members’ religious experience is not necessarily connected to leaving their bodies, while Plotinus describes an experiential process that leads, inter alia, to an inner sensation of the soul’s departure from physicality. There are rites that employ song and dance that put some of their participants into an out-of-body trance. Philo’s description does not hint at such an experience, but this is obviously a possibility. One difference between such a trance and the Plotinian experience relates to the individual’s consciousness of what is happening. Plotinus speaks of inner focusing, of a process that occurs within one’s consciousness, without involving the loss of one’s self-awareness, while a trance is defined as a disassociative state characterized by automatic (that is, involuntary) movements or mental activity.34 It seems that Philo’s presentation of “drunkenness in which there is no shame” refers to conscious excitement accompanied by strong emotions caused by the rites, and not trancelike states. Notwithstanding this, Plotinian inner focusing or drunkenness in which there is “no shame” à la Philo could also bring some individuals to trance states with partial or full loss of control of their bodies and/ or thoughts.35 A distinction, however, must be drawn between a trance intended to extinguish consciousness in order to produce a hypnotic state, as in the descriptions in the preceding chapter, and a trance that arises incidentally during the course of religious activity meant to effect inner change of the consciousness, with maximal wakefulness. The Plotinian experience and that of Philo both take place with a paramount consciousness and spiritual alertness that is connected with freeing consciousness from everyday life, forgetting the body, and focusing on the sublimity of the divine. The differences between them are, primarily, due to cultural and social disparities at the core of the differing aims of the religious activity and, in some small degree, also the product of personality differences. 34 Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 33–34. 35 I witnessed such a state during a Sufi dhikr ceremony in which I participated in Sakhnin, in Galilee, in the winter of 2008. At the conclusion of the singing and dancing, one of the participants entered a trance, in which he remained for five to ten minutes. He began to breathe abnormally, and he walked around the room without being in control of his movements, until he sat and calmed down. After he had left the room, the head of the group, sheikh Abu Falastin, said that the poor man was in an unpleasant and unnecessary condition.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

Are Dualistic Conceptions Related to Inward Focusing? Platonic introspective contemplation famously entails, and is dependent on, liberation from the bonds of the body. Plotinus attempted to overcome Platonic dualism with Aristotelian doctrine, but his writings demonstrate his inability to completely prevail over the rejection of the physical outer world to enable inward meditation.36 The transferal of Platonic and Gnostic dualism to monastic Christianity37 added force to Western culture’s assumption of a direct connection between any inner focusing and bodysoul dualism. In this context we must ask: to what degree does any meditative introspective contemplation entail the invalidation or rejection of the outer, material world? Despite the clear body-soul distinction in Indian culture, Buddhism reflects a different relationship between the physical and the spiritual. For the Buddhist, the material and the spiritual are two facets of the same phenomenal reality, and both are dependent on contact, that is, experiential processes. Without the sensory organs, consciousness cannot come into being, and without consciousness, the body cannot exist. In the common Buddhist metaphor “like two sheaves of reeds stacked together” they depend on each other for support.38 According to Buddhist concepts, at this first breakthrough one realizes “noself.” But this expression (anatman), which Buddhists are so fond of, can be very misleading. At first blush, the idea seems uninviting if not absurd. It sounds like a negation of individuality, a frightening loss of controlling center, or a kind of deluded regression. But what is meant by no-self is becoming free from the concept of self (satkayadrsti). And this is not quite the same thing as losing self, nor does it necessarily imply the absence of a concept of self.39 36 Brehier, Philosophy of Plotinus, 164–81; Arthur Hilary Armstrong, The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), 83–97; Eyjolfur Kjalar Emilsson, Plotinus on Sense-Perception: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 101–106, 145–48. 37 See Arthur Hilary Armstrong, “Dualism: Platonic, Gnostic, and Christian,” in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, ed. Richard T. Wallis (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 33–54. 38 Lydia Aran, Lydia. Buddhism: Introduction to the Religion and Philosophy of Buddhism [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1993), 38. 39 Young, “Buddhist Meditation,” 230–31.

225

226

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

In his discussion of the connection between yoga and alchemy, Eliade mentioned the notion common to both regarding transformability between the physical and the spiritual, that is based on the doctrines of proximity and continuity between the material and the spiritual, instead of dualism and dichotomies: The “elixer” obtained by alchemy corresponds to the “immortality” pursued by tantric yoga; just as the disciple works directly on his body and his psychomental life in order to transmute the flesh into a “divine body” and free the Spirit, so the alchemist works on matter to change it into “gold”— that is, to hasten its process of maturation, to “finish” it. Hence there is an occult correspondence between “matter” and man’s physico-psychic body— which will not surprise us if we remember the homology man-cosmos, so important in tantrism.40

Thus, despite the Western tendency to identify every sort of inner-focused mysticism with quietism and the negation of outer reality, introspective mysticism need not necessarily intend to nullify earthly materiality. In certain instances, it can effect transition and change within the material, which it transforms into a spiritual entity. Hollenback writes that the similarity between inner-focused mystical experiences and paranormal phenomena reveals that the former are not dependent on dualistic conceptions, but on recollection, which sets the background for conscious out-of-body experiences. The empowerment of thought, will, and imagination by means of concentration demonstrated in parapsychological phenomena stands in contrast to what dualistic approaches suggest. The latter tend to make ecstasy dependent on the separation of the body and the soul, which was most pronounced in the quietist approaches characteristic of medieval Christianity. Paranormal phenomena indicate that this is a conscious departure from the body by power of concentration. This essentially dynamic departure can be realized again by the power of thought in physical reality, even when the latter is physically distant from the body of the one undergoing the experience, as in instances of telekinesis.41

40 Eliade, Yoga, 283. On the relationship between the spiritual and nature in the philosophy of yoga, see ibid., 26–30. 41 Hollenback, Mysticism, 150–79.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

Inward Focusing in Christianity and Islam Plotinian inward focusing profoundly influenced Christian and in Islamic practices. Augustine was the first to document this. In Book VII of his Confessions he reviews what he read in the Platonic writings, and what he did not find there, but only in the New Testament:42 And being hence admonished to return to myself, I entered even into mine own inwards, thou being my Leader: and able I was to do it, for thou wert now become my Helper. Into myself I went, and with the eyes of my soul (such as it was) I discovered over the same eye of my soul, over my mind, the unchangeable light of the Lord: not this vulgar light, which all flesh may look upon, nor yet another greater of the same kind; as if this should shine much and much more clearly, and with its greatness take up all the room. This light was none of that, but another, yea clean another from all these. Nor was it in that manner above my mind, as oil is upon water, nor yet as the heaven is above the earth: but superior to my soul, because it made me; and I was inferior to it, because I was made by it. He that knows what truth is, knows what that light is; and he that knows it, knows eternity. Charity knows it. . . . And I cast mine eyes upon those other creatures beneath thee, and I perceived, that they neither have any absolute being, nor yet could they be said to have no being. A being they have, because they are from thee: and yet no being, because what thou art, they are not. For that truly hath a being, which remains unchangeably. It is good then for me to hold fast unto God: for if I remain not in him, I shall never be able to do it in myself: whereas he remaining in himself, reneweth all things. And thou art my Lord, since thou dost not stand in need of my goods.

Augustine identifies God, the Creator of the world and his personal Creator—the true and eternal being, with what was revealed to him during his “Plotinian” inner focusing. Augustine’s confession suggests a mystical experience,43 which, according to his testimony, also offers a definitive existential answer: “for if I do not abide in him, I can do nothing.”44 42 Augustine, Confessions, VII, x (16)–xi (17). For English translation see Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 123–24. 43 Hollenback, Mysticism, 38–39. 44 Philip Cary, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 31–44. See the discussion of existentialism and the mystical experience, below, chapter five, 358.

227

228

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

Christian monasticism developed spiritual techniques meant to enhance the worshiper’s meditative nature by Lectio Divina. In such study, which was compared to ruminating and was performed by the repetition and recitation of texts, the discursive study of Scripture was replaced by meditative contemplation. The content lost its meaning, in favor of the experience of inward absorption that lacks verbal or visual content and that creates the background for meditative prayer.45 Leclerq calls such study “active reading,” which he depicts as prayerful reading, following the counsel of the Cistercian Arnoul of Boheriss, which he quotes: “When he [= the worshiper] reads, let him seek for savor, not science. The Holy Scripture is the well of Jacob from which the waters are drawn which will be poured out later in prayer. Thus there will be no need to go to the oratory to begin to pray; but in reading itself, means will be found for prayer and contemplation.46

Johannes Tauler, the German mystic who developed the notion of the “depths of the soul,” described the great mystical experience as moments of profound absorption in the divine spark: No created light can penetrate these depths, in which God alone dwells. All Creation cannot fill this abyss or plumb its depths. No man can do this, only God alone in His limitlessness. Only the godly depths can communicate with the depths of the soul. “Deep calls to deep” [Ps. 42:7]. . . . Notwithstanding all the rational thoughts that a person can have regarding the Trinity—and there are people who engage in such thoughts—no one is capable of penetrating this solitude. No, certainly not. It is so inner, so deep within us, beyond time and place. It is absolutely simple, without any special prominence, and whoever succeeds in entering it will feel as if they dwelled there forever, unified with God. Although these moments are fleeting, they are experienced as if they were eternal.47

Continuing in the same spirit as Tauler, Underhill examined various aspects of Christian inner focusing in the two “Introversion” chapters in her book.48 45 Jean Leclerq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961), 71–76. 46 Speculum monachorum I (PL 184.1175) (cited in Leclerq, Love of Learning, 73). 47 Tauler, Predigten, 336. 48 Underhill, Mysticism, 298–357.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

As regards the Muslim world, Altmann wrote that the ecstatic experiential portrayal of the ascent of the soul that appears in the fourth Ennead (8:1) is especially prominent in the writings of al-Farabi, and was known to various Jewish thinkers,49 through the formulation in the pseudo-Aristotlean book Theology of Aristotle.50 In the Sufi world, the story of Muhammad’s spiritual ascent, at the beginning of Sura 17 in the Quran, is understood as representing an inner experience.51 In Sufism, especially in the writings of Abu al-Mugit Husayn Mansur al-Hallaj (executed in Baghdad in 922), particularly in chapters 4 and 5 of his book Kitab al-Tawasin,52 and in the dicta of the Persian Sufi teacher Abu Yazid al-Bastami (who died in the middle

49 Alexander Altmann, and Samuel Miklos Stern, Isaac Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 191–92. 50 Alexander Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism,” In Biblical and Other Studies, edited by Alexander Altmann, 196–232. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963. 225. On the Arabic version and the English translation of the Plotinian passage in Aristotle’s Theology, see Howard Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 627 n. 13. For a discussion on the book in the medieval world, see Paul Fenton, “The Arabic and Hebrew Version of the Theology of Aristotle.” In Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts, ed. J. Kraye, W. F. Ryan, and C. B. Schmitt, 241–64 (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1986). 51 See Alexander Altmann, “The Ladder of Ascension,” in Biblical and Other Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 41–72, who mentions the article by Joseph Horovitz, “Muhammeds Himmelfahrt,” Der Islam 11 (1919): 159–83, which alludes to Muhammed’s possible acquaintance with a number of sources, including the narrative of Jacob’s ladder in Gen. 28, the depictions of ascents to Heaven in Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and the Ascension of Isaiah, and the ecstatic techniques of Yordei Merkabah and Heikhalot Rabbah, chap. 15. According to Altmann, the narrative in the Quran was interpreted in three different ways in the Islamic culture: literally, especially by Al-Tabari (839–923); in Sufism, as interiorization; and as a neo-Platonic allegory, especially in Islamic philosophical works. See Altmann’s references to the book Rasail Ikhwan al-Safa (Cairo, 1928) (Altmann, “Ladder of Ascension,” 44–45) and to Kitab al-Hadaiq by the Spanish philosopher Ibn al-Sid al-Batalyusi (1052–1127) (ibid., 46–47). In my opinion, by casting the Neoplatonist interpretation in a solely allegorical light, Altmann contradicts the testimony that he himself brought of al-Farabi’s knowledge of Neoplatonist ecstasies depicted above. That is, the Neoplatonist interpretation of spiritual ascents, which was so influential for Jewish philosophy and the Kabbalah, could have been merely an ideational allegory, as Altmann argues, but there is no question that it could also have served as the basis for experiential interiorization. 52 See al-Hallaj, Kitab al Tawasin: Kamran, Ana al-haqq. On al-Hallaj, see Lois Massignon, The Passion of al-Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam, trans. Herbert Mason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).

229

230

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

of the ninth century), who depicted his personal ascents to heaven, this elevation was perceived as the inner ascent of the spirit. In Sufi mystical prayer, the worshiper introspectively contemplates his soul, and realizes that the very possibility of prayer means God’s acting within the worshiper. As Rumi asserts: “If they that are thirsty seek water from the world (yet) water too seeks in the world them that are thirsty.”53 Schimmel quotes Ibn Qayyim al-Jauziyya (died 1350) as saying: “And He is the Most High who praises Himself through the tongue of the praising one.”54 In the depiction of the higher degrees of the Sufi dhikr, which is reminiscent of the Eastern meditations,55 the Sufi reaches a state of introspective contemplation in the course of which the boundaries between the subjective and the objective disappear. Schimmel exemplifies this state with quotations from Sufi teachers, including Shibli, who says: “True dhikr is that you forget your dhikr”;56 and Rumi: “I am not I, you are not you, nor are you I. I am at once I and you, you are at once you and I. In my relation to you, O beauty of Khotan, I am perplexed whether you are I or I am you.”57 These states, which epitomize unio mystica, raise the question of whether the regular categories of interiorization can apply to them. On the one hand, this state is clearly dependent upon inward focusing; while on the other, the internalizer attains a total negation of the distinction between inner and outer, and his entire outlook on the world is reversed. In his youth, Buber claimed that the entire unio mystica experience is the soul’s inward focusing (“standing”) within itself.58 Later in life, he realized that the importance of absorption within oneself lies in one’s ability to anticipate the actual encounter between a person and what is not him.59 The 53 Rumi, Mathnawi 1:1741. For English translation, see Jalal al-Din Rumi, The Mathnawi of Jalalu’ddin Rumi, vol. 2, ed. and trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (London: Luzac, 1968– 1972), 95. 54 Ibn Qayyim al-Jauziyya, Kitab asrar as-salat, fol. 14a (as cited in Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 164). On the entire issue, see Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 160–67. 55 See Ernst Bannerth, “Dhikr et Khalwa d’apres Ibn ‘At’ Allah,” Melanges 126 (1974): 65–90; and see also the references to a discussion of the parallels among Christian mystics, in India, and in Japan: Idel, New Perspectives, 322, nn. 153–156. 56 Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 172. See also the discussion on sama’ [the Sufi dance], 178–86. 57 Jalal al-Din Rumi, Ruba‘iyat hadrat-i Mawlana, following the translation of Goldziher, Introduction, 135. 58 Buber, Ecstatic Confessions, 2–4. 59 Buber, I and Thou, 84–93.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

American philosopher Clarence Irving Lewis explained in the following passage why, although the mystic can attain a vivid experience of presence and substantiality by means of inner focusing, this is still an intellective, and therefore inner, experience: The mystic, for example, values preeminently that experience which he interprets as being the immediate presence to, and coalescence with, his own mind of the transcendent object which he seeks. But he will readily grant the presence and determining character of conceptual interpretation in ordinary non-mystical experience. Only he condemns the object of such experience as illusion or mere appearance. The world of every-day is not, for him, ultimately real; or at least its true nature is not revealed in ordinary experience. The moment of true insight is that in which the distinctions and relations which discursive thought creates are shorn away and reality stands forth, in luminous immediacy, as it truly is. Now all men restrict the word “knowledge” to the apprehension of the real. Hence the mystic’s metaphysical conception, which leads him to use the word “real” differently than other men, likewise moves him to restrict the term “knowledge” to the peculiar experience in which this “reality” is apprehended. That in the ordinary experience which other men trust as truly cognitive, the element of interpretation is present, he fully recognizes and even insists upon. He recognizes also that this conceptual element represents something induced by the construction or attitude of the mind itself.60

Inward Focusing in Jewish Sources Inward Focusing in the World of the Sages of the Mishnah and Talmud The portrayals of R. Akiva’s ecstatic prayer61 attest to the considerable degree of his self-oblivion during prayer. These descriptions are reminiscent of the “prayer of the lips” researched by Naeh. This form of prayer was based on self-oblivion and limiting intellective intent and personal will, in

60 Clarence Irving Lewis, Mind and the World-Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (New York: Scribner’s, 1929), 37. What Lewis says is of special importance, since he was the student of James, Dewey, and Pierce. 61 BT Berakhot 31a; T Berakhot 3:5. See above, Chapter one, 92, n. 137.

231

232

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

order to achieve the “routinization” [shgirut] of prayer.62 The ecstatic prayer of Tannaim such as R. Hanina ben Dosa and R. Akiva counters Urbach’s and Halperin’s claims of the lack of evidence of ecstatic mysticism among the Tannaim.63 Those sages perceived routinized prayer, as Naeh explains, as evidence of its divine acceptance. Judging prayer by this criterion emphasizes its passive element: the more “routinized” the prayer [i.e., the more fluent its recitation], the less its dependence on the worshiper’s intents and desires. This element is the basis for the conception that regards the manner of a prayer’s occurrence as the sign of its acceptance: the speaker feels as if it is not his active consciousness that guides his speaking, but force majeure; as if he is being aided from Heaven, who is in partnership with him, in his prayer.64

The intent required of the worshiper by this understanding is not that of the words, nor “directing the heart to our Father in Heaven” (see M Rosh Hashanah 3:8) or to the Temple.65 This is a different sort of prayer, one made possible by restricting the worshiper’s self-will and self-consciousness, and openness to the spontaneous verbality that, at least to some extent, seems close to the phenomenon of prophesying. It is only the worshiper’s introspective contemplation of the manner of his prayer that can teach him whether it is routine or not. From this observation the worshiper reveals God active within him, and becomes aware of his prayer’s acceptance. This prayer is proximate to the late Kabbalistic phenomenon known as “the Divine Presence speaking from his throat,” that will be discussed below. I am not arguing that R. Hanina or R. Akiva themselves necessarily thought that prayer acceptance is a subjective event that takes place in a person’s psyche. Interiorization is expressed in the worshiper’s perception of his introspective self-contemplation, whether at the time of the event, or immediately afterwards. This contemplation leads to a religious experience 62 See Naeh, “‘Creates the Fruit’”; and the above discussion, chapter one, 93. 63 Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, “The Traditions of Merkabah Mysticism in the Tannaitic Period” [Heb], in Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom G. Scholem, ed. E. E. Urbach, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, and Ch. Wirszubski, Hebrew section (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967), 12–13; David J. Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1980), 183–84. In opposition to these approaches, see Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 82–93; Liebes, Sin of Elisha, 6–7. 64 Naeh, “‘Creates the Fruit,’” 191. 65 See above, chapter one, 92, n.135.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

of a sense of acceptance. In this manner R. Hanina, R. Akiva, and those worshiping in this way might very well (as Naeh argues) have been attentive to the prayer process, seeing it as an external act of lovingkindness in which the gates of Heaven are opened for them. Even if, however, this was their understanding of the process, the technique they employed was not one of conceptual, intellective contemplation, but rather of inner attentiveness to the manner in which they uttered the prayer. This is not inward focusing, but inner contemplation of the prayer recited by the worshiper. Prayer that has been routinized (for routine prayer, see above, chapter one, p. 93.) is made possible by the conscious repetition of the words of the prayer, without awareness of their content. In this manner, the worshiper seeks to enhance the spontaneity of his prayer, since this attests to the divine activity within him.

The Heikhalot Literature and Yordei ha-Merkabah Scholem argued in his description of the Heikhalot literature and Yordei ha-Merkabah (i.e., those who are occupied with the Merkabah, the Heavenly Chariot) that this was the ecstatic mysticism of those seeking theophanies and knowledge of God. Thus, they were interested solely in the ecstatic; for them, the human ethical aspect was marginal.66 Despite the debate concerning the nature of the sources of Yordei ha-Merkabah, that Scholem said were Gnostic, his characterization of the Heikhalot literature as focused on ecstatic “mystic ascent,” based on the terminology used by this literature, is shared by all the researchers in the field.67 R. Ishmael said: When I ascended on high to behold the vision of the Chariot [Merkabah], and had entered the six Halls, one within the other. As soon as I reached the door of the Seventh Hall, I stood still in prayer before the Holy One, blessed be He, and lifting up my eyes on high (i.e. toward the Divine Majesty), I said: “Lord of the Universe . . . 66 Scholem, Major Trends, 79; idem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1965). 67 Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, 98–109. Halperin, who disagreed with the exclusive attribution of the Merkabah literature to the Tannaim and Amoraim, concurred with the characterization of this literature as ecstatic mysticism: Halperin, Merkabah, 179–88.

233

234

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

Then I entered the Seventh Hall, and he led me to the camp(s) of the Shekhinah, and placed me before the Throne of Glory to behold the Chariot. As soon as the princes of the Chariot and the flaming Serafim perceived me, they fixed their eyes upon me. Instantly trembling and shuddering seized me and I fell down and was benumbed by the radiant image of their eyes and the splendid appearance of their faces.68

This central and characteristic ceremony of the Heikhalot literature attests to this literature’s visionary content and the trance experience that it includes, as Haviva Pedaya has shown at length.69 From this perspective, this literature should be discussed in the context of the preceding chapter, with its focus on contentual paranormal experiences. In light, however, of R. Hai Gaon’s interiorized interpretation of gazing upon the Merkabah (see below), and the manifold meanings of “ecstasy,” which require us to clarify the meaning of the ecstatic state ascribed to this literature, it cannot be discussed without a prior examination of the meaning of the introspective contemplation in the Enneads of Plotinus. For Scholem, both ecstasy and contemplation are different aspects of psychological processes conditional upon various types of human activism, or as he put it, pre-hypnotic autosuggestion. He argued that self-oblivion expedites pre-hypnotic autosuggestive states.70 Idel concurs that this is a mystical ascent, adding that the spiritual body of the mystic is the entity which undertakes the celestial journey, while the corporeal body remains in the special posture in the terrestrial world . . . the assumption of a double-presence in a context connected to the term Golem may have something to do with the concept of a spiritual or astral body.71

By introducing the terms “spiritual body” and “astral body,” that are common in occult circles such as the anthroposophic school of Rudolf 68 Peter Schafer, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur [Heb] (Tubingen: Mohr, Siebeck, 1981), para. 1, 5; English translation based on www.workofthechariot.com/TextFiles/ Translations-Enoch.html. 69 Pedaya, Vision and Speech, 70–89. See also Wolfson, Speculum, 74-124. 70 Scholem, Major Trends, 49–50. 71 Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 286.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

Steiner,72 Idel actually argues that this is an outer process of the soul leaving the body of Yordei ha-Merkabah. R. Hai Gaon’s response to the question he was asked concerning the nature of the mystical ascents in the Merkabah literature was perceived by Idel and others as an erroneous rationalistic interpretation, since, according to R. Hai Gaon, “it is not that they ascend on high, rather, in the chambers of their heart they see and gaze as a person sees and gazes upon something clear with his eyes; and they hear, say, and speak as one who shelters in the spirit of divine inspiration.”73 For R. Hai Gaon, then, the ascent depicted in the Heikhalot literature is actually introspective contemplation that leads to seeing visions.74 Idel wrote about this interpretation by R. Hai Gaon: Therefore, far from expounding a mystical ascent of the soul, the gaon offers a radical reinterpretation of ancient Jewish mysticism. In the vein of more rationalistic approaches, he effaces the ecstatic or shamanic aspects of the Heikhalot experiences in favor of their psychological interpretation.75

For Idel, who concedes the existence of earlier interiorizing conceptions,76 the interpretation by R. Hai Gaon, who regarded this experience as one of introspective contemplation, is a mistaken psychological 72 On the anthroposophic development of the astral body, see Rudolph Steiner, How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation, trans. Christopher Bamford (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1994), 108–50. 73 Lewin, Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 4: Chagiga, 61. See also the interpretation of the words “stones of pure marble” (BT Hagigah 14b) by R. Nathan of Rome, author of He-Arukh: “It is not that they ascend on high, rather, in the chambers of their heart they see and observe, as a person who sees and observes with his own eyes something clear, and they hear, speak, and say, with the eye that looks with the spirit of divine inspiration [see Lev. Rabbah 1:3]. This is the interpretation of R. Hai Gaon.” 74 See Buber, Ecstatic Confessions, 4. As Idel showed (New Perspectives, 319 n. 102), Scholem’s reading of the Gaon’s responsum is erroneous and expresses Scholem’s personal understanding of the gazing upon the Merkabah, which differs from the Gaon’s opinion. Scholem’s mistake ensues from his reading of the Gaon’s statement, “Then he perceives the interior and the chambers, as if he saw the seven palaces with his own eyes,” as referring to the interior of the chambers of the Merkabah (see Scholem, Major Trends, 49), and not as referring to the topic of the sentence, that is, the mystic himself. Additionally, the term penimiut appears in another place in R. Hai Gaon’s writings with the meaning of the man’s inner self: “He sees the visions of His palaces in his inner self [ba-penimiut]” (Lewin, Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 4: Chagiga, 15). 75 Idel, New Perspectives, 90. Jellinek was the first to suggest that R. Hai Gaon’s inward conception was influenced by Sufi sources (Idel, New Perspectives, 319 n. 102). An objection similar to Idel’s was raised by Liebes, Sin of Elisha, 4. 76 Idel, New Perspectives, 319 n. 108.

235

236

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

understanding, which ignores the physical facts bound up in such an experience. This suggests that Idel perceives ecstatic states as events occurring beyond the psyche and not merely within it.77 Idel maintains that R. Hai Gaon’s interiorizing interpretation removes the contentual ecstatic meaning accompanying the description of the ascent at the heart of this literature, and that this understanding is rooted in rationalist influences that entered the world of the Geonim through the Arabic translations of Greek philosophical writings.78 Obviously, R. Hai Gaon’s response is interpretive, and does not necessarily express the self-perception of Yordei ha-Merkabah, of which we have no testimony. I, however, do not share the criticism of legitimate interpretation that attempts to explain the nature of the events portrayed in the Heikhalot literature. The assumption that every experience described as being out-of-body must include the physical departure from the body is diametrically opposed, for example, to the teachings of Plotinus, who, presumably speaking of himself, writes about an inner experience.79 If R. Hai Gaon’s interpretation is categorically invalidated because it seems too rationalist, then what Plotinus says about ecstasy as an inner experience must be similarly rejected, even though he does not interpret a text but rather describes his own personal experience. The discussion of these issues must differentiate between how Yordei ha-Merkabah perceived their spiritual ascents and how the phenomenon is understood by others, whether traditional commentators or modern scholars. The lack of textual data seemingly precludes our giving an authoritative and unequivocal answer to the first issue. The possibility that the Tannaim thought of gazing upon the Merkabah as introspective contemplation is based on the Talmudic dictum: “Many have discerned sufficiently to expound the Merkabah, and yet they never saw it. R. Judah [says to this]: All depends on avanta de-liba [the discernment of the heart].”80 This 77 Ibid., 319 n. 104; see above, n. 73. 78 Idel, Ascensions, 34–35. 79 See above, n. 14. Idel himself used the term “ecstasy” in its Plotinian sense in his studies of Abraham Abulafia, the creator of what Idel termed ecstatic Kabbalah or prophetic Kabbalah. 80 BT Megillah 24b. Based on this dictum, and in light of R. Hai Gaon’s interpretation, Hananel ben Hushiel argued: “They do not ascend to Heaven, they rather gaze and see with the discernment of the heart, as a person who sees and looks within a speculum that does not shine” (commentary of Hananel on BT Hagigah 14b; see Lewin, Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 4: Chagiga, 61).

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

dictum cannot be definitively understood, because of the vague nature of the wording “avanta de-liba.”81 Moreover, since this teaching can reasonably be attributed to Tannaim who were not Yordei ha-Merkabah, it cannot attest to the latter’s own perception. The style of the Heikhalot texts leaves the impression that their authors assumed that the experiences they portray attest to an external, disembodied experience. Another contemporaneous testimony is that by Paul, who is skeptical whether ascents to the heavens actually occur outside the body, or whether they result from inner contemplation.82 Paul’s doubts enable us to argue that even Yordei ha-Merkabah, or some of them, might have deemed their experiences to be inner, since Paul, too, does not think that the innerness of these experiences negates their validity and substantiality. This inner perception need not negate the literal meaning of “ascent to Heaven,” since the term originates in the inner feeling experienced by the one contemplating the Merkabah. This sensation is familiar to those engaging in Eastern meditative techniques. There are situations during the course of this introspective contemplative state in which the individual feels that his consciousness is ascending and detached from his physical body, which remains sitting on the ground. “Ascent to Heaven” is therefore an expression of an inner experience of the consciousness of a fierce inner sensation of ascent and detachment from the body; but we need not assign it a meaning of changed outer, spatial location. Some of those undergoing such experiences quite likely perceived them as events in the outer world, but the intellectual knowledge of this being an inner process does not necessarily bar the inner sensation of an ascent to the heavens, which is a conscious experience resulting from inner concentration processes. In her researches on the Heikhalot literature, Haviva Pedaya indicated a fundamental pattern for the experiences described in this literature, one containing several phases: (1) preliminary preparation of a meditative 81 See Liebes, Sin of Elisha, 105 n. 38. Adam Afterman offers an original understanding of the term, as reflecting quiet contemplation of the contents of the Merkabah, which he calls “inward contemplation,” included in the act of prayer. See Afterman, “Ma‘aseh Merkava in Rabbinic Literature: Prayer and Envisioning the Chariot” [Heb], Kabbalah 13 (2005): 249–69. 82 “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven— whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into Paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Corinthians 12:2–4).

237

238

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

nature; (2) a trance that she describes (using Idel’s terminology) as the transition to a different state of consciousness, of the detachment of the astral body and its ascent to heaven; (3) a vision of the image of the body roving about in the celestial worlds, climaxing in seeing God or the Merkabah; (4) shaking, trembling, a fall, the experience that she defines as the soul’s leaving the astral body, in most instances as a consequence of seeing God in human countenance or seraphim; (5) the imparting of the power of inspiration or spirit that enables the mystic to apply the power of speech and hearing, which is expressed in singing or the attainment of knowledge.83 This description assumes (in close parallel to what I wrote above) that inner meditative activity can lead to trance-like states in which a mystic sees visions of God. Many Yordei ha-Merkabah probably assumed that the meaning of the trance that they experienced was a physical departure from their body, while R. Hai Gaon’s interpretation that speaks of an inner process, does not negate the actuality of the sights revealed during the trance. Pedaya, too, asserts that this is not an instance of possession, but meditative activity directed to a transition of the consciousness to trance states in which the visions depicted in this literature—to which Yordei ha-Merkabah aspire in a normal waking state—are witnessed.84 Pedaya maintains that the desire for these visions (also seen in medieval Kabbalistic writings) reveals extroverted mystical activity, to use Stace’s terminology, as opposed to introverted activity, that reflects a desire to encounter the divine within man. She argues that this is depicted in the writings of R. Abraham Abulafia (to be discussed below),85 and has its source in personality differences. Explaining the distinction between the desire for outer knowledge and the desire of external sight of God, the longing for inner-conscious contact with Him, as reflective of personality differences, blurs the line between the varying spiritual goals at the basis of each of these paths. A similar distinction is also discussed by distinction Idel. The aspiration for gnosis, for the theosophic knowledge of God in a number of ways, whether visual or abstract, or, alternately, the desire for conscious waking and nonverbal or visual contact with a divine presence, do not specifically attest to varying personalities, but to essential differences in worldview that emerge in great 83 Pedaya, Vision and Speech, 73. 84 “In contrast with ecstatic phenomena in shamanistic religions in which the spirit of the idol or the spirit of a dead person possess someone, here the person is possessed by his own spirit, that is returned to him by God” (Pedaya, Vision and Speech, 80). 85 Pedaya, Vision and Speech, 97–99.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

part from the degree of exposure to and adoption of more rational thought systems that object to or oppose mythical modes of thought. The term “ecstasy” obscures this distinction, since this general term can be used for different paths each of which enables the occurrence of an experience that is sensed as a departure from the regular self. Consequently, it cannot contribute to an understanding of the different types of experienced content. Those who assume, like R. Hai Gaon, that the variety of visions of God is due to an inner process gain nothing by attributing one phenomenon to extroversion and the other to introversion. Are mystics like Plotinus, who assume an inner source of knowledge, but who nevertheless are occupied with the knowledge of God or experiencing Him, extroverts or introverts? Does such a claim add to our understanding of this religious phenomenon? The distinction between extroversion and introversion is psychological, while I maintain that, from the perspective of the phenomenology of religion, we are mainly concerned with examining the differences in worldviews, the degree of tension between rational and mythical thought, and the spiritual aims at the basis of such disparate spiritual paths. Scholarly claims against R. Hai Gaon’s “psychological interpretation” would identify interiorization with psychologization, but such an identification is itself erroneous. Admittedly, R. Hai Gaon’s explanation is indicative of his more rationalist thought, which prevents him from thinking that visions such as those depicted in the Heikhalot literature are experienced beyond the mystic’s inner consciousness. As I will show, however, his argument does not represent disbelief in the very substantiality and existence of the spiritual ascent experience felt in the psyche of the one undergoing it. Plotinus, who depicted such an ascent as an inner process, made no attempt to diminish the force of the experience of which he reports.86 Psychologization seeks to explain spiritual phenomena as the product of personality differences. More importantly, however, do different spiritual aims underlie different desires, and what is the significance of the differences between these aims? The response by R. Hai Gaon sets forth the common techniques that bring the gazer upon the Merkabah into the supernal worlds which he sees with his mind’s eye: “He fasts for a known number of days, places his head between his knees, and recites to the earth songs and praises.”87 For Scholem, 86 See below, chapter six, 473, n. 80, on Origen’s commentary to Ezekiel, which supports my basic argument. 87 Lewin, Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 4: Chagiga, 14.

239

240

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

R. Hai Gaon’s description is reminiscent of the portrayal of the prayer of R. Hanina ben Dosa in BT Berakhot 34b and the entreaties by R. Eliezer ben Dordia when he repented, as described in Avodah Zarah 17a. These recalled to Scholem the Chinese portrayal of communication with the spirits of the dead.88 Scholem commented that self-oblivion is common to all three depictions. An examination of Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai’s answer to his wife’s question in tractate Berakhot supports this understanding: “‘Is Hanina greater than you?’ He said to her: ‘No, but he is like a servant before the king, and I am like a nobleman before the king.’”89 Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai’s pride is the source of his prayer’s weakness in comparison with that of R. Hanina, whose force ensues from his humility. Humility is conditional upon negating one’s self-worth, which Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai calls being “like a servant before the king.” The self-oblivion discussed here is similar to that mentioned earlier as a condition for the “prayer of the lips.” Placing one’s head between one’s knees is a kind of fetal position, as presented in BT Niddah 30b, that expresses the wish to once again disappear or to be sheltered in the mother’s womb, which is compared to God as Creator.90 Even if the interpretation of R. Hai Gaon and those following in his footsteps are the result of late (Sufi and other) influences, the external portrayals of the head between the knees present a type of inward focusing of the self, that entails the nullification of the ego. Even if the authors of the Heikhalot literature perceived their ascent to Heaven as occurring physically, outside the body, and not in the spirit (as in R. Hai Gaon’s interpretation), their activity was based on such inward focusing and self-recollection effected by the prayers they repeated, as preparation for the ecstatic state that they would produce. The continuation of R. Hai Gaon’s response indicates that, despite his assertion that this is an inner process and not an outer phenomenon, it cannot be understood as psychologization, in terms of autosuggestion.91 “We believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, performs 88 Scholem, Major Trends, 50. 89 BT Berakhot 34b. 90 On this position see Paul B. Fenton, “‘The Head between the Knees’” [Heb], Daat 32–33 (1994): 19–29. 91 Margaretta Bowers and Samuel Glasner wrote of the affinity of ecstatic mystic and autosuggestive hypnotic states (Bowers and Glasner, “Auto-Hypnotic Aspects of the Jewish Cabbalistic Concept of Kavanah,” Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 6 (1958): 3–23). Hollenback, who placed greater emphasis on concentration and recollection, expanded the discussion on the connection between mystic visions (that are the product of active imagination) and phantasms, images, and emotional states

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

miracles for the righteous and great wonders, and it is not difficult for Him that He shows them, inwardly, visions of His chambers [heikhalav] and the array of His angels.”92 In the end of his response, R. Hai Gaon emphasizes the miraculous nature of the inner sights, even if they are seen with an inner faculty, and not an outer one. In line with his definition of the miraculous (immediately following), this means that, for the Gaon, inner visions are true: As regards your opinion that a discerning person would not think thusly, know that this is something that is impossible. If a person claims that it is possible, as one who claims, “I was in Babylonia on that day, from morning to night, and also on that day I was in Media from morning to night, but in a miraculous manner and by means of the utterance of [a divine] Name,” all this is vanity. Certainly, there are things that are objects as thin and light as the wind, that a person’s eyesight cannot see; and when the Holy One, blessed be He, desires to augment a person’s eyesight in order to see them, He augments, and that person, whose eyes have been opened more than his fellow’s, will see them. It therefore is written (Num. 22:31): “Then the Lord uncovered Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way,” for the angels are as the wind, which are beyond a person’s eyesight, except for a person whose eyesight is changed by his Creator from ordinary human eyesight. Accordingly, it is written (Dan. 10:7): “I, Daniel, alone saw the vision; the men who were with me did not see the vision,” for if he did not see in a vision, the Holy One, blessed be He, altered his eyesight; and if (Hollenback, Mysticism, 180–88, 282). His approach differs from that of Scholem, who assumed the suggestive nature of ecstatic states and their complete subjectivity. Although common sense sees a fundamental distinction between cognitive perception and imaginary, hypnotic, or ecstatic states, Hollenback finds continuity between them. He bases this argument on a number of studies in hypnosis and psychiatry, such as Vitus Droscher, The Magic of the Senses: New Discoveries in Animal Perceptions, trans. Ursula Lehrburger and Oliver Coburn (London: W. H. Allen, 1969); Simeon Edmunds, Hypnosis and Psychic Phenomena (North Hollywood, CA: Wilshire, 1972); William Needles, “Stigmata Occurring in the Course of Psychoanalysis,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1943): 23–39; Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (New York: Basic Books, 1970). For Hollenback, mystic experiences, ecstatic experiences, and hypnotic trances represent states that, in practice, share the same psychological mechanisms that operate our enculturation systems and enable our orientation in the world. Understanding what is common to mystical and parapsychological ecstatic experiences could aid us in questioning the natural tendency to regard inner experiences as a solipsistic subjective phenomenon. See Hollenback, Mysticism, 281–90. 92 Lewin, Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 4: Chagiga, 15.

241

242

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

in a prophetic vision, then it was as a dream, and we wonder at this, since a great terror fell upon them.93

This clearly shows that R. Hai Gaon believed in the existence of paranormal phenomena such as clairvoyance; and what he writes about the mystical experience of Yordei ha-Merkabah, as being introspective contemplation, is consistent with his beliefs.94 It is quite likely that the dichotomy used by Scholem to describe Yordei ha-Merkabah, as Gnostics who were unconcerned with moral questions, reflects the dichotomy in Scholem’s own conceptions, but not necessarily matters in the spiritual world of those he researched. The characteristic admiration of humility and disgust at pride in the moral world of pietists in Judaism and in other religions throughout the ages are also directly linked to mystical aspirations.95 The well-known connection between humility and revelation, too, shows the mutual dependence of mystical revelation and human inwardness. Indeed, R. Hai Gaon believed that many of the sages who sought to gaze upon the Merkabah “thought that one who is upstanding in several mentioned and clarified traits” could merit such visions. To sum up this question, assuming that inward focusing and introspective contemplation are the way to attain ecstatic experiences, like those of Yordei ha-Merkabah, does not automatically lead one to believe that these are solely illusory subjective experiences.96 Even if Yordei ha-Merkabah themselves thought their experience to be external and not an inner occurrence resulting from meditative inner focusing—as did R. Hai Gaon, the latter’s interpretation of the Merkabah, which was accepted by R. Hananel, R. Nathan of Rome, and the Tosafists—marks the beginning of a new spiritual tradition in Judaism. This new tradition was aware of the interiorizing nature of spiritual activity meant to attain contact with the divine presence in the world. This new interpretation of Yordei ha-Merkabah’s inward focusing directly influenced the attempts to revive such focusing in Judaism from then on. Notwithstanding the ability of inward focusing to also result in verbal experiences and visions, as in the case of 93 Ibid., 19; see also 26, R. Hai Gaon’s assertion that the test of prophecy is “a change of the world’s laws and practices.” 94 R. Hai Gaon’s conception is strikingly similar to explanations such as those by Hollenback presented above. 95 See Liebes, Sin of Elisha. 96 On introspection as an accelerant fueling ecstasy, see Laski, Ecstacy, 203.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

Yordei ha-Merkabah, such focusing could also lead to noncontentual experiences, such as those of Plotinus. In my understanding, a major factor in the difference between those who experience contentual experiences and those who have noncontentual ones is the worldview of the one undergoing the experience, in particular, the degree to which he adheres to rational and demythicizing thinking. It is this undermining of mythical thought which is at the basis of the emphasis of the experiential and noncontentual nature of the types of inward focusing that are the subject of this chapter.

Inward Focusing in Medieval Jewish Poetry and Thought The phenomenon of prophecy intrigued medieval Jewish philosophers.97 Their perception—especially that of Maimonides—was that prophecy was not merely a historical phenomenon that belonged to the Biblical period, but could also occur in their time; and thus, the need to discuss its character and the conditions that prepare the soul to attain prophecy.98 Despite this, their writings are not overly occupied with the prophetical experience deriving from a person’s positive activity to perfect himself, and accordingly, to ready himself for prophecy.99 In the case of Judah Halevi, scholars find that the apex of his religious experience is reflected in his religious poetry, and not in the Kuzari:100 Toward the source of life, of truth, I run, Impatient with a life of vanity, To see my Master’s face is all I want, None other do I fear, none else revere. If only I could see Him in a dream, I’d sleep at ease, not caring if I died. 97 Kreisel, Prophecy. 98 Abraham J. Heschel, “Did Maimonides Believe that He Had Attained the Rank of Prophet?,” in Heschel, Prophetic Inspiration after the Prophets: Maimonides and Other Medieval Authorities, ed. Morris M. Faierstein (Hoboken: Ktav, 1996), 69–126, esp. 112–19. 99 Kreisel, Prophecy, 625–26. On the exceptional influence of the Sufi longing “to receive the Divine Presence in every heart and every soul” (Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad Al-Ghazzali, Ma’aznei Zedek [Jerusalem, 1975], 48) on R. Abraham son of Maimonides, see Heschel, “Did Maimonides Believe,” 184–87. 100 Kreisel, Prophecy, 627–28; Wolfson, “Merkavah Traditions.”

243

244

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

If I could see His face within my heart, My eyes would never turn their gaze outside.101

And similarly, in the poetry of Solomon Ibn Gabirol: Three things there are, together in my eye That keep the thought of Thee forever nigh. I think about Thy great and holy name Whenever I look up and see the sky. My thoughts are roused to know how I was made, Seeing the earth’s expanse, where I abode. The musings of my mind, when I look inside At all times, “O my soul, bless Adonai.”102

The zeitgeist that combines the longing for contact with the divine with the awareness that this contact occurs within a person’s inner self, and not in external planes, infuses the poetry of Judah Halevi and Ibn Gabirol. Neoplatonist inward focusing profoundly influenced medieval Jewish thought on an intellectual level, and also in the experiential realm.103 R. Shem Tov ben Joseph Falaquera writes in Sefer ha-Maalot, under the influence of the Theology of Aristotle: The philosopher said, the speaking soul that at times will be prepared in some peoples [i.e., languages] when awakening and will adhere to the General Intellect, when it wants to know things, has no need for logic or thought, but suffices with the divine awakening. This is called ruaḥ ha-kodesh. This attribute was possessed solely by prophets and the godly . . . Aristotle said, At times it is as if I enter into myself and shed my body, and it was as if I were a simple substance without body, and I will see within myself the beauty and majesty. This will leave me wondrous and astonished, and I will know that I am part of the perfect and exquisite supernal world, and I possess active life. After I confirm this, I will ascend in my thought from this world to the divine Cause, and I will be as if I rest in it and adhere within it and to it. I shall be above the entire intellective world. I will perceive myself as if I am present in 101 See Scheindlin, Gazelle, 198–201. 102 Ibid., 188–91. 103 Altmann, “Delphic Maxim,” 225; Moshe Idel, “Types of Redemptive Activity in the Middle Ages” [Heb], in Messianism and Eschatology: A Collection of Essays, ed. Zvi Baras (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1983), 254–63.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

the world of the divine Intellect, and I will be as if I adhere within it and to it, as if I stand in the exalted place of God, and see there from the light and the brilliance, what the tongues cannot tell [i.e., what cannot be expressed], and what the hearts cannot contain [what humans cannot comprehend]. . . . In this manner, our sages, of blessed memory, said, So-and-so ascended to the heavens, for when he thinks of upper [i.e., supernal] matters, they said that he ascended; and when he thought of lower [i.e., worldly] matters, they said that he descended. David, may he rest in peace, alluded to this when he said [Ps. 113:5]: “who enthroned on high, sees what is below, in heaven and on earth.” . . . Abu Nasr said, Everything of perfect existence, when men will know it and intellectualize it, what will be intellectualized will be perfect, because what has been intellectualized from it within ourselves concurs with its reality. Its reality outside our inner being will be deficient in our inner intellect, for the intellectualization in our intellects of movement and time, and what has no end, and their like from what exists in reality, is deficient, because they themselves lack substantiality and perceptibility.104

This passage by Falaquera is of importance for us because of its inclusion of the inward-focusing experience and for its testimony to epistemological interiorization, which we will discuss below, and which Falaquera adopts in the name of Abu Nasr (al-Farabi). Here we see how the two draw upon each other.

Devekut, Inner Focusing, and Concentration from the Prophetic Kabbalah to Hasidism My book Human Temple contains an extensive discussion of various aspects of devekut in Kabbalah and Hasidism, in terms of inner focusing and concentration by means of anomian techniques, intellective devekut during prayer, and the observance of the commandments.105 The following is a development and expansion of that discussion. 104 Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera, Sefer ha-Ma‘alot, ed. Lajos Venetianer (Berlin, 1894), 21–24. See Idel’s quotations from Sefer Higayon ha-Nefesh ha-Atzuvah by R. Abraham bar Hiyya, and the commentary on aggadot by R. Yedaya ben Abraham Badrasi in “Types of Redemptive Activity,” 254–57. See Gershom Scholem’s discussion of this passage: On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Schoken 1991), 257–258; and Altmann’s discussion: “Delphic Maxim,” 226. On the clearly Plotinian source of this text, see above, 229 n. 50. 105 See esp. Margolin, Human Temple, 307–22.

245

246

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

According to Idel, the technique to attain prophecy developed by Abulafia is clearly interiorizing: “the letters of the Divine Name undergo a process of ‘purification’ by which they are transformed from tangible letters, existing outside of the intellect, into intellective letters, existing in the heart.”106 Abulafia himself presents this interiorization as follows: “but that of which I have informed you concerning the matter of the secret of combination, that when you mention the word combined, then the divine spirit shall rest upon you through the heating of the heart.”107 The technique of letter combination produces the inner state that Abulafia calls the “heating of the heart,”108 that is, the inner-consciousness event resulting from the technique of combination enables the divine spirit to descend to man. In contrast with the concept of aliyat ha-neshamah, Abulafia depicts spiritual ecstasy, prophesying, as a descent of the spirit, or as he puts it, the “resting of the divine spirit” on a person’s inner self. Idel noted that, unlike yoga, Sufi, and hesychastic techniques, which seek to achieve maximal concentration by the repetition of a usually simple formula: Abulafia is not interested in relaxing the consciousness by means of concentration on a “point,” but in purifying it by the necessity to concentrate intensely on such a large number of activities that it is almost impossible at that moment to think about any other subject.109

Idel maintains that Abulafia’s prophetic experience can be described (following the terminology of Marghanita Laski) as “intense ecstasy” resulting from the sudden rise in the level of intellective activity during the recitation of the names of God. Abulafia’s inner ecstatic methodology, as well, teaches that interiorization and ecstasy need not be perceived as contradictory. Although Abulafia’s technique has no parallel in Plotinus’ writings, and even though he presents the prophesying process as a descent of the divine spirit after the “heating of the heart,” instead of an ascent, the two 106 Idel, Mystical Experience, 22. 107 Abulafia, Sefer ha-Melamed, MS. Paris 680, fol. 293a (cited by Idel, Mystical Experience, 39). See also the quotation from Ḥayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba: “and your body begins to tremble greatly and mightily, until you think that you shall surely die at that time, for your soul will become separated from your body out of the great joy in attaining and knowing what you have known” (Abraham Abulafia, Ḥayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba, MS. Oxford 1582, fol. 2a, ed. Amnon Gross [Jerusalem, 1999], 147). 108 On the motif of the warming of the heart in Abulafia’s techniques, see Idel, Mystical Experience, 39–40. 109 Idel, Mystical Experience, 40.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

approaches have much in common. Both Abulafian ecstasy—that is a result of an intentional effort by means of intellective focus—and Neoplatonist ecstasy were perceived by these two mystics as inner processes within the consciousness. Abulafia’s teachings on the inner struggle between the rational and the imaginative stress that the pure intellect’s battle against the imaginings of the mind creates a prophetic process of inner detachment and direct connection with the Active Intellect.110 Although Abulafia emphasizes that this process is wholly inner and is conducted within the individual, he does not think that the “content,” or more correctly, the “prophetic essence,” that is revealed to the person is a suggestive self-creation, but something substantive that is revealed to the individual, within him.111 Idel discovered traces of Abulafia’s methodology, with its Sufi orientation and its singular concentration techniques, in the books Sha‘arei Zedek by R. Isaac of Acre, Badei ha-Aron by R. Shem Tov ibn Gaon, Sulam ha-Aliyah by R. Judah Albotini, Magen David by David ibn Abi Zimra, and in R. Moses Cordovero’s writings. The latter, especially, seeks to combine the classical Sefirotic Kabbalah with Abulafian ecstatic Kabbalah.112 Such an integrative approach can be found in Sefer ha-Temunah. The following passage taken from this work is based on the conceptional interiorization of the direct Sefirot-man parallel that this book highlights. The passage, that speaks of man’s delving into himself, is marked by the full integration of the Sefirotic Kabbalah and the inward-focused nature of ecstatic Kabbalah. The world of the Godhead is revealed through introspective contemplation: Moses used the potential in his attribute of Gevurah [the fifth Sefirah, associated with strict judgment], until the letters came, one form was connected with another, and they were inscribed in the second tablets by the finger of the supreme God, the living God. All of this [was done] in supernal, inner, subtle impressions and allusions. This is the awesome and very concealed picture. Happy is the man who fears the Lord, and if a person will delve deeply within himself, and will give heed to wisdom and discernment, with clear mind and subtle thought, to understand and become aware within this pure and awesome picture, he will find a picture for himself. For the 110 See, for example, Moshe Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia, trans. Menahem Kallus (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 60–73. 111 Idel comments that Scholem’s depiction of prophetic Kabbalah as “magic of inwardness” should rather be termed “inner technique,” since its main aim is to influence the psyche and alter the consciousness (Idel, Mystical Experience, 41). 112 Idel, “Hitbodedut in Ecstatic Kabbalah.”

247

248

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

beginning of the building is faith, and its end is the picture, that is, from [the letter] alef [of] emunah [faith] to [the letter] tav [of] temunah [picture], as “he is trusted [ne’eman] throughout My household . . . and he beholds the picture of the Lord” [Num. 12:7–8]. This is called “sea,” because this is the great sea, so deep it has no end, and it is called “living soul,” which is the name of the living God, “and angels of God were going up and down on it” [Gen. 28:12], and each one would receive his mission. The righteous one understood this in his dream, and knew that there is a supreme picture, corresponding to which below are messengers who go up from their place to the supernal picture, and on the ladder they go down below, to the lower one, for the Shekhinah does not descend among less than ten [i.e., a quorum].113

Prayer as Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing The intents of prayer that Scholem attributed to R. Azriel, one of the first Gerona Kabbalists,114 were plainly inward-focused at this early stage of the development of the Kabbalah, unlike the conceptual-theurgic Kabbalistic prayer intents which developed in succeeding generations: “Whoever fixes a thing in his mind with complete firmness, that thing becomes for him the principal thing.” Thus, when you pray and recite benedictions, or (otherwise) wish to direct the kavvanah to something in a true manner, then imagine that you are light and all about you is light, from every direction and every side, and in midst of the light a stream of light, and upon it a brilliant light, and opposite it a throne and upon it a good light; and when you are standing among them and desire vengeance, turn to the brilliance; and if you desire love, then turn to the good light, and let what comes from your lips be turned to his countenance. And turn to the right and you will find pure light, to the left and you will find an aura which is the radiant light. And between them and above them the light of glory, and around it the light of life. And above it the crown of light that crowns the objects of thoughts, illuminates the paths of ideas, and brightens the splendor of visions. And this illumination is inexhaustible and unending.115 113 Sefer ha-Temunah (Jerusalem, 1998), 22–23. 114 Scholem, Origins, 416–19. 115 Sha‘ar ha-Kavanah la-Mekubbalim ha-Rishonim zal (The Gate of Intent by the Early Kabbalists, of blessed memory), an anonymous text present in many manuscripts that was first published by Scholem. See Gershom Scholem, “Der Begriff der Kawwana in

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

The meditative nature of these intents is also evident from Pedaya’s analysis of two parallel passages by R. Ezra and R. Azriel in their commentaries on the aggadot in the Order of Taaniyot, in which the worshiper’s standing and actions116 are compared with those of the early pietists and the prophets.117 As R. Azriel defines the latter, “it is as if they are possessed [literally, ‘held’] by speech, as fish are held in a net”; or as R. Ezra puts it: “it is as if the rabbi put these things in his mouth and he spoke them involuntarily.”118 Pedaya noted that the experience indicated in these passages is not of a theurgic nature, that is, with the intent of influencing the Godhead, but has rather a mystical-pneumatic character, that she defines as directed to “experiencing the divine spirit within man.”119 She finds that, unlike R. Ezra, who speaks “as if a person ‘placed’ these things in his mouth,” R. Azriel “negates the image of the person who is ‘external’ to the worshiper, and speaks of an inner sensation: the person who speaks is ‘caught’ within his throat. He offers a felicitous term: ‘ahuzim’—ahuzim [possessed-held] by the holy spirit, trapped within the imposed speech.”120 That is, according to R. Azriel, the words of prayer must well forth from the divine spirit, the holy spirit that rests within man, as an ecstatic process that issues forth from within man, similar to the prayer directives from the school of the Maggid of Mezheritch to be discussed below. der alten Kabbala,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 78 (1934): 511. For English translation, see Gershom Scholem, “The Concept of Kavvanah in the Early Kabbalah,” in Studies in Jewish Thought: An Anthology of German Jewish Scholarship, ed. Alfred Jospe (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), 171. Scholem definitely attributes the work to R. Azriel of Gerona; see Origins, 416. 116 R. Azriel speaks explicitly there of the worshiper, who “must regard himself as if He [God] speaks with him [that is, tells him what to say], and teaches and guides him.” R. Ezra’s commentary on the Talmudic aggadot makes an abrupt transition from the discussion (also present in R. Azriel’s commentary) on a commandment on which many commandments are dependent, such as charity, to a description of the “thought that expands and ascends to the place of its origin,” which, we may surmise, refers to prayer. 117 Pedaya, “‘Possessed by Speech.’” See Perush ha-Aggadot by R. Ezra, MS. Vatican 244 on the order of fasts, published in Abraham ben Judah Elmalik, Likkutei Shikhehah u-Fe‘ah, Seder Taaniyot, fols. 7b–8b; Azriel, Perush ha-Aggadot, ed. Isaiah Tishbi (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1982), 39–41. 118 The source for R. Azriel’s statement appears in Azriel, Perush ha-Aggadot, ed. Tishbi, 41; the source for R. Ezra’s dictum is to be found in Sefer Likkutei Shikhehah u-Fe‘ah, fol. 8b. 119 Pedaya, “‘Possessed by Speech,’” 574. 120 Ibid., 579.

249

250

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

Unlike R. Azriel, Abraham Abulafia, the father of ecstatic Kabbalah, did not sanctify the mystical techniques that he proposed in order to attain prophecy and devekut, nor did he give Kabbalistic reasons for the commandments, as Idel has shown.121 Abulafia appears to have bolstered the division between ritual life and spiritual techniques which most probably originated in Maimonides’ distinction between halakhic activity and spiritual introspection in seclusion.122 R. Moses Cordovero’s remarks in Sha‘ar ha-Neshamah of Pardes Rimmonim on the intent of prayer broaden the gap between halakhic prayer and seclusion as concentration, that were fully integrated in Hasidism: As regards prayer: when a person prays without inner intent, in consequence his prayer is as an act without thought. Accordingly, when the prayer seeks to ascend, it is incapable of ascending from the lower Garden of Eden. For the end of action is there, and from there upwards, a person must shed his body and corporeality (which is the act) and ascend in a spiritual reality (which is the thought). The intent is the soul of the act, and this prayer is therefore rejected from the upper Garden of Eden, and has no place to which to ascend there. There is a prayer that will ascend a bit, too, to the Garden of Eden, but will not be able to enter the inner levels. Thus, we say, regarding the soul as well, that it will ascend according to its actions: if its actions are subtle spiritual deeds, with the subtlety of the uppermost level, it will certainly ascend, according to the measure of its garb, level after level, until the end of those garbs, for it does not merit to ascend upwards from there, because of its intent.123 121 Idel, “Hitbodedut in Ecstatic Kabbalah” [English], 104–5 and 141–42 n. 6. 122 “On the other hand, while performing the actions imposed by the Law, you should occupy your thought only with what you are doing, just as we have explained. When, however, you are alone with yourself and no one else is there and while you lie awake upon your bed, you should take great care during these precious times not to set your thought to work on anything other than that intellectual worship consisting in nearness to God and being in His presence in that true reality that I have made known to you and not by way of affections of the imagination” (Maimonides, Guide 3:51, trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 623). See also Maimonides’s distinction between the “first intention” to know God by means of commandments such as prayer, tzitzit (ritual fringes), mezuzah, and tefilin, and the “second intention,” the commandments of the Temple and sacrifices, which are given not for their own sake, but to facilitate the first intention of knowing God (Guide 3:32, trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 529–30). See Blidstein, Prayer, 80–88; see also Blumenthal, Philosophic Mysticism, 73–95. 123 Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, sha‘ar 31: Sha‘ar ha-Neshamah, chap. 5. See also Yosef Ben Shlomo, The Mystical Theology of Moses Cordovero [Heb] (Jerusalem: Bialik

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

Cordovero presents the inner worlds as higher because of their great worth, which ensues from their incorporeality. Concentration of one’s thought means spiritualization, in contrast with prayer without such concentration, which is a mechanical activity, a body without a soul. A comparison of statements on intent in prayer by R. Moses Cordovero, R. Judah Halevi,124 the author of Ḥovot ha-Levavot,125 and Maimonides (Guide 3:51) shows a developmental process that laid the groundwork for the definition of intent in prayer as shedding one’s body and materiality by the purification of thought to subtle spiritual levels. It should be mentioned that Cordovero was preceded in the unification of prayer and introspection by R. Abraham son of Maimonides.126 R. Abraham’s teaching apparently had Institute, 1986), 41–45. 124 On the prayer of the pietist, see Halevi, Kuzari 3:5 (trans.: The Kuzari, 137–39). The beginning of the rabbi’s exposition seems to reflect the usual requirement of intent in prayer. However, he insists that on intellectual speech, and not something mechanical or lacking intellective intentionality enables the transition to, and contact with, the divine dimension. The intellective absorption generates adherence to the spiritual realms. The intent that Halevi describes is not in the contentual plane, but in the substantive. Even though the intent is attained by the agency of “every word [that] is uttered thoughtfully and attentively,” it is, in effect, a state of mental conceptualization that consists mainly of release from the material world and immersion in the divine, spiritual world by means of mental adherence to the words of prayer. 125 See Bahya Ibn Paquda, Duties of the Heart, “On Self-Reckoning for God’s Sake,” chap. 9, 363–68. 126 “This explains the superiority of communal prayer over the prayer of the individual, from several aspects. I stipulated with you, at the beginning of what I wrote, that this is ‘in most cases.’ I said in this vein: if the individual prays by himself. . . . This is what enables the individual—at certain times and under certain circumstances—to attain a state of purity by the seclusion in which his inner intent [kavanat libo] is purified during his prayer, such that his prayer is greatly superior to communal prayer. There is a very great intent in this: its beginning is what we indicated above, and it culminates in prophecy, since this is its way. Consequently, the prophets and the sons of the prophets were accustomed to seclude themselves and to detach themselves from inhabited places” (Abraham ben Maimon, Sefer ha-Maspik, ed. Dana, 189). In his commentary to Ps. 84, R. Abraham writes: “‘It yearneth’ . . . the object of the longing for external solitude is to attain inward solitude . . . the recourse taken by . . . their prophets and their followers, ‘the disciples of the prophets and the pious,’ to solitude in the ‘temple’ . . . who have achieved the reunion [with God] by means of the paths of the heart and the proofs of the mind in the course of inward solitude. . . . the tears stream from their eyes, which overflow with tears like a gushing fountain. . . . And the cause of this weeping is twofold. Firstly (it is due) to sadness over (the period) of life that has rolled by and that will roll by without that pleasure . . . and the second of them is intense emotion on achieving what they attained, as the lover, who is deeply in love (and) who has been making efforts for a number of years to meet his beloved” (II:402–405). See the analyses by Pedaya, “‘Possessed by Speech,’” 612–15.

251

252

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

no direct successors, and after his death the combination of intent in prayer and the realization of the ideal of prophesying can be found once again in Cordovero’s writings. This integrative orientation was intensified and refashioned in the eighteenth century in Hasidism, following the prayer traditions of the early Hasidic masters.

Prayer and Inward Focusing in Hasidism In the world of the first generations of Hasidim, prayer—and even Torah study—became special occasions dedicated to a particular type of introspective contemplation and inward-focusing. In chapter one, we discussed the Kabbalistic and Hasidic distinction between prayer for man’s benefit and prayer for a sublime need.127 The uniqueness of the second type of prayer in Hasidism is that the verbal content of prayers and the discursive content of Torah study become secondary to the extent that they lose these meanings and focus on noncontentual inner experiences that are produced by the singular way of prayer and study reported by the Hasidic masters. At the end of the preceding chapter, our discussion of the Baal Shem Tov’s spiritual ascents examined the peak moments of his prayer, when, as portrayed by the Maggid of Mezheritch, he seemed to be out of the world. In Human Temple I noted that the ascension of thought in the prayer of the Hasidic masters was not an event that occurred in the outer world, but an inner event within the individual’s thought.128 The Maggid of Mezheritch taught, referring to the rabbinic dicta (BT Berakhot 10b): “What is the meaning of the verse (Lev. 19:26): ‘You shall not eat anything with its blood’—do not eat before you have prayed for your blood”: Consequently, man’s essence is in the blood. Then why is he called man (adam), and not blood (dam)? Rather, he causes himself to adhere to the Creator, may He be blessed, and draws within him the Chieftain [alufo, with an initial alef] of the world; the alef is joined to him, and he is called “adam.” This is the meaning of “You shall not eat anything with its blood”—that is, when the Chieftain of the world has not yet been joined, but only after

127 Above, chapter one, 116–117. See Margolin, Human Temple, 302–3. 128 Margolin, Human Temple, 185.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

prayer, when he has joined his blood to the Chieftain of the world, then he is called “adam,” and he is permitted to eat, but not before.129

At times the nonverbal nature of the experience of connection with the divine in Hasidic prayer is expressed also in physical changes that take place in the worshiper’s body and face. This phenomenon is not limited to the Baal Shem Tov in the Hasidic literature and is generally linked to the concept of enthusiasm: . . . as I have seen some of my teachers and masters . . . especially my teacher, the holy Rabbi, the man of God. . . . R. Meshullam Zusha, who totally divested himself from this world when he ascended in order to cleave to God, to such an extent that he was actually close to annihilating his existence. Thus it was necessary that he should take a vow and give alms that his soul will remain in him.130

R. Nahman of Bratslav presents such states as enthusiastic, in which the worshiper’s state of consciousness has been altered. He called this new state one of “not knowing”: This is why we see that sometimes a person is inspired during prayer and says many words with tremendous fervor. It is because, in God’s compassion, the light of Ein Sof has been opened to him and shines upon him. When a person sees this radiant light—“Even though he might not see, his mazal [fortune] sees” (Megillah 3a)—his soul is instantly ignited in great devotion, and he attaches himself to the light of Ein Sof. Commensurate with the measure of Ein Sof which is revealed—according to the number of words which are “opened” and “flashed”—all these words are said with great devotion, with a surrender of “self ” and with a negation of all his strength. During the time that he is negated in Ein Sof he is in an “aspect” of [Deut. 34:6] “no man knows,” so that even he is unaware of himself. But this state must be “running and returning,” so that his existence may be maintained. We find then, that when he is in a state of “returning” he must also bring awareness to his intellect. For at the beginning, at the time of devotion, his intellect was nullified, as is written, “no man knows.” But when he is in a state of “returning,” he returns to his material sense of self and to his normal state of 129 Dov Baer of Mezeritch, Maggid Devarav le-Yaakov, ed. Rivka Shatz-Uffenheimer (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), para. 162; idem, Or Torah (Jerusalem, 1968), 151. 130 Moses Eliakim Beriah ben Israel, Beer Moshe, fol. 8c (cited by Idel, Hasidism, 131; see his additional references, 324 n. 191).

253

254

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

awareness. And when he returns to his intellect, he then knows the unity of Ein Sof and Its good.131

We see, therefore, that Hasidism offered different techniques for altering the worshiper’s state of consciousness. The traditions, however, cited in the name of the Baal Shem Tov (mainly from the school of the Maggid of Mezheritch) connected these states with introspective contemplation of the letters and sounds of the prayer. This contemplation, which was especially developed in the school of the maggid, has different facets, some technical and others theoretical. The following directive from the testament of the Baal Shem Tov includes specific instructions: “Make a light for the teivah (ark) [and finish it to (the width of) an amah (cubit) on high . . .].” (Genesis 6:16). [The Baal Shem Tov said:] This means that the teivah (word) should shine. [This will be understood by the following:] Every letter contains “worlds, souls and Divinity.” These ascend and become bound up and united with one another, with Divinity. The letters then unite and become bound together to form a word [teivah], becoming truly unified in Divinity. Man, therefore, must include his soul in each of these aspects. All worlds will then be unified as one and ascend, and this effects immeasurably great joy and delight. This is the meaning of “[make it with] bottom, second and third [stories]” (ibid.), referring to “worlds, souls and Divinity,” [for “The Holy One, blessed be He,] has three worlds [in which He is concealed]” (Zohar III:159a). With every word you must hear what you say, because it is the Shechinah [Herself], the “World of Speech,”132 who speaks, provided that [the word] has a “light,” i.e., that it emerges with brightness and to bring gratification to your Maker. This requires great faith, as the Shechinah is referred to as “true faithfulness” (Isaiah 25:1; see Zohar I:22a and III:16b). Without faith, it is, Heaven forbid, a case of “he that murmurs separates the Master [of the universe].” (Proverbs 16:28).133 131 Nahman of Bratzlav, Likkutei Moharan 1:4(9) (trans.: Likutey Moharan, 1:64–67). 132 Zohar 3:230a. 133 Tzava’at Harivash. Translation to English: The Testament of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, trans. Jacob Immanuel Schochet (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1998), 61–63; Dov Baer of Mezeritch, Or Torah, 14 (emphases added). See, in this context, my discussion of the nature of prayer for R. Phineas of Koretz, Human Temple, 332–38.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

The worshiper is to be attentive to the letters of the prayer and the words that issue forth from his mouth.134 In effect, he must split himself into two: on the one hand, in practice, he must bring forth the sounds from his mouth, while, on the other, in terms of his consciousness, he must observe himself and realize that these letters and words possess divine vitality that enables him to utter them. This introspective contemplation of the divine vitality in the words of prayer transforms the worshiper into a “best man”—one who, as it were, accompanies the divine element within him to its linkage with its divine source. Another teaching from the school of the maggid demonstrates that this process of effort and concentration leads the worshiper, in the end, to forget his physicality and to be absorbed in the delight that has its source in the spiritual connection that occurs in his inner self during the course of such prayer: In prayer a person must place all his strength in speech, and go from one letter to another until he forgets his physicality. He is to think that the letters join and combine with one another, and this is a great delight. Imagine that, if this is a great delight in materiality, how much more so in spirituality; this is the world of Yetzirah [Formation]. Afterwards he comes to the letters in his thought and he will not hear what he speaks; this is his coming to the world of Beri’ah [Creation]. Afterwards he comes to the attribute of Ayin, in which all of his material strengths are negated; this is the world of Atzilut [Emanation], the attribute of Ḥokhmah.135

In these writings the spiritual delight accompanying the spiritual coupling awaiting this type of worshiper is compared with the delight in physical coupling, although the latter is deemed inferior to the great delight in spiritual coupling.136 The worshiper is to introspectively contemplate the divine coupling effected by means of what is spoken in prayer, which enables its inherent divine vitality to be actualized in the world. In this manner 134 On introspective prayer in the prism of the research of Hasidism, see Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, 168–88; Margolin, Human Temple, 346–52. 135 Dov Baer of Mezeritch, Maggid Devarav le-Yaakov, para. 57, 85–86 (also brought in additional Hasidic works; emphases added). The italicized terms refer to the hierarchy of the divine world. 136 On the discussion by R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye of spiritual delight and its comparison with material delight, see Margolin, Human Temple, 218–21. On the conceptional basis for the connection between spiritual delight and sexual pleasure made by the Baal Shem Tov, see below, the discussion of the Sefirot in man, chapter four, 332–36.

255

256

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

the physical, material consciousness of the ego is replaced by an awareness of and connection with its spiritual essence, which is perceived as the divine essence that enables the individual and all of reality to exist. In Likkutei Moharan, R. Nahman presents the contradiction between prayer as a process of detachment, in which the words leave the worshiper, and the Hasid’s efforts to experience the divine unity by his absorption in the experience of speech and a divine inner activity that issues forth from within him. The worshiper is attentive to the words of the prayer, contemplates their inner source, and has the sensation that he remains with the first letter throughout the entire prayer. The words are spoken, but he feels as if he has not left the first letter. Inwardly, he is within the divine unity all the time: And when speech emerges, it emerges from the soul, as it is written (Genesis 2:7), “thus man became a living soul”—which the Targum renders as: “he became a speaking spirit.” The utterance emerges and is heard by his ears, as our Sages, of blessed memory, said: Let your ears hear what you are bringing forth from your mouth (Berakhot 15a). Then the utterance begs and implores the soul not to part from it. As soon as the first letter emerges—such as the letter bet of the word Baruch [Blessed be]—it begs and implores the soul not to part from it: “Considering the great bond and love between us, how can you separate yourself from me? You see my precious beauty, my radiance, my magnificence and splendor. How can you tear yourself away from me and leave me? . . . Therefore, the rule is, he must make the entire prayer one. Each individual utterance should contain all the utterances—from the beginning of the prayer to where he is at present—so that from the beginning of the prayer to the end it will all be one. Thus, when he reaches the final word of the prayer, he will still be holding at its first word. This way one can pray the entire prayer and nonetheless not separate himself from even its first letter. [3.] And know! this aspect—i.e., the oneness—is itself the ultimate goal, as it is written (Zechariah 14:9), “On that day God will be One and His Name will be One.”137

In the Tanya R. Schneur Zalman of Lyady, a disciple of the maggid, develops a method of intellective introspective contemplation that serves as a practical directive before prayer and Torah study, and no less, as guidance 137 Nahman of Bratzlav, Likkutei Moharan 1:65(2–3) (trans.: Likutey Moharan, vol. 7, trans. Moshe Mykoff [Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 2003], 14–9.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

for the fundamental contemplative state to which a person should aspire in every life situation: . . . in order to awaken, at least, the natural love that is hidden in his heart, to become conscious of it in his mind at any rate, to be aware of his love of the One G-d in his thought and desire to cleave to Him, may He be blessed. This should be his kavanah [intent] when occupying himself with the Torah or the particular commandment, that his divine soul as well as his vivifying soul, together with their “garments,” shall cleave to Him, as has been explained above. Yet in fact the Rabbis, of blessed memory, have said that a man should never separate himself from the community [BT Berakhot 49b]. Therefore he should intend to unite and attach to Him, blessed be He, the fount of his divine soul and the fount of the souls of all Israel, being the spirit of His blessed mouth, called by the name Shechinah, because it dwells and clothes itself in all worlds, animating them and giving them existence, and is that which imbues him with “the power of speech” to utter the words of Torah, or with the power of action to perform the particular commandment. This union is attained through the drawing forth of the light of the blessed En Sof here below by means of occupation in the Torah and the commandments wherein [the light of the En Sof] is clothed. And he should be intent on drawing His blessed light over the fount of his soul and of the souls of all Israel to unite them. . . . nevertheless, every man should habituate himself to this kavanah. For though it may not be in his heart in perfect and complete truth, so that he should long for it with all his heart, nevertheless his heart does genuinely desire it to some small extent, because of the natural love in every Jewish heart to do whatever is the blessed Higher Will. And this union is his true desire, namely the Higher Union in Atzilut, which is produced by the impulsion from below, through the union of the divine soul and its absorption into the light of G-d which is clothed in the Torah and commandments in which it occupies itself so that they become One in reality, as has been explained above. For by reason of this, are also united the source of Torah and commandments, i.e., the Holy One, blessed be He, with the source of his divine soul which is called Shechinah. These are the two categories of “filling all the worlds” and of “encompassing all worlds,” as is explained elsewhere at length.138 138 Schneur Zalman ben Baruch, Likkutei Amarim, chap. 41. For English translation, see Sefer Likutei Amarim, Part One, Entitled Sefer shel Benonim, trans. Jacob Immanuel Schochet (London: Kehot, 1981), 211–13.

257

258

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

In the world of Hasidism, the Kabbalistic formula “for the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shekhinah” was understood beyond its theurgic Kabbalistic context. Its new meaning was that the divine that dwells within man, that is evident in the vitality that enables him to exist, and is expressed particularly in the words of prayer (“the power of speech”) or in the performance of a commandment (“the power of action”), must be unified with the Godhead, that is, the absolute and En Sof, which is the place of the world, and the world is not its place.139 In R. Schneur Zalman’s picturesque language, one must aspire to unite the divine aspect of “filling all the worlds” with the divine aspect of “encompassing all worlds.” Since God is also the source of the Torah and the commandments, the introspective contemplation of the fact that the divine vitality that enables the existence of the ego’s physicality dwells in the basis of human reality, in the ego itself (just as it dwells in all of existence), transforms the act of prayer and the performance of the commandments into an act of unification of the divine that dwells in the world with the absolute divine beyond it. In the words of R. Adin Steinsaltz: “This unification means that the essential ‘contradictory’ relationship between the Creator and the created disappears, and, at any rate, is blurred for some time.”140 R. Shalom Dov Baer Schneersohn, a later scion of the Schnnersohn family to lead Habad Hasidism, summed up the end goal of Hasidic prayer in the words: “This is the main thing: the labor in the service of the heart, which is prayer, to have one’s soul draw close and adhere to the godly by contemplating the divine light that clothes itself in the worlds.”141 R. Schneur Zalman was explicit regarding the inner nature of this connection, declaring that there are great differences between individuals concerning the fear and love of God, even if, externally, they all fulfill the same Torah and the same commandments: For we have all one Torah and one law, in so far as the fulfillment of all the Torah and commandments in actual performance is concerned. It is otherwise with fear and love, which vary according to the knowledge of G-d in the mind and heart, as has been mentioned above.

139 Gen. Rabbah 68:9. 140 Adin Even-Israel, A Commentary on the Tanya [Heb], vol. 4 (Jerusalem: Milta, 1989), on chaps. 38–44, 146. 141 Shalom Dov Baer (Schneerson) of Lubavich, Kuntres ha-Avodah (Brooklyn, 1946), 28.

Introspective Contemplation and Inward Focusing  •  CHAPTER THREE

Yet there is one love which incorporates something of all the distinctions and gradations of both “great love” and “eternal love,” and equally belongs in every Jewish soul, as our inheritance from our Patriarchs. And that is what the Zohar says on the verse: “[Thou art] my soul; I desire Thee in the night, . . . “ that “One should love the Holy One, blessed be He, with a love of the soul and the spirit, as these are attached to the body, and the body loves them,” and so forth.142 This is the interpretation of the verse: “My soul, I desire Thee,” which means “Since Thou, O Lord, are my true soul and life, therefore do I desire Thee.” That is to say, “I long and yearn for Thee like a man who craves the life of his soul, and when he is weak and exhausted he longs and yearns for his soul to revive in him; and also when he goes to sleep he longs and yearns for his soul to be restored to him when he awakens from his sleep. So do I long and yearn to draw the light of the blessed En Sof, the Life of true life, within me through occupation in the Torah when I awaken during the night from my sleep”; for the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are one and the same.143

For R. Schneur Zalman, and similarly in other Hasidic teachings,144 the soul itself is divine: “Thou, O Lord, are my soul.” These notions are based on the conceptional interiorizations and existential aspects of religious life that will be depicted in the following chapters. We can already state, however, that the change in the role of prayer in nascent Hasidism aroused new desires among the disciples of the early Hasidic masters: profound yearnings for contact and connection with the source of life inside them, to strengthen their inner bond with the divine element within, by means of the religious rite, that is called “occupation in the Torah,” centered around prayer and Torah study. This shift was accompanied by the profound awareness that these are inner processes, regardless of whether they are portrayed in terms of drawing and bringing down the godly into man, or as ascent and the raising up of the material to its divine source.145 142 Zohar 3:68a. 143 Schneur Zalman ben Baruch, Likkutei Amarim, Tanya, chap. 44 (trans.: Sefer Likutei Amarim, Part One, 231–34). 144 See, for example, Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, Degel Maḥaneh Efrayim, exposition for Shabbat Teshuvah, 266–69; see my discussion of this exposition in Human Temple, 349–50. 145 R. Menahem Mendel of Chernobyl portrays introspective Torah study and prayer as an act of the elevation of the words to their supernal place: “If a person studies Torah, prays, and utters the letters of the Torah with both fear and love, this constitutes the element of [supernal] knowledge. The fear and love of the element of [supernal]

259

260

Part Two: Emotion, Sensation, and Experience

This argument is proven by the considerable occupation with “alien thoughts” that mainly emerge during prayer. This concern is characteristic of the works of the early Hasidic masters, who set forth, in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, a diverse range of ways to contend with such undesirable thoughts. Idel’s recent comprehensive study of this issue, which continues a series of researches on the topic, is unique in its focus on a broad spectrum of ways, attributed to the Baal Shem Tov, to battle alien thoughts.146 Idel distinguishes between three different models, each of which is credited to the Baal Shem Tov: the traditional path of struggle (the agonistic model); the elevation of the alien thoughts, that he terms the harmonistic model; and the way of consciousness (the noetic model), that consists mainly of the understanding that God is concealed in all, and this very awareness leads to the elimination of the alien thoughts. The last method, which Idel presents as being at the heart of the Baal Shem Tov’s new way, is based on what I term “epistemological interiorization,” which will be discussed in chapter six. Hasidism’s enhanced concern with alien thoughts, with all its diversity (as shown by Idel), is a consequence of the Hasid’s intensive introspective contemplation of the events that unfold within him during prayer, following the Baal Shem Tov’s profound alteration of the purpose of prayer (as mentioned above). I maintain that this intensification is an integral part of the deep change brought about by nascent Hasidism, expressed mainly in its magnified focus on inner religious life and diverse interiorization trends.

knowledge create a channel in his mind and in his speech from the source in the world of thought, from the fount of wisdom, and the supernal Ḥokhmah and Binah flow into him. This becomes a single unity: the Torah that he speaks, with the supernal source. This speech ascends to its supernal source by the knowledge that he studies in fear and in love, which is actually the element of knowledge. A complete, single unification is effected, because the revealed Torah flies upward to its source” (Me’or Einayim, Vayetze, 63–64). From the perspective of the individual during introspective prayer, he brings down the Godhead and draws it into him; from the perspective that examines what happens to the speech of prayer itself, this prayer elevates the speech to its place. Both perspectives show inner processes that occur within the thought of the worshiper. Also see Wolfson, Open Secret (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 48–49 for a discussion of this ontological connection between man and God in Habad’s conception of worship. 146 Moshe Idel, “Prayer, Ecstasy, and ‘Alien Thoughts’ in the Religious Experience of the Besht” [Heb], in Let the Old Make Way for the New: Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Eastern European Jewry Presented to Immanuel Etkes, ed. David Assaf and Ada Rapoport-Albert, vol. 1: Hasidism and the Musar Movement (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2009), 57–120 (see his list of previous researches, 59 n. 8).

Introduction: Interiorization in Religious Thought

Chapter one opened with an examination of the relation between myth and ritual, which has troubled scholars since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the middle of that century, the question of the relationship between myth and the religious experience was subjected to renewed scrutiny. His examination of the evolution of Greek myths in Gnostic mystic teachings in late antiquity led the Gnosticism scholar Hans Jonas to ask: “What in the nature of these things (or in their typical course) comes first—experience or thought, feeling or concept, subjective practice or objective theory?”1 He concluded: . . . the theory is the anticipation, not the projection, of experience, making it possible, not resulting from it—an inversion of the relationship as psychologism is fond of seeing it. Here, as often, objective thought is the condition of possible experience. In a different sense I too consider the speculative system a “projection”: not, however, of experiences actually made, but of a total attitude toward being, whose theoretical explication is its own urgent concern. The explicit theory, then, has indeed issued from an existential stance—I call this the primal “‘objectivation,” by which I mean something with transcendental validity. . . . Without an antecedent dogmatics there would be no valid mysticism.2

1 Hans Jonas, “Myth and Mysticism: A Study of Interiorization in Religious Thought,” The Journal of Religion 49 (1969): 326. 2 Ibid., 328; see also the beginning of the essay, 315–16.

264

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Jonas expressly challenged the interpretation of Volker, who found metaphysical consequences of inner experiences in Origen’s teaching.3 That is, he opposed the approach also discernable in the assumption by James, Underhill, and others, that mystical experience preceded myths because the latter must be based on inner experiences.4 Jonas argued that myth is a consequence of an existential reality that seeks its truth in a comprehensive view of life and at times is even initially successful in satisfying this primal aspiration by means of symbolic-objective representations. It is only in the second phase, by means of an interiorization process that employs the psychologization of the mythical terminology, that mythical reality is transferred to an individual’s mental reality. The objective reality of myth becomes the subjective content that nourishes mystical experience. According to Jonas, the Gnostic mythical depictions of the ascent of the soul underwent a process of interiorization and psychologization in the Neoplatonist writings and in nascent Christianity. This process generated the basis for the subjective experiences that are reflected in the portrayal of ecstasy and unio mystica characteristic of the later writings, mainly without an awareness of the Gnostic sources from which they emerged. Jonas, unlike researchers seemingly close to his understanding, such as Gershom Scholem and Steven Katz, who rejected the existence of contentless mystical experiences,5 stressed the existential underpinning common to the objective mythical element and the subjective experiential one. The mystical experience, for Jonas, originates in the existential questions that were first answered by myths that he describes as “first objectified in the representational mythical projection that confronts the subject as a theoretical truth, is returned as a practical possibility to its origin, existence itself.”6 A distinction should be drawn between the argument that the theory is a consequence of the mystic experience that preceded it (an argument that was rejected by Jonas as psychologization) and his claim that the theory is a response to existential concerns. According to Jonas, despite the theory preceding the experience, both—the theory (the myth) and the experience (mysticism)—are responses to the same basic existential questions, and, also, are universal. Mystical experiences are, therefore, products of conceptual interiorization. 3 4 5 6

Ibid., 327. See above, chapter three, 212 n. 2. See above, chapter three, 213 n. 3. Jonas, “Myth and Mysticism,” 318; see also the end of section 2, 320.

Introduction: Interiorization in Religious Thought  •  CHAPTER THREE

This interiorization enables the mystic to understand his experiences as the realization of the contents of the myths on which he was raised and that are now interpreted as referring to the life of the individual. The assumed precedence of existential motive factors to both the theory and the mystical experience enables us to argue for the existence of nonverbal contents alongside the verbal, since both types provide an answer to existential questions that came before the mythical theories themselves. Myths that are formulated objectively do not belong to the direct inner dimension of religious life, but to the theoretical realm. By their very objective narrative formulation they express the externalization of existential experiences.7 The transformation of myths into the foundation for religious experiences is accelerated by conceptual interiorization processes, in which the myth contents are redirected to the inner lives of individuals. These conceptual processes interiorize the external mythic contents by means of interpretation directed to the individual’s subjective psychological life.8 The following chapters will discuss three aspects of inner religious life that also include the interiorization of objective religious contents. These three aspects comprise the conceptual underpinning for a diverse fabric of religious experiences, with the verbal ecstatic experiences and the nonverbal inward-focused experiences discussed in the preceding chapters being one component of a broad assemblage of additional religious experiences.

7

Muffs explained using the Bible as an example. He noted that the Bible’s great innovation lay in “the revelation of a new concept of personality. The divine personality is, to a great degree, the mirror image of man’s understanding of himself ” (Muffs, Love & Joy, 45). 8 A conception similar to that espoused by Jonas appears in the writings by some modern theologians, mainly among the successors of the Canadian theologian Bernard Lonergan. They tend to present Christian mysticism not only as the interiorization of rites, but also as the interiorization of religious ideas and the Scripture, which transforms them into a profound religious experience. The French cardinal Henri de Lubac argued in the 1960s that Christian mysticism must be understood as a deeper interiorization of the mystery of faith, and that it is enrooted in Scripture, the liturgy, and the sacramental life of the Church (on Lonergan and his successors, see McGinn, Foundations, 283–85). Therefore, he also argued that a fundamental distinction is to be drawn between Christian and non-Christian forms of mysticism. James Robertson Price, who basically favors Katz’s approach, argued that only an awareness of the role of conceptual interiorization enables us to understand the nature of mysticism (McGinn, Foundations, 323).

265

Chapter Four

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law

Myths and laws are formulated in an objective manner that is independent of the individual. Accordingly, their interpretation or reformulation in a manner reflective of the viewpoint of the subject, following a person’s more inner experiences, is a process of conceptual interiorization. The conceptual interiorization of laws and myths, which is expressed in inward conceptions and the experiences of those who produce them, allows the outer reality to be perceived as a presentation of the inner human world and arouses the individual to experience and realize these contents in his own life.

Examples of Conceptual Interiorization in India and in the Classical World The ˉAtman as Conceptual Interiorization in the Upanishads One of the earliest and most significant conceptual interiorizations took place in Indian thought, in the chapters of the Upanishads concerned with the eternal element known as Ᾱtman, which resides within man, and in all the world’s components. The seventh section in the third chapter of Brhadāranyaka Upanishad uses a fixed formulation to aver the existence of an inner essence in man and in the world that is different both from man’s body, feelings, and perceptions, and from the constituents of the natural

268

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

world. The outer world exists by means of an eternal inner and imperceptible essence that dwells in all: This self (ātman) of yours who is present within but is different from the earth, whom the earth does not know, whose body is in the earth, and who controls the earth from within—he is the inner controller, the immortal. . . . This self of yours who is present within but is different from darkness, whom darkness does not know, whose body is darkness, and who controls darkness from within—he is the inner controller, the immortal. This self of yours who is present within but is different from light, whom light does not know, whose body is light, and who controls light from within—he is the inner controller, the immortal. This self of yours who is present within but is different from mind, whom mind does not know, whose body is mind, and who controls mind from within—he is the inner controller, the immortal. . . . He sees, but he can’t be seen; he hears, but he can’t be heard; he thinks, but he can’t be thought of; he perceives, but he can’t be perceived. Besides him, there is no one who sees, no one who hears, no one who thinks, and no one who perceives. It is this self of yours who is the inner controller, the immortal. All besides this is grief.1

The eternal element is present in each of the physical forms in the world, but is not identical to them. It is in man, as it is in everything else. It maintains everything, but is different from everything. The identification of the eternal with the essence in man and presenting it as controlling all brings the Upanishad’s audience to the understanding that the outer reality is actually controlled by that eternal element within man; and that is the enduring factor that enables the world to be what it is. What is the relationship in the Upanishad between the eternal within to the manifest eternal that is not hidden within? Then Usasta Cākrayāna began to question him: “Yājnavalkya,” he said, “explain to me the Brahman that is plain and not cryptic, the self (ātman) that is within all.” “The self within all is this self of yours.” “Which one is the self within all, Yājnavalkya?” ...................................... 1 Upaniṣads, Brhadāranyaka Upaniṣad, chap. 3, sect. 7, 41–44.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

“You can’t see the seer who does the seeing; you can’t hear the hearer who does the hearing; you can’t think of the thinker who does the thinking; and you can’t perceive the perceiver who does the perceiving. The self within all is this self of yours. All besides this is grief!”2

The inner nucleus that maintains the reality that is perceived by the senses is not itself subject to sensory perception. The individual essence cannot be separated from that of all the natural reality; the essence concealed in man is the essence hidden in all. Now, take the bees, son. They prepare the honey by gathering nectar from a variety of trees and by reducing that nectar to a homogeneous whole. In that state the nectar from each different tree is not able to differentiate: “I am the nectar of that tree,” and “I am the nectar of this tree.” In exactly the same way, son, when all these creatures merge into the existent, they are not aware that: “We are merging into the existent.” No matter what they are in this world—whether it is a tiger, a lion, a wolf, a boar, a worm, a moth, a gnat, or a mosquito—they all merge into that. The finest essence here—that constitutes the self of this whole world; that is the truth; that is the self (ātman). And that’s how you are [Tat tvam asi], Svetaketu.3

Olivelle argues in his translation,4 based on Brereton’s philological examination of the phrase “Tat tvam asi,”5 that its accepted translation as the identification of the individuum and the absolute (That art thou) is incorrect. According to Brereton and Olivelle, this phrase means to show that Svetaku is no different from all the other creatures and that his existence is dependent on that same subtle and unseen essence. In the continuation of that chapter, Uddalaka asks his son Svetaku to split a fruit from the banyan tree and then to split one of the seeds in the fruit. In answer to his father’s question of what he sees, the son replies that he sees nothing. The father responds to this: The finest essence here, son, that you can’t even see—look how on account of that finest essence this huge banyan tree stands here. 2 Ibid., sect. 4, 39. 3 Upaniṣads, Chāndogya Upaniṣad, chap. 6, sect. 9, 153. 4 Upaniṣads, Notes, 349. 5 Joel Brereton, “That Tvam Asi in Context,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesselschaft 136 (1986): 98–109.

269

270

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Believe, my son: the finest essence here—that constitutes the self of this whole world; that is the truth; that is the self (ātman). And that’s how you are, Svetaketu.”6

Brereton explains that this passage opens by claiming that the tree grew and exists because of an invisible essence. It then asserts that everything in the world exists thanks to this essence, the ātman that enables the existing of all. Finally, according to Brereton, Uddalaka personalizes the teaching. Svetaku must look at himself in the same manner. Like the tree and everything else in the world, he is filled with this essence, which is the ultimate reality and the true essence. Brereton speaks of Uddalaka’s personalizing the teaching.7 In my opinion, this characterization does not fully describe the process, even if we now understand that this is not an identification but a comparison that applies to man, as well. It is noteworthy that the content of this personalization is interiorized. A person must understand that this invisible inner essence that maintains all is within himself, too. The connection between the conception of the Ᾱtman and the spiritual practices that developed in India and the East is obvious. The question, however, of which came first—the Ᾱtman that is present in all as an idea, or the Ᾱtman as the essence that is repeatedly experienced by means of those spiritual practices—remains unanswered, similar to what was said above regarding the relation between theory and experience in the GrecoRoman world. Hans Jonas, who examined the conceptual interiorization of these classical myths and the question of the relation between the objective mythical and the subjective mystical,8 argued for an existential basis common to both aspects. Burkitt and Dodds, in contrast, maintained that the Gnostic myths are a direct consequence of the Gnostics’ inner experiences.9 For Richard Wallis, too, the Plotinian hierarchy represents inner and experiential qualities.10 In this book, I will not attempt to resolve this question but will rather seek to map the main features of inner religious life and religious interiorizations in different cultures. This mapping indicates that, despite the differences between the interiorization processes in the Indian Upaniṣads, Chāndogya Upaniṣad, chap. 6, sect. 12, 154. Brereton, “That Tvam Asi,” 109. See above, the introduction to this chapter, 263–65. Francis Crawford Burkitt, Church and Gnosis: A Study of Christian Thought and Speculation in the Second Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 41–44; Dodds, Pagans and Christians, 18–20. 10 See above, chapter three, 220–21. 6 7 8 9

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

world and those of Western culture, we would be poorly advised to disregard their striking points of similarity.11

Conceptual Interiorization in Allegorical Interpretations of Classical Myths Conceptual interiorization is clearly at play in allegorical interpretations of classical myths, as, for instance, in Plato’s and Plotinus’ reading of the creation of man and love.12 Plato’s depiction in the Timaeus of the creation of man assumes the presence of the divine, most sacred, element in the “head”: The divine revolutions, which are two, they bound within a sphere-shaped body, in imitation of the spherical form of the All, which body we now call the “head,” it being the most divine part and reigning over all the parts within us. To it the gods delivered over the whole of the body they had assembled to be its servant, having formed the notion that it should partake in all the motions which were to be. In order, then, that it should not go rolling upon the earth, which has all manner of heights and hollows, and be at a loss how to climb over the one and climb out of the other, they bestowed upon it the body as a vehicle and means of transport. And for this reason the body acquired length, and, by God’s contriving, shot forth four limbs, extensible and flexible, to serve as instruments of transport, so that grasping with these and supported thereon it was enabled to travel through all places, bearing aloft the chamber of our most divine and holy part.13

Plato views the body’s limbs as the outer chariot of the head, that bears within itself inner, intellective, and psychological divine contents. This fundamental notion, which discerns between the outer physical dimension and the inner intellective one (“Soul”) in the head, was developed by Plotinus in the fifth Ennead: 11 To some extent, Brereton’s research narrows the gap that other scholars highlight between the immanence of Indian thought and the immanent elements in Western thought they describe as based on transcendental worldviews. His study supports approaches such as that of Radhakrishnan. See Savepalli Radhakrishnan, Eastern Religions and Western Thought (London: Oxford University Press, 1940). 12 Jean Pepin, Mythe et Allegorie: Les origines grecques et les contestations judeo-chretiennes (Aubier: Montaigne, 1958), 112–24, 190–209. 13 Plato, Timaeus 44–45 (trans.: 98–101).

271

272

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

It has been shown that we ought to think that this is how things are, that there is the One beyond being, of such a kind as our argument wanted to show, so far as demonstration was possible in these matters, and next in order there is Being and Intellect, and the nature of Soul in the third place. And just as in nature there are these three of which we have spoken, so we ought to think that they are present also in ourselves. I do not mean in [ourselves as] beings of the sense-world—for these three are separate [from the things of sense]— but in [ourselves as] beings outside the realm of sense-perception; “outside” here is used in the same sense as those realities are also said to be “outside,” as Plato speaks of the “inner man.” Our soul then also is a divine thing and of a nature different [from the things of sense], like the universal nature of soul; and the human soul is perfect when it has intellect; and intellect is of two kinds, the one which reasons and the one which makes it possible to reason. Now this reasoning part of the soul, which needs no bodily instrument for its reasoning, but preserves its activity in purity in order that it may be able to engage in pure reasoning. . . . 14

As Brehier summed up this position: “That which exists in things must exist in us too.”15 The central application of this notion is to be found in Plotinus’ theory of the divine nature of the human soul: Our demonstration that the soul is not a body makes it clear that it is akin to the divine spirit and to the eternal nature. It certainly does not have a shape or a colour, and it is intangible. But we can also demonstrate its kinship in the following way. We agree of course that all the divine and really existent has a good, intelligent life; now we must investigate what comes next, starting from our own soul and finding out what sort of nature it has. Let us take soul, not the soul in body which has acquired irrational desires and passions and admitted other affection, but the soul which has wiped these away and which, as far as possible, has no communion with the body. This soul does make it clear that its evils are external accretions to the soul and come from elsewhere, but that when it is purified the best things are present in it, wisdom and all the rest of virtue, and are its own. If, then, 14 Plotinus, Ennead V:1: “On the Three Primary Hypostates” 10 (trans.: 444:44–47). The background for this statement by Plotinus is what Plato says about the bestial element and the intellectual-divine element in man, which he terms the “man within us” (Plato, Republic, 589). For English translation, see The Republic, trans. Paul Shorey, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 276 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 402–403. See also Phaedrus 254 (trans.: 36:494–99). 15 Brehier, Philosophy of Plotinus, 162.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

the soul is something of this kind when it goes up again to itself, it must surely belong to that nature which we assert is that of all the divine and the eternal. For wisdom and true virtue are divine things, and could not occur in some trivial mortal being, but something of such a kind [as to possess them] must be divine, since it has a share in divine things through its kinship and consubstantiality. For this reason any one of us who is like this world would deviate very little from the beings above as far as his soul itself was concerned and would only be inferior by that part which is in body. For this reason, if every man was like this, or there were a great number who had souls like this, no one would be so unbelieving as not to believe that what is soul in men is altogether immortal. But, as it is, they see the soul in the great majority of people damaged in many ways, and do not think of it as if it was divine or immortal.16

The Neoplatonic theory of the soul’s divine origin is based on the matter-spirit dichotomy and assumes the possibility of separating the body’s instincts and desires from the pure mental essence. The latter is characterized by the good traits and wisdom that are perceived to be divine attributes, and therefore, eternal. Plotinus applies the theory of the separation between the material and the spiritual and knowingly detaches himself from the material world in order to concentrate, on his inner self and on his subjective mystical experience.17 He portrays his experience in terms of the theory to which he professes, and his inward-focusing brings him to dwell in the divine. This setting points to the conceptual interiorization that had its beginnings in Plato’s writings and continued in Plotinus’ discussion of the meaning of the “chariots of the gods” myth or the “losing of the wings” mentioned by Plato in the Phaedrus dialogue,18 and Zeus’ words to the gods that Plato brings in Timaeus.19 Plotinus interprets the mythical images in terms of the human soul’s inclination to be immersed in corporeality, and the reasons for this immersion: The individual souls, certainly, have an intelligent desire consisting in the impulse to return to itself springing from the principle from which they 16 Plotinus, Ennead IV:7: “On the Immortality of the Soul” 10 (trans.: 443:380–83). 17 Ibid.:8: “On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies” 1 (trans.: 443:396–97); see above, chapter three, 217 n. 14. 18 Plato, Phaedrus, 246–249 (trans.: 470–83). 19 Plato, Timaeus (trans.: 86–89).

273

274

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

came into being, but they also possess a power directed to the world here below . . . and they are free from sorrow if they remain with universal soul in the intelligible, but in heaven with the universal soul they can share in its government. . . . But they change from the whole to being a part and belonging to themselves, and, as if they were tired of being together, they each go to their own. Now when a soul does this for a long time, flying from the All and standing apart in distinctness, and does not look towards the intelligible, it has become a part and is isolated and weak and fusses and looks towards a part and in its separation from the whole it embarks on one single thing and flies from everything else; it comes to and turns to that one thing battered by the totality of things in every way, and has left the whole and directs the individual part with great difficulty; it is by now applying itself to and caring for things outside and is present and sinks deep into the individual part. Here the “moulting,” as it is called, happens to it, and the being in the fetters of the body. . . .20

The Plotinian perception of the soul as the divine element in man is clearly expressed in the thought of the medieval Christian mystics, who used this as the basis for the interiorization of the narrative in Genesis of creation in the image of God. Meister Eckhart wrote that the idea of creation in the image of God means that man’s soul is a divine spark: . . . the spark of the soul, which is created by God and is a light imprinted from above, and is an image of the divine nature, which always opposes what is not divine. It is not a power or faculty of the soul, as certain teachers suggest, and is always inclined to the good; even in hell it is inclined to the good.21

Tauler expanded upon this notion, stating that its significance is that God dwells within man: This image means not only that the soul is made in the image of God, but it is the same image that God is in himself in his own pure and divine Being; and

20 Plotinus, Ennead IV:8: “On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies” 4 (trans.: 443:406–409). 21 Johannes Eckhart, Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke (Stuttgart, 1936), part 1, 332f. For English translation, see Davies, God Within, 48, and see the extensive discussion in Davies, God Within, 47–59.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

here, in this image, God loves, knows and enjoys himself. God exists, dwells and acts in the soul.22

Additional examples of an interiorized conceptual interpretation of this sort for Homerian myths appear in Plato’s Eros theory and Plotinus’ interpretation of this theory.23 Homer’s Odyssey depicts Otus and Ephialtes, the two sons born to Aeolus’ wife Iphimedia, who claimed that she had already slept with Poseidon, the brother of Zeus. These two handsome sons were giants and because they wanted to ascend to the heavens, they waged a fierce war against the immortal gods, the denizens of Olympus. Apollo, the son of Zeus and Leto, killed them before they reached adulthood.24 This story, whose Biblical parallels are the narratives of the mighty ones, the sons of God, and the daughters of men (Gen. 6:1–4) and the Tower of Babel story (Gen. 11:1–9), was transformed by Plato in the Symposium into a description of the androgynous, as a third gender of original humans who had two adjoined bodies, and moved about by “whirling over and over.” These creatures attempted to ascend to the heavens and fight the gods. In response, Zeus cut them in two, to limit their mobility. The Platonic myth is an interiorized interpretation of the Homeric myth since it explains in psychological terms the aim of ascending to the heavens and being as gods. The holy heroes, who were handsome and strong, saw themselves as worthy of inheriting the place of the gods on Olympus, since they were more perfect than the humans of our time. The secret of their perfection lay in their bodies containing both earthly female and heavenly male elements. According to Plato, man originates from the sun, woman from the earth, and the third sex from the moon, “for the 22 Tauler, Predigten, 277; see the extensive discussion in Davies, God Within, 78–84. 23 Plato, Symposium, 189–93. For English translation, see Plato, Symposium, Gorgias, trans. W. R. M. Lamb, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 166 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 132–47; Plotinus, Ennead III:5: “On Love.” For English translation see, see Plotinus with an English Translation, trans. A. H. Armstrong, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 268 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 163–203: “And yet the new feeling for inner beauty which is announced by The Symposium makes itself powerfully felt in Alcibiades’ speech, when he compares Socrates to the statuettes of Silenus sold in art-shops, which open to reveal images of. gods inside them (Symp. 215a-b).” Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, 2 vols., trans. Gilbert Hihght (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943), 2:196. 24 Homer, Odyssey 11:305–20. For English translation see Homer, Odyssey, trans. A. T. Murray, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 104 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 422–23.

275

276

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

moon also partakes of both.”25 Platonic androgyny is physical and mental perfection, which the philosopher uses to explain the attraction in heterosexual and same-sex love between humans, who are divided into males and females. In his book Yoga, Eliade describes interiorization of this type in the yoga tantra and in alchemy. The alchemists safeguarded ancient traditions in which the material is a store of sacred powers which the alchemists could awaken and control. They did not relate to minerals and precious stones as objects of economic value. Instead, these traditions led the alchemists to treat them as treasures that bore within them cosmic forces, which they sought to harness.26 Conceptual interiorizations are frequently linked to any or all of the following manifestations: epistemological interiorizations, existential challenges of religious life, inward focusings. The connections between the different interiorizations have been discussed by scholars of religion. I define conceptual interiorization as an independent category, since the realization of this type of interiorization cannot always be found in one of the other expressions of inner life.

Conceptual Interiorization in Jewish Sources The Jewish sources contain a unique interiorization of the social law, in addition to the various types of interiorization of mythic thought very like the above examples. Additionally, the conceptual interiorization in these sources is characteristically of a midrashic-literary nature, unlike the theoretical character of the Greek philosophers’ interiorizations. These facts highlight the difference between the above examples and many of the passages I will cite in this section. It seems, however, that beyond this difference, a shared element of these various cultural phenomena of conceptual interiorizations is evident in the transformation of sanctified myths, laws, and narratives in the conceptual formulations that mainly emphasize the inner meanings relevant to every person.

25 Plato, Symposium, 190 (trans.: 134–37). 26 Eliade, Yoga, 259–67, 283–84.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

The Interiorization of Law Nahmanides asserts in his commentary to “Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you . . .” (Deut. 6:18): “Also when He did not command you, think to do what is good and right in His sight, for He loves what is good and right.” According to the literal meaning, “in the sight of the Lord” refers to what the Torah presents as the commandments of the Lord, that is, it is only by means of the commandments of the Torah that an Israelite can know what is good in the eyes of God. The new element that Nahmanides adds in his commentary is based on his exegesis of the words “that it may go well with you”: “for the Lord acts beneficently with those who are good and right in their hearts,” following Ps. 125:4: “Do good, O Lord, to the good, to the upright in heart.” Nahmanides especially relates to the dictum of the rabbis on this verse: “’Do what is right and good’—this refers to a compromise, acting beyond the strict demands of the law.”27 In effect, Nahmanides indicates that the rabbis’ conception that expanded “Do what is right and good” to include action beyond the demands of strict law is reflective of the interiorization of the law. In his understanding, “Do what is right and good” refers to what man perceives as such in his inner self, that is, in his heart.28 In light of the understanding that God “loves what is good and right,” Nahmanides determines that the Lord’s commandment is not limited to the fulfillment of the law, but comes to fruition in the maximal realization of the spirit of the law.29 In other words, 27 See Rashi to Deut. 6:18, based on the discussions in BT Bava Metzia. 28 The expression yishrei lev [“upright”], which appears seven times in the book of Psalms (7:11; 11:2; 32:11; 36:11; 64:11; 94:15; 97:11), expresses mainly the conception that uprightness is revealed in a person’s inner self, in contrast with his outer deeds, which might be deceptive. Uprightness is close to God, who, as I Samuel [16:7] says, “sees into the heart” and seeks sincerity in a man. An upright person fulfills God’s will not by rote, but within his inner self, out of a profound awareness of what is proper. 29 Urbach writes: “The dicta that we have cited relative to ‘beyond the requirement of the law’ and ‘pious conduct’ [lifnim mi-shurat ha-din, which is rendered in the current text as “going beyond the letter of the law”—trans.] indicate how wide is the range of matters, which, even for the person who keeps the precepts because he is enjoined, remain subject to his desire and will, to his temperament and attributes. There is no autonomy. In contrast to Kant’s ethical system, in which God is no more than an Idea that serves to complete the science of ethics, in the doctrine of the Sages God always remains the Source and the Giver of the commandments” (Urbach, Sages, 1:334). Urbach intends to prove the heteronomy of the system of commandments in contrast with Kant’s philosophy, which prevents him from offering a positive description of the freedom of action within the framework of “going beyond the letter of the law.” According to Nahmanides, in all the instances that are not covered by the laws of the

277

278

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

the human obligation to the moral command remains in force, even when this mandate is not expressly included in the system of commandments and laws, or when legal limitations prevent the court from employing coercive measures against an immoral act. Such situations were discussed by the rabbis with the new terms that they coined, for the inclusion—within the legal construct—of subjective understandings that expand the demands of the law, of such concepts as “lifnim mi-shurat ha-din” [beyond the strict demands of the law] and “hayav be-dinei shamayim” [liable by the laws of Heaven], which were used to make the legal system more malleable to include such situations despite legal restraints.30 Silberg wrote about the cases discussed in the Talmud31 concerning the concept of “beyond the demands of strict law”: “Their shared element is their willingly taking into account the ‘bough,’ and not only the ‘tree trunk,’ the ingathering of the strict law, and drawing it closer to the central nucleus.”32 This interpretation emphasizes the singularity of the conceptual interiorization of the law. A person perceives the “inner nature of the law” Torah, man is guided not by his desire and will, but by the belief “that He loved what is right and good.” Individual traits determine the degree to which a person is capable of actualizing “the right and the good” in his own life, even beyond the demands of the law. Nahmanides states that the reason for the law is not the arbitrary will of God who commands, but His commitment to the principles of what is right and good. Since the autonomy that the rabbis ascribe to man is not identical to the Kantian formulation, would it be correct to argue against any human autonomy? On theonomy as the combination of heteronomous morality and autonomous morality, see Buber, Eclipse of God, 98–99. See also Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, Religion and Morality, trans. Batya Stein (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), 139–53; Avi Sagi, Judaism: Between Religion and Morality [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2000), esp. part one, 18–101 and 269–313. 30 On the approach of the rabbis to matters of law and ethics, see Menachem Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles, vol. 1, trans. Bernard Auerbach and Melvin J. Sykes (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 141–227; Simon Federbusch, Jewish Ethics and Law [Heb] (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1947), esp. chaps. 4, 5, 8; Moshe Silberg, Principia Talmudica [Heb] (Jerusalem: Law Faculty, Hebrew University, 1984), 66–139; Urbach, Sages, 1:330–36; 2:830–33 nn. 46–68. 31 BT Ketubot 97a; Bava Kamma 99b; Bava Metzia 24b, 30b, and more. 32 Silberg, Principia Talmudica, 132. Silberg noted that, besides the technical use of the term lifnim mi-shurat ha-din in relation to specific instances, the commentators and decisors used this concept generally, to denote all those actions that go beyond the law, just as midat ha-ḥasidut [lit., “the attribute of piety”] is used in the post-Talmudic literature as a general appellation for the laws of integrity (ibid., 132 n. 147). On the meaning of lifnim mi-shurat ha-din in the Talmudic literature as acting within (lifnim) the law, see Christine Hayes, What’s Divine about Divine Law? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 177 n. 20.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

or the “spirit of the law” in his inner self—in the hearts of the good and the right, as Nahmanides terms this. This inward conception of ethics is consistent with the philosophical theories that stress the intuitive nature of morality.33 It is on this background that we are to understand the dictum by R. Johanan: “Jerusalem was destroyed only because they gave judgments therein in accordance with Torah law.” The Talmud explains: “they based their judgments on [strict] Torah law, and did not act beyond the demands of strict law.”34 This teaching reflects the profound comprehension of sages such as R. Johanan of the idea of the interiorization of the law. Understanding the Torah as a solely outer legal-judicial system and not as a system meant realizing the imperative in life of the “good and right” that a person senses in his inner self, led to the tragedy of the destruction of the Temple. For example, an examination of the Talmudic case of returning a purse that had been lost in the marketplace (BT Bava Metzia 24b), that is cited in the context of lifnim mi-shurat ha-din, shows that this principle refers to situations in which, on legal grounds, a person could free himself of the obligation imposed by the Torah. Since such a release obviously entails evading the doing of what is good and right to which the Torah directed its enactment of the law, a person is expected to understand—based on his personal introspective contemplation of the data—that he must exceed the demands of the strict law. This is a struggle against what is now called legal formalism, which is to be replaced by a conception of fundamental uprightness and justice, which a person knows in his inner self, without reliance on the cut-and-dried clauses of the law. The Platonist parallel of this conception is set forth in the dialogue of Euthyphro, in which Socrates convinces his conversant that that which is the holy “is loved because it is holy. . . . It is not holy because it is loved.” Accordingly, “what is dear to the gods is dear to them because they love it, that is, by reason of this love, not that they love it because it is dear.”35 The good act is not good because the gods desire it, or, translating this into legal terminology, because this is the desire of the law, rather, because it is good the gods, too, desire it, and therefore the 33 See Franz Brentano, The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong, trans. Roderick M. Chisholm and Elizabeth H. Schneewind (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), esp. 6–7; Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 63–72. 34 BT Bava Metzia 30b. 35 Plato, Euthyphro, 10 (trans.: 38–39).

279

280

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

law requires it. Justice and good are not a reality external to man which are known to him because he understands that the gods love justice, or that the law requires that one act in accordance with justice. Justice and the good act are beloved because they are known directly to man in his inner self. In this spirit, we may say that the good and the right in the sight of the Lord, that are reflected in the laws of the Torah are identical to the right and the good that a man is capable of discerning and feeling in his inner self, as is seen in the words of the prophet Micah: “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk modestly with your God” (Mic. 6:8). The rabbis frequently engage in conceptual clarifications of the aim of the law and the question of which is preferable, the observance of the law as it is, or the realization of the spirit of the law.36 On the subject of ona’at devarim [misrepresentation] in BT Bava Metzia 58–59, R. Judah states: “A person may not feign interest in a purchase when he has no money, since this is known only to the heart, and it is said of everything known to the heart [Lev. 25:17], ‘but fear your God.’”37 The laws of purchase and sale are formulated in an objective manner in order to regulate commercial life, but the inner moral element underlies the economic-legal dimension. From this respect, honoring the outer dimension is insufficient. By law, a person is permitted to bargain, but if he is incapable of consummating the terms he has attained, then in his inner self he knows that he has engaged in false negotiations. It is inner knowledge that must determine outer behavior. According to the rabbis, a person’s designs belong to the realm of relations between man and his God, even if they presumably are not flawed in the laws governing the interpersonal realm. This was the basis for the connection that the rabbis drew between the fear of God and the inner moral element underlying interpersonal behavior, which seemingly is regulated by law. Hermann Cohen wrote, in his discussion of the relationship between conviction in legal proceedings based on an examination of the facts, in 36 This is the context for Nahmanides’s invectives against the “sordid person within the permissible realm of the Torah” in his commentary to Lev. 19:2 (trans.: Commentary on the Torah, 282). This is connected with the institution of the prozbol by Hillel, in Tractate Gittin. See, for example, the responsum by Rashba (R. Solomon ben Abraham Adret) on the hiring of a tutor for a minor, in which he states: “all vows follow only the intent of the heart,” following the dictum of R. Judah (M Nedarim 7:3): “It all depends on the person who vows” (Teshuvot ha-Rashba 5:229; and see the basis for the responsum in the narrative in BT Bava Kamma 80a). 37 BT Bava Metzia 58b.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

accordance with the statutes of the law, and the question of a person’s guilt: “When the man is declared a criminal, in accordance with the facts, and he is not able to help himself in the narrower correlation between man and man, in this deepest distress arises the problem of his I, and the broader correlation between man and God offers at this point the only possibility of help.”38 Cohen maintains that the prophets’ fight against the sacrificial rite reflected a tremendous turning point in human thought, going beyond the mythic conception characteristic of the entire ancient world—in which the victim was made to feel guilt—to the moral stance of the individual: the individual standing before God.39 The experiences of guilt and moral responsibility that the written Torah and Oral Law fostered, and that, so Cohen maintains, are conditional on directly standing before God, are an additional and distinct type of the profound religious experiences that are built on the interiorizations of the law described above.

The Interpretation of the Appellation “Makom” as the Interiorization of Jacob’s Dream “He came upon a certain place [ba-makom]” [Gen. 28:11]—R. Huna said in the name of R. Ami: Why is an appellation given for the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, and He is called “makom”? For He is the Place of the world, and the world is not His place. R. Yose bar Halafta said: We do not know whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is the place of His world, or whether His world is His place. From what is written: “See, there is a place by Me” [Exod. 33:21], then the Holy One, blessed be He, is the Place of His world, and His world is not His place. R. Isaac said: It is written, “The eternal God is a dwelling-place” [Deut. 33:27]—we do not know whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is the dwelling of His world, or whether His world is His dwelling. From what is written: “Lord, You have been our dwellingplace” [Ps. 90:1], then the Holy One, blessed be He, is the dwelling of His world, and His world is not His dwelling. R. Abba bar Yudan said: He is like a warrior riding a horse, his robes flowing over on both sides; the horse is secondary to the rider, but the rider is not secondary to the horse, for it is said: “that You are driving Your steeds” [Hab. 3:8].40 38 Cohen, Religion of Reason, 167–68. 39 Ibid., 167–77. 40 Gen. Rabbah 68:9.

281

282

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

According to Urbach, the statements by R. Ami and R. Isaac, which are based on the question of the Tanna R. Yose bar Halafta, reflect a change that occurred in the world of the rabbis after they stopped using “Ha-Makom” [literally, “the Place”; usually rendered as “the Omnipresent”] as an appellation for God, replacing it with “the Holy One, blessed be He.” In their time, the meaning of the Ha-Makom appellation was no longer clear, since it had fallen into disuse. Urbach argues that this appellation originally expressed God’s immanence, His closeness to man and to the place where he is present. For Urbach, only the statements by the Amoraim impart transcendental meaning to the appellation, after it had lost its original meaning.41 Urbach thereby disagrees with Baer, who understood the expression, among other meanings, as a product of Greek influence that Philo might have introduced into the world of the rabbis.42 In my opinion, the statements by R. Yose bar Halafta and R. Ami need not be understood as blunting the divine immanence, as Urbach claims, but could be seen as expanding the declaration of R. Ishmael: “The Divine Presence is in all places,”43 in a manner that blurs the simple distinction between immanence and transcendence. I believe that this is a more conceptual and abstract formulation of the content of R. Gamaliel’s sun metaphor, the cave and water of the sea metaphors in the Song of Songs, and the like (see below).44 The statement that “the Holy One, blessed be He, is the Place of the world” is not a declaration of God’s transcendence, since the world’s resting within God is not an apt metaphor for emphasizing transcendence. On the other hand, it does not allow for the identification of the world with God, since “His world is Not His place.” The statements by R. Ami and R. Yose assert that God is, at the same time, both within the world and beyond it, and therefore the terms immanence and transcendence are of no avail in clarifying the thinking of the rabbis. In the narrative of Jacob’s dream, God’s dwelling place is in Heaven, and Jacob calls the site to which he came and where he saw the ladder set on the ground with its top reaching to the sky “the abode of God,” because God came down there from Heaven. R. Abba bar Yudan transforms the meaning of the dream, using the metaphor of a horse and its rider. With outer eyes, the rider seems to be dependent upon the horse, but we know that the rider 41 42 43 44

See Urbach, Sages, 1: 74-75. Baer, “Eschatological Doctrine,” 100–109. BT Bava Batra 25a. Below in this chapter, 292–93.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

is primary and the horse secondary. The inner truth is the opposite of the outer appearance. Consequently, the place that looks to us in a dream as where God stays when He comes to earth appears so only from an outer viewpoint. The doubt that Solomon already raised concerning the possibility of God’s presence in his Temple45 is resolved by an innovative idea: the Holy One, blessed be He, is the dwelling of His world, and His world is not His dwelling. God does not come to visit the earth, as in the outer mythical conception, rather, the world dwells within God. The place where God is revealed is not an outer site, it rather is the product of an inner comprehension that occurs within man. An examination of the difference between R. Ishmael’s statement: “The Divine Presence is in all places”46 and what R. Akiva says about the name Makom, to be discussed below,47 will shed light on the distinctions that originate in the different interiorization orientations. Instead of arguing, as did Urbach (and to some degree, Heschel, as well), that R. Ishmael, in his inclination to transcendence, reflects a more rational conception, in contrast with the more mythical notion of R. Akiva, who favors immanence, I prefer to distinguish between the different orientations of interiorization. The attitude held by R. Ishmael and those following in his path results from the conceptual-epistemological interiorization evident also in the statement by R. Gamaliel, and was formulated long afterwards in the Kabbalah and Hasidism in the wording: “There is no place void of Him.”48 In this vein, R. Yose bar Halafta, who in matters of faith and doctrine was close to 45 “But will God really dwell on earth? Even the heavens to their uttermost reaches cannot contain You, how much less this House that I have built!” (I Kings 8:27). 46 Above, n. 43. 47 Below, n. 52. 48 “A heathen asked R. Gamaliel: Why was the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed to Moses from within the bush? He replied: If He had been revealed on a carob or on a fig, you would have asked me thus. I cannot send you away without an answer—this is to teach you that there is no place empty of the Divine Presence, for even from the bush He spoke with Moses” (Num. Rabbah 12:4). Cf. Seneca’s statement about the one God: “nothing is void of him” (Seneca, De Beneficiis 4:8. For English translation see Moral Essays. De Beneficiis, trans. John W. Basore, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 310 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935), 218–19. See also: “‘I will be standing there before you on the rock at Horeb’ [Exod. 17:6]—the Omnipresent said to him: Wherever you find the imprint of human feet, there I am before you” (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ismael, Beshalaḥ, Vayisa 6, ed. Horovitz and Rabin, 175). See George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 372–73. On conceptual interiorizations, see also the extensive discussion below, chapter six.

283

284

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

the teachings of R. Ishmael, declared: “He is the Place of His world, and the world is not His place. Then, His world is secondary to Him, and He is not secondary to His world.”49 R. Akiva’s position, which Heschel characterized as opposed to the view of R. Ishmael and those close to him,50 is indicative of an inward-focused experience: Why is the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, called Makom? Because in every place where the righteous are He is found with them, as it is said, “In every place (Makom) where I record my name I will come to you, and bless you” (Exod. 20:24), and it is said: “He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night” [Gen. 28:11].51

The same verse interpreted by R. Yose as the source of the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the place of His world is used by R. Akiva as a prooftext for his assertion that God is present in the place where man stands in contact with God. The sacred place is the venue of the experienced meeting with God resulting from inward focusing.52 Although, according to Urbach, Philo’s interpretation of “Makom” in Jacob’s dream53 is reflective of the Alexandrian philosopher’s Hellenistic spiritual world (which was distant from the world of the rabbis) there is a fundamental closeness between his interpretation and the explanation I offered above. Philo finds three meanings in this term: (1) the material sense; (2) place, in terms of the divine speech that fills everything with nonmaterial potentials (the Logos); (3) the place in which everything is included, that contains all, and which cannot be contained by anything. Philo elaborates on the third meaning: “God for Whom no name nor utterance nor conception of any sort is adequate.”54 According to Philo, the verses that speak of seeing God, such as Exod. 24:10–11 (the revelation of 49 Midrash Tehillim 90:10, ed. Buber, 390–91; Gen. Rabbah 68:9 (see above, n. 782). See also A. Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God, vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), 92. 50 Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 97. 51 Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, chap. 35. The wording is based on English translation in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, trans. Gerald Friedlander (New York: Hermon, 1965), 264; Midrash Tehillim 90:10, ed. Buber, 391. 52 On the differing views of R. Ishmael and R. Akiva, see Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 94. On this notion as epistemological interiorization, see below, 471, n.72. 53 Philo, De Somniis 1:61–68. For English translation, see Philo, De Somniis (On Dreams, That They Are God-Sent), trans. Francis Henry Colson and G. H. Whitaker, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 275 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 328–31. 54 Ibid., 1:67 (trans.: 275:330–31).

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

God to the seventy elders), allude to the second sense. R. Yose bar Halafta, too, relates to the revelation through seeing (Exod. 33:20). R. Akiva seems closer to Philo’s third meaning, because of the direct nature of the contact that the Tanna portrays. The perception of God as place in the third meaning of Philo can be only experiential and direct because it cannot be expressed verbally. The interiorized interpretation of Makom—which accords with the identification of the soul with God—appears in a number of medieval Jewish sources: 1. Shir ha-Yihud (the hymn of the unity of God), composed by Ashkenaz pietists: The beginning and the end are ordered in Your hand, You are in them and they are supported by Your spirit. . . . [You] suffer all, fill all, and, being all, You are in all . . . there is none other than Your existence, [You] are living and omnipotent, and there is none save You; You were before all, and being all, You filled all. . . . [You] are and will be, and You are in all; being forever, and thus [You] are known. We shall testify to You, and in You is testimony; that You are He [i.e., God], and are present in all, all is Yours, and all is from You.55

2. Ha-Ofan by R. Judah Halevi: God, please, may I find You, Your exalted and hidden place, and if I were not to find You, Your glory fills the world, that which is present within, the ends of the earth that exists, who is exalted to those close, the refuge to those distant, You, who is “enthroned on cherubim” [Ps. 99:1].56

3. The perception of Ha-Makom in the thought of R. Moses Cordovero: Thus the place of their perception of the verity of His existence will be called “Makom,” from the aspect of those perceiving. This is the intent of “See, there is a place [makom] by Me [iti]” [Exod. 33:21]—the perception that you 55 Shir ha-Yiḥud for Tuesday, in Shir ha-Yiḥud: The Hymn of Divine Unity with the Kabbalistic Commentary of R. Yom Tov Lipmann Muelhausen Thiengen 1560 (Jerusalem: Jewish National and University Library Press, 1981), xiii–xvii (on Shir ha-Yihud, see the introduction by Joseph Dan, ibid., 7–26). See Urbach, Sages, 2:716 n. 39, on the parallels to this conception of the Thanksgiving Scroll of the Judean Desert sect in Paul’s statement in Romans 11:36, and in the writings of Marcus Aurelius. 56 Hebrew Poems from Spain and Provence, vol. 1, ed. Hayyim Schirmann (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1954), 524.

285

286

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

perceive in the reality. It does not say, “See, I am place [makom ani], because His presence is not that perception . . . consequently, the place of perception is not outside Him, and is not He Himself, rather, that perception is “by Me,” and it is this that is called “Place.”57

The explanation by Eleazar Azikri of Jacob’s dream that appears in the manuscript of Milei de-Shemaya fully integrates all the ideas discussed above: “A ladder was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and angels of God were going up and down on it. And the Lord was standing beside him” [Gen. 28:12–13]—on the ladder, and according to another opinion, over Jacob [Gen. Rabbah 63:3]. And this is all one, for the ladder is an allusion that the world is a chariot to the Lord, may He be blessed, and the horse is secondary to the rider [Gen. Rabbah 68:9]; and the ladder is an allusion to Jacob, that he is a small world [i.e., microcosm].58

Jacob’s ladder symbolizes both the world and man as the chariot of God, similar to the imagery in Genesis Rabbah of the horse and rider as a metaphor for the concept of Ha-Makom. The world and man are insubstantial without God, who is seated on them, and together they forge a single unity. Just as, regarding Ha-Makom, it is difficult to determine “whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is the place of His world, or whether His world is His place,” as R. Yose bar Halafta asks in Genesis Rabbah, this doubt seems apt also regarding man, who is as a ladder set on the ground with its top reaching to the sky. R. Abba bar Yudan’s metaphor of the horse being secondary to the rider, and not the reverse, teaches that the meaning of man lies in the divine essence for which he serves as a chariot.

The Interiorization of the Myth of Creation in the Image of God The Bible associates the verse “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27) with blood, as is implicit from the later verse: “Whoever sheds the 57 Cordovero, Shi‘ur Komah, siman 20: Makom, fol. 35a–37a. See idem, Pardes Rimmonim, part 1, sha‘ar 6: Sha‘ar Seder Amidatam, chap. 3, fol. 29a–b. 58 Milei de-Shemaya, ed. Pachter, section 281. See the Zoharic sources in Pachter’s notes, 174, and his references to Azikri’s Sefer Ḥaredim: chap. 7, fol. 14b–15a; Mitzvot Aseh me-Divrei Kabbalah u-me-Divrei Soferim ha-Teluyot ba-Lev, chap. 1, para. 31, fol. 44a–b.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in His image did God make man” (Gen. 9:6). Blood is defined in Deuteronomy 12:23 as nefesh: “for the blood is the nefesh.” Bible scholars understand the word nefesh as life, in light of its comparison with the Akkadian napisitu, which, as in Hebrew, is derived from the root nun-peh-shin, with the usual meaning of “life.”59 Since all living creatures are defined in Gen. 1:24, 30 as “nefesh hayah” (living creature), this indicates that the primary simple meaning of creation in the image of God, unlike the depiction in Gen. 2:7 (that says only “and man became a nefesh hayah [living being]”) is bound up with the superiority of the human race, as being capable of ruling all other living creatures. “And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth” (Gen. 1:26). According to the Creation narrative in Gen. 2, man’s uniqueness consists of his working the land, since before his creation, “and there was no man to till the soil” (v. 5), and in the continuation of the chapter: “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it” (v. 15). The creation of man is described by the book of Genesis in terms of vitality [nefesh hayah], mastery of all living creatures, and cultivating the land, with the latter two representing economic creativity. These aspects do not necessarily emphasize inner life, and are primarily evident in man’s outer life.

59 See Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 152; Marc Vervenne, “The Blood Is the Life and the Life Is the Blood: Blood as Symbol of Life and Death in Biblical Tradition (Gen. 9,4),” in Ritual and Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, ed. J. Quagebeur (Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 452–67. “Life” is not the only interpretation of the Akkadian napistu. According to another interpretation, it means “creature,” “living entity,” which could be a human or an animal. An additional interpretation connects the meaning of the root nun-peh-shin with the throat, where the windpipe [keneh neshimah] is located. On this etymological basis, the nefesh can be viewed as a sort of material vessel through which breathing [neshimah]—the essence [nishmat] of life—passes. The Bible researcher Mieke Bal proposed understanding “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19) as meaning that the nefesh is the material element in man that is anchored in the earth, and in the Bible it does not have a spiritual element, such as “soul” or “spirit”; while life comes from God (see Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, trans. Christine van Boheemen [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985], 24–25). In this light, Yael Katz suggests that the phrase nefesh ḥayah refers to a combination of two elements, ruaḥ ḥayyim [lit., “living spirit”] and nefesh, which together produce the living creature [nefesh ḥayah] (Katz, “The Mythic Meaning of Blood in the Biblical Cult” [Heb], PhD diss. (Tel Aviv University, 2008), 141–42).

287

288

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

A number of rabbinic dicta present different forms of the interiorization of the Creation myth in the book of Genesis, that revolves around the creation of man in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–29).60 This interiorization stresses the significance of creation in the image of God regarding man’s self-perception, way of life, and the religious law to which he is obligated.61 According to Lorberbaum, in the school of R. Akiva, the principle of creation in the image of God was the founding idea for the formulation of new laws and positions regarding matters such as the four court-imposed death penalties, the laws of the murderer, and the laws relating to reproduction. He maintains that R. Akiva’s stance was the continuation of the conception reflected in Hillel’s teachings, which, too, reveal an iconic anthropomorphic notion of the image of God, with its assumption of a common mold shared by God and man that includes the physical aspect.62 The teachings of Hillel,63 R. Akiva,64 and R. Meir65 all reflect an incontrovertibly iconic conception of the presence of God in man. The perception of the image of God 60 The perception of the Creation narrative in Genesis as myth obviously runs counter to the Biblical antimythical conception, which is expressed most forcefully in Kaufmann’s work (see Kaufmann, History of the Religion, vol. 1, part 2, 255–75, 419–25). For a survey, and critique, of this conception, see Uffenheimer, “Myth and Reality,” 147; Frank Moore Cross, Cana’anite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), Preface, vii–ix; Halbertal and Margalit, Idolatry, 67–78. Jewish Bible scholars’ mythic perception of the Bible began with Martin Buber, “Myth in Judaism,” in Buber, On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1995), 95–107; see also Moshe Schwarcz, Language, Myth, Art [Heb] (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1967), 143–94, 216–52. This conception was discussed by Liebes, “De Natura Dei,” 243–47; Yair Lorberbaum, In God’s Image: Myth, Theology, and Law in Classical Judaism, trans. Michael Prawer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 43–45 (see his definition of myth, 90–92); Ithamar Gruenwald, “The Inevitable Presence of Myth” [Heb], in Eshel Beer-Sheva, vol. 4: Myth in Judaism, ed. Havivah Pedayah (Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1996), 1–14; idem, “Myth in the Reality.” 61 See Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of the Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Harvard Theology Review 87 (1994): 171–96; Moshe Halbertal, Interpretive Revolutions in the Making: Values as Interpretive Considerations in Midrashei Halakhah [Heb] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997), 165–67; Lorberbaum, God’s Image, 170–344. 62 Lorberbaum, In God’s Image, 173–80, in light of the Tannaitic sources that he cited and analyzed (156–73). 63 Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, version B, chap. 30; Lev. Rabbah 34:3, ed. Margulies, 775–76. 64 T Yevamot 8:7, vol. 4, ed. M. S. Zuckermandel (Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1963), 250, and the parallel in BT Yevamot 63b; Gen. Rabbah 34:6. 65 M Sanhedrin 6:5; BT Sanhedrin 46b.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

as iconic presence assumes a holistic approach that does not distinguish between body and soul, and views the divine presence as existing in man, both mentally and physically. We can speak here of conceptual interiorization in the sense that the divine element in the Creation narrative relates to the flesh-and-blood human being. For Hillel, God dwells in man’s body, and therefore washing the body, and its evacuation, are commandments.66 Similar, yet different, possible understandings of the rabbis’ conception of creation in the image of God place even greater emphasis on their inherent conceptual interiorization: To proclaim the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He; for man stamps many coins with the one seal and they are all like one another; but the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, has stamped every man with the seal of the first man, yet not one of them is like his fellow. Therefore every one must say, For my sake was the world created.67

There are at least two ways to understand this mishnah: (1) the seal of Adam is inner because the outer appearance of every person is different, while the inner essence is uniform; (2) the general form of the human body is divine.68 The latter possibility is extremely close to the view that finds God’s full iconic presence in man, but it is not identical with that opinion since it does not assign a specific form to the image of God.69 The feeling 66 Lorberbaum contends that R. Akiva continues the view of Hillel. In my opinion, a comparison of two versions of the story about Hillel in the bathhouse, given in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, version B, chap. 30 (discussed by Lorberbaum, In God’s Image, 173–78), and Lev. Rabbah 34:3, can indicate a difference of opinion between Hillel and R. Akiva on the question of the image of God. In the Lev. Rabbah version, Hillel cites the verse: “A kindly man benefits himself; a cruel man makes trouble for himself ” (Prov. 11:17). This verse can be understood as an argument that Hillel invokes, in this version, to support his view of bathing as an act of kindness to the divine soul that is hosted in the body. This conception is reminiscent of the Stoic worldview; see Baer, “Eschatological Doctrine,” 96–100. Heschel also distinguished between the meaning of creation “in the image of God” for Hillel and for R. Akiva. See Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 261–62. 67 M Sanhedrin 4:5 (trans.: Danby, The Mishnah, 389). 68 This claim is supported by Robinson, “Hebrew Psychology,” 368–69; and by Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 263. 69 Lorberbaum finds some similarity between the parable about coins that the Church Father Athanasius presents to explain the divine presence in Jesus, and the rabbis’ use of this parable in M Sanhedrin and in Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ismael, Baḥodesh 8, ed. Horovitz and Rabin, 233; trans.: Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 22:62). See Lorberbaum, In God’s Image, 172–73. In my opinion, despite the shared usage of the same parable, the text of M Sanhedrin does not postulate any simple figurative likeness between God

289

290

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

that “For my sake was the world created” runs counter to common sense and reflects the existential meaning of the interiorization of the notion of creation in the image of God. In addition to the dicta of Hillel, R. Akiva, and R. Meir, the interiorization of the idea of creation in the image of God has a clearly Platonic or Stoic orientation in the late Tannaitic and the Amoraitic literatures:70 Our masters say: Come and see: the Holy One, blessed be He, fills His world, and this soul [nefesh] fills the body; the Holy One, blessed be He, sustains His world, and this soul sustains the body; the Holy One, blessed be He, is One in His world, and the nefesh is one in the body; the Holy One, blessed be He, sleep does not come before Him, and the soul does not sleep; the Holy One, blessed be He, is pure in His world, and this soul is pure in the body; the Holy One, blessed be He, sees and is not seen, and this soul sees and is not seen. The soul, that sees and is not seen, shall come and praise the Holy One, blessed be He, who sees and is not seen.71

The Stoic nature of this passage can be learned from a comparison with the writings of Seneca.72 This teaching emphasizes the godly traits of the and His creatures. According to the parable, humans are special in that each of them is different from his fellow, unlike the coins. We may reasonably suggest that the parable in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael also does not assume complete similarity between the Creator and His handiwork, which is compared to portraits and images of the king, and to coins struck in his likeness. 70 See, for example, the metaphor of sight and the pupil: Plato, Alcibiades, 133 (trans.: 208–11); Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 1:90. For English translation, see Cicero, De Natura Deorum, trans. H. Rackham, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 268 (London: Heinemann, 1972), 86–89. 71 Deut. Rabbah 2:37. This passage has numerous parallels, with minor differences: BT Berakhot 10a; Lev. Rabbah 4:8, ed. Margulies, 96–97; Midrash Tehillim 103:4, ed. Buber, 433; Tanḥuma, ed. Rabinowitz, Ḥayei Sarah 3, 269. The version in BT Berakhot contains imagery that does not appear in Deut. Rabbah: “Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, feeds the entire world, so too, the soul [neshamah] feeds the entire body. . . . Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, abides in the innermost precincts. so too, the soul abides in the innermost precincts.” The version in Lev. Rabbah contains two additional qualities: “This nefesh survives the body, and the Holy One, blessed be He, survives His world, ‘They shall perish, but You shall endure’ [Ps. 102:27]. The nefesh, which survives the body, shall come and praise the Holy One, who survives His world. . . . This nefesh does not eat in the body, and the Holy One, blessed be He, hunger does not come before Him, as it is written, ‘Were I hungry, I would not tell you’ [Ps. 50:12]. The nefesh, which does not eat in the body, shall come and praise the Holy One, blessed be He, for eating does not come before Him.” 72 Cf. Seneca, Epistulae Morales, trans. Richard M. Gummere, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 75 (London: Heinemann, 1972), epistle 65, 456–59. The parallel was first noted

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

human soul, focusing on its spiritual nature, which it contrasts with the bodily world, and it is this spiritual essence that attests to the divine within man. This contrast, with its clear distinction between the spiritual and the physical within man—in the spirit of the Greek world—is somewhat weakened in light of our knowledge of the rabbis’ tendency to describe the bodysoul ties as a complex interdependent relationship. This view is expressed in the parable by R. Ishmael on the lame man and the blind man who guard the garden, which ends as follows: What does the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He restores the soul to the body and judges them together, this is the same as: “He summoned the heavens above, and the earth, for the trial of His people” [Ps. 50:4]: “He summoned the heavens above”—to bring the soul; “and the earth”—to bring the body, for the trial of His people.73

The following passages, which presumably speak only of the Divine Presence and not of man and his soul, have great potential for interiorization, as I will attempt to explain.

by Armand Kaminka, Studies in the Bible, the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, vol. 2: Studies in the Talmud [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1951), 63; see also Altmann, “Delphic Maxim,” 201. Cf. the Roman Stoic Lucilius Balbus, cited by Cicero: “what can be so obvious and so manifest as that there must exist some power possessing transcendent intelligence by whom these things are ruled? Were it not so, how comes it that the words of Ennius carry conviction to all readers—‘Behold this dazzling vault of heaven, which all mankind as Jove invoke.’ Ay, and not only as Jove but as sovereign of the world, ruling all things with his nod, and as Ennius likewise says—‘father of gods and men,’ a deity omnipresent and omnipotent? If a man doubts this, I really cannot see why he should not also be capable of doubting the existence of the sun; how is the latter fact more evident than the former? Nothing but the presence in our minds of a firmly grasped concept of the deity could account for the stability and permanence of our belief in him, a belief which is only strengthened by the passage of the ages and grows more deeply rooted with each successive generation of mankind” (Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 2:1–2 [trans.: 268:124–27]). The soul reveals within itself, and with its own powers, the presence of God and His omnipotence. As the rabbis express this: “The soul, that sees and is not seen, shall come and praise the Holy One, who sees and is not seen.” 73 Lev. Rabbah 4:5, ed. Margulies, 89–90. See in the continuation of the midrash the parable of R. Hiyya, that divine justice applies only to the soul, since it is in the nature of the body to sin, while the soul is from the upper spheres: “But you are from the upper [spheres], where none sin before Me, therefore I leave the body and sit in judgment with you.”

291

292

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The Emperor said to R. Gamaliel: “You say that wherever ten [Jews] [are present] the Divine Presence rests. How many Divine Presences are there, then?” He [R. Gamaliel] summoned [the Emperor’s] servant, and struck him on the neck. He asked him: “Why [do you permit] the sun to enter the Emperor’s house?” He [the Emperor] said: “The sun shines upon the whole world!” “Then if the sun, which is but one of the thousand myriad of the servants of the Holy One, blessed be He, is everywhere, how much more so the Presence of the Holy One, blessed be He!”74

The potential for interiorization inherent in this parable is noteworthy. It is brought in Tractate Sanhedrin among a series of questions that pagans asked about the God of Israel, and not in the narrow context of a rabbinic dictum relating to the Divine Presence resting on ten worshipers, as Moore presents it. The counter-question posed by R. Gamaliel in response to the Emperor’s question is: How can the sunlight enter the house of the pagan, even though it is obvious to all that the sun—which is the source of this light—is vastly distant from the place where its effect is felt, that is, inside the house? As Rashi explains, the pagan answers that sunlight is present everywhere, and therefore R. Gamaliel’s response is “how much more so!” Urbach rightly observes that the analogy implies that the Shekhinah is not identical to the light, but it possesses the light’s ability to penetrate, even beyond the walls of the house and through its windows. Not only does the sun parable teach that the sun is one of God’s servants (to emphasize His transcendence), it also graphically illustrates the Godhead’s ability to penetrate what we perceive as walls, like the sunlight. The pagan’s question is not how can the Divine Presence rest among a quorum of worshipers, but whether the fact of the existence of many quorums, with the Divine Presence resting in each of them, means that there are many Divine Presences. The sun parable negates the question by offering a broader answer: the Divine 74 BT Sanhedrin 39a. Abelson cites this parable to indicate that, for the rabbis, the Shekhinah is the Presence of God that is known and tangible everywhere, like the sunlight (Joshua Abelson, The Immanence of God in Rabbinical Literature [New York: Hermon, 1969], 108). Moore stressed that the parable is meant to explain how the specific presence of God in a certain place is possible, that is, when a quorum assembles for prayer (Moore, Judaism, 1:435–36). Urbach adds that this parable about the omnipresence of God-Shekhinah shows that the Shekhinah is neither a separate entity nor light, and that the Shekhinah’s presence in the world does not detract from its transcendence (Urbach, Sages, 1:47–48).

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

Presence, like the sun, is capable not only of resting in every quorum of worshipers, it can also rest in the house of each individual, including that of the pagan himself, and is therefore able to also rest in a quorum of people. R. Gamaliel responds to the pagan with a rhetorical question: You ask how the Divine Presence can rest in a quorum? I will show you that it is capable of resting in the house of every person. A proximate midrash is the parable of the sea water in a cave: “Within, it was decked with love” [Cant. 3:10]—R. Yudan said, This is the merit of the Torah. . . . R. Azariah said, in the name of R. Juda in the name of R. Simon: This is the Shekhinah. One Scriptural passage says: “And the priests were not able to remain and perform the service because of the cloud, for the Presence of the Lord filled the House of the Lord” [I Kings 8:11], and another Scriptural passage says: “and the court was filled with the radiance of the Presence of the Lord” [Ezek. 10:4]. How can both Scriptural passages be harmonized? R. Joshua of Sikhnin, in the name of R. Levi: To what was the Tent [of Meeting] similar? To a cave that was next to the sea, the sea surged and flooded the cave; the cave was filled, but the sea lacked nothing. So too, the Tent of Meeting was filled with the brilliance of the Shekhinah, and the world lacked nothing of the Shekhinah.75

This parable, which compares the Tabernacle to a cave, shares a fundamental argument with the preceding midrash: the Divine Presence in the world does not diminish from God’s essence, which is not dependent on the world. What is common, therefore, to these parables and to the isomorphic dictum on the soul and the Holy One, blessed be He, in Tractate Berakhot is the claim that the Divine Presence in man does not detract from God’s essence. One of the apprehensions regarding interiorization orientations is the possibility of reductionism in God’s standing. The importance of these parables lies in their putting this fear to rest. God’s Presence in the world or in the Tabernacle, that is compared to a cave, or in people, who, I maintain, are compared in R. Gamaliel’s parable to houses into which the sunlight penetrates, does not diminish God’s self or independence. These conceptual interiorizations are consistent with the dictum of R. Eleazar: “A person should always consider himself as if the Holy One dwells within him,” that was discussed above in the context of ritual interiorization.76 75 Cant. Rabbah 3:8. 76 See above, chapter one, 129–130 n. 250.

293

294

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

In medieval thought, we can speak of two directions of conceptual developmental of the idea of creation in the image of God. Altmann preferred to distinguish between the Kabbalistic and the philosophical approaches to this question.77 Indeed, a comparison of the writings on this issue by Maimonides and Nahmanides reveals a fundamental difference between them.78 Maimonides’ position is unequivocal and is set forth quite clearly in the beginning of the Guide of the Perplexed: The term “image” [tzelem], on the other hand, is applied to the natural form, I mean to the notion in virtue of which a thing is constituted as a substance and becomes what it is. It is the true reality of the thing in so far as the latter is that particular being. In man that notion is that from which human apprehension derives. It is on account of this intellectual apprehension that it is said of man: “In the image of God created Him” [Gen. 1:27].79

Maimonides’ definition is based on the distinction between to’ar [feature] and tzelem [image]. The former is what the masses attribute to the term tzelem and therefore assumes that God has human form.80 The latter means “form” in the Aristotelian sense, namely, the essence and definition of something. In Hil. Yesodei Torah [Laws of the Fundamentals of the Torah], Maimonides emphasizes this distinction: The superior intelligence in the human soul is the specific form of the mentally normal human being. To this form, the Torah refers in the text “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. I:26). . . . The text, above quoted, does not refer to the visible features—the mouth, nose, cheeks, and other distinguishing bodily marks. These are comprehended in the nomenclature “feature.”81 77 Altmann, “Delphic Maxim,” 209 n. 82. His discussion in ibid., 199–213, of the motif of the soul in the image of God is devoted to the Kabbalistic literature, while his discussion of the microcosm in ibid., 213–22, relates to the philosophical literature. 78 See the expansion of this issue in Yair Lorberbaum, “Imago Dei” [Heb], PhD diss. (Hebrew University, 1997), 269–323. 79 Maimonides, Guide 1:1 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 22). Cf. Philo, De Opificio Mundi 69–71 (trans.: 226:54–57). 80 See Maimonides, Guide 1:1. 81 Maimonides, Book of Knowledge 4:8, 39a. On Maimonides’s understanding of creation in the image of God, see the extensive discussion: Sara Klein-Braslavy, Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Adam Stories in Genesis [Heb] (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1986), 203– 17; idem, Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Adam Stories in Genesis [Heb] (Jerusalem:

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

Nahmanides’ stance is different. He disagrees with the view of the “philosophers” that reflects the position held by Maimonides that the purpose of the material reality is to physically nourish and sustain the body in order to reproduce the species, and that it has no need of the World to Come. Instead, Nahmanides states: “There are great secrets in this form, for the creation in this image was not meaningless, without reason, rather only for a great need and a worthy reason, and his Maker, may He be blessed, desires his existence.”82 Altmann noted the complexity of Kabbalistic texts on this question. On the one hand, some Kabbalistic works definitely tend to combine these two seemingly contradictory conceptions; while on the other hand, some of these writings champion a one-sided approach, one close in spirit to that of Maimonides, which identifies the crux of man with wisdom or the soul.83 For the purposes of a discussion of the medieval development of the conceptual interiorization of the myth of creation in the image of God, we should rather distinguish between the evolutions of the Platonic-Stoic notion of the images of the soul and of God84 and those of the idea of man as microcosm. As Altmann showed, Hebrew manifestations of the Delphic Maxim were influenced by the Muslim traditions which held that their version (which adds to the original beginning of “Know yourself ” the ending “and know God”) originated in ancient Hellenistic traditions. We see from various sources that not every form of self-knowledge must be interpreted as conceptual interiorization. A person’s familiarity with his bodily structure, or even with his psychological functions, could obviously remain within the realm of outer knowledge, which teaches of the world and/or of God. The description of God as reflected in the limbs of a person’s body could also be thought, to a certain degree, to be a type of externalization, as I will illustrate below. Conceptual interiorization could be attributed to those ideas that exceed an external description in Rubin Mass, 1986), 13–22; Warren Zev Harvey, “How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed, I, 1” [Heb] Daat 21 (1988): 5–23. On the disparity between Maimonides’s interpretation of the image of God and this idea in the Tannaitic literature, see Yair Lorberbaum, “Maimonides on Imago Dei: Philosophy and Law—The Felony of Murder, the Criminal Procedure and Capital Punishment” [Heb], Tarbiz 68 (1999): 533–66. 82 Moses ben Nahman, Torat ha-Adam, in Writings of Our Master Moses ben Nahman, ed. Hayyim Dov Chavel (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1963–1964), vol. 2, Sha‘ar ha-Gemul, 305. 83 Altmann, “Delphic Maxim,” 208–13, with examples of both interpretive directions. 84 Above, 290 (after n. 70).

295

296

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

attempting to reach the inner essences of human life. It would also be possible to understand outer, and even historical, phenomena as derived from inner human life.

Nefesh, Ruah., and Neshamah: Man’s Inner Essence in Early Kabbalism as the Image of God They said that He, may He be blessed, created man in His image and His likeness, and established him in a supernal form, as is said: “And God created man in His image” [Gen. 1:27]. [Questions] were raised and precise study was made regarding this profound matter of man who is in the image of God: it was said in Sitrei Torah [mysteries of the Torah] that it is the intellective form in man that is called “man,” for the skin, the flesh, and the bones are the clothing of man; they said that it therefore is written: “You clothed me with skin and flesh and wove me of bones and sinews” [Job 10:11]. If the skin and the flesh are clothing, still—who is man, for he is within the clothing, and he is established in three tikkunim [here, the three degrees of nefesh, ruaḥ, and neshamah]. Behold, I reveal to you a hidden, profound, and very great secret: they said there in Sitrei Torah: It is written, “and on top, upon this semblance of a throne, there was the semblance of a human form” [Ezek. 1:26]—what is the semblance of man? . . . The person in this world is not a human being, unless these three things join together to be the form of man, namely, nefesh, ruaḥ, and neshamah.85

R. Moses de Leon’s question regarding the true essence of man is answered with a statement with evident Maimonidean influence: “it is the intellective form in man that is called ‘man.’” This approach also underlies several dicta in the Zohar.86 Despite the Zoharic awareness of the notion of 85 Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon, Shekel ha-Kodesh, ed. Charles Mopsik (Los Angeles: Cherub, 1996), 28. Nefesh means “soul, life force”; ruaḥ is “spirit”; and neshamah means “breath, soul, soul-breath” (Zohar, 1:206a). See also Matt, Zohar, 3:262 n. 26. 86 “Every spirit is called ‘human’; the body of the spirit of the holy side is a garment of the ‘human,’ and so it is written: ‘You clothed me in skin and flesh, wove me of bones and sinews’ (Job 10:11). Flesh is the garment of the ‘human,’ as it is written everywhere: ‘flesh of a human’ (Exodus 30:32)—‘human,’ within, ‘flesh,’ garment of the ‘human,’ its body” (Zohar 1:20b; trans.: Matt, Zohar, 1:156); and similarly, Zohar 1:22b; 2:75b–76a. See also Vital, Sha‘arei Qedushah, part 1, sha‘ar 1, 6: “It is known to the knowledgeable, that the human body is not man; rather, a single garment, in which the intellective soul—which is man himself—is engarbed while he is in this world. After his death, this

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

the image of God being reflected in the appearance of the body, the Zohar clearly distinguishes between the two ideas: “. . . but the reason is that the delight of the blessed Holy One focuses only on soul, not on body; for soul resembles the Superior soul, while body is incapable of uniting above— even though the body’s image abides in supernal mystery.”87 Unlike Tikkunei Zohar’s88 finding the human physical appearance to be identical to the godly countenance (except for the distinction that exists only in man) between the male body and the female, this teaching patently separates the idea of the godly soul (that is seen as being of the same essence as the image of God, thus enabling unification after death) from that of the corporeal countenance, that despite it being in the “supernal secret,” can only allude to the godly one, but is not identical to it. This conception continues the interiorization of the image of God myth described above, by equating the intellective element (that the Zohar separates into the different levels of nefesh, ruaḥ, and neshamah) with the supernal, godly soul.89 This is extremely close to the ideas of the medieval Ashkenaz pietists, although they do not appear in the latter’s writings in the direct context of creation in the image of God, but in their portrayal of the Divine Presence beyond and within man: Since the soul receives emanation from the first light, adheres to the Creator, and is called Binah, therefore, the Holy One, blessed be He, is in the soul. This is the meaning of “He is one [ve-hu ve-ehad, literally, ‘in one’]; who can dissuade Him? Whatever He desires, He does” [Job. 23:13]—the interpretation: it should have said “ve-hu ehad, who can dissuade Him.” What is the meaning of “ve-ehad”? Rather, He is soul to [the human] soul; this is the meaning of “for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and

garment will be removed from him, and he will be clothed in a pure, clean spiritual garb.” 87 Zohar 1:140a (trans.: Matt, Zohar, 2:277). 88 “Come and see: When the Holy One, blessed be He, wished to create man, thus He wished to create him. Like His countenance, without genitalia . . . or differentiation, as it is said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ For all the Sefirot were included in him, with no differentiation or severance, with the male united with the female, for they are brethren” (Tikkunei Zohar 90b, tikkun 56). 89 See also Ibn Ezra’s commentary to Exod. 23:28. Ibn Ezra defines neshamah as wisdom, and sees the nefesh and the ruaḥ as mediating between the neshamah and the body.

297

298

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

awesome God” [Deut. 7:21]—in your actual midst; and the knowledgeable person will understand.90 This is the meaning of “A king is held captive [asur] in the tresses [barehatim]” [Cant. 7:6]—you already know that the wise soul is a power in the mind, and from there everything spreads, and man comprises all the spiritual things. Consequently, it says “king”—which is repentance—is asur be-rehatim” [here, channeled in the trough]: the place of the mind is compared to [the channeling] trough. . . . For, at any rate, the mind of the son is drawn down from the mind of the Father, and it says “asur” [meaning], as something connected to something.91

The identification of God with the heart and the inner realm, in terms of man’s deepest will, is unique to the Zohar and was highly influential on the interiorizing conceptions of God in the later literature, especially in Hasidic writings. The Zohar says on Exod. 25:2: “Therefore it is written, ‘Ve-yiqhu, Have them purchase, Me an offering.’ “’From every man’—from one who is called ‘man,’ who overpowers his impulse, for whoever overpowers his impulse is called ‘man.’ “’Whose heart impels him.’ What does this mean? That the blessed Holy One delights in him, as is said, ‘To You he said, “My heart”’ (Psalms 27:8); ‘rock of my heart’ (ibid. 73:26); ‘goodhearted’ (Proverbs 15:15); ‘He gladdened his heart’ [Ruth 3:7)—all referring to the blessed Holy One. Here, too, ‘whose heart impels him’—from him ‘you shall take My offering,’ for there it is found and nowhere else. “How do we know that the blessed Holy One delights in him and places His dwelling in him? When we see that this person desires, in joyous aspiration of the heart, to pursue and strive for Him with heart, soul, and will, surely there, we know, dwells Shekhinah.”92

As this exposition has it, the expressions “lev” [heart] and “tov lev” [good heart], that are cited from Numbers, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ruth, “all were said regarding the Holy One, blessed be He.” That is to say, a person’s inner self is reflected by his heart that expresses the desire to act well, to overcome oneself on behalf of another, which is also identified with 90 A Kabbalistic manuscript from the thirteenth or fourteenth century that originated among the Ashkenaz pietists; cited by Scholem, Major Trends, 375 n. 97. 91 Azriel, Perush ha-Aggadot, ed. Tishbi, Berakhot, 5. 92 Zohar 2:128a-b (trans.: Matt, Zohar, 5:200).

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

overcoming the self on behalf of God. The very existence of such a will in a person attests to God’s residing within that individual. Good will, that is called lev tov, is depicted in the Zohar as the Divine Presence that dwells within man.

Man as Microcosm The idea to which Nahmanides alludes—and which R. Azriel presents in the wording “and man is composed of all the spiritual things” originates in the formulation “man is a microcosm,” that appears in a number of midrashim.93 This concept is reminiscent of the Hellenistic notion of man as microcosm, as Altmann noted.94 The dictum of R. Yose ha-Galili in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan shows that the notion that “everything that the Holy One, blessed be He, created in His world, He created in man” does not necessarily have an aspect of conceptual interiorization. This teaching contains distinctly external analogies between man’s form and various natural phenomena. It appears as the continuation of a teaching that includes the dictum from M Sanhedrin 4:5: “if any man saves alive a single soul Scripture imputes it to him as though he had saved alive a whole world.”95 We may conclude from this that R. Yose’s statement was meant to illustrate the preceding dictum by depicting the creation of man as an analogy for the entire world. Some interiorization potential can be found in the evolution of this midrash in Aggadat Olam Katan that was published by Jellinek: Rav said, A man has two hundred and forty-eight limbs. His heart is equivalent to all of them, as it is said, “but the Lord sees into the heart” [I Sam. 16:7]. Just as a man sees, so too, does the heart see, as it is said, “My heart saw much wisdom and knowledge” [Eccl. 1:16]. Just as a man hears, so too, does the heart hear, as it is said, “Grant then, Your servant an understanding [shome’a, literally, “hearing”] heart” [I Kings 3:9]. . . . Just as a man is good, so too, is the heart good, as it says, “but he that is of a merry heart [both using the word tov] has a continual feast” [Prov. 15:15]. Love is 93 See Tanḥuma, Pekudei 3; Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, version A, chap. 31. 94 Altmann, “Delphic Maxim,” 213–16. 95 The version “if any man saves alive a single soul,” without the usual “from Israel,” is based on Solomon Schechter’s notes to version A, Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, ed. Schechter (Vienna, 1897), 91. Trans.: Danby, p. 388. See Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, “‘Kol ha-Meqayyem Nefesh Ahat. . . .’ Development of the Version, Vicissitudes of Censorship, and Business Manipulations of Printers” [Heb], Tarbiz 40 (1971): 268–84.

299

300

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

only in the heart, as it is said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” [Deut. 6:5], and hate is only in the heart, as it is said, “You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart” [Lev. 19:17]. And everything in the world depends on the heart, therefore it is written, “also He has set the world in their heart” [Eccl. 3:11].96

Here we sense the inverse emphases. Man is important, not only because he contains the world and its fullness, but because of the worth of what occurs within his soul. This emphasis is not especially concerned with the question of Creation, it rather reflects an existential aspect of the type I will discuss below. Scheindlin found a possible conceptual interiorization of the microcosm concept in a poem by Judah Halevi: My meditation on Your name aroused me, They set before my face Your acts of love, Revealed to me the soul that You created— Bound to me, yet past my understanding. My heart beheld You and was sure of You, As if I stood myself at Sinai mountain. I sought you in my dreams, Your glory passed Before my face, on clouds descending, landing. My thoughts awakened me to rise from bed, To bless Your glorious name, O Lord, commanding.

Scheindlin analyzes this poem, in light of Ibn Ezra’s commentary to “I praise You, for I am awesomely, wondrously made; Your work is wonderful; I know it very well” (Ps. 139:14), as reflecting the idea of the microcosm and the knowledge of God from the knowledge of man.97 Knowledge of this sort can be a “scientific” knowledge of the world. In the poem, according to Scheindlin, Revelation as a historical event becomes an inner intellective event in which a person who contemplates the connection between body and soul learns about the world as a whole, that, too, is made of such a linkage. Based on this interpretation, Judah Halevi’s poem describes the conceptual interiorization of the Revelation at Sinai. The realization of the knowledge of God based on the idea that “man is a small world” enables 96 Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrasch, 5, Aggadat Olam Katan, 57–59. 97 Scheindlin, Gazelle, 164–70, esp. 164–65.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

the poet to have a personal revelation that parallels the historic Revelation: “And my heart saw You and believes in You, as if standing at Sinai.” Harvey, following Komem, suggested a more mystical interpretation, according to which the poet, aided by his inner eye, sees the divine glory as it was seen at Sinai.98 The simple meaning of what Sefer Yetzirah writes, too, cannot be included in the category of conceptual interiorization, despite the first appearance of the world-year-soul analogy in it (see below); but this, as well, appears in the book in descriptive contexts. The fact that the entire book is formulated as a depiction of the world—and not as wondering about the nature of man99—prevents me from including it in this category, even though the Kabbalists’ interpretations of the book clearly reflect interiorizations. Nor does Sefer ha-Bahir’s portrayal of man as a “microcosm”100 necessarily teach of conceptual interiorization, and its main thrust is descriptive. Scholem’s analysis of the magical implications of the idea of man as microcosm in Kabbalistic writings, too, indicates this notion does not necessarily reflect a conceptual interiorization.101 The Kabbalah of the Gerona circle of R. Isaac the Blind does, however, clearly focus on the internal human significance of the idea. As R. Isaac the Blind writes in his commentary to the third chapter of Sefer Yetzirah: Three matrices: things that emanate, and are emanated and received one from another. But when it arrives at the world of the separate entities, they are only called patrices, from whom are progeny. For at first [they are matrices,] 98 Warren Zev Harvey, “Judah Halevi’s Synesthetic Theory of Prophecy and a Note on the Zohar” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): 152 n. 20. See the discussion of Kuzari 4:3 in chapter six, below. 99 Scholem wrote on Sefer Yetzirah: “The Book Yetsirah describes in broad outlines, but with certain astronomico-astrological details, how the cosmos was built—chiefly from the twenty-two letters” (Scholem, Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 168). See also Dan, On Sanctity, 234–58. 100 “What are the seven parts of man’s body? It is written (Genesis 9:6), ‘In the form of God, He made man.’ It is also written (Genesis 1:27), ‘In the form of God He made him’—counting all his limbs and parts” (Sefer ha-Bahir, para. 82, ed. Reuven Margolius [Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1994], 36). For English translation, see The Bahir: An Ancient Kabbalistic Text Attributed to Rabbi Nehunah ben HaKana, trans. Aryeh Kaplan (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1979), 30. 101 Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Schocken, 1996), 127–28; idem, “Sitra Ahra: Good and Evil in the Kabbalah,” in Sholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, trans. Joachim Neugroschel, ed. Jonathan Chipman (New York: Schocken, 1991), 69.

301

302

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

for the patrices themselves are so called, like flames from coals. When it arrives at the separate entities it becomes the effect that issues from all the matrices. From all the connections we have spoken of patrices are made, to make connections in the separating of all the things that made progeny. Even though we speak of separate entities, it does not depart from the connected things, for all draws from there. Therefore every thing is sealed with these patrices, and it speaks of how world, year and soul [nefesh] are made of them, and those connections, all of them, are created and emanated from them. Man himself is constructed with letters, and when he was constructed, the supernal breath [ruaḥ elyon] that governs that frame, governs all. The result is that all is connected among supernal beings and among lower beings, and he is of world, year and soul. For all that is in world, is in year, and all that is in world and year, is in soul, and the soul outweighs all. The things separate from each other, for they are essences from within essences. But from the beginning of the separate world, they are perceptible progeny, formal, which have finitude.102

Scholem explains this as follows What is in the world is also in the neshamah. Consequently, when a person brings his neshamah to adhere to the supernal, he elevates the entire creation that is enfolded within him to its roots, that are the divine attributes, and he connects all with all.103

The isomorphism in the notion of “man is a microcosm” is essentially a comparative description that stresses the similarity between two forms. At times it is only externally formal, but when it refers to the similarity between two entities, as between the human soul and God,104 it contains the basis for conceptual interiorization, as in the above commentary by R. Isaac the Blind.

102 Sefer Yetzirah, 14–15; trans.: Mark Brian Sendor, “The Emergence of Provencal Kabbalah: Rabbi Isaac the Blind’s Commentary on Sefer Yezirah,” 2 vols., PhD diss. (Harvard University, 1994), 2:129–34 and 135–37. 103 Gershom Scholem, Beginnings of the Kabbalah (1150–1250) [Heb] (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1948), 114. 104 As portrayed in a teaching in Deut. Rabbah 2:37 (above, n. 71).

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

The Zoharic Conception of Soul in the Body as God in the World The perception of the Ᾱtman as conceptual interiorization in the Upanishads, which was discussed in the beginning of this chapter, has conceptual parallels in the Zoharic discussions of the question of what is man. I do not intend to engage in a philological-historical examination of possible spiritual influences of the Indian world on the Zohar. My claim of points of similarity is purely phenomenological. An exploration of the channels of influence is complex and complicated and would exceed the purview of the current work. That said and done, however, placing the Upanishad texts in conjunction with the Zoharic documents, despite their differences in style and literary and conceptual contexts, teaches of a shared principle: man, like the entire world, is composed of outer garb, which is identical to the manifest reality characterized by its particularity, and a concealed, uniform inner essence, that, in actuality, maintains the outer reality. When the human was created, what is written? “You clothed me in skin and flesh” (Job 10:11]). What then is the human if not skin and flesh, and bones and sinews? But surely, the human being is nothing but soul! And these that we have mentioned—skin, flesh, bones, and sinews—are all merely a garment; they are a person’s clothing, not the human. And when this human departs, he is stripped of those garments that he is wearing. The skin in which a person is clothed and all those bones and sinews all inhere in mystery of supernal wisdom, corresponding to the pattern above. Skin, corresponding above, as our Master has taught concerning those curtains, and it is written: “skins” (Exodus 25:5). For the garments above covering the garment are expanse of heaven—outer garment. The curtains are the inner garment—a protective membrane. Bones and sinews are chariots and all those forces stationed within. All of them are garments for what is within: mystery of adam, human, who is innermost. So, too, mystery below. The human is the innermost within, his garments corresponding to what is above. Bones and sinews correspond, as we have sad, to those chariots and camps. Flesh covers those camps and chariots, standing outside; this is the mystery conveyed to the Other Side. Skin, covering all, corresponds to those heavens covering all. All of them, garments clothing the innermost within, mystery of human. All of a mystery, below corresponding above.

303

304

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

So, “Elohim created the human in His image, in the image of Elohim He created him” (Genesis 1:27)—twice here ‘Elohim,’ one pertaining to male and one pertaining to female. Mystery of human below inheres entirely in mystery above In the heaven covering all, impressions were made, thereby showing and revealing—through those inlaid impressions—concealed matters and secrets. Those are impressions of stars and constellations inlaid in this heaven covering outside. Similarly, skin—external covering of a person— is a heaven covering all, containing impressions and traces. Those are stars and constellations of his skin, a covering heaven, through which concealed matters and secrets are shown and revealed—stars and constellations eyed by the wise of heart, gazing upon them to know. Gazing at the face, in the mysteries we have mentioned, when it shines, free of anger. This is the mystery of “the astrologers, the stargazers” (Isaiah 47:13).105

The Zohar assumes that man’s essence is his spiritual aspect. The soul within him is perceived as being of an inner nature, unlike the body, which is seen as outer.106 The understanding, however, of the human essence as spiritual and the human body as a vessel, matching the perception of the Sefirot as vessels and Ein-Sof as essence, does not assume differentiation between the body and the soul during the course of life itself. The inner spiritual element leaves its impression in the corporeal element, and these impressions may be identified and distinguished by the observer who is capable of doing so with his wisdom. Not only does the theosophic teaching 105 Zohar 2:75b-76a (trans.: Matt, Zohar, 4:409–10). 106 A parallel to these discussions in the Zohar appears in the beginning of R. Moses Shem Tov de Leon’s Sefer ha-Mishkal (including most of the material from his Sefer ha-Nefesh ha-Ḥakhamah): “Who is called man is to be studied and examined, whether this is body or form. For if you were to say that the body, that comes from a putrid drop [see M Avot 3:1], flesh full of worm and maggot, is in the image of God—Heaven forbid and forfend! Let this not enter the mind of any wise man. They said, in the secrets of the Torah [that is, the Kabbalistic literature], it is written, ‘You clothed me with skin and flesh and wove me of bones and sinews’ [Job 10:11]—if skin and flesh is clothing, the matter is [variant: study] well, Who is man? For it is the inner that is called by this name, which is primary; while the skin and flesh is the clothing and covering that is on man. For the inner is called man, and the body is the clothing that covers [ha-sakhukh] it. They said, it was said on this matter: ‘It must not be poured [yisakh] on the flesh of man’ [Exod. 30:32]—certainly not on the flesh, for the body is the flesh, and man is the inner, upon the model of God” (Sefer ha-Mishkal, in J. H. A. Wijnhoven, “Sefer ha-Mishkal: Text and Study,” PhD diss., [Brandeis University, 1964], 44).

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

of essence and vessels (that is extensively discussed by Kabbalistic literature)107 parallel the Kabbalistic teaching of man, we can reasonably speak of the possibility that the former was fashioned in the wake of the latter. The imagery of the Sefirot as a receptacle for the divine essence is based on the perception of the human body as a receptacle for the divine soul. R. Moses de Leon states explicitly in Sefer ha-Mishkal For the craftsman needs vessels, and the vessels need the craftsman, to bring the vessel to actualization and to perform its [necessary] task. Likewise, the soul needs to show its action, and to be garbed in the body, and perform in it the activity of this world. (Accordingly, the soul is an excellent example of what the Rabbis wrote on the verse “Bless the Lord, O my soul” [Ps. 103:1]— just as the Holy One, blessed be He, sees and is not seen, so too, the soul sees and is not seen; just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is holy, so too, it is holy; just as the Holy One, blessed be He, feeds the world, so too, the soul feeds the entire body), as the Rabbis said [BT Berakhot 10a]. . . . All this teaches that He made the form in the image of God. . . . You should know and understand that the secret of the supernal soul is the model of the Creator, as the model of the son is from the father, for it is his actual structure. Thus, the supernal soul is a structure upon the model of the Creator, which is the image of God—an image upon the model of the Creator, for the body is not in the image of the Creator, may He be blessed.108

The vessel, that is, the body, through which the divine soul acts in the world, performs its task as a receptacle that contains the soul. R. Asher ben David lucidly portrays the parallelism between the activity of the spirit, by means of the Sefirot and its activity in man: Every operation performed by the median line, which is the attribute of mercy, operates by the inner force which acts in it . . . and it is as a vessel 107 On the issue of essence and vessels, see Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, part 1, sha‘ar 4: Sha‘ar Atzmut ve-Kelim; Ben Shlomo, Mystical Theology, 100–169. On the significance of the conception of the outer reality as clothing for the inner godliness, a notion that negates the separate meaning of the world, and not the world itself, see Margolin, Human Temple, 262–63. 108 Sefer ha-Mishkal, 45. In one of the last sections of Sefer ha-Nefesh ha-Ḥakhamah that are not included in Sefer ha-Mishkal, Moses de Leon states: “What was said that man is a small world means that, just as the Holy One, blessed be He, fills the whole world and by His spirit maintains the worlds, the supernal world and the earthly world, so too, man’s soul maintains the body, and leads it to wherever it wishes” (Sefer ha-Nefesh ha-Ḥakhamah, para. 55).

305

306

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

to the spirit . . . and the prophet is in its image, a vessel to the divine spirit which is in him when the speech is with him, even despite his will. . . . The spirit speaks in him and the prophet is as its vessel, how much more so that this median line which is a vessel to the inner spirit which breaks out in it.109

The integration of body and soul, in the Zoharic perception, is obviously not monist; nor, however, does it reflect simple dualism.110 It assumes the distinct existence of the spiritual world, that is of greater worth than that of the physical world which is dependent on it. This conception is nevertheless aware of the profound connection between these two planes, that enables the knowledgeable to see how the physical body reflects man’s inner spiritual essence, which is primal in man. This notion, that the Zohar (2:76a) presents at the end of the discussion on physiognomy and before the beginning of its discussion of chirology, is a tour de force that reveals the ideational foundation on which these teachings are based. This is the meaning of creation in the image of God: just as the physical world is garb for the godly essence within, so too, the human body was created as the clothing for its inner-spiritual contents, for man’s inner self.

From the Idea of Man = Microcosm to the Psychologization of the Sefirot R. Abraham Abulafia’s writings are marked by his significant innovation in the perception of man as microcosm. In his letter “Ve-Zot le-Yehudah,” he states outright that the Sefirot are the powers within man, unlike the theosophic Kabbalistic position in his time, which places man in the image of the Sefirot:111 “For the last complex creature is man, who includes all the Sefirot, whose intellect is the Active Intellect. When you release him from 109 Asher ben David, Perush Shem ha-Meforash, in The Kabbalah of R. Asher ben David, ed. Rachel Elior (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1980), 20, ll. 16–29. English translation in Idel, New Perspectives, 142. 110 On the various positions concerning the body-soul relationship, see Keith Campbell, Body and Mind (London: Macmillan, 1971); Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Body and Mind: The Psycho-Physical Problem [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1983), and their respective bibliographies. 111 See Tishby, Wisdom, 2:682–84. This assertion should not be accepted unreservedly, as there exist some exceptions in the theosophic Kabbalah, such as R. Ezra’s statement: “Know that, just as He contains ten things, so too man. This is the greatness of man’s power, in accordance with his intent and knowledge, to draw down from the Ayin of His thought” (Ezra, Perush ha-Aggadot, Likkutei Shikhehah u-Fe‘ah, fol. 16b).

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

his [supernal] connections, you will find in him the unification which is unique, and even the primary emanation, that is thought.”112 He precedes this with an explanation of the difference between the meaning of the Sefirot for “the masters of the Sefirot” (theosophic Kabbalists) and their meaning in his teaching: The masters of the Sefirot, will give them names, will say that the name of the first Sefirah is “Thought,” will add to it a name, to explain it, and will call it Keter Elyon, as a crown [keter] is placed on the heads of kings. . . . Thus he will do for each Sefirah of the ten Sefirot belimah [i.e., Sefirot without being]. The master of the [supernal] names has a [completely] different intent, very greatly superior to this, which is not [the intent of the masters of the Sefirot]. The profundity of this way of names is a profundity to which no profundities of human thought are more excellent. It alone joins human thought with the godly, in accordance with the human capacity, and in accordance with what is imprinted in man. It is known that man’s thought is the cause of his Ḥokhmah, his Ḥokhmah is the cause of his Binah, his Binah is the cause of his Ḥesed, and his Ḥesed is the cause of his fear of his Maker. His fear is the cause of his Tiferet, his Tiferet is the cause of his Nitzahon, his Nitzahon is the cause of his Hod, and his Hod is the cause of his self [i.e., Yesod], which is called “Groom,” his self is the cause of his Malkhut, which is called “His Bride.”113

Idel writes that just as the Sefirot until Yesod and Malkhut refer in this passage to human activity, the portrayal of the last two Sefirot as “Groom” and “Bride” is not to be understood as a depiction of activity within the Godhead, but as an allusion to the intellective relationship between man and God. The intellect that acts in the cosmos and the intellect that acts within man are presented here as groom and bride, the Sefirot of Yesod and Malkhut. Idel based his interpretation on what Abulafia writes in his book Or ha-Sekhel on “the combination of intellective godly love with intellective human love.”114 What Abulafia writes in other places, including the direct identification of the tenth Sefirah (Malkhut) with the Active Intellect, support this interpretation from another perspective:

112 Adolph Jellinek, Ginzei Ḥokhmat ha-Kabbalah (Auswahl kabbalistischer Mystik) (Leipzig, 1853), 20. 113 Ibid., 16–17. The version cited here is based on Idel’s emendation, following MS. New York, JTS 1887; see Idel, New Perspectives, 147. 114 Idel, New Perspectives, 348 n. 315, 349 n. 321.

307

308

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Consequently, one Sefirah is called the Active Intellect, which is the sar [guardian angel] of the world, who is the world for you, and is called the Life of the worlds.115 The Active Intellect in our world, this is the intellect that is the smallest among them, as is attested by the small [letter] yud. It is the tenth degree, with the attribute that is called the tenth attribute, and its name is Malkhut. It is truly the last Sefirah. All of its eternal consequences are subsumed under its reality; they are its details, and it is their cause, which is called the form of the human intellect, that is to say, the form of the intellective soul.116

The identification of the Active Intellect, that Abulafia also calls ruaḥ ha-kodesh [the spirit of divine inspiration], with the Sefirah of Malkhut117 gives this Sefirah clearly intellective content. This conception, that draws direct parallels between the Sefirot and man, and therefore highlights their human, psychological character, is formulated as follows in Sefer ha-Temunah: The Sefirot are the image of man, for man is a microcosm, as “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” [Gen. 1:26], they have seven forms. And the soul within the body, and the hidden light which is in his head. For in him is the secret of the small image [of God], as is written: “I would behold God while still in my flesh” [Job 19:26], and the secret of the supernal image [of God], for the Sabbaths and the attributes that are in the Sefirot are to connect the small tent with the great one, and all for man’s sake, as “you shall count off seven weeks [shabbatot]. They must be complete” [Lev. 23:15].118

The conceptual interiorization in the psychologization of the Sefirot, as in the writings of Abraham Abulafia, fundamentally differs from the modern occupation with psychological aspects of the Sefirotic world.119 115 Otzar Eden Ganuz, part 1, para. 3 (MS. Oxford 1580, fol. 72a). 116 Sefer ha-Ḥeshek, part 1, para. 3 (MS. New York, JTS 1801, fol. 17a). 117 According to Idel, “Abulafia accepted the identification of the Active Intellect with ruaḥ ha-kodesh, the faithful spirit, and the kingdom of heaven.” See Moshe Idel, “Abraham Abulafia’s Work and Doctrine” [Heb]. PhD diss. (Hebrew University, 1976), 88, and his reference to Sefer Sitrei Torah, MS. Paris 774, fol. 129b. 118 Sefer ha-Temunah 64, fol. 25a–b. 119 The first attempt at a Jungian psychological explanation of the teaching of the Sefirot was published in 1952 by Siegmund Hurwitz; see Siegmund Hurwitz, Archetypische Motive in der Chassidischen Mystik (Zurich: Rascher, 1952). Werblowsky’s lecture at the conference of the International Association for Analytical Psychologists in London

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

Psychological analysis of the teaching of the Sefirot assumes that this teaching is an unconscious projection of the psychological life of Kabbalists onto the divine world.120 Theosophic Kabbalists could not conceive of the possibility of such a projection.121 For them, the conscious connection between the human world and that of the Sefirot is expressed in the idea of man as microcosm. Abulafia’s differing conception, which reached its peak in Hasidism, has the “ecstatic Kabbalist” contemplating the Sefirotic teaching with reservations,122 and he is therefore capable of negating this unconscious projection by the deliberate identification of the Sefirot with his inner forces. We may assume that Abulafia’s affinity with Maimonides and the was published in 1956; see R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, “Some Psychological Aspects of Kabbalah,” Harvest 3 (1956): 1–20. These two articles were the beginning of a process, marked by the psychological analysis of Kabbalistic teachings, that has intensified in recent years; see, for example, Micha Ankori, “This Infinite Forest”: A Comparative Study in Analytical Psychology and Jewish Mysticism [Heb] (Ramat Hasharon: Gabal, 1989). I distinguish between the psychological analysis of Kabbalistic teachings, based on unintentional consequences of psychological life on the world of the Godhead, and, on the psychological analysis of Hasidic teachings that are directly concerned with psychological matters; see, for example, Micha Ankori, The Heart and the Spring: A Comparative Study in Hassidis and Depth Psychology [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Ramot, 1991). For a different sort of psychological and sociological discussion of Kabbalistic and Hasidic teachings, see Mordechai Rotenberg, Dialogue with Deviance: The Hasidic Ethic and the Theory of Social Contradiction (Philadelphia: Ishi, 1983); idem, PaRDeS Hanefesh: The Psycho-Therapeutic Bridge between the Rational and the Mystical [Heb] (Jerusalem: Akademon, 1996); S. Giora Shoham, The Bridge to Nothingness: Gnosis, Kabala, Existentialism, and the Transcendental Predicament of Man (Rutherford: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994). This research usually includes a psychological and sociological analysis and is closer to the direction taken by the psychoanalyst Erich Neumann. Beyond his psychoanalytical analysis of mystical life, Neumann sought to change the modern man’s spiritual world by means of a psychological study of mystical materials. See, for example, his works: Das Bild des Menschen in Krise und Erneuerung (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1960); Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, trans. Eugene Rolfe (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1969); “Mystical Man,” in The Mystic Vision: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, ed. Joseph Campbell, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 375–415. This orientation is fundamentally similar to Eliade’s treatment of the materials he cites, for example, in The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); and The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. William R. Trask (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1987). 120 Werblowsky, “Psychological Aspects,” 18. See also his analysis in ibid., 11 ff. 121 Here we see Scholem’s objection to a psychological analysis of the Kabbalah, despite his active participation in the Eranos meetings organized in Ascona by Jung’s disciple Olga Frobe-Kapteyn, where Jung was always present. (See Werblowsky’s apology, “Psychological Aspects,” 1.) 122 See Idel, Ecstatic Kabbalah, 1–3; idem, New Perspectives, 348 n. 313.

309

310

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

latter’s Guide of the Perplexed underlie his objection to the notion of man as microcosm. which he replaced with the perception of the Sefirot as forces within man. Abulafia’s preference for the human meaning of the Sefirot was not necessarily a consequence of the psychological interiorization of the divine world in his Kabbalistic worldview. It is rather an expression of the shift in spiritual focus from the attempt to comprehend God to man’s quest to understand himself and his potential for direct communion with Him. The writings of Kabbalists who fell under the sway of the psychologization of the Sefirot, such as R. Moses Cordovero (see below), show great concern about the materialization of the Sefirot. The attempt to combine the mental projection onto the divine world with the direct psychological sense of the Sefirotic realm is liable to lead the Kabbalist to the personification of the divine world, to the extent of overturning the divine meaning of the Sefirot.123 The tendency to conceptually internalize the Sefirot, which is expressed in an awareness of their human, psychological essence, intensified among the Safed Kabbalists. Cordovero’s writings seek to combine various Kabbalistic ideas with the question of the nature of the soul, while emphasizing the human meanings of the notion of man as microcosm: 123 R. Moses Cordovero, in Pardes Rimmonim, part 1, sha‘ar 4: Sha‘ar Atzmut ve-Kelim, chap. 6, fol. 19b, interprets Elijah’s message to R. Shimon bar Yohai (Tikkunei Zohar, introduction, fol. 15) as follows (English translation based on Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, vol. 1, trans. Elyakim Getz [Providence: Providence University, 2007], 182–83): “‘[Above and below] are recognized’—through creation in which there are many activities, and upper things are revealed, for from the low ones we recognize the higher ones, as it is said, “From my body I see God” [Job 19:26]; through them man knows God. After understanding the higher ones from the low ones, man goes back from above to below in order to recognize the greatness of the low ones, which depend on the higher ones. The order of grasping the unknown goes from the latter to the former [min ha-meu’har el ha-qodem], and then from the former to the latter [min ha-qodem el ha-meu’har]. He first emanated Emanation inside, which was His substance. After Emanation came Creation, then Formation and Action, all this to make known His greatness and His existence in the world. From Action we understand Formation, from Formation we understand and rise to Creation, from Creation we understand and rise to Emanation. . . . All this is true of what is emanated, created, formed, and done, but there is no grasping whatsoever of His essence. We can only understand that everything depends on Him like an amulet hanging on the arm. This is the meaning of “No one knows You”—no one can grasp His elevated state at all. We can only know that He is the master of all things, that from Him are channeled good will and love—not by necessity but altruistically, from cause to effect—and that He is the First Cause. This is the meaning of “You are recognized as the Master of all”— for the grasping of the divinity by the human mind is only possible through the chain of the worlds, from cause to effect, with Him being the First Cause.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

We have another way in this (in contrast to Rabbi [Joseph] Alcastil, who responded to Rabbi Judah Hayyat) that each and every soul includes the ten. . . . Since a person, by his proper deeds, intensifies one of the attributes to act, and all the other attributes will be engarbed in the matter of that attribute, by inductive power, as we interpreted in Sha‘ar Mahut ve-Hanhagah. . . . [T]his question can be resolved by what we explained, for man can increase within his soul whatever part he so wishes, in accordance with his actions. Now, the Patriarchs wished to adhere only to a high place, and they increased in their soul: Abraham, the part of Ḥesed, Isaac, the part of Gevurah, and so forth, and similarly for all people. We already explained this at length in Sh’ar haKinuim, chapter 4, with the help of Heaven.124

Cordovero’s explanation of the idea of the Sefirot within man realizes the potential for interiorization within the teaching of the Sefirot itself. He completely parallels the Sefirot with human traits: each Sefirah matches a human quality. For example, a person who enhances the performing of kindnesses in his lifetime intensifies the ḥesed within himself, and thereby strengthens the Sefirah of Ḥesed.125 The Sefirot are also the psychological map of a person’s soul, “since each soul includes the ten.” He then writes: The matter is for the body to resemble the spiritual. Consequently, it is necessary that even if this is spiritual, it is to adhere to the material, out of his great desire for Him. The reason is that the lower [realms] are the dwelling of the upper [realms]. And just as the effect desires to ascend to its cause, so too, the cause desires that its effect be close to it. And just as the effect desires its cause, so too, the cause desires that its effect will draw close to it. These matters are inherently necessary, for thus is the connection of the worlds with their being the multijointed lamp. . . . And similarly regarding the soul, for it comes down from the cause to the effect, by the mentioned degrees, as is explained in the commentary. And this is certainly a redoubled boon, that as we alluded in this Gate and in the preceding Gates regarding the soul, so too, the body, that is its chariot that the Holy One, blessed be He, created for it, it [= the body] resembles it [= the soul] in every respect . . . 124 Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, part 2, sha‘ar 31: Sha‘ar ha-Neshamah, chap. 1, fol. 72a. 125 “For they are parts within Binah, for Binah contains the ten [Sefirot]. . . . By force of the reality being included in it, when the soul is drawn down, it includes the ten together, and all are bound within it. Afterwards, by his actions he increases in his soul . . . part. The principle is that the merciful one [ha-ḥasid] [increases] Ḥesed, the mighty one [ha-gibbor] who conquers his inclination [increases] Gevurah” (Tikkunei Zohar . . . Or Yakar, Bava Kamma, 1:27; cited by Sack, Cordovero, 207; see also Sack’s explanation).

311

312

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

for the human body, although it is foul material, contains all the upper and lower [spheres].126

The spiritualization of the human body is effected by the performance of the commandments, by means of the psychological parallelism between the Sefirotic world and man’s psyche. The adherence of the different traits of the soul, which are present in the body’s limbs, is as the attraction of the deed to its cause. The attraction of the human to the godly is not only a human need, but a divine one as well, following the Zoharic conception of the interdependence of the upper and lower arousals. R. Yehudah opened: “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:11). They have already established that through an arousal below arises an arousal above, for nothing arouses above until something arouses below. Blessings from above manifest only at a site of substance, not emptiness.127 Cordovero learned from the Zoharic idea that “through an arousal below arises an arousal above” that “the existence of all emanation is emanated only for the needs of the lower ones.” His comparing the godly world to a nursing mother who wants to nurse128 highlights the spiritual essence common to the godly world and to man. This, in turn, provides the

126 Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, part 2, sha‘ar 31: Sha‘ar ha-Neshamah, chap. 8, fol. 75b– 76a. See Luzzatto, Sefer ha-Kelalim, 339, para. 2: “There is another matter relating to them, namely, the Sefirot contain what will be the root of man’s soul, and what will be the root of the body in him, for the image of man in its entirely is the connection of body and soul together. Even inanimate objects contain an aspect of the soul, as it were, and there is some inner power that maintains their form.” 127 Zohar 1:88a (trans.: Matt, Zohar, 2:61). 128 “This idea recurs many times in the Zohar, as in ‘The Divine Presence is below for a higher purpose.’ Its meaning is that the whole of emanation only takes place for the sake of the lower ones, as explained in the sha‘ar of Ta‘am ha-Atzilut [the Gate of the Cause for Emanation]. And since its principle starts below—after the lower ones are worthy of the blessing that will rest on them—the blessing and plentitude rest on the higher ones. But when the blessing does not rest among the lower ones because of their evil disposition, the blessing does not rest on the higher ones either. Therefore, ‘The Divine Presence is below’ means that there is a dwelling for the Divine Presence below, in the lower world. ‘For a higher purpose’—it is needed for the higher emanation above it. Here is a parable: When a mother nurses her living child and he is disposed to nurse, the milk in her breasts increases. But if she does not have a baby to nurse and rain plentitude on him, milk is lacking in her breasts” (Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, part 1, sha‘ar 8: Mahut ve-Hanhagah, chap. 20, fol. 51a; translation partly based on trans. Getz, Pardes Rimmonim, 8:6–26, 123–24).

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

conceptual basis for the interiorization of Kabbalistic ideas in general, and especially, the matching of the Sefirot with the traits of man’s psyche. Several passages in the writings of R. Eleazar Azikri, Cordovero’s student, reflect the notion of man as a chariot, or a dwelling place, for the Godhead: How worthy is a man to be holy in his 248 limbs, his heart, and his soul, since he is a temple for the holy King, as it is written, “The Holy One in your midst,” it is written, “the Temple of the Lord are these” [Jer. 7:4], and it is written, “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy” [Lev. 19:2]. That is, and I dwell in your midst, as it is written, “I will establish My abode in your midst” [Lev. 26:11].129 Man is the Throne of Glory, the four basic elements are the four pillars of the Throne; the nefesh, ruaḥ, neshamah are the dwelling-place of God; “Let the waters bring forth” [Gen. 1:20], “and the spirit of God sweeping over the water” [Gen. 1:2], as is taught in the Zohar [2:24a]: “Two hearts, to the right of the Throne and to its left, and the intellect adjoining.” This is what is said, “The Patriarchs are the Merkabah” [Gen. Rabbah 47:6].130 The main dwelling of the Shekhinah is in the heart of Israel, as it is said, “that I may dwell among them” [Exod. 25:8].131

Pachter maintains that these passages are not to be understood as depicting man as the inherent Throne of Glory and as the dwelling of God. In Pachter’s reading, the Patriarchs realized this possibility, and, under certain conditions (which Azikri describes as “conditions of servitude”), man can do so again.132 This explanation, that is meant to blur the meaning of Azikri’s conceptual interiorization, turning it into a wish for the actualization of a potential of which only exemplary individuals are capable, is inconsistent with what Azikri states explicitly in the same manuscript: “More than all that you guard, guard your mind [libkha, literally, ‘heart’]” [Prov. 4:23]—the meaning: that the heart is the source of life . . . and one 129 Milei de-Shemaya, ed. Pachter, para. 87. 130 Ibid., para. 39. 131 Ibid., para. 81; see also para. 282. Cf. Sefer Ḥaredim, chap. 7, fol. 14; Mitzvot Aseh me-Divrei Kabbalah u-me-Divrei Soferim ha-Teluyot ba-Lev, chap. 1, para. 31, fol. 44b (see Milei de-Shemaya, ed. Pachter, 107 n. 20). 132 Milei de-Shemaya, ed. Pachter, introduction, 80.

313

314

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

who sinned and followed his [evil] urge and his heart suffers pangs [of conscience], when he returns to the Lord with all his might and submits, that husk will be shattered, and this is as it is written, “True sacrifice to God is a contrite [nishberah, literally, ‘broken’] spirit” [Ps. 51:19]. Then the river of each limb, that until then had been laid waste and dried up, will return to its former strength. Know that when the husk is completely shattered, then the heart will adhere to its Creator, for it was for this that it was created.133

The divine service of the pietist, by means of servitude, silence, and abstinence, which, as Pachter showed, is characteristic of Azikri,134 consists mainly of the rectification of the primal state that was spoiled by man. Repentance restores to its former glory the limb that had dried up by being severed from its spiritual source due to sin and the temptation of the Evil Urge. The Kabbalistic conception of the heart [= the nefesh] and the head [= the neshamah] as the dwelling-place of God, or in greater detail, of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the Shekhinah, is cardinal, and is not to be interpreted as alluding to a potential difficult to realize. The necessity to devote tireless efforts to shatter the husk is not a condition but rather a rectification, that is meant to renew the essential connection that has faded, and almost been severed, between man and the godly essence within.

The Conceptual Interiorization at the Basis of Zoharic Theurgy135 Some of the passages in the Zohar that discuss the reasons for the commandments clearly contain elements of conceptual interiorization. This is especially evident in the manner in which the Zohar presents the dependence of the upper arousal on the lower, in the recitation of the Haggadah during the Passover Seder: After this it is one’s duty to narrate the glory of the Exodus from Egypt, for one is obliged to praise this event continually. We have taught that every man who talks of the Exodus from Egypt and rejoices fully in its narration will eventually rejoice in the Shekhinah in the world to come, and this is the greatest joy of all. This is the man who rejoices in his master, and the Holy One, blessed be He, takes delight in the narration. 133 Ibid., para. 232; see Pachter’s references, 151. 134 Ibid., introduction, 81–86. 135 On the theurgic Kabbalah and its sources, see Idel, New Perspectives, 156–99; Mopsik, Les grands textes.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

It is at this time that the Holy One, blessed be He, gathers His household together and says to them: Come and listen to the recital of My praises, which My children utter as they rejoice in the redemption that I have performed. They all assemble and come to join Israel, and they listen to the praises that they recite as they delight in the joy of the redemption that their Master has performed. They [the divine household] come and give thanks to the Holy One, blessed be He, for all the miracles and the manifestations of His power, and praise Him for the holy people that He has on the earth, who take delight in the joy of the redemption that their Master has performed. Then He gains additional strength and power in the world above, and by this narration Israel give strength to their Master, just as a king increases in power and might when [his subjects] praise his might and give thanks to him. And all fear Him and His glory is exalted on high. Therefore one must praise him by reciting this story, as we have explained.136

The conceptual background for this teaching appears in the midrash: “From before Thy people, whom Thou didst redeem to Thee out of Egypt”— [II Sam. 7.23] . . . —R. Akiba says: Were it not expressly written in Scripture, it would be impossible to say it. Israel said to God: Thou hadst redeemed Thyself, as though one could conceive such a thing. Likewise you find that whithersoever Israel was exiled, the Shekinah, as it were, went into exile with them. When they went into exile to Egypt, the Shekinah went into exile with them, as it is said: “I exiled Myself unto the house of thy fathers when they were in Egypt” (I Sam. 2.27). When they were exiled to Babylon, the Shekinah went into exile with them. . . . And when they return in the future, the Shekinah, as it were, will return with them.137

What R. Akiva barely dares to utter: “Israel said to God: Thou hadst redeemed Thyself,” becomes, in the Zohar, a recurring statement that is not to be doubted. For the Zohar, this is the heart of the Haggadah narrative. In this Zoharic teaching, the redemption from Egypt is the redemption of the Holy One, blessed be He. The central question that arises here is: why is the redemption of Israel from Egypt considered to be the very redemption of the Godhead? The midrash of R. Akiva examines the idea from a collective perspective, which identifies the Jewish people with its God by means of the 136 Zohar 2:40b-41a (trans.: Tishby, Wisdom, 3:1316–17). 137 Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ismael, ed. Horovitz and Rabin, pisha 14, 51–52 (trans.: Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 1:114–15). See Urbach, Sages, 2:705–706 n. 62; 706 n. 70.

315

316

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

idea that the Divine Presence rests among the people. The general context of the midrash is the question of whether or not God is present among the people after the destruction of the Temple and the Exile.138 The direct continuation of the dictum in the Zohar clearly shows that, in this context, it perceived man as an individuum. This teaching can be understood as an example of conceptual interiorization, by means of the Zoharic dicta that explicitly stress the godly dimension in man, by their identification of the divine with the human soul.139 When the people of Israel are redeemed, the godly within them is similarly redeemed. In the continuation of the Zoharic passage: It is obligatory to speak continually in this way before the Holy One, blessed be He, and to narrate publicly every miracle that He has performed. You might object and ask why this should be obligatory, for does not the Holy One, blessed be He, know everything, all that has been and all that will be? Why then need we declare before Him what He has done, since He knows it already? The answer is that we do indeed have to narrate the miracles and speak in His presence of all that He has done, because these words ascend, and the celestial household who have all gathered together take note of them, and they all praise the Holy One, blessed be He, and His glory is exalted over them, both above and below. It is the same with the man who declares and recounts in detail all the sins that he has committed. You might wonder whether this is really necessary. But the prosecutor is always present before the Holy One, blessed be He, in order to recount the sins of mankind, and to demand that justice be meted out to them. When a man confesses every one of his own sins first, he deprives the prosecutor of his opportunity and he cannot demand that the man be punished, for [the prosecutor] first makes a general demand for punishment and then begins to make his accusations, saying: So-andso has done such-and-such. Therefore, a man should confess his own sins first. When the prosecutor sees this, he will not be able to say anything against him, and then he will leave him altogether. If he turns in contrition and repents, well and good. If not, the prosecutor will reappear and say: 138 In light of Lorberbaum’s claim regarding R. Akiva’s iconic conception (see Lorberbaum, “Imago Dei”), we might also impart personal meaning to this Tanna’s teaching, but at any rate, the general context of the dictum is historically specific, as Urbach maintains: Sages, 2:705–706 n. 62; 706 n. 70. 139 See Tishby, Wisdom, 2:677–86, 692–722; and the sources in Zohar Ḥadash, Genesis, 18a–19b; Zohar 2:13a–b; 2:219b–220a; 3:61a–b.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

So-and-so came before You impudently, and he despises his Master; his sins are such-and-such. One must therefore take great care of these things, and appear always as a faithful servant before the Holy One, blessed be He.140

The Zohar relates to the individual, taking an example from the realm of individual repentance. A single person’s confession does not reveal to the Holy One, blessed be He, secrets or unknown sins, and its significance is presumably for the sinner himself. The analogy raised by the Zohar, however, indicates that from the moment that a person confesses and bears responsibility for his actions, he negates the destructive activity of the Accuser, of the evil depicted here in light of the description of the Adversary at the beginning of the book of Job. Through his confession, the sinner acknowledges his guilt and therefore in good time weakens the power of evil-the Accuser and leaves the latter with no pretext to launch his attack. Accusation weakens the divine forces, while self-confession acts to counter this: it rectifies and strengthens these forces. Scholem argues that, in the Zohar, the idea of the arousal below creating the arousal above means “the Godhead being able to act below only when its powers are aroused and activated by the stimulus of human actions.”141 Based on the above passages from the Zohar, it seems that we can be more precise and argue that they imply that man is capable of enhancing the power of the Godhead for “the sake of the Above.” Just as the confession— which is primarily an inner human act—radiates to the Godhead and actualizes it, so too, the paean to the Exodus speaks of a double miracle. In the redemption of Israel, the divine within them is redeemed as well. Israel’s liberation from the impurity of Egypt is also the redemption of the divine from the forces of evil.142 In this teaching, the Zohar does not relate to Israel only as God’s people, but as a congregation of individuals each of whom is at least potentially capable of redeeming God Himself, taking into account the identity between the godly within him and the godly beyond him. In the retelling of the Exodus on Passover night, the Israelites rejoice in their redemption because the God within them is redeemed with them. In this

140 Zohar 2:40b–41a (trans.: Tishby, Wisdom, 3:1317). 141 Gershom Sholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, trans. Joachim Neugroschel, ed. Jonathan Chipman (New York: Schocken, 1991),187–88. 142 See Tishby, Wisdom, 3:1254–55.

317

318

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

manner they blunt the forces of evil and strengthen and actualize the divine elan vital.143

Introspective Contemplation of the Psyche as Fashioning Conceptual Interiorization in Kabbalah R. Elijah de Vidas’s book Re’shit Ḥokhmah contains outstanding inner contemplative explanations of patently Zoharic ideas:144 R. Simeon bar Yohai, may he rest in peace, taught us the secret of the essence of love. The matter is what he said before this regarding the love of the Companions: “All the Companions in the days of Rabbi Shim’on loved one another in soul and spirit.”145 The explanation of this is that a person’s love of his fellow is by the soul, for love is the desire of the soul. Even though bodies are divided and separate from one another, the soul of this one and that one is the spiritual, and the spiritual is not discrete. Rather, it is united by the epitome of unity. As one Companion’s soul arouses its desire to love its fellow, its fellow’s soul, too, will awaken and love him; and the two souls will be as one, as the verse says regarding David and Jonathan: “Jonathan’s soul became bound up with the soul of David; Jonathan loved David as himself ” [I Sam. 18:1]. David’s love for Jonathan aroused his [Jonathan’s] love for him [David], as it says: “They kissed each other and wept together, etc., David wept the longer” [I Sam. 20:41]; and he [= David] said upon his 143 R. Hayyim of Volozhyn’s attempt to limit the theurgic meanings of this Zoharic teaching about Israel, who “give strength to their Master,” an attempt based on Lam. Rabbah 1:33, is evident in the first part of his Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim. Shalom Rosenberg’s opposition to the contemporary Kabbalah scholars who emphasize the theurgic nature of Kabbalah continues the direction taken by R. Hayyim. See Rosenberg, “The Myth of Myths” [Heb], Jewish Studies 38 (1998): 149–61. The above discussion casts additional light on this controversy. 144 On the book’s general nature and its place in the Kabbalistic ethical literature, see Mordechai Pachter, “The Book ‘Re’shit Ḥokhmah’ by R. Eliyahu De-Vidas and Its Epitomes” [Heb], Kirjath Sepher 47 (1971–1972): 686–709. On the place of the book in nascent Hasidism, see idem, “Traces of the Influence of R. Elijah de Vidas’s Re’shit Ḥokhmah upon the Writings of R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye” [Heb], in Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby, ed. Joseph Dan and Joseph Hacker (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), 569–91. 145 Zohar 2:190b (trans.: Matt, Zohar, 6:76). See Yehuda Liebes, “The Messiah in the Zohar” [Heb], in The Messianic Idea in Jewish Thought: A Study Conference in Honour of the Eightieth Birthday of Gershom Scholem. Held December 4–5, 1977, ed. Samuel Ream (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1982), 157–64.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

[= Jonathan’s] death: “Your love was wonderful to me more than the love of women” [II Sam. 1:26]. Solomon, may he rest in peace, taught us this reality, that their souls were bound together in the awakening of love, when he said: “As face answers to face in water, so does one man’s heart to another” [Prov. 27:19], which the Rabbis interpreted: “R. Hanina said, Does water have a face? Rather, what is this water? You put it in a vessel and you gaze into it, and it is visible to you, so too, man’s heart to another man.”146 This explains what we interpreted, that just as water in a vessel, when a person gazes into it, he will see his face in it. These are two kinds of “face”: one is the face through which he looks, which is direct light, and the face in the water that he sees is light reflected from below to above, from the water in the vessel to him, and the two faces are one, they are bound together. If a person averts his gaze from the water, he will see nothing in the water, for there is no direct light there, no reflected light. And so a man’s heart to another: when a person arouses his heart’s desire to love his fellow, this desire will arouse his fellow’s heart to him. And if this is as we said, that the face in which a person gazes in the water is direct light, this is according to the material reality. But the spiritual reality is the secret of the lower awakening, that ascends from our actions to the Shekhinah; this is the matter of the feminine waters of which the Zohar speaks.147 If there is no lower awakening, there is no supernal awakening, as it is said: “but a flow would well up from the ground” [Gen. 2:6]; and afterwards, “and water,” as this was interpreted in the Zohar.148

The original exegesis of Prov. 27:19 explains the relationship between the outwardness and inwardness of the same person. The heart reveals to a person, as if in a mirror, his inner world. Inner life is seemingly as transparent as water, but since it has a special “vessel” that contains it, which is the heart, a person can thereby discern the inner aspects of his life. De-Vidas uses this water analogy for a completely different end: to explain both the nature of the psychological connection between people and the similarity and association between this connection and that between man and the divine world. He reads the verse differently. De-Vidas does not find here the relationship between a person’s heart and his entire personality, but 146 Midrash Mishle, ed. Burton L. Visotzky (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1990), chap. 27, 112. For English translation, see The Midrash on Proverbs, trans. Burton L. Visotzky (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 112–13. 147 Zohar 1:17b–18a; 25:b–26a. 148 De-Vidas, Re’shit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Ahavah 1:25–27, ed. Waldman, 1:361–62.

319

320

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

that between one person and another, or between one person’s heart and another’s. The transparency of the water is a mirror of the love in a person’s heart for his fellow. The water in the vessel possesses intrinsic tangibility, in addition to reflecting the love of the person gazing into it. It is as if the water absorbs the love (direct light), which is now compared to the love that is aroused in the heart of the other person (reflected light).149 All depends on the gazer: if he lifts his eyes from the water, no substantiality will be created within the water itself. The direct light, which is actually the loving stare of the gazer, also enables the existence of the reflected light, the emotion of love that is returned by the second person; and both join together in the love between friends. The spiritual sense common to human beings makes possible the inner union between these two people, that is—love. It is this inner chord that also allows for the contact between man and the divine worlds (= the soul of the world). The Zoharic notion of the arousal below as causing the arousal above was revealed by means of the inward contemplation of the psychological connection between friends. The inner spiritual plane is the one that unites different people, and it also enables people to understand the secret of connection between man and his world and the godly world, a linkage that, in actuality, is dependent upon man. “If a person averts his gaze from the water, he will see nothing in the water.” If a person does not direct his soul and spirit to God, He will remain indifferent to him. Beyond the 149 Bracha Sack found the sources of the idea that the soul is compared to a mirror, and that each Israelite soul reflects the other souls, also compared to mirrors, in R. Moses Cordovero’s Or Yakar commentary to the Zohar: “For the soul of every one from Israel is included in the sixty myriads [= 600,000] that together are as the image of a mirror, for all the mirrors that will be placed opposite it and close to it will show itself ” (Or Yakar, 13:238, on Torah, Numbers 1:2). See Sack, Cordovero, 206–9. Sack noted the evolution, or parallel, in Cordovero’s writings on the reflection of the Sefirot in each other. Zeev Gries analyzed the comparison of the soul to a pure, polished mirror in Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar Ḥeshbon Nefesh, chap. 4. English translation: The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, 239–40. Gries also suggested viewing al-Ghazzali as the source of the imagery. See al-Ghazzali, Ma’aznei Zedek, 35–36, 44–45, 52–53; see Gries, Conduct Literature (Regimen Vitae): Its History and Place in the Life of Beshtian Hasidism [Heb] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1990), 252 n. 18. An additional source of the mirror imagery, according to Gries, is the Talmudic dictum: “With his own blemish he stigmatizes others as unfit” (BT Kiddushin 70a). On Vidas’s metaphor of gazing into water in the context of his concept of love, see Mordechai Pachter, “The Theory of Devekut in the Writings of the Sages of Safed in the Sixteenth Century” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3 (1982): 97–115, esp. 101–102.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

conception of the Sefirot paralleling man’s psyche, from a human perspective at least, the divine world is completely dependent on human spirituality. The Zoharic sexual imagery of the lower water (“the feminine waters”) that arouses the upper water, which is the “masculine shefa [emanated bounty]”—that is, femininity arouses masculinity—is understood here in a psychological sense. Psychological desire, the spiritual intentionality toward God that comes from man, arouses the divine emanation, and this consequently seeks to unite with the spirituality that comes from man.150 De-Vidas then uses existential terminology to formulate his expansion of this notion. I will discuss this aspect in the following chapter.

The Kabbalistic Psychological Interpretation of the Narratives in the Torah Abraham Abulafia interpreted the stories in the Torah as directly relating to the life of the psyche. Idel used Abulafia’s interpretation of the Binding of Isaac to exemplify this interpretation and summed up the inward nature of this commentary as follows: . . . the story of the binding is conceived as an inner conflict, a man testing himself to see if he is capable of having his intellect rule over his imagination. The opening of this section does not speak of Abraham necessarily, but rather of a man who thinks in his heart of what his response would be if commanded by God to sacrifice his son. Will he be able to forego his physicalimaginational propensity as a result of a command from the intellect?151

Idel maintains that it was Abulafia’s mystical method, which focuses on the names of God, that enabled him to transform the Biblical text itself into one that relates the life of the psyche, similar to clearly philosophical texts. For Abulafia, the tests depicted in the Bible are a psychological lesson meant to teach man to come to know his way of thinking: This is for the sake of [obtaining] knowledge, so that the one being tested knows the actual nature of his own thought processes [intent]. And this is called ‘complete knowledge,’ for the true nature of one’s thought [intent] 150 On goodwill as attesting to the divine within man, see above, 298–9. 151 Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, 121–22; see also 61–63, the citations from Abraham Abulafia’s commentary to The Guide of the Perplexed: Sefer Ḥayyei ha-Nefesh, MS. Munich 408, fol. 83b, 84a–b.

321

322

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

is known only as potential, and indeed with actualization the true nature of one’s [thought intent] becomes known. . . . A parable may be provided for this [understanding the nature of the trial] with regard to one’s sexual inclination in reference to forbidden forms of sexual contact. One may think himself totally immune to this inclination, and that if an opportunity were to present itself to him, he would not transgress. But when the opportunity actually presents itself, and he finds that nothing would prevent him from transgressing, due to the total seclusion that he finds himself in, together with a woman, he actually does transgress. At that point he will know that his previous self-estimation was false. Whereas if he is able to take control of himself he would know that his self-estimation was accurate. Thus, it [the trial] is for the sake of [obtaining self-] knowledge. It is the person who is actually testing himself so that he would know in actuality the truth of his self-estimation. And this, only he will know.152

Paralleling Abulafia’s interpretation, the Zohar, too, contains psychological interpretation of the Torah’s narratives that, in the spirit of the above Zoharic passages, emphasizes the connection between the psychological-human and the godly. For example, the following Zoharic exegesis of (Gen. 45:27–28) “But when they recounted all that Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to transport him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. ‘Enough!’ said Israel. ‘My son Joseph is still alive! I must go and see him before I die’”: Rabbi Shim’on said, “At first, ‘the spirit of Jacob revived’; afterward, ‘Israel said, “Enough! Joseph my son is still alive”’ (ibid., 28). Well, at first, Torah calls him Jacob because they made Shekhinah a partner in that ban when Joseph was sold. Now that Shekhinah has arisen: “the spirit of Jacob revived”— mystery of Shekhinah. Once She is firmly established, a rung above arouses toward Her—rung of Israel. From here we learn that mystery above does not arouse until first there is arousal below. For here, “the spirit of Jacob revived,” at first; afterward, “Israel said.”153

In this teaching, the boundaries between Jacob’s personal character and his Zoharic symbolic meaning are blurred. “The spirit of their father Jacob revived” is a human event that happened following Joseph’s making 152 Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Mafteah ha-Ḥokhmot, MS. Parma 141, fol. 25b (cited in Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, 121–22). 153 Zohar 1:210b-211a (trans.: Matt, Zohar, 3:295).

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

himself known to his brothers; the meaning of this event, which was the lower arousal, was the Divine Presence’s renewed resting in Jacob’s inner life. The event in the earthly world is what effects the ascent into the upper worlds, that, the Zohar claims, is alluded in the name change from Jacob to Israel. This teaching fundamentally resembles the above Zoharic teaching on the Exodus. Here, too, the direction that is presented—from below to above—means that human life (in this case the reviving of Jacob’s soul after the tidings about Joseph), strengthens, raises, and actualizes the godly life. “Jacob” and “Israel” are not merely symbolic concepts that are to be interpreted in accordance with the Sefirotic symbolism of the Zohar. The inner processes that produced the change in Jacob, following which he would be called “Israel,” create tangible and positive change in the divine world. Lurianic Kabbalah contains parallels between anthropomorphic concepts attributed to the Lurianic world of Sefirot and partzufim [the countenances of God], on the one hand, and on the other, human life. As Pachter showed, states such as katnut [“smallness”] and gadlut [“greatness”], that Lurianic Kabbalah ascribes to processes in the godly supernal worlds, also explain human psychological processes experienced by key characters in the Biblical narratives.154 The states of katnut to which Moses had to descend due to the influence of the sin of the Golden Calf over him are described in R. Hayyim Vital’s commentary to “But the Lord was wrathful with me on your account” (Deut. 3:26): You already know that Moses possessed the aspect of katnut and gadlut; and similarly, all the souls are in the form of Zeir Anpin that has ibbur, katnut, and gadlut. The secret of this is that the Lord, may He be blessed, gives wisdom to the leaders of the generation according to the merit of the generation. When Israel sinned with the Calf, they caused Moses to return to the secret of ibbur, and the rest of the illuminations he had ceased; all that was left him was the aspect of the illumination of ibbur, and he returned to his state of katnut.155 154 Mordechai Pachter, “Katnut and Gadlut in Lurianic Kabbalah” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 10 (1992): 171–210. 155 Schneur Zalman ben Baruch of Lyady, Likkutei Torah (Vilna: Romm, 1904), Vaetḥanan, p. 235 (cited by Pachter, “Katnut,” 206); see the entire teaching. R. Hayyim Vital lists three periods in the process of Zeir Anpin’s development: ibbur, katnut, and gadlut. Vital uses metaphors taken from human ontological development to portray the changes in the divine state. For Zeir Anpin, see Tishby, Wisdom, 1:335 n. 282.

323

324

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

In some passages of the Lurianic corpus, the occupation with the divine partzufim and the states of katnut and gadlut in the Godhead rouse a more inward, or even psychological, reading of the stories of the Torah. The portrayals of the gadlut and katnut in Moses’ life became a model of the psychological states of “all the souls.”

The Interiorization of the Kabbalistic Teaching of the Sabbatical and Jubilee Years Scholem wrote that the Kabbalistic teaching of the Sabbatical years, especially as it was fashioned by the author of Sefer ha-Temunah, imparts historical significance to divine processes and includes the possibility of understanding the messianic era as an essential change in the dimensions of time and the physical orders of the world.156 Notwithstanding this, Scholem also acknowledged the possibility of giving this teaching an interpretation based on a conceptual interiorization reflected in the following passage by R. Isaac of Acre in his book Meirat Einayim:157 Accordingly, contemplate and look with your good intellect, for after the removal of the Evil Inclination, “He did not create it a waste, but formed it for habitation” [Isa. 45:18]. Then the opposite will be the case: He did not form it for habitation, but created a waste. Then those who seclude themselves will multiply, and those who set themselves apart will increase, until before the completion of the sixth millennium, man and beast will disappear from the earth, for by the soul’s overwhelming the body, all the bodily sensations will cease, and man, even during his lifetime, will be a soul without body, due to his great adherence to the Lord, may He be blessed. . . . We have learned the secret of the chaos of the seventh millennium, that the world will be destroyed and emptied of all creatures. Once there will be no creatures, there will be no emanation, for the Shekhinah will not rest on the trees and the stones. The world will collapse and become chaos, as it was at the beginning of Creation. Afterwards, in the eighth millennium, the Lord, may He be 156 Scholem, Beginnings of the Kabbalah, 187, 192. See also ibid., chap. 7 (“Sefer ha-Temunah and the Doctrine of Sabbatical Years,” 176–92); idem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 460–74; idem, On the Kabbalah, 77–83. 157 Scholem, Beginnings of the Kabbalah, 187 n. 2. Idel presented R. Isaac the Blind’s interpretation of Sabbatical years as interiorization; see Moshe Idel, “The Jubilee in Jewish Mysticism,” in Millenarismi nella cultura contemporanea, ed. Rambaldi Enrico I (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000), 209–32.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

blessed, will create ex nihilo and renew the world. This progression will continue until the great Jubilee, which is the Jubilee of the Holy One, blessed be He, which is fifty thousand years, which is a thousand generations. Even according to the view that in the seventh millennium [the world] will not return to chaos as it was at the beginning of Creation, only the creatures, while the change shall occur in the way of “He established the earth on its foundations,” etc. [Ps. 104:5]; or, even according to the view that the destruction of the world does not refer to all creatures, but only to the destruction of their desire for bodily matters, then whoever kills his desires in his lifetime, and the body is destroyed as if he has no body—they are dead in their lifetimes, and live after their deaths. This is the meaning of Scripture: “Then I praised those who are already dead” [Eccl. 4:2]. The Rabbis said: The one who does not want to die is to die, so that he will not die.158 In any event, the entire world is in agreement, with none dissenting, every Israelite [who believes] in the Torah of Moses and the tradition of the prophets concurs that in fifty thousand years the world will return to chaos, as it was before the six days of Creation, and this is the negation of the Evil Inclination.159

R. Isaac of Acre clearly indicates that the meaning of the destruction of the world in the Kabbalistic teaching of the Sabbatical years is not physical, but rather of a spiritual-inner nature. This will be a direct result of the negation of the Evil Inclination by means of asceticism and seclusion that will bring humanity as a whole to maximal spiritual devotion, to the very annulment of bodily sensation, meaning that man, while alive, will be a “soul without a body.” This expression is plainly explained by R. Isaac of Acre in his commentary to the Torah portion of Re’eh, earlier in his book: Now, you should know that when the divine intellect descends and reaches the Passive Intellect, and when the Passive Intellect reaches the psyche [nefesh] in man—for man is called “nefesh”—the divine intellect in man’s psyche is called nefesh, which comes from above to down below. When you look upon this from down below upward, you see that when man separates himself from the vanities of this world, and causes his thought and soul to adhere to the upper spheres, constantly, his soul will be named after the highest of the supernal attributes which he perceived and to which he 158 Apparently following the Talmudic dictum: “What shall a man do to live? Let him kill himself ” (BT Tamid 32a). 159 Isaac ben Samuel of Acre, Meirat Einayim, ed. Hayyim Aryeh Ehrlinger (Jerusalem, 1993), Nitzavim, on the commentary of Nahmanides to Deut. 30:6, 308–10.

325

326

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

adhered. How so? If the secluded soul merited to attain the passive intellect, it will be called “passive intellect,” as if it itself were the passive intellect. Similarly, when it ascends further and perceives and adheres to the acquired intellect, then it becomes the acquired intellect. And if it merited further and adheres to the Active Intellect, then it itself is the Active Intellect. And if it merits to adhere to the divine intellect, it is fortunate, for it has returned to its foundation and root, and is actually called the divine intellect. That man will be called the man of God, or the godly man, the creator of worlds.160

This passage by R. Isaac of Acre, which has its source in Abulafian philosophy, as Idel showed,161 not only clarifies the nature of the conceptual interiorization at the basis of his interpretation of the Kabbalistic teaching of the Sabbatical years, it also explicates the inner nature of the Abulafian method as a whole and the nature of the epistemological interiorization in which it is grounded (see below, chapter six).

Conceptual Interiorizations in Hasidism Many of the conceptual interiorizations surveyed above resound strongly in Hasidism. At times we gain the impression that the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples intentionally searched different sources for many of these interiorizations, which they used to create a Jewish renaissance that made inner religious life the focus of their lives.

Inner Godliness In one of the shorter teachings in Likkutei Moharan, R. Nahman of Bratslav combines the notion of inner Godliness (whose Zoharic source was discussed above)162 with the interiorization of the “Place” of the rabbis: When a person has a heart, place is irrelevant for him. To the contrary, he is the place of the world, etc. For godliness is in the heart, as it is said, “God is the rock of my heart” [Ps. 73:26]. Regarding the Lord, may He be blessed, it is said: “See, there is a place by Me” [Exod. 33:21], for He is the Place of His world, and the world is not His place. Consequently, whoever has an Israelite 160 Isaac ben Samuel of Acre, Meirat Einayim, Re’eh, on the commentary of Nahmanides to Deut. 14:1, 287. 161 See Idel, “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Ecstatic Kabbalah.” 162 Above, 298–9.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

heart should not rightly say that this place is not good for him, for place is irrelevant for him. To the contrary, he is the place of the world, and the world is not his place.163

In his commentary to the rabbinic dictum “For He is the Place of the world, and the world is not His place” (Gen. Rabbah 68:9), R. Nahman identifies the Place with inner godliness, and thereby, in effect, effaces the distance between the place of God and that of man. God’s place is also within man, and where man has a heart, that is, when man is connected to his inner world, his longings, and the depth of his feelings, he is already in the godly place. This conceptual formulation is based on the epistemological interiorization formulated by the Baal Shem Tov: “where man thinks is where He is.” This idea will be discussed at length in chapter six; at this point, I wish to focus on the notion that godliness is present within man. The story of the heart and the spring that R. Nahman tells within the context of the story for the third day in the tale “The Seven Beggars” begins as follows: Everything has a heart. Therefore the world as a whole also has a heart. The Heart of the World has a complete body, with face, hands, and feet. . . . However, a toenail of the Heart of the World has more of the essential nature of a heart than the heart of anything else.164

After this introduction, no great effort is required to show that “the heart” is the innerness in every thing. Just as man has an inner nature, so too, the world as a whole has a heart, an innerness. This comparison between the heart of man and that of the world enables us to perceive the divinity within man and God as mutual reflections of the same essence, similar to what was written above about conceptual interiorizations by means of the contemplation of the life of the psyche and psychological interpretations in Kabbalistic literature.165

163 Likkutei Moharan 2:56. 164 Nahman of Bratzlav, The Seven Beggars and Other Kabbalistic Tales of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, trans. Aryeh Kaplan (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2005), “The Seven Beggars,” 32–33. 165 See above, 318–24.

327

328

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The Inner Point The notion of the divine within man evolved in Hasidic thought—especially in the nineteenth century—into the concept of the inner point. This development is especially evident in Sefat Emet, as it links the ideas of memory and the inner point: The holiday of Pesah is called Shabbat in the Torah, as in “from the day after the Sabbath” (Lev. 23:15). Pesah is like Shabbat, of which Scripture says “remember” and “keep.” Of Pesah too it says: “this day will be a remembrance for you” (Ex. 12:14) or “so that you remember the day you came out of Egypt” (Deut. 16:3) and “Keep the month of Aviv” (Deut. 16:1); “Keep the matzot” (Ex. 12:17). For memory is a point within, one where there is no forgetfulness. . . . Every Jew has this inner place, the gift of God. Our task is really to expand that point, to draw all our deeds to follow it. This is our job throughout the year, for better or worse. But this holiday of matzot is the time when the point itself is renewed, purified from any defilement. Therefore, it has to be guarded from any “ferment” or change on this holiday. “Keep the matzot, for on this very day I brought the children of Israel forth from the land of Egypt” (Ex. 12:17)—be`etsem [“this very day”) refers to that inward point, just as it is in itself (be-`atsmo) without any change. This is why it needs “keeping.” “This day is a remembrance”—for the renewal of that point within, the point of memory. One could also read it “a remembrance” indeed, a day that reminds us of the real reason we were created in this world: to do His will. And this day gives remembrance. This is the meaning of “so that you remember the day you came out, etc.”—all the days of your life. “The days of your life” are the special illuminations for a person, to rectify all the days of his life in the world. By means of “the day you came out of Egypt” you will remember all the days of your life. The meaning of “the day you came out” is, by means of the day you came out, you will remember. For it gives remembrance, as it is written, “This day is [a remembrance]”—for remembrance, as mentioned above. And remembrance is connection, that can connect all the days with their root, by means of “the day you came out of Egypt.”166

R. Nahman writes, in a kindred spirit: 166 Alter, Sefat Emet, exposition for Pesah 1897, 99–100. For English translation, see English edition: The Language of Truth: The Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet, trans. Arthur Green (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998), 389–90, with addition.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

A person must carefully guard his memory so that he does not fall into forgetfulness, the aspect of “a demise of the heart.” And the essence of memory is to be continually very mindful of the World to Come. One should never entertain the thought, God forbid, that there is only a single world. Through this that he attaches his thought to the World to Come, the unification YHVH-Elohim is achieved.167

The memory of which the Hasidic masters speak is the recollection of the godly essence existent within man and the world. The World to Come is not the world after death, but the other world: the godly inwardness that sustains this world. The thought’s adherence to the existence of the godly world that dwells within all Yesh is the secret of spiritual life, and forgetting this idea is compared to the death of that heart. A comparison of this teaching with the passage by the rabbi of Gur in Sefat Emet teaches of a conceptual continuity between R. Nahman’s conception of inner godliness and the inner point of the rabbi of Gur. The great danger that lies in wait for all men, and especially for the Hasid, lies in forgetting the existence of this point, abandoning the awareness of the existence of the heart—in practice, causing the death of this inner point. The Hasidic teaching of the inner divinity assumes that the existence of this divinity is conditional upon human consciousness. If a person forgets that inwardness is godly, all that remains in his consciousness is the outer existence, and in epistemological terms, the divine within can no longer exist.168

Smallness [Katnut] and Greatness [Gadlut] The Hasidic understanding of katnut de-mohin and gadlut de-mohin relates these Lurianic concepts to man’s inner spiritual state in accordance with the inherent psychological aspect of the Lurianic sources themselves.169 In this short discussion, I will not reexamine the Kabbalistic source of the concepts, but rather indicate the overt psychological meaning given them by 167 Nahman of Bratzlav, Likkutei Moharan I:54(1) (trans.: Likutey Moharan, vol. 6, trans. Moshe Mykoff [Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 1999], 142–45). 168 See the extensive discussion: Piekarz, “The Inner Point.” On Gur Hasidism, see Yoram Jacobson, “Truth and Faith in Gur Hasidic Thought” [Heb], in Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby, ed. Joseph Dan and Joseph Hacker (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), 593–616. 169 Yehuda Liebes, “‘Two Young Roes of a Doe’: The Secret Sermon of Isaac Luria before His Death” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 10 (1992): 113–69; Pachter, “Katnut”; above, 323 n. 155.

329

330

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

the disciples of the Baal Shem Tov. “Smallness” and “greatness” were transformed from terms portraying states within the Godhead to fundamental concepts used in describing a person’s spiritual condition; man was deemed to be a dynamic entity because of the constant changes in the states of the godly vitality within him. The changes in the power of the life force within man determine the nature of his spiritual world: will he be engaged with small, inferior things, or with great matters? That is, it is life’s godly and spiritual contents that infuse it with lofty spiritual significance. The thing of the matter is that “Dashing to and fro among the creatures” [Ezek. 1:14] is the secret of “smallness” and “greatness,” and a person cannot stand on a single level. The reason is that a person is called a “small world,” and from all the totality of the four worlds of Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah are included in him. When he cleaves to Him, may He be blessed, by Torah and prayer, then he elevates all the sparks of the four worlds of Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah. If he remains in this exalted level, what will he correct tomorrow? Consequently, he descends once again, in order to elevate other aspects, etc.170

The inner-spiritual dynamic, with its ascents and descents, is perceived as indispensable. In the spirit of Kabbalistic thought, the states of devekut [adherence to the godly] during prayer and Torah study are seen as rectifying all the worlds. As, however, we shall see in the following chapter, the idea of rectification is clearly existentialist. Accordingly, constantly remaining in states of “greatness,” which would seem to be the ideal for Hasidim, is interpreted by R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye (following the understanding of his teacher the Baal Shem Tov of “Dashing to and fro among the creatures”) as a denial of the obligation to rectify the world. This rectification is performed through the repeated elevation of the material reality to spirituality by the intellective adherence to the spiritual. This obligation 170 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Ketonet Pasim, ed. Gedalyah Nigal (Jerusalem: Peri Haaretz Institute, 1975), fol. 21a, 143–44. Cf. ibid., fol. 31a, 213: “This will explain, ‘R. Yose ben Kisma said, “Once I was walking along the way”’ [M Avot 6:10], for it is called ‘walking’ when a person descends from his level, the opposite of coming, for ‘Dashing to and fro among the creatures.’ For it is impossible to remain on a single level, since in the world there is the principle of moḥin de-katnut, which is the aspect of God [Elohim], and moḥin de-gadlut, which is the aspect of YHWH, as it is said in Peri Etz Ḥayyim, Laws of Pesah [see Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, Peri Etz Ḥayyim, Sha‘ar Hag ha-Matzot (Jerusalem: Hoza’at Kitvei Rabeinu Heari, 1988), chap. 1, 493]. Thus man possesses this aspect of smallness and greatness.”

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

enables viewing the “smallness” states and descent as necessary for the daily renewal of the rectification process: “descent for the purpose of ascent.”171

Inner Messianism Idel discusses at length the interiorization of traditional messianic conceptions in the thought of R. Abraham Abulafia. He argues that Abulafia was the first to internalize the meaning of the character of the Messiah, and that he regarded traditional concepts relating to “the birthpangs of the Messiah” as portraying the struggle to attain inner redemption.172 In Hasidic thought, these conceptions refer not only to anomic efforts, but also to the totality of religious activity, and especially prayer and Torah study: In the exile of Israel, some of those judging forces from above take on the form of nations that bring us suffering. Were Israel to have full faith in the power of mind, and apply it to Torah study with awe and love, they would uplift and transform all such judgments into pure good. Each of those nations would then have only one cycle of ascendancy, followed by immediate decline, for the good would have been lifted out from it. It is only because our faith is imperfect that the exile lasts so long. Even those who do pray and study, if their minds are not fully attuned and if not accompanied by love and awe, cannot form the ladders needed for the transformation of judgment forces. This can be done only by mind. The true meaning of exile, then, is that mind is in exile because it is not employed properly in the service of God. The lessening of faith brings about a diminishing of mind; faith, the seventh of the upper rungs, is the gateway through which one must enter to get to da`at and all the attributes.173

The repeated use of the Kabbalistic linkage between exile and dinim, the “judging forces,” would seem to give the impression that this Hasidic teaching adds nothing to the Kabbalistic discussions of Exile and Redemption. 171 This expression, characteristic of Hasidic thought, is based on the interpretation that R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, gave to the verse “Dashing to and fro among the creatures” (Ezek. 1:14). See, for example, Alter, Sefat Emet, sermon for Shavuot 1874, 24. 172 Idel, Messianic Mystics, 65–79. 173 Menahem Mendel of Chernobyl, Me’or Einayim, Vayetze, 66. English translaton based on Menahem Mendel of Chernobyl, Upright Practices, The Light of the Eyes, trans. Arthur Green (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 221.

331

332

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The special meaning, however, of the expression “Torah study with awe and love” in the Hasidic literature, and especially in Meor Einayim, teaches otherwise. Exile is exile from knowledge [da’at], and therefore redemption is conditional upon occupation with Torah study and prayer in the way of “awe and love,” that is, Hasidic inward focusing. The messianic idea was interiorized in the literature of nascent Hasidism and was perceived as an expression of epistemological religious processes, and not as an outer change. Many of the Hasidic masters shared this messianic interiorization, with its focus on inner prayer and the development of spiritual awareness, which they called the attainment of knowledge. Scholem regarded this early Hasidic messianic interiorization as neutralizing messianism;174 Dinur and Tishby led the vigorous opposition to this claim, and brought a number of proofs to refute it.175 Scholem’s opponents maintained that the new meanings of messianism did not abrogate for Hasidim the collective messianic hope and the desire to immigrate [la-alot; literally, “go up”] to the material Land of Israel. In light of these two opposing schools of thought, I propose that for the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples—who sought to overcome the material-spirit dualism—immigration to the Land of Israel and living in it were deemed to be redemptive and messianic. This, however, would be the case only if the people living in the Land were capable of connecting the material and the form, corporeality and the Godhead, in their prayers and in their way of life.176

The Sefirot as Human Character Traits The psychologization of the doctrine of the Sefirot, which had its beginnings in the ecstatic Kabbalah of R. Abraham Abulafia, made an impressive comeback in Hasidism. Idel maintains that, after a lengthy period of Kabbalistic focus on the structure of the Godhead and the processes that 174 Gershom Scholem, “The Neutralization of Messianism in Early Hasidism,” in Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays in Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1995), 178–202; Margolin, Human Temple, 32–33. 175 Ben Zion Dinur, The Changing of the Generations: Researches and Studies in the History of Israel from Early Modern Times [Heb] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1972), 170–227; Isaiah Tishby, “The Messianic Idea and Messianic Trends in the Growth of Hasidism” [Heb], Zion 32 (1975): 1–45. For a fuller survey of references on Hasidism and the messianic idea, see Margolin, Human Temple, 406; Liebes, “The Messiah in the Zohar.” 176 Margolin, Human Temple, 338.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

occur within it, Hasidism returned to interpret the Sefirot as forces within man, similar to the direction set forth by Abulafia.177 The theosophic system that faced the Hasidic camp was much more complex than that with which Abulafia was familiar, since Kabbalistic theosophy had greatly developed between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries; nonetheless, the two conceptions definitely share a common element.178 We may reasonably assume that when the Baal Shem Tov spoke of human character traits, he was influenced by the above passage in Cordovero’s Pardes Rimmonim.179 R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye relates in two places how the Baal Shem Tov interpreted the idea that man is called a small world (microcosmos): I received from my teacher that there are ten Sefirot in every human being, each of whom is called “small world,” because the thought [wisdom] is called Father . . . until it reaches faithfulness, which is called two legs of truth [Netzaḥ and Hod], and pleasure is worship, called Foundation [Yesod], Tzaddiq, or Berit Milah [Circumcision].180 I received from my teacher that there are ten Sefirot in a human being, for he is a small world. As Rabad [R. Abraham ben David of Posqueires] wrote (in [his commentary to] Sefer Yetzirah), that what is in the supernal worlds is also in the year [i.e., in the dimension of time] and in man’s soul. The sign of this for you is: “Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke [ashan—read here as an abbreviation for olam, shanah, nefesh—see below], etc.” [Exod. 19:18], see there. The last [i.e., lowest] level in man, such as suffering, poverty, and tribulations, and the like, is called the attribute of Malkhut, which is the last attribute, for “her feet go down to Death” [Prov. 5:5]. Netzaḥ and Hod are lasting pillars, for a person believes that the belief in the Creator is true. The attribute of Yesod is when he delights in the service of the Lord, may He be blessed, more than all delights. For “I would behold (God) while still in my flesh” [Job 19:26; understanding “my flesh” as the sexual organ]—the organ of intercourse is the choicest of delights, for it is the unity of the joining of the male and the female; from the material he will understand the spiritual delight when he causes himself to adhere to His unity, May He be blessed,

177 Idel, New Perspectives, 146–53; idem, Hasidism, 227–38. 178 Idel, Hasidism, 234. 179 Above, 311 n. 124. 180 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef, Kedoshim 8, 354.

333

334

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

which is the root of all delights, etc. And “The wise man, hearing them, will gain more wisdom” [Prov. 1:5].181

The Baal Shem Tov explicitly mentions the commentary to Sefer Yetzirah attributed to R. Abraham ben David of Posqueires [Rabad)]as the Kabbalistic source for his interpretation, but the influence of the passage from Sefer ha-Temunah discussed above is obvious.182 As Nigal explained,183 the olam-shanah-nefesh paradigm, that frequently appears in the writings of R. Jacob Joseph, originates in the commentary to Sefer Yetzirah attributed to Rabad.184 The heart of the idea lies in its emphasis of the existence of fundamental principles common to the three dimensions: the natural world and the godly worlds [“olam”; literally, “world”]; society, that is, social time [“shanah”; literally, “year”]; and the inner life of the individual [“nefesh,” “soul”]. The Baal Shem Tov and his disciples apply this idea in varied contexts. In the context of the doctrine of the Sefirot, the depiction of the godly world in light of the Sefirotic system means that the ten Sefirot are present in man. The two sources cited above exemplify this concept for six of the ten Sefirot: Ḥokhmah, Binah, Netzaḥ, Hod, Yesod, and Malkhut. Ḥokhmah is the wisdom in man, Binah is the limitation of thought, that is, the ability to decide, Netzaḥ and Hod are faithfulness, Yesod is delight, and Malkhut is the suffering within man caused by the travails of everyday life. Each of the traits equivalent to the seven lowest Sefirot can function in man in either a high godly plane or a lowly one, that is, a material context perceived, in Hasidic sources, as base in comparison with the godly sphere. This understanding is finely set forth in the interpretation of Ḥesed as the trait of love in man brought by R. Menahem Mendel of Chernobyl, in the name of the Baal Shem Tov: The Baal Shem Tov said: If a man marries his sister, this is ḥesed185—For one who goes to [engage in] illicit sexual behavior, Heaven forfend, this is because of the love in him, and love is ḥesed [lovingkindness], the attribute

181 Ibid., Lekh Lekha 3, 57. 182 See above, 308, n. 118. 183 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Zofnat Paaneah, ed. Gedalyah Nigal (Jerusalem: Institute for the Research of Hasidic Literature, 1989), introduction, 14–21. 184 “All that is attributed to the olam is attributed to shanah and to nefesh” (commentary attributed to R. Abraham ben David of Posquieres on Sefer Yetzirah 3:6). 185 Following Lev. 20:17.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

that is in the Creator, may His name be blessed, but now he uses this for evil, and brings the love down, as it were, to a place of filth.186

Just as delight (which is compared to the attribute of Yesod), can be either sexual or spiritual, so too the love in man can range over a scale with love of God at its upper end, and acts of illicit sexual behavior at its bottom. The identification of the Sefirah of Yesod (also called Tzaddiq) with delight was apparently coined by the Baal Shem Tov. Idel did not find in the theosophic Kabbalah any symbolic use of the term ta‘anug [delight] as it was employed by the Baal Shem Tov.187 The interpretation by Sefer ha-Temunah for the verse in Job (23:11): “I have followed in His tracks” was used by the founder of Hasidism to highlight the bond between physical and spiritual life. The physical is a foundation for the spiritual, and whatever exists in the material can be transferred and elevated (transformation and sublimation). The Baal Shem Tov stated that we can draw an analogy from the pleasure of sexual coupling to the even greater delight that one can attain when a person is connected with the godly.188 Since the Baal Shem Tov identifies Ḥokhmah and Binah with man’s thought and ability to decide, we might surmise, in light of the plethora of Hasidic sources brought in the name of the Baal Shem Tov that speak of the divine life force, that the highest Sefirah for him is the divine vitality in man, on which all existence depends. Following the Baal Shem Tov, the Maggid of Mezheritch and his disciples continued this occupation with the divine attributes within man. In the following quotation the maggid discusses the attributes of Din and Tiferet; however, special note should be taken of the centrality of the motif of thought in this teaching: If a person comes to self-aggrandizement [hitpa’arut] in his thought, this is in the world of Tiferet, and if he comes to think of love, this is in the world of love, and similarly regarding the other attributes of the seven days of construction [= the seven lowest Sefirot]. If he is wise enough to shed materiality from himself, then he adheres with that same supreme love to the attributes of the Creator, may He be blessed. Even though the love that comes in his thought now is of this world, he can shed this materiality 186 Menahem Mendel of Chernobyl, Me’or Einayim, Miketz, 82. 187 Idel, New Perspectives, 352 n. 369, argues that the term as used in Sefer ha-Bahir, ed. Margolius, para. 21, 31, denotes an emotional event with no symbolic meaning. 188 On the pleasure principle in the writings of Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, see Margolin, Human Temple, 218–20.

335

336

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

from himself, to have this [worldly love = materiality] adhere to the root of supernal love.189 When a king has a son in a place of filth, he goes to that place out of love of his son, to take him from there. Thus, at times a thought is born in man because [what is in] the [supernal] worlds descends from above, and that thought comes to man, as well. When he is wise to know to what the thought belongs, whether to love, to fear [of God], or Tiferet; even though this is from the matters of this world, in physical desire, he is capable of elevating it. He will know that that thought must be rectified at that time, whether in love, in fear, or in Tiferet; for it was spoiled due to the smashing [of the vessels], and now is the time to elevate it. Consequently, the thought descended from the upper worlds and came to the person to elevate it from the smashing. That is, he is to adhere to the Creator, may He be blessed, according to that attribute, whether in love, in fear, or in Tiferet, and the other attributes of the seven days of construction . . . for in everything is to be found the pervasion of the Creator [i.e., the divine life force], may He be blessed, for “His presence fills all the earth” [Isa. 6:3]. He will elevate the inner nature that there is in everything, each according to its degree, from the seven days of construction, and the inner nature of that thing will adhere to the Creator, may He be blessed. For it is impossible to make any movement or speak anything without the power of the Creator, may He be blessed. And this is the meaning of “His presence fills all the earth.”190

The Maggid of Mezheritch, who was known as a Kabbalist before he met the Baal Shem Tov, is somewhat cautious in his use of these concepts in these passages. He focuses on the “seven days of construction” (that is, the seven lowest Sefirot), and especially on Ḥesed, Din, and Tif ’eret. He emphasizes the notion of the elevation of the fallen thoughts to their source, in the spirit of the Lurianic ideas of the smashing of the vessels and the fall of the sparks, but he also clearly interiorizes these Kabbalistic ideas and applies them in the realm of inner life. The new light he casts on these topics, however, is focused mainly on his profound contemplation of human thought: [A person’s] thought . . . is perceived by the person himself, and not by others. Qadmut ha-sekhel [i.e., what precedes consciousness] is not perceived even

189 Dov Baer of Mezeritch, Maggid Devarav le-Yaakov, para. 25. 190 Ibid., para. 26.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

by the individual. When one of these seven thoughts comes to a tzaddiq from qadmut ha-sekhel, he causes himself to adhere, and he will strip himself of that thought . . . for Israel has the ability to bring everything to Ḥokhmah, which is the root of Israel.191

According to the maggid, a person’s thoughts on the godly attributes, that he calls the “seven thoughts,” originate in the more godly stratum present in human thought, of whose existence within him a thinking person is unaware. He calls this stratum “qadmut ha-sekhel” [the preconscious] since it is earlier and deeper, and therefore more godly, and is not known to the man who thinks it. R. Schneur Zalman of Lyady, the founder of Habad Hasidism and a disciple of the maggid, insisted that the concept of the hidden intellect—or the preconscious—relates to the essence present within the human soul: The manifestation of the intellect that is revealed within a person’s brain is merely an illumination that received emanation and is drawn from the hidden intellect in the soul [nefesh], for the hidden intellect is singular [by its unconscious presence] in the soul itself and above the . . . manifestations of its powers in thought.192

When R. Schneur Zalman attempts to explain his intent in the Tanya, he writes: . . . the soul does not intend or know to intend at all the change in the motions of the lips, of those changes. This is even more evident with the utterance of the vowels. For when it is the wish of the soul to articulate the vowel o, then, of themselves, the lips become compressed; and with the a—the lips are opened. Thus, it is absolutely the will of the soul to compress or to open . . . the pronunciation of the letters and vowels transcends the apprehended

191 Cited by Gershom Scholem, “The Subconscious and the Concept of Kadmut ha-Sekhel in Hasidic Literature” [Heb], in Sholem, Explications and Implications (Tel Aviv: Am-Ovede, 1975), 354. See also this article republished in idem, The Latest Phase: Essays on Hasidism by Gershom Scholem, ed. David Assaf and Esther Liebes (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2008), 270. Sholem refers to Dov Baer of Mezeritch, Maggid Devarav le-Yaakov, ed. Shatz-Uffenheimer, fol. 24b, paras. 93–94, 161–62, 194. See, for example, Ahron Marcus, Der Chassidismus: Eine Kulturgeschichtliche Studie (Pleschen: Jeschurun, 1901), 106–109. Scholem also referred to a booklet written by Marcus on Hartmann and Hasidism under the pseudonym “Verus,” Hartmann’s inductive Philosophie im Chassidismus (Lemberg: Wolf, 1889). 192 Shneur Zalman ben Baruch of Lyady, Likkutei Torah, Beḥukotai, fol. 46b.

337

338

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

and comprehended intellect, and is, rather, from the hidden intellect, and the primordium of the intellect which is in the articulate soul.193

Gerschom Scholem, following Aaron Marcus,194 assumed in his article “The Unconscious and the Concept of Kadmut ha-Sekhel in the Hasidic Literature” that the term “kadmut ha-sekhel,” which he first finds in the writings of the maggid, is close to the “unconscious” that appears in the writings of the German philosopher Eduard von Hartmann (1842– 1906).195 Scholem then argues: “in this concept we have an original Hebrew term that denotes the area of the unconscious in the psyche.”196 Scholem links von Hartmann’s concept of the unconscious with the psychoanalytical understanding of the concept. In my opinion, a study of these sources shows that the sense of the Hasidic term kadmut ha-sekhel is close to its meaning for Plotinus and Hartmann,197 but it does not indicate different levels of awareness, as in the “topographical” meaning it received in psychoanalytical thought. This term is meant to teach of the different levels of spontaneity in human thought. The example brought by R. Schneur Zalman in his Tanya is not close to the repressed or archetypical contents of the psychoanalytical “unconscious.” He indicates that the cognitive consciousness, which we perceive as the higher level of thought, is actually the more superficial and outer level. In contrast, man possesses a deeper plane of thought, one that is spontaneous and intuitive, which is understood by the maggid and his disciples as prior, in the sense that it serves as an unknown source for the outer epistemological level; they therefore call this “kadmut ha-sekhel”—literally, “what precedes the conscious.” 193 Idem, Likkutei Amarim, Iggeret ha-Kodesh 5 (trans.: Sefer Likutei Amarim, Part One, 409–12). 194 above, n. 191. 195 See Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious: Speculative Results according to the Inductive Method of Physical Science, trans. William Chatterton Coupland (London: Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1893); Dennis N. Kenedy Darnoi, The Unconscious and Eduard von Hartmann: A Historico-Critical Monograph (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967). 196 Scholem, “Kadmut ha-Sekhel.” Based on this article, and in the spirit of Jungian psychology, Sigmund Hurwitz wrote his book on the archetypical motif in Hasidic mysticism, Archetypische Motive. 197 Plotinus, Enneads 3:4, 4; 3:9, 9; 4:3, 13; 4:6, 5. See Nathan Spiegel, Introduction to Plotinus’s Enneades [Heb], trans. Nathan Spiegel (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1978), 96–97.

The Conceptual Interiorization of Myth and Law  •  CHAPTER FOUR

It is not content that distinguishes the conscious from the preconscious, but the degree of intellectual spontaneity, which nascent Hasidism especially identified with connection with the divine. According to R. Schneur Zalman, epistemological intellective activity is made possible by the existence of involuntary and unconscious activity. Since the spontaneous plane is concealed and is not manifest to the individual when he thinks, this prior intellect is perceived as directing the outer plane and is therefore also divine. The concealed and controlling nature of this plane (that is understood as more inner), explains its identification as the divine thought present in man. These are not different levels of consciousness, in the accepted psychoanalytical sense, but rather two planes—an inner plane and an outer one which generally exist in tandem, with a causeand-effect relationship between them. The spiritual goal of the Hasid, especially in the school of the Maggid of Mezheritch, is to directly connect from within with the outer intellective plane and to be directed by it. This is the meaning of the aspiration, at least during prayer or the giving over of a teaching, to attain the state of “the Divine Presence speaking from his throat,” as this is depicted in the writings of the maggid,198 and that characterizes Hasidic inward-focused prayer.199 The view of the Sefirot as man’s attributes is patently of great importance in Hasidic thought. As we see from the teachings of the Maggid of Mezheritch, the Hasidic masters linked it with their basic tenet: “His presence fills all the earth.” The divine in man is manifest in his character traits, which include intellective and emotional capabilities. Each of these capabilities is expressed in his everyday material life, but man’s task is to elevate these traits and powers to a higher level. The various human attributes have a godly source, which is perceived in Hasidism as their supernal root. By harnessing his thought to link these traits to their godly significance, man realizes his mission in life. This is the juncture in which the interiorization of the idea becomes an existential matter, which enables the uniquely Hasidic synthesis of the desire to dwell in the godly Ayin, on the one hand, 198 Dov Baer of Mezeritch, Maggid Devarav le-Yaakov, paras. 2, 50, 173. On the disagreement between R. Phinehas of Koretz and the Maggid of Mezeritch on the question of activism or passivity as regards the desired path to divine spontaneity, see Margolin, Human Temple, 343–78. 199 See above, 252–56, the discussion on prayer and inward focusing in Hasidism; Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, chap. 7, 168–88.

339

340

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

and on the other, commitment to life in this world. Faulty understanding of this synthesis led to major controversies in the study of Hasidism and to interpretations each of which emphasizes one aspect, while negating the possibility of the other.

Chapter Five

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life

The Preference for Inwardness In many instances, inner religious life reflects a change in the spiritual order of priorities, with life’s outer substance relegated to a secondary standing, while the inner existential contents now occupy center stage.1 This preference is based on the inclination to hold inner life in greater esteem than the outer. The favoring of interiorization is evident in the placing of man’s inner world at the center of religious life. Martin Buber drew a fundamental distinction between the external attitude to man typical of Aristotle’s discussions on the nature of man, which were conducted in the third person, and the personal self-awareness reflected by Augustine.2 In this personal awareness, the individual—as a unique personality—is the focus of his own study, in contrast with the awareness of the philosophers and scientists, Aristotle’s successors, who 1 This formulation is influenced by Søren Kierkegaard: “In Hegelian philosophy the outer (the externalization) is higher than the inner. This is often illustrated by an example. The child is the inner, the man the outer; hence the child is determined precisely by the outer, and conversely the man as the outer by the inner. Faith, on the contrary, is this paradox, that inwardness is higher than outwardness” (Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh, trans. Sylvia Walsh [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 60). 2 Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor-Smith (London: Routledge, 1993), “What Is Man?,” 150–54.

342

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

present “Man” as an object, which they observe, taking care to detach the observed traits from the person under scrutiny as a whole.

Augustinian Self-Awareness Brian Stock explains that Augustine’s thought is to be viewed in light of the fact that most writers in antiquity employed the conception of the bios to examine the issue of self-description, without relating to historical or physical life, but rather to the way of life, and especially to the lifestyle capable of fashioning innerness by means of the will. These writers refrained from autobiographical descriptions (in the later sense of the concept) since they deemed it to be marginal, deceptive, and a distraction of what is truly essential to the self. This is why Plotinus, for example, refused to have his portrait drawn or have his students write the story of his life. The goal was knowledge of the self, and therefore, Stock argues, an artistic or literary portrayal of a person was regarded in those circles as coming in place of a study of one’s inner being.3 Augustine revived the essence of this literary and philosophical tradition through his Confessions and created a type of inner discussion within man on the conditions and limitations of self-knowledge. According to Stock, Augustine likewise differed from earlier writers on the theme of self-knowledge in making the investigation of his subjective experience the point of departure for his self-examination. His belief in the value of subjectivity was indirectly supported by the argument of the cogito, in which he anticipated Descartes. In response to the skeptical view that our knowledge of ourselves is as problematical as our knowledge of everything else, he asserted that the one thing he knew for sure was the irrefutable fact of his own existence. This proof provided him with a firm foundation for inquiring into other aspects of his self-knowledge. He also reevaluated the role of personal memories in establishing the continuity of this knowledge. The story of the soul’s progress or education, which was a theme common to many ancient inquiries into self-knowledge after Plato, thereby became

3 On the profound interest of Hellenistic and Roman philosophers in the way of life characterized by ideal wisdom and the fundamentally inner stance of thought that emphasizes self-control and the contemplative life, see Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase, ed. Arnold I. Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

associated with the account of a particular life as it proceeded in historical time through stages of incertitude, self-understanding, and ethical conduct.4 Augustine’s perception of the self was original and unique.5 This conception, however, drew upon a number of schools of thought that preceded it and laid the foundations for Augustinian thought.6 I will mention three ways of thinking characteristic of the spiritual worlds upon which Augustinian self-awareness drew: the ideal of conquering one’s desires; the existential view of Stoicism; and the preference of inner life that centered around belief as profound inner confidence.

The Ideal of Conquering One’s Desires Aristotle’s discussions on overcoming one’s desires, which I believe are also at the crux of Freud’s thoughts on these matters, significantly contribute to our understanding of the importance of the struggle against desires in the development of an existential stance that focuses on the inner. Aristotle devotes a lengthy deliberation to submission to one’s desires and overcoming them in the seventh chapter of his Nichomachean Ethics. At the heart of his discussion is the question of “how can a man fail in self-restraint when believing correctly that what he does is wrong?”7 That is, what happens within a person and leads him to submit to his desires, even though he knows that such behavior is not proper. In order to answer his question, Aristotle devotes a lengthy analysis to the concept of 4 Brian Stock, After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 12. 5 On Augustine and his Platonic and Plotinian sources, see Taylor, Sources of the Self, 127–42. 6 On the fashioning of the self in religious cultures in the twentieth century, see Marcel Mauss, “A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person, the Notion of Self,” in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, ed. Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes, trans. W. D. Halls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1–25; Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick Hutton (London: Tavistock, 1998). Two collections of researches on the self and its fashioning in the religions of antiquity and in the monotheistic religions were recently published. See David Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzman (eds.), Religion and the Self in Antiquity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); David Shulman and Guy Stroumsa (eds.), Self and SelfTransformation in the History of Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). On the relationship between the idea of the self in antiquity and the modern notion, see Seigel, Idea of the Self, 45–83. 7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 73:378–79.

343

344

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

“self-restraint,” and that those who either conquer or submit to the desires are so characterized “in [their] regard to Pleasures and Pains.”8 There are two sources of pleasure: (1) physical factors, including everything connected with food and sexual relations—are basic needs; (2) nonessential factors, which nonetheless are fundamentally worthy, such as victory, honor, or wealth, and that, too, are pleasurable. For Aristotle, every excess in regard to natural degree is actually a submission to one’s inclination. A failure of self-restraint, in his wording, with regard to something which is inherently good, becomes bad when one acts in excess and becomes a servant to it. In practice, he argues, submission to one’s inclination refers to the necessary urges. In every instance in which “unrestraint” (in Aristotle’s wording) is attributed to other matters, such as anger, ambition, or greed, it is due to the similarity between an action without proper consideration and submission to the natural inclinations. Aristotle calls a person who excessively pursues pleasures for their own sake “profligate,” one who follows the middle path is “temperate,” and the one deficient in the enjoyment of pleasures is the opposite of the profligate.9 Unlike Socrates, who found it inconceivable that a person would submit to his inclination while, at the same time, realizing the impropriety of doing so, Aristotle offers a less idealistic and more normative explanation: Nor indeed does the unrestrained man even know the right in the sense of one who consciously exercises his knowledge, but only as a man asleep or drunk can be said to know something. Also, although he errs willingly (for he knows in a sense both what he is doing and what end he is aiming at), yet he is not wicked, for his moral choice is sound, so that he is only half-wicked. And he is not unjust, for he does not deliberately design to do harm, since the one type of unrestrained person does not keep to the resolve he has formed after deliberation, and the other, the excitable type, does not deliberate at all.10

Aristotle concludes his theoretical discussion on a sober note: Both Self-restraint and Unrestraint are a matter of extremes as compared with the character of the mass of mankind; the restrained man shows more and the unrestrained man less steadfastness than most men are capable of.11 8 9 10 11

Ibid., 394–95. Ibid., 410–13. Ibid., 426–27. Ibid., 428–29.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

Aristotle’s preference for normative discussion prevented him from examining how curbing one’s urges benefited a person showing such restraint. Freud, who, like Aristotle, viewed pleasure as a fundamental principle that is necessary for comprehending human behavior, had a better understanding of the influence of curbing one’s instincts on man and society. Freud’s last book, Moses and Monotheism, contains substantial observations on the function of the curbing of instincts in religious culture as a whole, and especially in Jewish religious culture.12 His comments indicate that Freud remained faithful to what he had stated explicitly earlier, in his essay, “The Future of an Illusion”: It seems rather that every civilization must be built up on coercion and renunciation of instinct . . . One has, I think, to reckon with the fact that there are present in all men destructive, and therefore anti-social and anticultural, trends and that in a great number of people these are strong enough to determine their behaviour in human society.13

At times, it seems that Freud’s theory of drives contributed greatly to Western man’s liberation from the shackles of the repressed libido. Freud himself, however, taught that the goal of psychoanalysis is to aid the human race in contending with the task of curbing instincts, to which culture owes its existence.14 Control of one’s instincts does not mean the ascetic’s 12 The Israeli psychoanalyst Yehoyakim Stein argues that Freud’s Moses and Monotheism contradicts all of his earlier writings. According to Stein, before his death Freud wrote a paean to nineteenth-century rationalism, as if he had not acted for decades to undermine this rationalism by popularizing his idea of the libido, which he had taken such efforts to place in the center of human life (Stein, The Unconscious in Science and in Psychoanalysis [Heb] [Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005], 89–99). I differ, and maintain that Freud’s interest in rationalism and the conquest of the libido in the Mosaic code is innately connected with his teachings as a whole and his arguments regarding man’s essential liberation from the repression of the libido, which causes irrational behavior. In my opinion, Freud’s praise of the rationalism that preceded monotheism and his acclaim of the idea of conquering one’s urge that this religion spread throughout the world do not contradict Freud’s belief that the religious path is undesirable, even if well-meaning. The libido is to be controlled in a wiser manner. 13 Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, in Freud, The Standard Edition of the Compete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1961), 21:7. 14 For Freud, religion was mainly a compulsive neurosis that originated in the repression of the primordial patricide. He asserted that religion’s obsessive occupation with the instincts is incorrect. Religious ritualism maintains the disparity between true psychological motives and the obsessive external behaviors that derive from them. According to Freud, psychoanalytical treatment of the repression of the libido

345

346

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

overcoming and nullification of his urges, but their realization with wisdom and within the limits of the reasonable and the advisable. In Totem and Taboo, Freud laid the foundations for his claim that controlling instincts and morality belong to the essential content of religion with which they are intimately bound. The system of prohibitions in totemic religion (taboo) consists mainly of limitations that lay the foundation for moral boundaries. The ban on incest primarily creates the renunciation of one’s mother and sisters despite one’s desire for them; this is the beginning of the moral and social order. This recurs in the life of the child in modern times, as well, when the child is required by his father, both consciously and indirectly, to curb his desire for his mother. During adolescence, society and the superego assume the place of the father in the creation of authority that presses for renunciation of instinct.15 Freud’s discussion in Moses and Monotheism teaches that curbing one’s urges provides inner satisfaction as an alternative to sensual satisfaction. This is the preference of spirituality over sensuality, which is the source of the inner pride of one who overcomes instinct. This argument explains the specific contribution of this effort to distinguishing between outwardness, with its tempting pleasure and inwardness, which finds spiritual satisfaction in overcoming this outwardness. Freud’s description is at the basis of the insight that curbing one’s desires—which functions as a central principle in the religions of the ancient world and the monotheistic religions—is more than merely preserving the balance between the necessary and what is beyond the necessary, in Aristotle’s definition. It provides man with an inner spiritual satisfaction that could be perceived as replacing external, physical satisfaction. Such a perception is essential for understanding life’s inner existential aspects, and especially those of the religious life which are the topic of this book. The question of curbing desires is obviously connected with the broader issue of religious abstinence and asceticism. This significant phenomenon of inner religious life made a major contribution in the fashioning of the self and the subjective in religious cultures. is superior to the religious one, because psychoanalysis is scientific and rational. Freud believed that psychoanalysis would have greater success in dealing with man’s instinctual drives. As a rationalist, he wholeheartedly believed that a psychological analysis of behavior, based on psychoanalytical theory, can enable the patient to overcome his uncontrollable impulses. 15 Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, trans. Katherine Jones (New York: Vintage, 1967), 119–20.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

As, however, Gavin Flood has recently shown, although religious asceticism is subordinate to specific religious traditions (and in that respect completely differs from the authentic and subjective perceptions of modern existentialism) it nevertheless possesses a clearly existential dimension.16 The singularity of inwardness inherent in asceticism is deserving of a separate discussion, which would exceed the purview of the current work.17 Within the limitations of the current discussion, it is noteworthy that the concept of the struggle against one’s urges, as, for example, in Sufism, that profoundly influenced the medieval Jewish musar (ethical instruction) literature, is of clearly existential nature, for a dual reason, as the following text alludes. The Sufis gave pride of place to the war against one’s inclinations and the abandonment of desires, which they understood as an inner war: God, may He be exalted, said: “But those who struggle in Our cause, surely We shall guide them in Our ways” [Quran 29:69], and Mujahed explained: This is the war against the soul. They asked the messenger of God, may he rest in peace: “Who is called a warrior?” It is related in the name of Hasan [al-Basri]: Warriors returned to the messenger of God from one of the raids. He said to them: “Blessed be your coming, and God’s blessing upon you! You have returned from the little war to the great war.” They asked him: “Messenger of God, what is the great war?” He replied: “Man’s war within his soul against his inclination, for the sake of God, may He be exalted.”18

The wording “war within the soul” reflects the conceptual interiorization of the concept of war against the enemies of Islam. Now, the war is internal. This notion regards inner struggle as a religious goal, with inner life deemed to be the realization of the will of God. The individual who struggles with his inclination is compared to a warrior who must fashion 16 Gavin D. Flood, The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 242. 17 See, for example, Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valentasis, Asceticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Flood, Ascetic Self. For examples of texts reflecting asceticism in nascent Christianity, and especially in the Benedictine world, see Owen Chadwick, Owen. Western Asceticism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1958). 18 A well-known Sufi teaching that has its source in the anonymous Sufi book Adab el-Maluk (The Way of the Kings), cited by Sviri, Sufis, 296.

347

348

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

a personality strong enough to enable him to overcome himself. The sheer act of overcoming will, in fact, fill his life with deep meaning.

The Existentialist Viewpoint in Light of the Stoic Example The diverse traditions that relate to the conquest of one’s desires reflect differing levels of tension between one’s physical and emotional inclinations and intellective inner consciousness. It is the latter which is identified with the self and is perceived as loftier or more profound than physical and emotional inclinations (or as reflective of the superego, in Freudian terminology). In the sources that highlight this tension, we find, at times, a discussion of the proper relation of these two dimensions, so that they will not be seen as inimical and negating one another. The Stoic writings reflect this most clearly: Men seek out retreats for themselves in the country, by the seaside, on the mountains, and thou too art wont to long above all for such things. But all this is unphilosophical to the last degree, when thou canst at a moment’s notice retire into thyself. For nowhere can a man find a retreat more full of peace or more free from care than his own soul—above all if he have that within him, a steadfast look at which and he is at once in all good ease.19 Bear in mind that what pulls the strings is that Hidden Thing within us: that makes our speech, that our life, that, one may say, makes the man. Never in thy mental picture of it include the vessel that overlies it nor these organs that are appurtenances thereof. They are like the workman’s adze, only differing from it in being naturally attached to the body. Since indeed, severed from the Cause that bids them move and bids them stay, these parts are as useless as is the shuttle of the weaver, the pen of the writer, and the whip of the charioteer.20

The esteem shown for seclusion, man’s communion with his inner self, and this favoring of inner life—expressed, for instance, in inner thought and choice over outer matters, which are independent of man’s inner self, such as the body, possessions, or fame—are among the outstanding features 19 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Communings 4:3. For Engish translation, see The Communings with Himself of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, trans. C. R. Haines, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 58 (London: Heinemann, 1979), 66–69. 20 Ibid., 10:38 (trans.: 58:290–91). See also 7:28 (trans.: 58:176–77).

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

of Stoicism. As, however, can be seen especially in the case of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Stoicism did not call for the abandonment of outer life, but for a change in the inner attitude to it. Epictetus was Marcus Aurelius’ spiritual teacher. His years of service to his master Epiphraditos had left him contemptuous of the despotism of the rich and man’s subjugation to his fellow man. He distinguished between what is given over to man’s free will and what is not within his control: What, then, does it mean to be getting an education? It means to be learning how to apply the natural preconceptions to particular cases, each to the other in conformity with nature, and, further, to make the distinction, that some things are under our control while others are not under our control. Under our control are moral purpose and all the acts of moral purpose; but not under our control are the body, the parts of the body, possessions, parents, brothers, children, country—in a word, all that with which we associate. Where, then, shall we place “the good”? To what class of things are we going to apply it? To the class of things that are under our control?21

The preference of inner over outer life is evident, first and foremost, in focusing on what is conditional upon free will, and is not dependent on the external data of the reality, to which all humans are subject. This distinction does not require the nullification of external life but rather the inversion of the accepted hierarchy of values: instead of concentrating on outer activity, which consists mainly of the accumulation of external power and property, the preference of contemplation imparts meaning to the outer world and thereby gives man inner strength. . . . some persons, like cattle, are interested in nothing but their fodder; for to all of you that concern yourselves with property and lands and slaves and one office or another, all this is nothing but fodder! And few in number are the men who attend the fair because they are fond of the spectacle. “What, then, is the universe,” they ask, “and who governs it? No one? Yet how can it be that, while it is impossible for a city or a household to remain even a very short time without someone to govern and care for it, nevertheless this great and beautiful structure should be kept in such orderly arrangement by sheer accident and chance? There must be, therefore, One who governs it. What kind of a being is He, and how does He govern it? And what are we, who have been created by Him, and for what purpose were we created? Do 21 Epictetus, Discourses 1:22 (trans.: 131:144–45).

349

350

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

we, then, really have some contact and relation with Him or none at all?” That is the way these few are affected; and thenceforward they have leisure for this one thing only—to study well the “fair” of life before they leave it. With what result, then? They are laughed to scorn by the crowd, quite as in the real fair the mere spectators are laughed at by the traffickers; yes, and if the cattle themselves had any comprehension like ours of what was going on, they too would laugh at those who had wonder and admiration for anything but their fodder!22

Faith as Inner Trust in God in the Bible, Nascent Christianity, and Sufism Unlike the Stoic demand to change one’s attitude to the outer world, the Christian promotion of negating the importance of outer life (to the extent of abandoning care for it to the Lord’s mercies) is already evident in Jesus’ sermons that intensify the motif of Biblical belief that appears, for instance, in Psalms and Proverbs: “Trust in the Lord and do good, abide in the land and remain loyal”;23 “Leave all to the Lord; trust in Him; He will do it.”24 Jesus’ sermons in Matthew and Luke25 demonstrate a preference for a life of inner faith, to the extent of total trust in God and man’s total reliance on Him: Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? . . . Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.26

This inner mental state of total trust in God releases the believer from any worldly cares. Instead of a person devoting most of his efforts and energy to ensuring his physical existence with labor, commerce, and the like, Jesus calls upon his listeners to mainly direct their energy inward, to fortify their faith in their Father in Heaven. The Christological interpretation that Paul gave to the verse “the righteous shall live by his faith” (Hab. 22 23 24 25 26

Ibid., 2:14 (trans.: 131:312–15). Ps. 37:3. Ps. 37:5; “Entrust your affairs to the Lord, and your plans will succeed” (Prov. 16:3). Matthew 6:24–34; Luke 12:22–30. Matthew 6:26–34.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

2:4) corresponds with this belief, that is attributed to Jesus himself.27 Martin Buber developed the distinction between “to believe that” and “to believe in” as the axis for the Biblical conception of faith.28 The concept of faith in the Bible, according to this distinction, is a nonpropositional attitude. It is not directed to any claim, statement, or depiction in regard to God, but rather expresses an interpersonal relationship such as love, fear, commitment, and the like.29 Belief in God therefore denotes trust in Him. In medieval theological thought, the concept of belief came to express a propositional attitude to establishing a truth proposition of the existence of God and the truthfulness of various beliefs connected to religious doctrine. Moshe Halbertal, who agrees that a change occurred in the meaning of the term “belief ” in the medieval period, examines Buber’s argument, especially in the wake of Wittgenstein’s discussions of the attitude of faith.30 Halbertal noted the complexity of this attitude, beyond the dichotomy set forth by Buber,31 due mainly to his fear of a reduction of faith to positions or norms that come exclusively from the subject. Consequently, belief in the existence of God is not a description present in the world, but a normative claim about the world, that gives it a certain value, purpose, and even justification. In the final analysis, despite his reservations, Halbertal’s conclusion relies on Buber’s and Wittgenstein’s distinctions.32 The Muslim asceticism that gave birth to Sufism fashioned the principle of tawakkul [trust in God] under the influence of Christian monasticism, on the one hand, and Jewish-Eastern asceticism on the other. This 27 See Flusser, Jewish Sources, 378. 28 Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith, trans. Norman P. Goldhawk (London: Routledge and Paul, 1951). 29 A propositional attitude is a “relation to a proposition,” that is, it describes one of a number of possibilities for describing a certain person’s attitude to a claim. For example, “a person knows that X is a thief,” “a person surmises that X is a thief,” or “a person believes that X is a thief.” Belief as a concept that does not relate to propositional attitude means a type of attitude, such as love or fear, which is not directed to a claim, statement, or description. See Moshe Halbertal, “On the Faithful and Faith” [Heb], in On Faith: Studies in the Concept of Faith and Its History in the Jewish Tradition, ed. Moshe Halbertal, David Kurzweil, and Avi Sagi (Jerusalem: Keter, 2005), 12. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 36. 32 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barret (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). For Wittgenstein’s position, see Nehama K. Verbin, “Seeing-As and the Justification of Religious Belief: Reasons and Miracles,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 18 (2001): 501–22.

351

352

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

principle calls for intense trust in God, that reaches the extreme level of quietism and complete apathy to any effort to satisfy material needs, even the most basic.33 Similar to its Christian counterpart, the Sufi notion of tawakkul undoubtedly generated a unique inner mood that is expressed in equanimity to all property, hunger, and physical want. Although the Christian and Muslim existential mindsets described above are not to be identified with modern philosophical existentialism, they share the awareness of the gap between the inner and the outer, which at times leads to the pronounced preference of the former over the latter. The discussion of the religious expressions of the focus on existential aspects in light of modern existentialist thought is based on this awareness. Inquiry of this sort is grounded in the assumption that, despite the substantive disparities between the various phenomena, as in the question of relating to the outer world and that of the status of religious-mystical experiences, the addressing of existential aspects of religious life and philosophical existentialism (that conducts a philosophical discussion of man in terms of self-contemplation) share a common denominator. Søren Kierkegaard, the founding father of existentialist religious philosophy in the nineteenth century, is the philosopher who molded the contemporary consciousness of the existential aspects of religious life. The relationship between these aspects and several modern philosophical existentialist positions regarding a number of fundamental issues is not to be taken for granted. I will now clarify this question as regards three topics: (1) the attitude to the outer world; (2) the attitude to mystical religious experiences; and (3) the relationship between subjectivity and immanence.

Existential Aspects of Religious Life and Modern Existentialism: The Attitude to the External World in Existentialist Thought Existentialist thought in the middle of the nineteenth century was characterized by its ironic and suspicious attitude to outer and social life. Ran Sigad defined this stance as follows: The discussion does not revolve around the connection between basics, but rather introspection in the inner world of the one who experiences and senses, for whom a phenomenon is not only something external, but also a personal and inexpressible sensation which nevertheless influences his life. 33 Goldziher, Introduction, 132.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

Furthermore, it generally seems to the existentialist that his inner sensation is much more significant for him than his common life with other people in the world; he also hates society and its generalizations because of the violence it demonstrates against him in order to produce from him what it deems good, according to its rules, as Hegel showed. The existentialist is for reverse violence, for the destruction of the general in favor of his incidental and arbitrary personality, that is characterized by its existing just like that, without explanation, and is not understood, neither by itself nor by others, and specifically as such it demands justification.34

According to Sigad, the antisocial nature of modern existentialist thought—that is, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche—is substantive for the existentialist nature of their doctrines. Despite this, as emerges from the above Stoic passages, Stoic existential interiorization is not conditional on the extreme attitude to the world characteristic of some modern existentialist philosophies. The Stoics did not view public obligations as an improper necessity, but as a natural one, the product of the social nature of the human race.35 A study, however, of Kierkegaard’s writings reveals his inner conflict on this point. Kierkegaard demanded the concealment of religious inwardness, which had to be independent of the outer act. Furthermore, concealing inwardness is a religious ideal of the first order. “True religiousness, just as God’s omnipresence is distinguishable by invisibility, is distinguishable by invisibility, that is, not to be seen.”36 In Fear and Trembling, in which Kierkegaard discusses the Binding of Isaac, the ideal of belief is presented as differing from the ideal of love of God. The believer lives within finitude, and therefore, for Kierkegaard, in the scene when Abraham regains Isaac: . . . his needing no preparation, no time to collect himself in finitude and its joy. If that was not the case with Abraham, then he perhaps loved God but

34 Ran Sigad, Studies in Existentialism [Heb] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1975), 35–36. 35 Unlike the view of most modern existentialists. See the essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Haskell House Publishers 1948). Following the Second World War, Sartre objected to the identification of existentialism generally with subjectivity that disregards human social affairs, and specifically, with quietism. 36 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript in Philosophical Fragments, trans. and ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 475.

353

354

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

did not believe, for whoever loves God without faith considers himself, but whoever loves God with faith considers God.37

Abraham’s greatness lies in his ability to act by faith within this, the outer world. His uniqueness is evident in his special stance regarding this world, which is not one of indifference and alienation, but that of one capable of acting in the world while clearly preferring inwardness. This is obvious in his faith, which at certain moments leads him to an exaltation that soars beyond this world. Abraham, who lives in his faith, is accordingly capable of enjoying the world, since he rejoices when he receives his son back, but this joy is different from that of someone who knows only this world. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, as in Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard discusses the relationship between the outer and the inner, but his skepticism toward the external world increases: . . . the less externality, the more inwardness, if it is truly there; but it is also the case that the less externality, the greater the possibility that the inwardness will entirely fail to come. The externality is the watchman who awakens the sleeper; the externality is the solicitous mother who calls one; the externality is the roll call that brings the soldier to his feet; the externality is the reveille that helps one to make the great effort; but the absence of the externality can mean that the inwardness itself calls inwardly to a person—alas, but it can also mean that the inwardness will fail to come.38

Kierkegaard, the champion of the concealment of inwardness, was aware of the importance of external existence as a condition for the presence and veracity of the inner. Within the context of his critique of Christian monasticism, Kierkegaard developed his arguments against the extreme 37 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 30. See also the continuation (ibid., 34): “The knights of infinity are dancers and have elevation. They make the upward movement and drop down again, and this too is not an unhappy pastime nor unlovely to behold. But every time they drop down they cannot assume the posture at once; they hesitate an instant, and this hesitation shows that they are really strangers in the world. This is more or less conspicuous in proportion to their artistry, but even the most skillful of these knights still cannot hide this hesitation. One does not need to see them in the air but only at the instant they touch and have made contact with the ground to recognize them. But to be able to land in such a way that it looks as if one were simultaneously standing and walking, to transform the leap of life into a gait, absolutely to express the sublime in the pedestrian—that only the knight of faith can do—and that is the only miracle.” 38 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 382.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

outer-inner and physical-spiritual dichotomies in monastic culture that guide the monastic aspiration for detachment from the external: The individual does not cease to be a human being, does not take off the multitudinously compounded suit of finitude in order to put on the abstract attire of the monastery, but he does not meditate between the absolute telos and the finite. In immediacy, the individual is firmly rooted in the finite; when resignation is convinced that the individual has the absolute orientation toward the absolute telos, everything is changed, the roots are cut. He lives in the finite, but he does not have his life in it. His life, like the life of another, has the diverse predicates of a human existence, but he is within them like a person who walks in a stranger’s borrowed clothes. He is a stranger in the world of finitude, but he does not define his difference from worldliness by foreign dress.39

Kierkegaard’s reaction to Hegelian exteriorization and the false monastic interiorization led him to think more favorably of Stoicism. This, however, should be seen as an interim position before his finally taking a more ascetic direction toward the end of his lifetime. From as early as Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard had been wrestling with the Lutheran conception of absolute surrender which enables faith. For Kierkegaard, this model is the very embodiment of the absurd and the paradoxical, and at the end of his life, he apparently concluded that such a model is impossible. His final conclusion was that a return to the world is hypocritical and therefore inconceivable, which is evident also in his decision to renounce his engagement to Regine Olsen. Kierkegaard’s writings are replete with the tension between the Lutheran model of a return to the world in faith and the martyric model to which he adhered at the end of his life. As the ascetic element came to dominate his thought, he retreated from the ideal of the faith of Abraham. Kierkegaard’s failure to realize his profound wish to think positively of the world from the perspective of the believer might have been bound up with his general inability to adopt the ethical phase and realize it in his life. Although modern forms of existentialism cannot be categorically defined as negating the value of social and ethical life,40 they clearly tend 39 Ibid., 410. 40 See Walter Kaufmann’s trenchant criticism of Sartre’s characterization as existentialists of, not only himself, but also of a heterogeneous group of thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Gabriel Marcel, Hiedegger, Jaspers, and others: Kaufmann, “Existentialism (and

355

356

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

to present inwardness as an alternative reality to the outer one. Although Dostoyevsky’s works, with Crime and Punishment at the fore, do not rely on a clearly formulated existentialism, they reflect an interiorization in which the inner motives for a person’s actions clash with what external circumstances would seem to dictate. Raskolnikov, who repeatedly wrestles with the question of whether to confess the murder he has committed, is prevented from admitting to his crime when interrogated by the police officer. He finally breaks when he comes once again to the police station, on his own volition, when he learns of the suicide of Svidrigailov, the one person who could have incriminated him. Raskolnikov’s confession comes precisely at the moment when external restraint has vanished.41 His inner doubts, originating in his psychological systems, prove decisive. When he thinks that his confession would be motivated by fear of the law, he lacks the mental energy to admit his crime, since his motives for the murder, too, were the fruit of inner processes, and indeed, he enjoyed no monetary gain from the murder of the old woman pawnbroker whom he despised.42 When he is left only with his inner guilt, with no possibility of being caught and tried on the basis of external testimonies, the murderer is compelled to willingly confess his crime and he begins a process of inner purification in prison.43 The complex existentialist attitude to social life is influenced by various factors. The preference for the inner instead of for the outer has consequences for the entire question of the attitude to the outer world, especially since in many instances this partiality clearly leads to reservations concerning, or even the negation of the external. Nonetheless, I do not think there is a necessary connection between existentialism and the negation of the

Phenomenology)” [Heb], in Modern Trends in Philosophy, ed. Asa Kasher and Shalom Lappin (Tel Aviv: Yahdav, 1982), 252–72, and esp. 256–57. 41 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. David McDuff (London: Viking, 1991), 598–609. 42 Ibid., 594–95. 43 The demand to conceal moral behavior and to reduce its dependence on the external reality is close, too, to certain aspects of Kant’s moral conception. These ideas originate in nascent Christianity, when the believers were to combine inner faith with moral conscience. This combination reached its high point in the conceptions of Luther and Calvin, who, according to some scholars, significantly influenced Kantian ethics. The degree to which a person’s actions are moral depends, for Kant, on the intent to act in accordance with the inner moral demand. This demand is formulated in absolute terms that are independent of external conditions.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

outer. Conceptions that view the external in a positive light, as well, can share in the existentialist emphasis of the gap between inner and outer.

Existentialism and Mystical Experience Both mystics and existentialists have called for self-knowledge and inward contemplation over the course of time, but Kierkegaard drew into sharper focus than any preceding thinker the difference between various types of self-knowledge and the inward journey to man’s soul and very being. Kierkegaard’s existentialist successors find a substantive distinction between existential interiorization and the quest for mystical connection and amalgamation of a nonsensory and ecstatic character with God or the world. In his analysis of Kierkegaard’s Journals, Sagi describes the nature of the philosopher’ interiorization, which does not rely on a mysticism that breaches the bounds of human existence: The basis for finding the self, therefore, is not the knowledge and collection of many details, but a person’s inner action through which he finds himself. The inward turning is primarily expressed in concentration on the self, on my existence, the search for the Archimedian point that give meaning to the assemblage of details of the diverse experiences and turn them into a whole, organic system. Only a person who reaches that basic point that enables him to understand himself in his existence will be capable of bearing existence and not retreating from it and be dissipated within a nonauthentic reality.44

A study of some passages from Kierkegaard’s Journals indicates that when he was in his twenties, a mystical experiential element, too, impacted the fashioning of his existentialist worldview. Such experiences, however, were rare, and their influence was much less than, for instance, that of his experience of exposure to his father’s sin. Still, some Kierkegaard scholars noted a specific experience of a mystical nature that apparently led to a shift in his worldview and way of life when he was about twenty-five years old.45 44 Avi Sagi, Kierkegaard: Religion and Existence—The Voyage of the Self, trans. Batya Stein (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 15–16. Cf. the narrative that Kierkegaard includes at the end of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 615–16. 45 Søren Kierkegaard wrote in his journal (see The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, trans. Alexander Dru [New York: Harper, 1959], 59) on May 19, 1838: “There is an indescribable joy which enkindles us as inexplicably as the apostle’s outburst comes gratuitously: “Rejoice I say unto you, and again I say unto you rejoice” [Phil. 4:4].—Not a joy over this or that but the soul’s mighty song “with tongue and

357

358

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

In 1844 Kierkegaard published a collection of sermons, including “The Thorn in the Flesh,” in which he critiqued Paul’s mystical experience; and emphasized the inherent existential flaw of such experiences, relating it to their vain aspiration to exceed the boundaries of human existence. Mystical experience, like aesthetic experience, is distinguished by its detachment from the continuum of life and its liberation from commitment to the world, and is therefore invalid from an ethical perspective.46 Toward the end of his life Kierkegaard once more turned to the experiential, but as an inner relationship to the eternal. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments, he opposed basic universal religiosity (religiosity of type A) to Christian religiosity (religiosity of type B, that is characterized by its paradoxical dialectical nature), the former being an inner existential attitude to the eternal that typifies the human race.47 Generally speaking, Kierkegaard—the existentialist believer—was very reserved regarding mystical life. Mystical experience arouses the individual’s attention to the inner, but its undiscriminating nature does not allow for the existence of an independent consciousness of the self.48 His objection to the mystical is reminiscent of Buber’s transition from mysticism to dialogue. Buber’s self-criticism concerning his personal mystical experiences spurred his transition from the mystical to the existential.49 Unlike the above direction, from the mystical to the existential, the general call to prefer the inner instead of the outer that characterizes the Stoic writings led the emperor Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher, to mouth, from the bottom of the heart”; “I rejoice through my joy, in, at, with, over, by, and with my joy”—a heavenly refrain, as it were, suddenly breaks off our other song; a joy which cools and refreshes us like a breath of wind, a wave of air, from the trade wind which blows from the plains of Mamre to the everlasting habitations.” Jacob Golomb compares Kierkegaard’s feelings here to an experience of Pascal’s; see Jacob Golomb’s introduction to the Hebrew translation of Fear and Trembling: Frygt og Baeven, trans. Eyal Levin, ed. Jacob Golomb (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997), xiii. 46 See David Brezis, Kierkegaard et les figures de la Paternite (Paris: Cerf, 1999). 47 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 509. See Tamar Aylat-Yaguri, Human Dialogue with the Absolute: Kierkegaard’s Ladder to the Climax of Spiritual Essence [Heb] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), 99–142. 48 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness, trans. Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 83–86. 49 According to Samuel Hugo Bergmann, Buber’s life and thought reflect his transition from mysticism to dialogical philosophy. See Bergmann, Dialogical Philosophy: From Kierkegaard to Buber, trans. Arnold A. Gerstein (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 217–38.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

the threshold of a mystical experience of the type that Otto called “the unifying vision”:50 All things are mutually intertwined, and the tie is sacred, and scarcely anything is alien the one to the other. For all things have been ranged side by side, and together help to order one ordered Universe. For there is both one Universe, made up of all things, and one God immanent in all things, and one Substance, and one Law, one Reason common to all intelligent creatures, and one Truth: if indeed there is also one perfecting of living creatures that have the same origin and share the same reason.51

Just as some modern existentialists reach their philosophy out of their unease with the mystical, other writings—for example, Stoic works, which too are characterized by their existential interiorization—sometimes reflect opposing orientations. The claimed contradiction between existentialist thought that places the individual at the center, facing the world, and philosophies that go so far as having the individual merging with the divine and/or the world originates in the fact that modern existentialist thought from the time of Kierkegaard has been based on Kant. The religious thought of the pre-Kantian world, in which the question of the subject had yet to be posed in full force, contains worldviews that incorporate existentialist conceptions and mystical wishes for ecstatic liberation from physical consciousness. From another perspective, however, one that examines the relationship between Kierkegaard’s religious existentialist thought and the philosophy of immanent existentialists, such as Heidegger’s, the difference between subjectivity and immanence assumes importance.

The Relationship between Subjectivity and Immanence in Existentialist Thought If the subjectivist conception characteristic of existentialist thought demands immanence that negates any possible transcendence, then transcendental religious notions have no place in this context. We therefore should clarify this question before examining the existential aspects of the Jewish sources. 50 See Otto, East and West, 38–53. 51 Marcus Aurelius, Communings, 7:9 (trans.: v58:168–69); see also 7:13 (trans.: 5:168– 71); 4:23 (trans.: vols. 80–81). See also Nathan Spiegel, Marcus Aurelius, Emperor and Philosopher [Heb] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1980), 142–43.

359

360

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The “attitude of faith,” as Kierkegaard called the proper religious stance, requires man to turn inward in order to exist religiously. Although Kierkegaard placed great emphasis on the subjective dimension of the religious experience—as did Augustine in his Confessions—he was aware of God’s absolute transcendence and the impossibility of His becoming an object of consciousness. Presumably, because of the difficulty in resolving the demand to find God in a person’s inner self and His perception as completely external to man, it could be argued that, in practice, any such demand makes God immanent. Kierkegaard offers a highly complex and sophisticated response to this problem: the subjective experience of faith does not limit the infinite chasm between man and God. To the contrary: it highlights this distance. What man finds within himself is not God, but the possibility of addressing Him. In other words, true religiosity is expressed in realizing man’s ability, as a finite and immanent creature, to aspire to the transcendental, to long for it, and to respond to it. The inward look does not reveal God to us, but rather the correct attitude to Him, through which, and only through which, we experience true faith.52 Avi Sagi finely summarized this position: “The subjectivist digression should not be considered as a claim that God becomes immanent or identical with the immanent. The activity is totally subjective, because its content is totally transcendent.”53 Although many modern existentialists, headed by Heidegger, turned to a distinctly immanent orientation, Kierkegaard’s explicit position on the issue teaches that existential aspects of religious life need not be identified with an immanent conception of God. In the epilogue that Hans Jonas added to the English version of his book on Gnosticism, he wrote of the affinity between some existentialist thinkers and Roman-period Gnostic writings. Mandaeist literature states that life was cast into the world, light into darkness, the soul into the body. This thought, that is in the background of the Gnostic concept of “pneuma” (the spirit that is beyond material negativity, beyond nature and all that is normative), is close to post-Kierkegaardian existentialism.54 Exploring a different direction, the following section will discuss the existential data in the Jewish sources that, in many instances,

52 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 199–200, 243–45. My thanks to Assaf Sagiv for drawing my attention to this reference. 53 Sagi, Kierkegaard, 144. 54 Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 320–40.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

assume the existence of a God who is not exclusively transcendental, but rather has both transcendental and immanent aspects.

Existential Interiorizations in the Jewish Sources The Biblical Intensification of Inner Religious Sentiment A significant number of chapters from the book of Psalms contain nonsupplicatory verses of praise and thanksgiving; some of these verses are deeply infused with a religious feeling of closeness to God or of fierce longing for such closeness. Greenberg noted that chapters of this sort attest to a soul so filled with a consciousness of God that it has no desire to dissociate itself from such an awareness. “Only goodness and steadfast love shall pursue me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for many long years” (Ps. 23:6).55 Greenberg argues that the singularity of these verses lies in their not linking praise to supplication, unlike Biblical prayers such as II Sam. 7:22– 29, or the instruction given by R. Simlai in BT Berakhot 32a.56 Greenberg writes: Another singular quality of the Biblical psalms that distinguishes them from their counterparts in Babylonia and in Egypt is the multitude of invitations to thank and praise God . . . if the intent were simply to please or flatter, why were such wordings not used by the poets of Babylonia and Egypt? Were the poets of Israel more proficient in the ways of flattery?57

Greenberg’s view differs from that which sees the hymnal verses in Psalms as an integral part of the verbal formula that accompanied sacrificial rite, a view similar to the findings from the Mesopotamian world discussed by Hallo.58 Whether or not praise was part of the ancient rite, of all the verses from Psalms cited by Greenberg, we can distinguish between those 55 Greenberg groups together verses of praise, such as Ps. 92:2–3, 5–6; 103:2; 104:33, and those relating to closeness, such as Ps. 92:23; 29; 42–43 (Greenberg, On the Bible, 193–97). 56 Ibid., 193. 57 Ibid., 195–96. 58 See James L. Kugel, “Topics in the History of the Spirituality of the Psalms,” in Jewish Spirituality, vol. 1: From the Bible through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 125–29, based, inter alia, on William W. Hallo, “Letters, Prayers, and Letter-Prayers,” in Krone, ed., Proceedings of the Seventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. 2: Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, 17–27.

361

362

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

of praise, that might possibly be linked to a verbal rite (or not), and those that, in their entirety, express the profound religious experience of devekut and closeness to God, or at the very least, the yearning for such an experience: “One thing I ask of the Lord, only that do I seek: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, to frequent His temple” (27:4); “My heart says: ‘Seek My face!’ O Lord, I seek Your face” (27:8); “My soul thirsts for God, the living God; O when will I come to appear before God!” (42:3); “I long, I yearn” (84:3).

The Interiorization of the Biblical Principle of Reward and Punishment, and the Advantage of Love over Fear Ire and anger, these also are abominations, and a sinful man will have possession of them. He who avenges will discover vengeance from the Lord, and when he observes carefully, he will carefully observe his sins. Forgive your neighbor a wrong, and then, when you petition, your sins will be pardoned. A person harbors wrath against a person— and will he seek healing from the Lord? Does he not have mercy on a person like himself and petition concerning his sins? His being flesh maintains ire— who will make atonement for his sins?.59

Flusser taught that this passage from Ben Sira is the earliest source for the beginning of what he termed “A New Sensitivity in Judaism.”60 Ben Sira implicitly has reservations regarding the principle of measure for measure that underlies the Biblical doctrine of reward and punishment. He rejects the principle of vengeance and calls for forgiveness based on an awareness of the weaknesses common to all, as is indicated by the question: “Does he not have mercy on a person like himself and petition concerning his sins?” Turning to God’s atonement and forgiveness assumes, for Ben Sira, that He is aware of man’s weaknesses. The principle of forgiveness should also apply to societal relations. This passage reflects a profound view of men and their world, and explicitly rejects the one-sided thought at the basis of the 59 Ben-Sira 27:30–28:5; trans.: Sirach, 742. 60 Flusser, Judaism, 469–89.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

principle of measure for measure, that tends to simple dichotomies of good and evil. “Be not like slaves that serve the master for the sake of receiving a reward, but be like slaves who serve the master not for the sake of receiving a reward; and let the fear of Heaven be upon you.”61 This dictum by Antigonus of Sokho teaches of the penetration of a more complex notion (that was expressed in this passage from Ben Sira) into the world of the first Tannaitic “Pairs” (the joint heads of the Sanhedrin). This conception was expressed in a new understanding of “the fear of Heaven.” Antigonus of Sokho perceives the anticipation of external reward for observing the Torah and its commandments as opposed to true piety. The reward for the observance of the Torah is an inner matter, and not any external recompense. Observance of the commandments with no expectation of reward is a higher value because it is undertaken out of inner purposes without the expectation of any external benefit. As Urbach has shown,62 Ben Azzai formulated these ideas in extreme fashion, one that totally disassociates a person’s moral-religious behavior from the fate and circumstances of his external life: “one commandment draws another commandment in its wake, and one transgression draws another transgression in its wake, for the reward of a commandment is a commandment, and the reward of one transgression is another transgression.”63 Observance of the commandments is a purely inner affair, and is not to be connected to external reward and punishment.64 This thinking deeply affected the world of the rabbis and appears in many places in their literature: R. Eliezer son of R. Zaddok says: Do [good] deeds for the sake of their Maker, and speak of them for their own sake. Do not make of them a crown to aggrandize yourself, nor a spade to dig with. This is an a minori ad majus inference: If Belshazzar, who merely used the holy vessels that had been

61 M Avot 1:3. 62 Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, “Studies in Rabbinic Views Concerning Divine Providence” [Heb], in Yehezkel Kaufmann Jubilee Volume: Studies in Bible and Jewish Religion, ed. Menahem Haran (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1960), Hebrew section 471–73. 63 M Avot 2:4. 64 Kaminka, Studies in the Bible, 50. Kaminka found the Stoic parallel of this teaching in the letters of Seneca: “the reward for all the virtues lies in the virtues themselves” (Seneca, Epistulae Morales, epistle 81; trans.: 75:230–31).

363

364

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

profaned, was uprooted from the world, how much more so for the one who makes use of the crown of the Torah!65 R. Meir says: It is said of Job, “he feared God” [Job 1:1], and it is said of Abraham, “you fear God” [Gen. 22:12]. Just as the fearing of God said of Abraham is from love, so too, the said fearing of God of Job is from love.66

No one is beloved as much as the religious from love, like Abraham. Our forefather Abraham turned the evil instincts into good ones as it is written (Neh. 9:8): “You found his heart trustworthy before You.”67 Rashi comments on the wording “the religious [literally, ‘keeping away’] from love”: “Keeping away from the love of reward for the commandments, and not from love of the Creator’s commandments.”68 The preference of inner motives over outer ones is common to all the above sources. The Mishnah (Kiddushin 1:10) addresses the issue of reward and punishment as follows: “If a person performs but a single commandment it shall be well with him, and he shall enjoy longevity and he shall inherit the land; but anyone who neglects a single commandment, it shall not be well with him, he shall not enjoy longevity, and he shall not inherit the Land.” The Babylonian Talmud’s discussion of this passage, however, is focused on R. Jacob’s assertion: “There is no reward for the commandments in this world.”69 Unlike Ben Azzai, R. Jacob resolves the problem of Divine Providence by stating that the reward for observance does not exist in this world, but is to be found in the World to Come and at the Resurrection of the Dead.70 The Talmud states that R. Jacob was the maternal grandson of Elisha ben Abuyah, who became known as “Aher” [the “Other”] following his heresy concerning the Biblical principle of reward and punishment. The Talmud’s comment about Elisha ben Abuyah, that is attributed to R. Joseph, that “if Aher [= Elisha ben Abuyah] had expounded this verse as had R. 65 BT Nedarim 62a. 66 BT Sotah 31a. 67 PT Berakhot 9:6. For English translation, see The Jerusalem Talmud. First Order: Zeraim. Tractate Berakhot, ed. and trans. Heinrich W. Guggenheimer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000), 672–73. 68 Rashi to BT Sotah 22b, s.v. Parush me-Ahavah. See also Sifre on Deuteronomy 5:32, ed. Finkelstein, 13, 54. 69 BT Kiddushin 39b; Hullin 142a. See Urbach, “Studies in Rabbinic Views,” 472 n. 42. 70 “There is not a single commandment that is written in the Torah whose reward is [written] at its side on which the Resurrection of the Dead is not dependent” (BT Kiddushin 39b).

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

Jacob, the son of his daughter, he would not have sinned” connects Elisha ben Abuyah’s heresy regarding Divine Providence in this world and the solution offered by his grandson R. Jacob. If Elisha ben Abuyah had maintained that reward and punishment are reserved for the World to Come, and are not applicable in this world, he would not have become an apostate. Even though R. Jacob’s solution could have sufficed in order to resolve Elisha ben Abuyah’s qualms regarding Divine Providence, the Talmudic discussion continues, and prescribes: A person should always regard himself as though he were half liable and half meritorious. If he observes a single commandment, he is happy for tipping the scales to merit; if he commits a single transgression, woe to him for tipping the scales to guilt, as it is said, “but one sinner destroys much good” [Eccl. 9:18].71

In contrast with the Mishnaic teaching that emphasizes the reward or punishment for each commandment or transgression, this dictum stresses the personal happiness of one who observes a commandment, as compared with the sense of loss felt by the transgressor. I do not mean to argue that this dictum reflects a release from the conception of external reward and punishment, but, like the teaching that “the reward of a commandment is a commandment,” it, too, focuses on a person’s inner sensation. The counsel it gives is to always live with the feeling that every act is capable of tipping the scales one way or the other. This worldview shifts the center of attention from the anticipation of reward or the fear of punishment to the inner satisfaction ensuing from the very decision in favor of good or evil in each of a person’s actions. The continuation of the Talmudic discussion, that is cited in the name of R. Eleazar the son of R. Simeon, supports my argument, since he says: Because the world is judged according to its majority, and an individual is judged according to his majority [of good or bad deeds], if a person observes a single commandment, happy is he for tipping the scales for him and for all the world to merit; if he commits a single sin, woe to him, for tipping the scales for him and for all the world for liability, as it is said, “but one sinner, etc.” On account of the single sin that this one committed, he and the whole world lose much good.72 71 BT Kiddushin 40a–b. 72 BT Kiddushin 40b.

365

366

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

This dictum further reinforces the sense of responsibility. The counsel to the individual to view each action of his as tipping all the scales, for liability or for merit, now becomes a cosmic conception. R. Eleazar’s advice is that the individual perceive his action as decisive for the entire world, to the side of merit or the side of liability, thereby vastly amplifying the individual’s responsibility. The transition to imagery of universal scales that are influenced by each and every action of the individual completely dwarfs the personal significance of reward and punishment, and shifts the center of gravity to the very deed itself. The shift in focus from the personal to the cosmic greatly weakens the personal significance of crime and punishment, since if an act exonerates or condemns the world, the weight of responsibility now occupies center stage, while the outer personal utility on which the principle of personal reward or punishment is founded is relegated to the sidelines. A person’s inner satisfaction is fueled by the sense of meaning imparted to every action that influences the entire world, and not only the individual. The seeming compromise of Rav’s principle of “not for its own sake,” that recurs in the Talmudic literature, actually reflects interiorization: “For R. Judah said, Rav said: A person should always be occupied with Torah and commandments, even not for their own sake, for out of [performance] not for its own sake comes [performance] for its own sake.”73 According to this accommodating teaching, outer action is not intrinsically worthy, and can be viewed in a favorable light only thanks to the optimistic assumption that the outer observance of a commandment is capable of undergoing change and finally become inner performance, that does not seek outer utility or reward. Rav’s dictum in the printed editions and in some of the manuscripts74 clearly indicates that, in his estimation as well, the observance of Torah and commandments out of external motives has no substantive worth.75 The personal prayer of R. Safra in the tractate of Berakhot concludes: “may all those who do so not for its own sake come to do so for its own sake.”76 Although this prayer is concerned with Torah study and not 73 BT Sanhedrin 105b; Horayot 10b. 74 See Urbach, Sages, 2:856 n. 94, on the differences between the manuscripts and the printed edition of some of these sources regarding the expression she-mitokh she-lo li-shma, which Urbach translates as “for from doing these things from other motives.” 75 For a parallel discussion of “Torah for its own sake,” see Solomon Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (Woodstock: Jewish Lights, 1993), 159–63; Urbach, Sages, 1:395–99. 76 BT Berakhot 16b–17a.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

with other commandments, the wording it shares with the teaching of Rav indicates a contentual affinity between the two. This prayer does not distinguish between Torah scholars who are God-fearing and those who are not, it rather may be understood as referring to those whose study is driven by ulterior motives. Medieval Jewish thought expanded the discussion of the inner motives of the fear of Heaven, and the rabbinic dicta cited above were not interpreted literally. A study of Sha‘arei Orah reveals both continuity and change on the question of outer and inner fear of Heaven: Know that love and fear that are bound up in the service of the Lord are the same matter, for fear has two aspects: there is outer fear, and there is inner fear. Outer fear: if a person has not perceived the greatness of the Lord, may He be blessed, and he worships out of fear of punishment and tribulations, this is outer fear. He is like one who prevents himself from killing or from stealing out of fear, lest he be killed. This fear is not certain, but nevertheless has good intent. Notwithstanding this, there is inner fear that is greater than it, which is fear that comes from understanding. How so? If a person merits to fathom the greatness of the Lord, may He be blessed, and the force of His amazing and beneficial wonders, His attributes, and the sorts of [divine] bounty and blessings that directly ensue from his knowledge of Him and His attributes—when he is conscious of His loftiness, he will be aware of the deficiency of his own body, which is a worm and maggot. Then he will be affrighted, and fear rebelling against a great King as Him. He will say: Who has brought me this far, to recognize and gaze upon the great and awesome King, the King who enthrones kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, while I am a base, worthless, and contemptible creature? What am I, what is my life, to be worthy of the exalted greatness of this place? Accordingly, he fears lest he not be worthy to be accepted in the palace of the King who enthrones kings, the Holy One, blessed be He. . . . This is the fear that was ascribed to Abraham after he underwent ten tests, all of which he accepted with love, as it is said: “For now I know that you fear God” [Gen. 22:12]. This is the attribute of which none is more exalted, and it is greater than love. This is the trait of fear that adheres to the Sefirah of the letter yud, which is the secret of will and thought.77 77 Gikatilla, Sha‘arei Orah, sha‘ar 9, 100–101. For more on inner vision, see, for example, De-Vidas, Re’shit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Yirah 1. On love, see the sources that De-Vidas brings, Re’shit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Ahavah 1:1–26, ed. Waldman, 1:345–61.

367

368

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

In the first half of the eighteenth century, R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto intensified the interiorization processes in Kabbalistic thought, and his words on the principle of reward and punishment mark the apex of its interiorization: “. . . good deeds incorporate an intrinsic quality of perfection and excellence in man’s body and soul. Evil deeds, on the other hand, incorporate in him a quality of insensitivity and deficiency.”78 A different development, that more strongly evinces the evolution of existential approaches resulting from a philosophical worldview, is to be found in the Maimonidean conception of Divine Providence.79 This notion will be discussed at greater length in the following chapter, on “Epistemological Interiorization.”80

The Doctrine of the Two Yetzarim The two Biblical verses in which the term yetzer [often rendered “inclination”] appears, not only as thought, propensity, or neutral nature, but in negative senses: “every plan [yetzer] devised by his mind was nothing but evil all the time” (Gen. 6:5) and “the devisings of man’s mind [yetzer lev] are evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21) do not state that the yetzer itself is evil, but that it is revealed to God as such. These verses reflect an absolute deterministic approach regarding man’s freedom vis-a-vis his yetzer, that is, his nature.81 Ben Sira, which was written in the first half of the second century BCE, retains the Biblical meaning of this term as human nature, but with a noticeable change: man’s inner motive force is now presented as one that gives him the ability to choose good or evil: It was he [= the Lord] who from the beginning made humankind, and he left him in the hand of his deliberation. If you want to, you shall preserve the commandments, ........................................... Before humans are life and death, 78 Moses Hayyim Luzatto, Derekh Hashem, part 2, chap. 2, para. 5. For English translation, see Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Derech haShem: The Way of God, trans. Aryeh Kaplan (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1988), 100–101. 79 Maimonides, Guide 3:51. 80 See below, chapter six, 488–92. 81 Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, trans. Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961–1964), vol. 1: From Adam to Noah: A Commentary on Genesis I–VI 8, 303; and vol. 2: From Noah to Abraham: Genesis VI 9–XI 32, 120–21.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

and whichever one he desires will be given to him.82

And in the continuation: “He did not command anyone to be impious, / and he did not give anyone leave to sin.”83 In this text the word yetzer is of neutral moral worth. Other texts, that are slightly later than Ben Sira, already speak of two opposing elements present in the human psyche that struggle against one another. For example, we find in the Testament of the Tribes, a Jewish Hellenistic composition from the second half of the same century: God has granted two ways to the sons of men, two mind-sets, two lines of action, two models, and two goals. Accordingly, everything is in pairs, the one over against the other. The two ways are good and evil; concerning them are two dispositions within our breasts that choose between them.84

Despite the marked difference between the monist conception of Ben Sira and the dualist thought of the Testament of the Tribes, both share an internalizing approach that assumes the existence of mental forces within man. Buber’s claim of the more introspective view of the yetzer in Talmudic literature85 is demonstrated in the various studies that concur with him and paint a detailed picture of the development of the inclinations doctrine in

82 Ben-Sira 15:14–17; trans.: Sirach, 731. See Ben-Sira, 97, 105, 137 for Segal’s interpretation of the word yetzer, which, here, means a natural inclination that can be either good or evil, a mental power, or the source of a person’s desires. 83 Ben-Sira 15:20; trans.: Sirach, 731. 84 Testament of Asher 1:3–5; trans.: Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha, 1:816–17. See the entire discussion of the evil inclination in the Second Temple period literature in Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 67–70; Ishai Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 44–64. 85 Martin Buber, Good and Evil: Two Interpretations, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Scribner’s, 1953), 94. See also the chapter “Imagination and Impulse,” ibid., 90–97.

369

370

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

rabbinic thought.86 As Urbach observes, this doctrine, that was developed by the rabbis, is distinctly interiorizing.87 Ishai Rosen-Zvi finds in the world of the Tannaim two different perceptions of the yetzer. That of the school of R. Akiva, which speaks of a neutral inclination, is reflected in the statement: “R. Akiva says: The Torah spoke only against the [Evil] Inclination”;88 while the more widespread notion, that of the school of R. Ishmael, refers to the Evil Inclination. The first school of thought speaks of the yetzer in terms of the natural human inclination, that is the expected reaction of a person who is commanded by the Torah to perform actions that run counter to its nature and who is required to overcome it, for instance: “to make your enemy your friend.”89 The term “Evil Inclination [yetzer ha-ra],” in contrast, as it is presented in exegeses in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael and in Mekhilta de-Arayot, does not teach of the yetzer as a natural inclination, but as an antinomian entity that resides within man and incites him against the Torah.90 These distinctions between the different approaches in the Tannaitic literature to this term, as interesting as they may be, and the different understandings of it in Amoraitic literature,91 do not negate the earlier scholarly conclusions that the various texts relating to this issue commonly assume that these are inner, psychological contents that underlie human behavior as a whole, and especially religious conduct. Rosen-Zvi draws this distinction to show that the complexity in the world of the rabbis noted by Boyarin, following Porter,92 had its beginnings 86 F. C. Porter, “The Yecer Hara: A Study in the Jewish Doctrine of Sin,” in Biblical and Semitic Studies: Critical and Historical Essays by the Members of the Semitic and Biblical Faculty of Yale University (New York: Scribner’s, 1901), 93–156; Moore, Judaism, 474–96; Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 242–92; Urbach, Sages, 1:471–83; G. H. Cohen-Stuart, The Struggle in Man between Good and Evil: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Rabbinic Concept of Yeser Hara (Kampen: Kok, 1984); Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 61–76; Jonathan Wyn Schofer, The Making of a Sage: A Study of Rabbinic Ethics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 84–115; Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires. 87 Urbach, Sages, 1:471–72. 88 Sifra, Megillat Aharei Mot 11:1, ed. Weiss, fol. 90b. 89 Mekhilta d’Rabbi Sim‘on b. Jochai on Exod. 23:4, ed. Epstein and Melamed, 215 (trans.: Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, 359–60). See Rosen-Zvi, “School of R. Ishmael,” 43–44. 90 Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires, 18–26; idem, “School of R. Ishmael,” 44–47. 91 See Cohen-Stuart, Struggle in Man; Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires, 65–86; idem, “School of R. Ishmael”; idem, “Rereading the Yetzer in Amoraic Literature” [Heb], Tarbiz 77 (2007–2008): 71–107. 92 Porter, “Yecer Hara,” 115 ff., esp. 120.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

in the teachings of the Tannaim. Boyarin writes of the existence in the rabbinic world of two irreconcilable psychological views: a mainly good-evil dualistic approach, with good and evil in constant struggle between them; and a more monist conception, that assumes that the force present within people that causes them to build and create is the same power that leads them to evil and destruction.93 For Rosen-Zvi, R. Ishmael’s image of the Evil Inclination and the battle against it are a development of this term that led to its perception as an independent entity that struggles with man. The Evil Inclination is therefore presented in this school as an autonomous entity, distinct from man, even though it dwells within his body.94 He defines this phenomenon as, to some extent, externalization, that makes it possible to separate the person himself, who aspires to overcome his desire, and the Inclination, such as the midrash on Boaz in Sifre: “As the Lord lives” Lie down until morning [Ruth 3:13]—for the Evil Inclination was sitting and importuning him the entire night. It said to him: You are unmarried and want a woman, and she is unmarried and wants a man. You have learned that a woman is acquired by sexual intercourse, go and have sexual relations with her, and she will be your wife. He took an oath against his Evil Inclination and said to it: “As the Lord lives—if I will touch her”; and to the woman he said: “Lie down until morning.”95

This disassociation from the Inclination enables Boaz to assume that it is not he who lusts, but his Inclination, since Boaz is presented as being on the other side of the divide, as struggling with his Inclination and seeking to control it. Rosen-Zvi maintains that R. Ishmael’s transformation of the yetzer to the Evil Inclination, as an independent entity of demonic character, was an original Tannaitic creation. Since, however, the term “demon” is usually not reserved solely for a discrete entity, but also refers to an independence that facilitates the demon’s existence outside man, it seems that

93 Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 64–67. See also Mordechai Rotenberg, The Yetzer: A Kabbalistic Psychology of Eroticism and Human Sex (Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1997), 59–70, who compares the connection between the evil inclination and creativity manifested in rabbinic thought and in the Kabbalistic and Hasidic sources with Freud’s biological and dualistic perception of instinctual urges. 94 Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires,76. 95 Sifre on Numbers, Behalaalotekha 88. Cf. Lev. Rabbah 23:11, ed. Margulies, 544–45; Ruth Rabbah 6:8. See also the analysis by Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires, 18–26; ibid, “School of R. Ishmael,” 49–50.

371

372

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

in Tannaitic literature the Evil Inclination has only the potential to become a demon. Rosen-Zvi writes that the Tannaitic concept is unique in that, on the one hand, it rejects the innocent model of Ben Sira, while, on the other, it also negates the cosmological-dualist Qumran pattern. In his opinion, the appearance of the Evil Inclination in the Tannaitic literature is an additional outstanding example of the rise of the inner dimension as the main definer of man. The dangers lying in wait for man and the struggles that he wages are not only outside him, they are also within him.96

Although the meaning of the term “inclination” is much more limited in Freudian theory, and refers mainly to the (instinctive) biological sexual impulse present in the id, drawing a parallel between Freud’s theory of personality and the rabbinic inclinations doctrine can aid in understanding the place of the inclination in the world of the rabbis. While the external mandates of the Torah parallel the Freudian superego, which is an interiorization of outer demands, the place of the inclinations in the world of the rabbis corresponds to the id, which for Freud is the place of the urge, located within man’s psyche. In the world of the rabbis, the self is to identify with the Torah and not surrender to the demands of the inner inclinations, according to one approach, or, according to another, to enlist these inclinations to fulfill the demands of the Torah. In order to understand the wealth of meaning given to the yetzer in later Jewish sources, we should examine the few Tannaitic sources in which the yetzer in general, and especially the Evil Inclination, are assigned broader meanings than the antinomian one given it particularly by the school of R. Ishmael, and which became the commonest meaning in the rabbinic literature. These texts would, in later periods, become a source of inspiration for expanding the meanings of the term, as we will see below.

The Story of R. Simeon the Righteous about the Nazirite from the South [R.] Simeon the Righteous said: In my life I ate a [Nazirite] guilt-offering only a single time. It happened that a person [came] to me from the South. [I saw] that he had beautiful eyes, a handsome face, and curly locks. I said to him, why did you see fit to destroy this lovely hair? He, too, [said] to me: I 96 Rosen-Zvi, “School of R. Ishmael,” 78.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

was a shepherd in my city, and I went to fill [water] from the spring. I looked at [my reflection], and my Inclination rose within me, and sought to drive me from the world. [I said to it]: Wicked one, you should not be jealous of what is not yours, of something that will turn into dust, corruption, and worms. Behold, I undertake to shave you off for [the sake of] Heaven. I patted my head [and kissed him]. I said: May those like you multiply, who do the will of the Omnipresent in Israel. In you [the verse (Num. 6:2) is fulfilled:] “If anyone, man [or woman], explicitly utters a Nazirite’s vow, to set himself apart for the Lord.”97

This narrative was discussed extensively in scholarly literature.98 What is of importance for our discussion is the realization of both the Nazirite from the South and R. Simeon the Righteous of the necessity here to cancel an explicit, but outer, obligation in order to maintain inner religious authenticity. Indeed, the very reason that the Nazarite had long hair, and therefore was more handsome, is that he adhered to the explicit directive (Num. 6:5) for Nazirites not to cut their hair. In order, however, to overcome his Inclination, the Nazirite understood that he had to cancel, through a guilt-offering, the vow that he had taken. By accepting the offering of the Nazirite, Simeon the Righteous showed the seriousness with which he took the former’s struggle with his Inclination, since it is an inner voice that aroused the handsome Nazirite to fall in love with himself and/or be proud of his own beauty. Both deemed heeding the voice of the Inclination to be a spiritual danger for the Nazirite, who was accordingly liable to be so enamored with himself as to forget God and lose his spiritual world. The difference between the versions of the two Talmuds regarding the Nazirite’s inner dialogue with his Inclination is significant. The Babylonian Talmud has the Nazirite saying:

97 T Nazir 4:6 (see Tosefta, ed. Lieberman, 139). Cf. the “Nazirite from the South” narrative in BT Nedarim 9b and PT Nazir 1:6. 98 See Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, “Joab’s End in the Midrash: Political History in the Eyes of the rabbis” [Heb], in Urbach, The World of the Sages (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988), 400–402; Yonah Frenkel, “The Halakhah in Aggadic Narratives” [Heb], Meḥqerei Talmud 1 (1992): 213–14; David Halivni, “On the Supposed Anti-Asceticism or Anti-Naziritism of Simon the Just,” Jewish Quarterly Review N. S. 58 (1968): 243–52; Leo Landman, “The Guilt-Offering of the Defiled Nazirite,” Jewish Quarterly Review N. S. 60 (1970): 345–52; M. H. Spero, “The Talmudic Perception of Narcissus: The Subversion of Mirroring by Symbolizing Death,” Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 17 (1944): 137–69.

373

374

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

I said to it: “Wicked one! Why are you prideful in a world that is not yours, with one who is destined to become a worm and maggot? I swear that I will shave you off for [the sake of] Heaven.”

And in the Palestinian Talmud: I said to it: “Wicked one! You are haughty about something that is not yours. I must sanctify you to Heaven.”

In the Babylonian Talmud’s version, the Inclination attempted to convince the Nazirite to be prideful of passing physical beauty, which is not the handiwork of the Nazirite himself, but of his Creator. The transient nature of the body detracts from its worth, thus leading to the conclusion that the problem lies with improper narcissistic self-love. The Palestinian Talmud, in contrast, stresses that since the body’s beauty belongs to God, it must be dedicated to Heaven; accordingly, the focus of the problem in this version is pride in divine beauty, and its rectification consists of devoting the beauty to God. The different versions might possibly reflect the two disparate orientations regarding the Evil Inclination in the world of the Tannaim: the BT version corresponds to demand for the total repression of the Evil Inclination, while the version of the Palestinian Talmud is closer to the spirit of the mishnah in Tractate Berakhot (9:5), that requires worship of the Lord with both one’s inclinations. The evil pride in physical beauty is to be directed to the godly and to be consecrated to Heaven. We see that, already in the world of the Tannaim, the Evil Inclination is a general name for inner thoughts and desires that lead a person astray from what is proper, whether regarding one of the explicit commandments of the Torah, or regarding something that common sense teaches is improper, such as anger, pride, and other bad traits. The realm of the “improper” includes both negative thoughts and behaviors and actions explicitly prohibited by the Torah.

The Dictum of R. Johanan ben Nuri on Anger, Idolatry, and the Evil Inclination R. Simeon ben Eleazar said in the name of R. Halfai ben Agra, who said in the name of R. Johanan ben Nuri: One who tears his hair, rends his garment, smashes his vessels, scatters his money in his anger, shall be accounted to

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

you as an idolater. It is as if his Inclination says to him, Go and worship this idolatry, for such is the way of the Evil Inclination.99

The version in the Babylonian Talmud, that quotes the Tosefta passage, ends with the wording: For this is the handicraft of the Evil Inclination: today it tells him, Do thus, and the following day it says to him, Do thus, until it tells him, Worship idolatry, and he goes and worships. R. Avin said: What verse [implies this]? “You shall have [Bekha, literally, ‘in you’] no foreign god, you shall not bow to an alien god” [Ps. 81:10]—who is the strange god that resides in a person’s body? You must say, this is the Evil Inclination.100

The anger described here is identified with the Evil Inclination because it causes a person to abandon his considered thought, and he is liable to engage in idolatry. That is, according to this teaching, the Inclination is evil because it pushes a person to engage in improper acts following its domination of the person. Ps. 81:10 speaks of a foreign god that dwells among the people of Israel; and the midrash brought in BT Shabbat interiorizes the verse and imparts it with existential meaning. According to Rashi on this verse: “’Bekha’—meaning, among you, for if it were among you, in the end you would bow to an alien god.” In essence, the midrash teaches that idolatry, as well, is an inner matter, or at the very least, one that cannot be understood only in terms of external influences, it also is related to inner urges that are capable of dominating man if he does not master them. The struggle against idolatry—that the Bible perceives as a battle against external forces—assumes a distinctly inner nature in the world of the rabbis.101 This conception of idolatry as an inner desire within man can be understood in at least two different ways. The first explains how negative traits and behaviors, such as anger, can now be compared to idolatry, since both reflect inner domination by a force that is perceived as a sort of foreign and undesirable god that dwells within man. The anger depicted here constitutes a loss of self-control that leads 99 T Bava Kamma 9:31 (see Tosefta, ed. Lieberman, 49). 100 BT Shabbat 105b. Cf. “Whoever listens to his urges, it is as if he worshipped idols. What is the reason? ‘There shall not be in you a foreign god, you shall not bow to an alien god’ [Ps. 81:10]—that which is foreign within you, do not crown as king over you” (PT Nedarim 9:1, 41b). See the development of this idea in Zohar 3:106a–b. 101 See the development of this conception, following the exegesis of Ps. 81:9–10, in Zohar 3:106a–b.

375

376

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

to a takeover by an improper inner force. The second meaning claims that idolatry has an inner source, namely, human thought; consequently, erroneous worldviews that are not idolatry, in the narrow sense of the word, too, are deemed the spawn of the Evil Inclination. Two approaches to the question of the proper path of action to be taken against the Evil Inclination are already apparent in the world of the Tannaim. Wishes to conquer the Evil Inclination and cause it to submit, that reflect the repressive trend described above, appear in most of the private prayer formulae set forth in the tractate of Berakhot.102 The appellation “the yeast in the dough,” used to denote the Evil Inclination in the prayer of R. Tanhum bar Iskolstika (in the Palestinian Talmud) and in that of R. Alexandri (in the Babylonian Talmud) reflects the latter psychological approach. Hence this urge [= the evil urge] is called ‘the yeast in the dough’, the ferment placed in the soul by God, without which the human dough does not rise. Thus, a man’s status is necessarily bound up with the volume of ‘yeast’ within him; ‘whoever is greater than another, his urge is greater than the other’s’ [BT Sukkah 52a].103

This understanding of “the yeast in the dough” is supported by the rabbinic dicta that express the conception of a transformation between the two inclinations. Such an idea is opposed to the demand—also present in rabbinic thought in many places—for the total repression of the Evil Inclination.104 The term “the yeast in the dough” obscures the good-evil dichotomy concerning the inclinations. The essence of the inclination lies in its vitality, which can progress in diverse directions. Man has the ability to direct this vitality to the good, which is also God’s will. 102 BT Berakhot 16b–17a; 61b; PT Berakhot 4:2. 103 Buber, Good and Evil, 94–95. See the discussion of the source in BT Sukkah: Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 64–65. 104 See, for example: “R. Judah said in the name of Rav: A man once conceived a passion for a certain woman, and his heart was consumed by his burning desire. They went and consulted physicians, who said, ‘There is no cure until she engages in intercourse with him.’ The rabbis said, ‘Let him die rather than she should engage in intercourse.’ [The physicians said,] ‘Let her stand naked before him.’ [The rabbis said,] ‘Let him die rather than she should stand naked before him.’ [The physicians said,] ‘Let her engage in conversation with him from behind a fence.’ [The rabbis said,] ‘Let him die rather than she should engage in conversation with him from behind a fence’” (BT Sanhedrin 75a).

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

The Mishnaic teaching: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart . . .’ [Deut. 6:5], ‘with all your heart’—with both your inclinations, with the Good Inclination and with the Evil Inclination”105 patently belongs to the second, monist, conception, that of the school of R. Akiva, despite its inclusion of the term “the Evil Inclination,” which originated in the school of R. Ishmael.106 The solution it offers for the dualism within the heart is the opposite of that suggested by the other tradition (that originated in the school of R. Ishmael). In this mishnah, the desired harmonization is achieved by mobilizing the Evil Inclination for the service of the Lord, while the tradition from the school of R. Ishmael removes the Evil Inclination, in the spirit of Mekhilta de-Miluim: “Moses said: ‘This is what the Lord has commanded that you do’” [Lev. 9:6]—remove that Evil Inclination from your hearts, and you all will have the same fear and the same counsel to serve before the Omnipresent. Just as He is singular in the world, so too, let your service be singular before Him, as it is said: “Cut away, therefore, the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more” [Deut. 10:16]. Why is this so? For, I am the Lord your God—He is the God of gods and the Lord of lords. If you do so, the glory of the Lord shall appear to you.107

In contrast, the meaning of the mishnah that prescribes serving the Lord with both inclinations becomes fully apparently in light of the teaching in the Palestinian Talmud: No one is as beloved as the religious from love, like Abraham. Abraham transformed the Evil Inclination into the good one. What is the reason? “You found his heart trustworthy before You” [Neh. 9:8]. . . . But David could not bear this, and he killed it in his heart. What is the reason? “And my heart is pierced within me” [Ps. 109:22].108

This dictum definitely opposes the teaching of the repression of the Evil Inclination that voids a person of his inner powers. The idea—that is identified with the godly—consists of transforming evil into good and the unification of vitality (= the Evil Inclination) and the good. 105 M Berakhot 9:5. 106 See Rosen-Zvi, “School of R. Ishmael,” 58–59. 107 Sifra, Mekhilta de-Miluim, Shemini 1, ed. Weiss, fol. 43d. See also Rosen-Zvi, “School of R. Ishmael,” 57 n. 69. 108 PT Sotah 5:9.

377

378

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The depth of the difference between the two approaches in sources for contending with the Evil Inclination is evident in the modern period in the disparities regarding this issue between the different schools of the Mussar yeshivot [Talmudic academies that educate specifically for ethical-devotional behavior founded in Lithuania by the students of R. Israel Salanter in the second half of the nineteenth century]. This difference is perhaps even more pronounced in the disparities between these schools and their varying approaches, on the one hand, and, on the other, a wide range of Hasidic teachings. While some Mussar yeshivot tended to advocate the complete repression of the Evil Inclination, others suggested a more nuanced approach, wherein repression and transformative sublimation are combined. Wherever they are located on this scale, the Mussar yeshivot still tend to differ quite radically from the Hasidic teachings that are wholly focused on sublimation and which adopt the position that the above passage from the Palestinian Talmud ascribes to Abraham and that are cited in the name of the Baal Shem Tov himself, as we shall see below. Both the repression and the sublimation of the Evil Inclination demand that man bear responsibility for his Evil Inclination and either conquer it or direct it in the spirit of the commandments. This recognition of man’s autonomy, that is based on the rabbinic inclinations doctrine, underlies the discussions of and counsels against the wiles of the Evil Inclination in Ḥovot ha-Levavot,109 Sefer Ḥaredim,110 and Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit.111

Major Changes throughout the Ages in Understanding the Nature of the Evil Inclination Tannaitic literature used the term yetzer generally to refer to the dual independent force within man. The existence of yetzer explained man’s propensity to sin and transgress the mandates of the Torah, without freeing him of responsibility for his actions, specifically because a separation was 109 Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar Yiḥud ha-Ma‘aseh, chap. 5 (trans.: The Book of Direction, 276–301). 110 Azikri, Sefer Ḥaredim, fol. 76a–b. Cf. Cordovero, Derishot be-Inyanei ha-Melakhim, 59. 111 Horowitz, Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, vol. 1, Be-Eser Ma’amarot, ma’amar 3, 4, fol. 35c–38b; ma’amar 7, fol. 21a; 39c–40a; 49a–b. The discussions of the evil inclination in the above sources are the background of the doctrine that maintains that divine service can be elevated by means of the evil inclination, as noted by Mendel Piekarz. See Piekarz, Beginning of Hasidism: Ideological Trends in Derush and Musar Literature [Heb] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1998), 204–68.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

presumed between the self and the Evil Inclination. According to Ishai Rosen-Zvi, in most Amoraitic literature the Evil Inclination also seeks mainly to persuade man to sin: “It does not seduce, it rather incites, and its aim is not the satisfactions of desires, but the violation of the Torah. It is concerned with actions, and not with thoughts, and such is the struggle against it.”112 He maintains that it is only in the later Stammaitic stratum of the Babylonian Talmud that the yetzer is specifically portrayed in the form of sexual desire, which would lead in later generations to the narrow identification of the Evil Inclination with sexuality.113 Just as in the rabbinic period we can speak of contentual changes in the inclinations doctrine, and especially to the meaning of the Evil Inclination, significant changes occurred in the medieval period in the nature and content of the struggle with the inclinations in the Jewish world, on the background of the penetration of various influences. One of the most striking of these influences was that of Sufism on the Jewish world, by means of the book Ḥovot ha-Levavot [i.e., Duties of the Heart]. The long discussion by its author, R. Bahya ibn Pakuda, on the struggle against thoughts engendered by the Evil Inclination [“the instinct”] begins by dividing these thoughts into two categories: (1) thoughts that raise doubts concerning religious beliefs, and thereby undermine the reason for maintaining a life of Torah and commandments; (2) action-directed thoughts that encourage a person to take care of the affairs of this world and strengthen his worldly existence, while negating the reason and worth of religious activity that does not contribute to this earthly existence.114 The book defines the Evil Inclination as the “worst enemy” that a man has in the world.115 The chapter devoted to the struggle against the Evil Inclination consists mainly of examples of troubling thoughts that divert a person from the observance of the commandments and from his spiritual efforts to dedicate his life to the love of God, along with the fitting responses to such thoughts. When he begins his examples, ibn Pakuda cites the above Sufi narrative, almost word for word:116

112 Rosen-Zvi, “Rereading the Yetzer,” 91. 113 Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires, 108–112; idem, “Rereading the Yetzer,” 107. 114 Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar Yiḥud ha-Ma‘aseh, chap. 4 (trans.: The Book of Direction, 276). 115 Ibid., chap. 5 (trans.: The Book of Direction, 276). 116 See above, 347 n. 18.

379

380

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

It is told of a pious man that he met some people returning from a great battle with an enemy. He said to them, ‘You are returning, praised be God, from a smaller battle, carrying your booty. Now prepare yourself for the greater battle.’ They asked, ‘What is that greater battle?’ and he answered, ‘The battle against the instinct and its armies.’117

Ibn Pakuda’s claims that the war against the Evil Inclination is the greatest of wars because a flesh-and-blood enemy despairs after he learns of the victor’s superior force, while in the battle against the Evil Inclination, the triumph of the latter means death for man, yet a person’s victory over the Evil Inclination does not vanquish the latter, and, actually, the battle continues one’s entire life. The extreme formulations used by ibn Pakuda were influenced by the ascetic nature of the Sufi world, which wages all-out war against man’s inner urges, and, more than he wants the transformation of the Evil Inclination, he seeks to continually and absolutely best it. It seems that this notion reflects the favoring of the more pessimistic of the two directions evident in the Palestinian Talmud’s dictum on the verse (Ps. 109:22) “my heart is pierced within me,” that is, identification with the way of David to fight the Evil Inclination brought in the Palestinian Talmud, and not that of Abraham. Moshe Idel wrote that we may reasonably assume that the term “the battle of the urges” that appears in the writings of R. Abraham Abulafia originated in the descriptions of such battles in Ḥovot ha-Levavot, but this war takes on a new and different meaning in Abulafia’s works. He speaks of a ceaseless war between two inclinations: the Evil Inclination is the imagination, known as koaḥ ha-midameh (the “imaginative faculty”) in medieval Jewish philosophy, and the Good Inclination, which is the intellect.118 It is known and conspicuous to all the Sages of the Torah who are Kabbalists, nor is it concealed to the true philosophers, that every man is given a choice without any compulsion and without any force, but there is a human power within man, and it is called the Stirring Power koaḥ ha-me‘orer, and it is that which arouses his heart to do or not to do [any thing]. And after this, a man finds in his heart one who forces him between these two opposites, 117 Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar Yiḥud ha-Ma‘aseh, chap. 4 (trans.: The Book of Direction, 277). 118 Moshe Idel, “The Battle of the Urges: Psychomacia in the Prophetic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafiah” [Heb], in Peace and War in Jewish Culture, ed. Avriel Bar-Levav (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2006), 116.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

and whichever of them shall be victorious over him will activate the limbs to perform actions for good or for evil; and this principle shall return, of man always struggling and warring against the thoughts of this heart, the two former motivating all of the aspects of his many thoughts, as is written in Sefer Yezirah [chap. 6], “The heart in soul [i.e., within man] is like the king in a battle”. . . .And a man possesses these two forms, called impulses or powers or angels or thoughts or comprehensions [tziyurim] or however you wish to call them. For the intent of them all refer to one thing, but the main thing is to apprehend His reality and to recognize their essence in truth, by proofs which are based on tradition and reason, and to distinguish between them in degree.119

Idel explains that the inner enemy is depicted here as thoughts of the heart, referring to thoughts that distract the prophetic Kabbalist from the concentration needed to attain the ecstatic-prophetic consciousness that he seeks. Since the struggle can be decided in the realm of a person’s thought, and less in the developmental process of self-education, redemption depends upon an inner victory, that can be achieved momentarily:120 Do not remove your thoughts from the Lord for anything in the world, even if a dog, a cat, a mouse, or some other thing that was not with you in the house. This is the activity of the Satan, who goes about in the mind and creates an image that does not exist in the reality, and he is appointed over this.121

Idel comments that the main enemy of the one who exerts himself to concentrate is therefore the unreal nature of the worthless thoughts that are related to the imaginative faculty. The hindrance they are liable to cause to the mystic’s redemptive activity, as a consequence of physicality and sexual desire, was of less concern to Abulafia. In Abulafia’s thought, the Evil Inclination that must be fought is the imaginative faculty, which generates foreign thoughts, that in turn disturb the concentration necessary for the prophetic experience.122 119 Sefer Sitrei Torah, MS. Paris BN 774, ed. Amnon Gross (Jerusalem, 2002), 149–50 (cited in Idel, “Battle of the Urges,” 106). See also the discussion in Idel, Mystical Experience, 96–97. 120 Idel, “Battle of the Urges,” 107. 121 Abraham Abulafia, Ḥayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba, fol. 63a–b, amended in accordance with MS. Paris 777, fol. 122b (cited in Idel, “Battle of the Urges,” 108). 122 Idel, “Battle of the Urges,” 109–10.

381

382

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Idel asserts that despite the likely influence on Abulafia of what ibn Pakuda wrote regarding the war with the Evil Inclination, the interiorization of this war in Abulafia’s writings differs from that in Ḥovot ha-Levavot, that was written under the influence of Neoplatonist and Sufi thought. Abulafia speaks of a process of the demythologization of Satan, who represents the imaginative faculty that constantly awaits the noetic fall, since Satan demands that the mystic wage constant war against his own thoughts. This motif is similar to that found in the Eastern Orthodox Christian mystical hesychasm.123 Idel explains that Abulafia, under Neo-Aristotelian influence, transferred the arena of the struggle from the soul to the intellect.124 Abulafia’s different direction was influenced by the thought of Maimonides, who neutralized the mythical-demonic aspects of the term “Evil Inclination” found in the rabbinic literature, and gave prominence to the saying of Resh Lakish: “Satan, the Evil Inclination, and the Angel of Death are all the same.”125 The importance of this dictum, for Maimonides, lies in its assertion that all the actions ascribed to Satan, the Evil Inclination, and the Angel of Death are a single action, namely, the removal and departure of the intellect, which is abandoned in favor of the body’s demands: Know that the word satan derives from [the verb “satah,” to turn away, figuring for instance in the verse]: “Steh [turn away] from it and pass one” [Prov. 4:15]; I mean to say that it derives from the notion of turning-away and going-away. For it is he who indubitably turns people away from the ways of truth and makes them perish in the ways of error. . . . They also say that the evil inclination is produced in the human individual at birth: “Sin croucheth at the door” [Gen. 4:7]; as the Torah states literally: “From his youth” [Gen. 8:21]. On the other hand, good inclination is only found in man when his intellect is perfected.126

Thus, for Maimonides the Evil Inclination causes man to digress from rational thought in favor of submission to the body’s demands, like a child who is driven by his physicality due to the weakness of his intellect. Following the inner intellective meaning that Maimonides gave to the terms “Evil Inclination” and “Good Inclination,” Abulafia asserted that “the 123 Ibid., 110–11; see George A. Maloney, Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorskij (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), 73–79. 124 Idel, “Battle of the Urges,” 134. 125 BT Bava Batra 16a. 126 Maimonides, Guide 3:22 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 489–90).

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

two thoughts that a person finds within himself are derivatives of the two inclinations.”127 Emphasizing the inner sense of the inclinations as intellective, either imaginative or rational, enabled Abulafia to, on the one hand, stress the extreme contrast between them and, on the other, be cognizant of the inner intellective element shared by both, that, inter alia, provides a new understanding of the Mishnaic teaching in Berakhot 9:5 about serving the Lord with both inclinations.128 Idel expressly noted the profound difference between the interiorizing conception of the inclinations of the prophetic Kabbalah founded by Abraham Abulafia and the understanding that emerges from the theosophic writings of Castille Kabbalists in the thirteenth century. Idel argues that the latter acted out in reaction to the extreme spiritualization of the Evil Inclination in Ḥovot ha-Levavot, in the writings of Abulafia (who speaks often of the “war within the heart”) and in additional sources, and tended to perceive the Evil Inclination as an outer force that is to be battled as if it were a mythical entity. For Idel, the perception of the Evil Inclination in the Zohar, and especially in Safed Kabbalah, in the writings of both R. Moses Cordovero and R. Isaac Luria, reflect this exteriorization process. In these books the main motive factor in human behavior does not exist within man, but in the relations between man and a series of external entities such as angels and demons that are created by acts of kindness or by sins. Only in the Kabbalistic ethical-teachings literature from the middle of the sixteenth century and the Hasidic literature does the spiritual war within the heart return to occupy its central position.129 The book Sha‘arei Kedushah is a prime example of the inner perception of the inclinations in the Kabbalistic ethical-teachings literature. It presents the inclinations, not as outer entities, but as inner forces that accompany the soul: 127 Abulafia, Imrei Shefer, ed. Amnon Gross (Jerusalem, 2000), 27. For more on the importance of the urges in Abulafia’s thought, see ibid., 24, 26, 80, 129 (cited in Idel, “Battle of the Urges,” 109). 128 “In my opinion, the good inclination itself is, in truth, the evil inclination, which was created in man, as hinted [by the word] va-yetzer, [which is written in Gen. 2:7] with two [letters] yud, to demonstrate [that there exist] two inclinations, and another hint to this are [the two names of God]: YHWH and Elohim” (Abraham Abulafia, early commentary on the secrets of the Guide of the Perplexed, MS. Jerusalem 8o 1303, fol. 72b (cited in Idel, “Battle of the Urges,” 140 n. 172). 129 Idel, “Battle of the Urges,” 139–41. For additional aspects of the interiorization of religious life in Abulafia’s writings, and especially for the interiorization of the messianic idea, see Idel, Messianic Mystics, 65–79.

383

384

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

We will also explicate the nature of the Good Inclination and the Evil Inclination, that they are two additional creations in man, besides his soul. They are light from the light of the angels, which is called the Good Inclination, and light from the light of the kelipot [literally, “husks”; the external repositories of evil], which is called the Evil Inclination, which is exterior to the Good Inclination and a kelipah to it. A person’s soul itself, however, is the innermost of them all. By its being inner, and also because it is called man’s essence (atzmut), consequently, he has the choice to turn to the place that he wants, because he is greater than them. His propensity is mainly to the Good Inclination, because it is holy like him, and additionally, it is closer to him. The main propensity of the body, however, is to the Evil Inclination, because both are from the side of the evil, and also because they are close to one another. Now, from this aspect, the material quarrels with the soul; since the soul performs commandments only by means of the body, which tends more to the Evil Inclination, from this aspect, there is a great difficulty in conquering them.130

According to this conception of R. Hayyim Vital, we can draw three concentric circles of inwardness. The soul is in the center, beyond it is the Good Inclination, and furthest outward is the Evil Inclination. The Evil Inclination is identified with physicality, while the Good Inclination is defined as an inner force that tends to the soul, but is not identical to it. The battle waged between the inclinations is portrayed—as in the original rabbinic depiction—as an inner struggle between two attractions, that of the body, to which the Evil Inclination draws, and that of the soul, to which the Good Inclination draws, with the observance of the commandments being the practical expression of the latter attraction. The diverse range of new meanings that were given to the rabbis’ doctrine of the inclinations during the course of the medieval period were the raw material used by the founders of the various schools within the Hasidic movement and the traditional yeshivah world, beginning in the eighteenth century. The most important difference between these two worlds on the question of contending with the Evil Inclination is reflected most clearly in the above passage from the Palestinian Talmud: “Abraham transformed the Evil Inclination into the good one,” on the one hand, while on the other, “David could not bear it, and killed it in his heart.” As mentioned above, the Hasidic world preferred the approach attributed to Abraham, in the spirit 130 Vital, Sha‘arei Qedushah 3:2, 103–104.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

of the teachings ascribed to the Baal Shem Tov, who adopted this path, while the way attributed to David became the guiding light for the leaders of the Mussar movement, the students of R. Israel Salanter, and was especially refined in the “Novardok approach” of the Mussar yeshivot founded by his student R. Joseph Josel Horowitz in the city of Novardok (Belorussia) in 1896.131

The Doctrine of the Inclinations in Hasidism Joseph Weiss argued that the fundamental innovation of the Baal Shem Tov relates to the elevation of foreign thoughts. The idea is that these thoughts are not totally evil, and therefore must not be ejected from the contemplative consciousness, but rather “rectified.” According to Weiss, “the early growth of Hasidic thought was bound up with the new way revealed by the Baal Shem Tov to treat erring and misleading thoughts.”132 A brief study of the elevation of foreign thought in the teaching brought in the name of the Baal Shem Tov in early Hasidic books reveails that this issue was based in its entirety on the Baal Shem Tov’s conception of the Evil Inclination. The roots of this notion are to be found in the Baal Shem Tov’s worldview that tended to monism and opposed the extreme dualism of body and soul, material and form, which in great degree dominated medieval Jewish thought. Our perusal of the writings of Abraham Abulafia showed that he intensified the interiorization of the doctrine of the inclinations, turning this into a war against unworthy thoughts. The Baal Shem Tov infused the struggle against foreign thoughts with new existential meanings, of rectification and elevation, by means of meditating upon the godly element that sustains them. This development was built upon R. Isaac the Blind’s famous parable of the loiterer and the king’s daughter, that is preserved in the book Re’shit Ḥokhmah by R. Elijah de De-Vidas. This parable, as well, received a 131 On the Mussar movement generally, and its roots in the Lithuanian opposition to Hasidism and the teachings of Elijah, the Vilna Gaon, see Dov Katz, The Musar Movement: Its History, Leading Personalities, and Doctrines, trans. Leonard Oschry (Tel Aviv: Orly Press, 1975). On the Novardok style and its founder R. Joseph Josel Horowitz, see the Hebrew edition: Katz, Tenu‘at ha-Musar (Tel Aviv: Abraham Zioni Press, 1967), 4:150–290. See also Immanuel Etkes, Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Mussar Movement: Seeking the Truth of Torah, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993). 132 Joseph Weiss, “The Early Growth of the Hasidic Way” [Heb], in Studies in Hasidism, ed. Avraham Rubinstein (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1977), 165.

385

386

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

new meaning in the world of the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples.133 Keter Shem Tov relates in the name of the Baal Shem Tov: From the Baal Shem Tov: Foreign thoughts are to be elevated through three [Sefirotic] lines, and attention must be paid from which each foreign thought is to be elevated to its root. These three lines are called “Fathers,” as is known, and the husk is called “curse,” which is the foreign thought; this is the exile of the Shekhinah within the depths of the husks. This is the meaning of what is written, “Come near to my soul and redeem it” [Ps. 69:19]. This means, to elevate the parts of the soul, the holy sparks, from within the husks to the holy, which is called “redemption.” For one must pray because of the exile of his nefesh, ruaḥ, and neshamah [each usually translated as “soul”] that are [controlled] by the Evil Inclination.134

Here, as in other places, the Baal Shem Tov applies the verse in Psalms regarding the mental distresses of the worshiper against external enemies to what happens in the worshiper’s inner world. The verses “Come near to my soul and redeem it, free me from my enemies. You know my reproach, my shame, my disgrace; You are aware of all my foes” (Ps. 69:19–20) are applied to the inner thoughts that are in spiritual exile because they have been trapped by the Evil Inclination. That is, they have been banished from the holy and have been channeled to the world of spiritual death, in the spirit of Maimonides’ and Abulafia’s interpretations of the “Evil Inclination.” The Baal Shem Tov teaches how to rectify and elevate these thoughts by connection to their godly source. From the Baal Shem Tov, may his memory be for the life of the World to Come: how a person hears from the Evil Inclination to commit a transgression, he had to learn from the Evil Inclination itself, that always does the will of its Maker. This is the meaning of what is written: “When you take the field against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive” [Deut. 21:10].135

133 Moshe Idel, “Female Beauty: A Chapter in the History of Jewish Mysticism” [Heb], in Within Hasidic Circles: Studies in Hasidism in Memory of Mordecai Wilensky, ed. Immanuel Etkes et al. (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1999), 326–34. The parable of the loiterer and the king’s daughter appears in full below, chapter six, 495 n. 140. 134 Keter Shem Tov, 59. 135 Ibid., 152.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

According to the Baal Shem Tov, the rectification is performed by intellective contemplation of the Evil Inclination itself, that is, of negative thoughts that are not fitting and that distract a person from prayer. The contemplation indicated by the Baal Shem Tov leads to the profound understanding that these thoughts could not exist by themselves without the divine life force that sustains them. This vitality is denoted by the Lurianic “holy sparks,” a term the Baal Shem Tov frequently uses to designate the godly source that sustains evil, as well, and that is to be elevated and redeemed by such contemplation.136 The Baal Shem Tov’s method is what the Palestinian Talmud ascribes to Abraham, who was capable of turning evil into good by revealing the holy spark that sustains evil. This actualizes the position taken by the mishnah in Berakhot to serve the Lord with both inclinations, unlike the opposite approaches in the thought of the rabbis, such as the teaching that tractate Sukkah transmits in the name of R. Judah bar Ilai: As R. Judah expounded: In the future the Holy One, blessed be He, will bring the Evil Inclination and slay it before the righteous and the wicked. To the righteous it will seem like a towering hill, and to the wicked it will seem to them like a strand of hair. Both the former and the latter will weep. The righteous will weep and say, “How could we have overcome such a towering hill!,” and the wicked will weep and say, “How is it that we were unable to overcome a strand of hair!”137

This teaching shows that, instead of the belligerent position that views the elimination of the Evil Inclination and its removal from man as an ideal that will be attained in its entirety only in the messianic era, the Baal Shem Tov is not afraid to come into contact with the Evil Inclination and harness it to the service of the Lord. According to the Hasidic tradition, this conception enabled the Baal Shem Tov to win over ascetic personalities such as 136 This idea is significantly expanded in the Baal Shem Tov’s commentary to Ps. 107, which first appeared as Sefer Katan [“Little Book”] (Zhitomer, 1805). For this commentary, including the entire text, see Rivka Shatz, “The Commentary of R. Israel Baal Shem Tov to Psalm CVII: The Myth and Ritual of ‘The Descent to She’ol’” [Heb], Tarbiz 42 (1972– 1973): 154–84. Shatz stressed the existential nature of the commentary: “Actually, we have here, in all these teachings, an existentialist statement: a sense of activist enterprise to smash the partitions of the imaginary reality, and the joy of discovering that everything is merely ‘a covering and dream language’ of the King Himself ” (ibid., 182). 137 BT Sukkah, 52a. Shatz, “The Commentary,” 182 n. 72.

387

388

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye and the Maggid of Mezheritch.138 The change that the Baal Shem Tov effected in the world of R. Jacob Joseph is reflected in many teachings in which the latter discusses the proper relationship between matter and form: It seems to me that man was created from matter and form, which are two opposites. For matter follows the dictates of the physical matter, which is the husks, while the form desires and seeks spiritual things. The end purpose of man’s creation is that he make form of matter, and that there will be a single unity, and not distinct things.139

The Baal Shem Tov brought about a spiritual upheaval in his encounter with ascetic pietists such as R. Jacob Joseph. He explained to them the error in seeing tension between matter and form, which they perceived in terms of a war to the death between the Evil Inclination and the Good Inclination. Matter, however, can be transformed into form, in the spirit of what R. Jacob Joseph would later write in his commentary to the Torah portion of Bo (Exod. 10–13:16): For it is known that there are matter and form, and they are two opposites. When one rises the other falls, as we mentioned in the explanation of nitzim or nitzavim as referring to Dathan and Abiram.140 There are different times, there is a time when the matter dominates, when a person is engaged in material matters, such as eating and drinking, intercourse, and the like, and there is a time when the form dominates, when a person engages in Torah and prayer. When he derives pleasure from one, he harms the other [employing a wordplay: the letters of oneg (“derives pleasure”) rearranged form nega (“harms”)], and this is called Mitzrayim [= Egypt], for one grieves [metzar] the other, as “In distress [min ha-metzar] I called on the Lord” [Ps. 118:5]. When, however, both are equal in oneg, this is the preferable time, as it is said, “As the musician played, the hand of the Lord came upon him” [II Kings 3:15], for when there is the joy of form that also has joy for matter, this is complete joy. . . .

138 Shivḥei ha-Besht, ed. Rubinstein, 103–105, 126–29 (trans.: In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, 64–65, 81–84). 139 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef, introduction, para. 4, 12. 140 Ibid., Mishpatim 2, where matter and form are presented as quarreling with each other, following BT Nedarim 64b: “Wherever nitzim [quarreling] or nitzanim [standing] are mentioned, the reference is to none other than to Dathan and Abiram.”

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

Then when the matter rejoices in the joy of the form, then “and every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die” [Exod. 11:5]. This refers to the Evil Inclination, who is an old, first-born king who rules this world, which is called the land of Egypt, for the pleasures of this world have a boundary [metzer] and limit, and as it is written, “and my heart is pierced within me” [Ps. 109:22]—after the matter has joined the joy of the form, this is perfection than which there is no higher, and this is easily understood.141 The Hasidic commentary seeks ways to realize the Mishnaic dictum of “‘with all your heart’—with both your inclinations,” to which it gives a new interpretation. The early Hasidic masters took diverse approaches to the question of the Evil Inclination and the tension between materiality and spirituality, and even those that remained closer to the alternative position, that sought to overcome the Evil Inclination, were markedly influenced by the Baal Shem Tov’s innovation. An approach that incorporates the two directions, in the spirit of the Baal Shem Tov’s interpretation, was set forth by R. Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk in his exegesis of Ps. 109:22 (“and my heart is pierced within me”) and 119:105 (“Your word is a lamp to my feet”): This is the meaning of the words of King David, may he rest in peace, who said “and my heart is pierced [halal] within me” [Ps. 109:22]. The meaning of “and my heart” is my inner self, since every inner thing is called “heart.” This is close to the interpretation of the holy Zohar,142 following “In Your behalf my heart says” [Ps. 27:8], for he said of the Lord that He is his heart, since He is the innerness of everything. This is the meaning of His word and my heart: the meaning—my innerness is empty [halal] within me; this means, that it [i.e., his heart] is not connected to any material thing, and accordingly is ready to receive all thoughts simply, as they are, from the world of thought. This is the meaning of the words of King David, may he rest in peace, in the verse “Your word is a lamp to my feet” [Ps. 119:105]. This means that the lamp is called “light,” that illuminates by means of material objects, namely, the oil and the wick; and the foot is called the lower and material levels. This is what we said: “a lamp to my feet” means the light that illuminates me in my material thoughts, not to act in the manner [my] thought [directs me], which is “Your word,” meaning: that I recalled that the enticements of the [Evil] Inclination are Your words, because you vitalize them, and Your intent 141 Ibid., Bo, para. 7, 149–50. R. Jacob Joseph frequently reiterates this notion; see, for example, ibod., Baḥar, para. 6, 411. 142 Zohar 2:128a–b. For a discussion of this exposition, see above, 298, n. 92.

389

390

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

is undoubtedly the opposite of this. In reward for this [in the continuation of the same verse], “a light for my path.” This means: the light is the simple spiritual light, without connection to anything material, and this is my reward: after the smashing of desire several times, to do the opposite of the thought, I made for myself a path that will bring me the simple thought, without material garbs, and let this suffice for the one who understands.143

The “foot” for R. Menahem Mendel is all the material lower levels. Wolfson maintains that the term regel [foot], that already appears in Biblical and Talmudical sources as a euphemism for the male sexual organ (e.g., Exod. 1:5; BT Berakhot 23a), is related in Kabbalistic and Hasidic sources to the term halikhah [walking].144 Whether we accept this specific interpretation, that the Hasidic tradition was faithful to the prime meaning that rabbinic tradition ascribed to the Evil Inclination as the sexual urge, or whether we regard the term as relating to sexuality and all material matters, a fundamental change emerges from this Hasidic teaching: while the more traditional interpretation struggles with the Evil Intention in the attempt to put it to death, the Hasidic interpretation gazes upon the Evil Inclination and realizes that it originates in the divine vitality. R. Menahem Mendel writes: “I recalled that the enticements of the [Evil] Inclination are Your words, because you vitalize them.” The Hasidic conception of vitality is the key to understanding this tradition’s relating to the enticements of the Evil Inclination as a whole, and specifically with the sexual enticement. By being aware that the Evil Inclination originates in the godly life force that infuses everything, the Hasid aspires to overcome his Evil Inclination by means of sublimation. It would seem that the Hasid, too, seeks to smash his desires and to overcome their domination of his inner world. At first glance, this aspiration 143 Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, Peri ha-Aretz, “Letters,” 58 (letter from 1784). 144 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Walking as a Sacred Duty: Theological Transformation of Social Reality in Early Hasidism,” in Hasidism Reappraised, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1996), 202–207. I objected to this interpretation in my Human Temple, 238 n. 71. The word regel is often used to denote a low and material place, not only in a sexual sense. See, for instance, R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef, Vayere, 59: “Here, there is the aspect that after his ascent, he once again descends in order to elevate the lower degrees, as is alluded to by the verse ‘I had bathed my feet—was I to soil them again’ [Cant. 5:3].” However, my objection to the reduction to a sexual connotation does not negate the argument that the phallic symbolism is not incidental. Rather, it attests that the Hasidic masters regarded sexual temptations as the clearest manifestations of corporality in human life.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

appears identical to the wish to subdue the desires, that had its beginnings in rabbinic dicta, and is characteristic of the medieval mussar [ethical-pietist teachings] literature that evolved into the doctrine of the repression of the urges in the Novardok yeshivot. We should not, however, underestimate the difference between these two disparate ways. The rabbis’ counsel to harness the Evil Inclination to the service of the Lord is understood by the Hasidic masters in a new light, without abandoning the basic medieval conception that viewed materiality as a barrier between man and the nonmaterial godly light. The Evil Inclination in general, and especially the sexual urge, are not opposed to the godly: they are nourished by the godly vitality (because they are living forces). Due, however, to this life force’s being clothed in materiality, the latter aims to make man its slave. The Hasidic awareness entails the understanding that “Your intent is undoubtedly the opposite of this.” In other words, man is aware that the divine life force that is clothed in materiality as a whole, and especially in sexual materiality, is meant to enable him, as a flesh-and-blood creature, to go beyond this materiality. Accordingly, he is capable of successfully overcoming desire and controlling it, instead of being controlled by it. Thanks to this ability, man will reach the state “that will bring me the simple thought, without material garbs.” Liberation from enslavement to one’s desires and the ability to overcome them allow a person to experience the verse “and my heart is pierced within me,” which is of the aspect of his inner connection to the divine essence within him. We may reasonably assume that the Lurianic discussion of the halal ha-panui [the void] underlies R. Menahem Mendel’s interpretation of the verse “and my heart is pierced [halal] within me.” While originally, in Lurianic Kabbalah, this term expresses the voiding of existence of the divine fullness to enable the creation of the worlds, in this Hasidic interpretation the halal is not a spatial concept, but rather denotes a state of consciousness, one empty of materiality. The void before the formation of the material worlds was transformed into the inner thought that is filled with the divine light because it was liberated from the dominion of material desires. By understanding that the desires, too, originate in the divine vitality, the Hasid aspires to directly connect, in his innermost self, with this life force, without the intermediary of materiality. In Platonic terms, the Hasid who contemplates the erotic desires that engulf him understands that their source is in the divine eros. He substitutes their physical realization with an experiential-intellective connection with that divine source, in order to ascend, in his inner nature, beyond the instinctual subjectivity

391

392

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

that dominates him. The Hasidic existential conception relates to the Evil Inclination as one expression of the godly vitality within man that is to be intellectively bound to its source.

The Mussar Movement and the Novardok Approach The medieval mussar books, from Ḥovot ha-Levavot and Sha‘arei Teshuvah to Orḥot Tzaddiqim, Tomer Devorah, and Mesilat Yesharim, were enthusiastically studied in the Mussar yeshivot that were founded by the students of R. Israel Salanter in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century.145 R. Israel Salanter declares in his Iggeret ha-Mussar (the Mussar Manifest): Man is free in his imagination and imprisoned in his intellect. . . . Woe to the imagination, this evil foe. It is in our hands, we have the power to drive it away, when we attentively heed the intellect, to know the truth, to calculate the benefit of a transgression as opposed to its cost. And what shall we do, the imagination is a flowing stream, and the intellect will drown, if we will not convey it in a ship, which is the soul’s emotion and the spirit’s storm.146

The Mussar yeshivot founded by Salanter’s students were meant to offer an alternative to the Hasidic path, and especially to curb the influence of the Jewish Enlightenment, as is stated explicitly by his student R. Joseph Josel Horowitz, the “Elder of Novardok”: The time came and “a stock sprouting poison weed” [Deut. 29:17] fell in the world, this is the cursed Haskalah [= the Jewish Enlightenment], which has struck down many victims, and has dulled the heart of the people. It led to people starting to be disgusted with the word of the Lord and its bearers. A breach sprang forth between the yeshivot and the world, and a chasm opened between them. Since they felt that the life of [this] world and the life of perfection are two different opposites, that are not compatible with one another and cannot be reconciled, they began to leave the yeshivot and they drew close to new guides, who incite and cause to stray from the true path. Under the influence of the new spirit, the spirit that itself was in the yeshivot became attenuated, became colder, until the few who remained, too, 145 On R. Israel Salanter, see Etkes, Rabbi Israel Salanter; Katz, The Musar Movement, 1:180–335. 146 Israel Salanter: Selected Writings, ed. Mordechai Pachter (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1972), 114.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

were indecisive . . . and now, what is to be done? The evil spirit, the spirit of unfetteredness and heresy, Heaven forfend, is strengthened every day in the world, and begins to harm the remaining ones, and to drive them to the world and life that are the actual opposites of the life of Torah. We must take counsel, how to save the perfect souls of Israel, lest they be swept away in the current of the time that grows stronger and is renewed every day, and lest they drown in the tempestuous waves. . . . If we truly wish to rebuild the yeshivot, we must place them on faithful foundations, and elevate them to the level of the yeshivot in the past generations. In order to achieve this, we must assume this basic assumption: “One thing is asked—to live in the House of the Lord all the days of my life” [based on Ps. 27:4]. That is, we cannot connect with the world, because the world has distanced itself from us. We must emphasize that the world and the yeshivah are two opposite things that contradict one another. In order to be saved from the deleterious influence of the world, the surviving remnant must be strong in the face of circumstances and become even more distant from the outside world. In an emergency, when all the railroad cars are filled with an army at war, we must purchase a ticket from the first class.147

The sincere words of the Elder of Novardok attest to the significant change, in recent generations as well, in the content of the Evil Inclination from the perspective of the world of Torah scholarship. R. Israel Salanter, who was critical of the religiosity of those of his generation, including the Torah scholars among them, did not find the Haskalah itself to be the root of the problem. He rather remained faithful to the conceptions of the Evil Inclination in the medieval mussar literature, and combined two schools in this literature, the one that viewed the Evil Inclination as “the power of impurity in man that leads him to trespasses,” and that which regarded it as “the power of human desires, that longs for everything pleasurable at the time.”148 Unlike Salanter, his student R. Joseph Horowitz explicitly defined the spirit of impurity, the evil spirit of the Evil Inclination, as “the spirit 147 Joseph Jusel Horowitz, Madregat ha-Adam: From the Teachings of the Saba of Nowardok (Jerusalem, 1976), 18–19. This book, first published in 1947 in New York, is a collection of R. Horowitz’s talks to his students, from the establishment of the yeshivah until his death in Kiev in 1919. The first essay, “Man’s Level in Understanding One’s Attributes,” was initially published in Poltava in 1918; the second, “Man’s Level on the Ways of Trust in God,” was published there in 1919; and “Man’s Level in Seeking Perfection” was published in Piotrkow in 1922. 148 Pachter, Israel Salanter, 118–19.

393

394

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

of unfetteredness and heresy.” According to this latter worldview, that was adopted by many yeshivah heads beginning in the early twentieth century, the root of evil lies in the power of attraction of the heretical thoughts disseminated by the Haskalah movement, since it led to the aggrandizement of the life of this world, attraction to its pleasures, and the casting of grave doubts regarding the truth of the tenets and teachings of Judaism and the practical obligations that devolve from them. The Evil Inclination is identified with the new thoughts that preceded the process of secularization in the Western world, and they became the root of the instinctual attraction to the pleasures of this world. The path that was fashioned in the Mussar yeshivot, and especially in the Beit Yosef yeshivot founded by Horowitz, consisted of total war against the Evil Inclination, while doubting the ability of the Hasidic way to effect the desired results. This viewpoint completely rejected the Hasidic inward contemplation of the Evil Inclination’s thoughts, in order to connect them to their godly source, and thereby harness them to the service of the Lord. The desire of the Hasidic masters to refrain from the need to repress the Evil Inclination—that leads to the weakening of the inner vitality—was perceived as unimportant in light of the intensifications of the new enticements of the Evil Inclination. In the beginning of his book, Horowitz expressly rejects the Hasidic methodology: Nahmanides, of blessed memory, already wrote that falsehood is baseless. That is, evil has no basis, and is only trickery, which is called “[hocus-] pocus,” in which people are deceived and their money is taken from them. The strength of trickery lies only in its speed, for people make haste all the time to do the “[hocus-]pocus,” to the extent that a person cannot properly look at it. For if he had gazed upon it with sharp vision, then he undoubtedly would have become aware of the falsehood and fraud it contains, and only this tremendous speed causes the senses to be deceived. Additionally, this is actually the ways of the Evil Inclination, for Satan cannot show transgression in the form of something good, and his power lies entirely in his speed of motion, to the extent that when a person begins to look and think about it [i.e., the temptations], his deed is already done, and the person finds himself after the act, with his thought. Consequently, the wicked do not abandon their way, for they know that it is evil and bitter. For the Evil Inclination hurries on his way, while [man] acts slowly in comparison; consequently, [man] always finds himself bested.149 149 Horowitz, Madregat ha-Adam, 14.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

According to the barriers parable of the Baal Shem Tov, the world was created by means of trickery; accordingly, the proper contemplation of the reality reveals this trickery, which deludes us into thinking that iron barriers stand between us and God.150 The Baal Shem Tov’s methodology consisted of inner contemplation through which man was to overcome the problematic nature of instinctual thoughts and elevate them to their godly source. For R. Joseph Horowitz, this way is incapable of contending with the powerful sophistication of “Evil Inclination” thoughts. He based his direction in life entirely on that of the Vilna Gaon (R. Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, 1720–1797), and the quotation from the latter he brings in the end of his discussion of the modes of repentance reflects the disparity between the Lithuanian Mussar path and that of the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples: The Vilna Gaon, of blessed memory, stated this to us: There are three types of physicians. The first is a wise man who prescribes a drug to drive out the bad blood; the second cannot drive out the bad blood, but places a bandage on each wound and heals it from the outside; and the third does not even know this, but is capable of alleviating it, so that it will not be so harsh. That is, there are three ways of serving the Lord: one who refines his intellect until he is disgusted by all the delights of nature, the filthy desires, and the other snares of the Evil Inclination, and obviously he will not engage in them at all; the intellect of the second is not so refined to think to be disgusted by all this, rather, his habit becomes his nature, and is called second nature. Despite his being desirous, he nevertheless breaks by himself, from the outside, any transgression that comes to hand; and the third is not so capable of breaking even from the outside, but he weakens his Evil Inclination when the latter fights with him and incites him to violate all the negative commandments. Then he weakens it with one of the sensibilities of the moral attributes. He will remove his desire, weigh it against the punishment for this transgression, remember the day of death, and thereby overcome his Evil Inclination when he remembers the greatness of its punishment. This is the meaning of Scripture, “not pressed out,” corresponding to those who completely conquer their Evil Inclination; “not bound up,” corresponding to the second [category], who bind up every wound on the outside; “not

150 See below, chapter six, 504–8.

395

396

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

softened” [all from Isa. 1:6], corresponding to the third group, saying that all three wounds exist, but there is not a single remedy for them all.151

For the Vilna Gaon, the best way to overcome the seductions of the Evil Inclination is by honing one’s intellect, that is, being fully occupied with Torah study, which will lead to disgust at and the nullification of the various instinctual attractions. The two other ways are methods of direct struggle that are meant to vanquish the Evil Inclination. The passage manifestly conveys that the Vilna Gaon’s strategy against the Evil Inclination consisted of maximal distancing from it, at the price of withdrawal from the world and an active life. The difference and tension between the Hasidic way of facing the Evil Inclination and Novardok’s war were described by Shmuel Ben-Artzi in Novardok, his memoirs from the time he was a student in the Beit Yosef yeshivah in Mezerich in the early 1930s: At that time doubtful thoughts about the method of justification of the way of Novardok began to enter his mind. And was not that Hasidic rabbi correct when he said of the Mussar advocates from the Novardok school that “their way consists of driving out with a towel the darkness that fills the house, instead of lighting a candle, even if small” . . . ? Perhaps, in truth, there is no need, and it might also be impossible, to fight against the bad traits and to attempt to uproot them from the heart with the sad ways of Novardok. Instead of this, would it be preferable to fill the day in the pursuit of good deeds and to serve the Lord “in joy, song, and gladness,” and the bad traits will depart on their own? From here, from the yeshivah building, he left, with his goal clear before him; and he returned here, to clarify for himself whether or not he had reached his goal. He would take a trenchant accounting of himself. . . . What was the goal? To totally uproot his love of the world, that distracted his thoughts from his maker; to see in this beautiful, transitory world, the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, the power and magnificence of the All-Powerful, and not mere beauty over which he should, and may, dally and be amazed, ceasing his study and his war with the Evil Inclination and its minions, and say: “How beautiful!”152

151 Horowitz, Madregat ha-Adam, 179–80 (following the Vilna Gaon’s commentary to Prov. 2). 152 Shmuel Ben-Artzi, Novardok [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Miskal, 2007), 53–56.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

This monologue, presumably spoken by a young man in the Beit Yosef yeshivah who was torn between the world of the Novardok Mussar yeshivah and the Hasidic worldview that he absorbed in his grandfather’s home, straightforwardly reflects the gaping chasm between the two methods, that was drawn into stark relief by the extreme Novardok emphasis on working on one’s traits and the conquest of the Evil Inclination. Ben-Artzi’s picturesque depiction is supported by the book of R. David Bleicher, the founder of the yeshivah in which he studied, who was the student and successor of the Elder of Novardok and the head of the central Beit Yosef yeshivah in Miedzyrzec-Podliaski until its destruction in the Holocaust, when he was murdered, together with his family and students: It is good for a person not to learn Torah matters from life, let him rather gaze upon the Torah by itself. Similar to this, in the border crossings between one country and another, guards stand and block the crossing. But when the countries’ representatives convene to discuss changing the borders, they do not see before them the guards who stand watch, they rather engage in negotiations and offer their opinions about the situation. Likewise, a person need not learn the ways of the Torah from the reality of the world, rather, he should learn everything from the Torah itself. When the Torah says that all of life’s details depends upon observing its details, let this be as tangible for him as if life’s senses show, and let him not budge a hairsbreadth from this sensation. This shows that it is realistic for him. For someone who comes to ask and raise objections about the Torah drawn from the reality of the world asks the opposite question, for the [actual] contradiction is from the Torah regarding the world, since the Torah is precise and eternal. [Man’s] view of the course of life is an absolute error.153

The way of thinking fashioned in the Beit Yosef Mussar yeshivot greatly influenced the world of yeshivot that was rebuilt following the Holocaust. The Mussar study methods unique to the Beit Yosef yeshivot were not renewed in almost all the new yeshivot, but the fundamental worldview that regarded the secular zeitgeist as the great temptation of the Evil Inclination, that thought of yeshivah life as an alternative to the life of this world, came to

153 David Bleicher, Divrei Binah u-Mussar: Mussar Talks Recorded by the Students of the Beit Yosef Yeshivah (Tel Aviv, 1970), 19–20.

397

398

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

dominate the Hasidic world as well, and was adopted by most of ultra-Orthodoxy’s leaders after the Holocaust.154

Summary of the Discussion of the Doctrine of the Inclinations In summary, the perception of the Evil Inclination underwent numerous changes in Jewish thought over the course of time. In my estimation, the primary importance of the rabbinic doctrine of the inclinations does not lie in the late Amoraitic attempt to describe the nature of the Evil Inclination in monolithic fashion, identifying it with sexuality. A far more significant aspect of the rabbis’ treatment of the issue is reflected in their awareness of the complexity of the human personality, of the existence of conflicting forces at work within man that pull him in different directions, and in suggesting diverse ways to contend with this. What is perceived as proper by the more intellective, conscious parts is not necessarily consistent with other inner attractions, that contradict and undermine what is approved by the intellect or by society. The two ways of contending with the Evil Inclination discussed above—fighting it or harnessing it for what is proper—could either oppose or complement one another. The perception of the two methods as contradictory frequently led to one-dimensional positions that engendered extreme responses. The question of what the inclinations doctrine in the Jewish sources added to that which is found in other religious sources lies beyond the purview of the current work, but I will briefly discuss the relationship between the picture that emerges from the Jewish sources and the fundamental position of Freudian psychoanalysis. Freud held Judaism’s overcoming of the Evil Inclination in esteem, while also subjecting it to pointed criticism. For Freud, overcoming the instinctual drive was not only the inner fuel of the idea of free choice and what nourishes the Jewish separatist laws; it led 154 On the role played by the students of the Beit Yosef yeshivah in fashioning the yeshivah world on the eve of the Holocaust and after it, see Bleicher, Divrei Binah u-Mussar, 89–93. R. Nahman of Bratslav held a different, approach, characteristic of the Hasidic sages. He maintained that the lust for money, the main component of the evil inclination, was to be corrected and not eliminated. R. Nahman’s idea offers a different direction for contending with modern materialism. See Ronny Bar-Lev, “Nahmanite Ethics and the Spirit of Tzaddiqism: The Lust for Money and Its Rectification in the Doctrine of R. Nahman of Bratzlav,” in On the Economy and on the Sustenance: Judaism, Society and Economics [Heb], ed. Itamar Brenner and Aharon Ariel Lavi (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2008), 59–96.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

Jews to develop self-guilt following a failure to achieve it, which led to an expansion of prohibitions, thereby creating an obsessive vicious circle.155 Since overcoming one’s instincts is based, in religion, on a system of repression of guilt feelings, then, according to Freud, this is an illusory solution.156 Freud was convinced that religious Judaism’s dealing with this issue was not successful, and he viewed psychoanalysis as a superior alternative. In the latter, consciousness is of great importance as a central tool in man’s dealing with his instincts. Moreover, psychoanalysis demands that man not deny the existence of such forces within him, arguing that their repression leads to their involuntary domination of man. At first glance, the rabbinic doctrine of the inclinations seems very distant from psychoanalysis, but there are significant points of contact. The very identification of certain behaviors as the Evil Inclination’s temptations typical of the rabbinic doctrine raises to the consciousness the disparity and tension between the different forces and directions that guide man in his actions. The difference between rabbinic and psychoanalytical conceptions is to be found in the ways in which they react to this complexity within man. Psychoanalysis assumes that repression and control are suppressive in nature, and result in even more uncontrollable outbursts. Jewish conceptions, beginning with the rabbis, demanded an active stance, and a clear decision in favor of what was perceived as proper, against what was deemed natural and necessary. The contemplative Hasidic way posited the elevation of the instinctual contents to the consciousness, by harnessing the instinctual energy on behalf of the values of religious life. This subliminal direction is quite similar to that taken by Freud. Struggle and the conquest of the Evil Inclination demand a weakening, and maximal surrender, of this energy’s contribution to life, based on the notion that a life of Torah is to take the place of natural, instinctual life. The way of the conquest of the 155 Freud, Moses and Monotheism, 173. 156 Hermann Cohen, in contrast, argued that Judaism, following the teachings of the prophets, ceased to impose guilt feelings on sacrifices. Rather, the acknowledgment of guilt is an individual process: when man stands before God, even as a fiction, he becomes aware of his own self. “When the man is declared a criminal, in accordance with the facts, and he is not able to help himself in the narrower correlation between man and man, in this deepest distress arises the problem of his I. . . . From this state of affairs it necessarily follows that free will must be maintained because of guilt, maintained in no way as an illusion, although as a fiction. But this fiction is the first principle of moral action in general. . . . If man is not permitted to lay aside the consciousness of his guilt then it is ethics itself which refers man to religion. . . . Man looks into the eyes of men; only God looks into the heart” (Cohen, Religion of Reason, 167–68).

399

400

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Evil Inclination is an extreme, activist direction that assumes that man is capable of wresting a decisive victory, in his inner self, in the battle between the different forces at play. In practice, however, it is based on infusing life with alternative content, that is, the contents of the Torah, as is explicit in rabbinic dicta. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel: My children! I created the Evil Inclination, but I [also] created the Torah to temper it. If you are occupied with the Torah, you will not be delivered up to it, as it is said, “Surely, if you do right, there is uplift.” But if you are not occupied with the Torah, then you will be delivered up to it, as it is said, “sin crouches at the door.” Moreover, it is entirely preoccupied with you, as it is said, “its urge is toward you.” Yet, if you so wish, you shall rule it, as it is said, “yet you can be its master.”157

Psychoanalysis seeks the hidden motives that often prevent a person from acting in accordance with the values that have their source in the religion, culture, and ethics in which he was educated. Psychoanalysis argues that the repression of these motives harms the balance of mental energy that is essential for a person’s existence and undermines his functioning. The Jewish doctrine of the inclinations indicates that awareness itself does not ensure man’s mastery of his life. Couched in modern terms, this doctrine relates to the inclinations as forces brimming with energy. For the rabbis, the Freudian ideal is existentially insufficient, and ways should be found to channel this energy to a purpose that exceeds the actualization of the instincts themselves. Rabbinic thought assumes that the Torah in itself wields considerable influence on man’s ability to contend with and channel this inner ferment. Psychoanalytical thought has no place for such an assumption when it speaks of human instincts.

The Emphasis on Inwardness as a Guiding Principle “The Holy One, blessed be He, requires the heart, as it is written, ‘but the Lord sees into the heart’ [I Sam. 16:7].” This is Rabba’s explanation in BT Sanhedrin 106b-107a for the question of why the prayer of R. Judah, whose study was limited to Nezikin [= civil law], was answered, while the prayers of his contemporaries, whose studies were much broader and included topics from diverse areas (such as the study of the tractate of Ukatzin), were 157 BT Kiddushin 30b. The Biblical quotations are from Gen. 4:7.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

not. The Biblical prooftext highlights the extent of the difference: “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Pay no attention to his appearance or his stature, for I have rejected him. For not as man sees [does the Lord see]; man sees only what is visible, but the Lord sees into the heart.” According to the principle stressed in this verse, a king is not to be chosen on the basis of his outer appearance. Consequently, we are to understand that, after David was portrayed as “handsome” in verse 12, the following verse (13) “And the Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him, for this is the one’” emphasizes that the fine sight that was revealed to Samuel was liable to be misleading. God directed Samuel to choose David because his inner and outer qualities were the same. Samuel did not select David on the basis of his outer appearance, he did so in accordance with the directive of the divine prophetic force that is characterized by inner vision. Rabba, as well, was not blinded by his contemporaries’ scholarliness: he preferred R. Judah’s inwardness, despite his not being the most erudite of his generation. What the Bible ascribes to the divine power of sight is translated by Rabba into a human test. It is clear to Rabba that the Torah scholars who presume that their great scholarliness makes them more meritorious than R. Judah thereby attest to their haughtiness, and, accordingly, to their inner inferiority. “But the Lord sees into the heart” provides Rabba with a fitting backdrop for formulating the principle that “The Blessed One, be He, requires the heart,” which unequivocally teaches of the superiority of inwardness to outerness. This principle patently favors the inner essence of a person’s religious activity, that is usually hidden from plain sight, over religious observance that is performed in outer life within social contexts. Admiel Kosman presented a fine example of this idea in his discussion of the narrative of R. Tanhuma and the divorced man from the midrashic work Genesis Rabbah, that he calls a narrative about “An Act that Comes from the Heart.”158 In the time of R. Tanhuma Israel had need of a fast [i.e., this was during a drought]. They came to him and requested: “Master, proclaim a fast.” He proclaimed a fast for one day, then a second day, and then a third day, but no rain fell. He came and expounded to them, saying: “My children, be filled 158 Admiel Kosman, “Obedience to the Law Versus Spontaneous Charismatic Action: Halakhah, Magic and Dialogue” [Heb], Bar-Ilan Law Studies 18, no. 1–2 (2002): 219–47. Kosman expands Yonah Frenkel’s comments on the narrative; see Frenkel, The Aggadic Narrative: Harmony of Form and Content [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2001), 308–13.

401

402

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

with compassion for one another, and the Holy One, blessed be He, will be filled with compassion for you.” When they were giving charity to the poor, they saw a man give money to his divorcee. They came before him [R. Tanhuma] and asked: “Why are we sitting here while a transgression is [being committed] here?” He asked them: “What did you see?” They replied: “We saw a certain man giving money to his divorcee.” He summoned them and had them brought before the community. He [R. Tanhuma] asked him: “What is this woman to you?” He answered: “She is my divorcee.” He [R. Tanhuma] asked him: “Why did you give her money?” He responded: “My master, I saw that she was in distress, and my heart was filled with compassion for her.” R. Tanhuma then turned his face to Heaven, and declared: “Master of the Universe, this man, against whom this woman has no claim for sustenance, saw her in her distress, and he was filled for compassion for her—and You, about whom it is written ‘The Lord is compassionate and gracious’ [Ps. 103:8], and we are Your children, the sons of Your friends, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—how much more so should You be filled with compassion for us!” Immediately, rain fell and the world felt relief.159

Kosman notes that R. Tanhuma uncovered the divorced man’s inner intent when he questioned him. The man’s action was halakhically flawed, because of the fear that giving money to one’s ex-wife, when not obligated to do so, might raise the suspicion of illicit sexual relations, and therefore the rabbis erected barriers between former spouses (see BT Ketubot 28a). Notwithstanding this, R. Tanhuma found that the man’s action was done out of his sincere sensitivity to his ex-wife’s distress. The public’s mistrust of the ex-husband exposes their outer motives and their inability to fully realize the exposition: “be filled with compassion for one another.” They fear that the man’s transgression will cancel the benefit that was supposed to result from their act of charity. In contrast with their utilitarian view of the giving of charity, R. Tanhuma sees the divorced man’s behavior as the true and full realization of human compassion. One who is filled with compassion for another gives charity because he senses the other person’s deep distress. And this is a dialogical bond, an “I-Thou” relationship. A person, however, who gives charity to a poor person as an outer action, while his heart is closed to the other’s distress, uses the poor 159 Gen. Rabbah 33:3. See Bereshit Rabbah, ed. Theodor and Albeck, 304–5. Kosman’s version (Kosman, “Obedience to the Law,” 230–32) follows Midrash Bereshit Rabba: MS. Vat. Ebr. 30, ed. M. Sokoloff (Jerusalem, 1971), 33.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

person as an object to attain his personal aim. In our case, the public shows no interest in the poor people themselves, as is shown by the continuation of the narrative. It merely needs them in order to do a “good deed” through them, the ritual of giving charity.160

The emphasis placed on the superiority of inwardness is not limited to ritual matters between man and God and is equally relevant for interpersonal relations. The Talmudic literature presents models of the ideal individual that encourage a person to improve his personality and inner traits with the aim of inner self-control and the strengthening of positive qualities and behaviors that will prevent conflict with other people. Directives of this sort are meant to develop the individual’s inner personality, so that he will limit uncontrolled situations in his life, and intensify his awareness of his conduct.161 Much has been written about the “Stoic nature” of the dictum by Ben Zoma in M Avot 4:1.162 For our discussion, we should take note of the fact that the wise man who learns from every man, the mighty one who 160 Kosman, “Obedience to the Law,” 235. 161 Joshua Levinson noted that the aggadic literature reveals an important development in the world of the rabbis: “The emergence of a new conception of subjectivity . . . increasing interest in people’s inner world. . . . The rabbis sought to know what Abraham thought on the way to bind [that is, sacrifice] his son, what Jacob experienced when he deceived his father and stole the blessing. The enhanced importance of the inner dimension leads to cognition, and perhaps preference, of inner processes over outer ones. . . . In other words, they transferred the model of the hero to man’s inner expanse” (Joshua Levinson, The Twice-Told Tale: A Poetics of the Exegetical Narrative in Rabbinic Midrash [Heb] [Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005], 128–29). 162 See Kaminka, Studies in the Bible, 50–51. A parallel phrase “Who is mighty? He who conquers his passions” in this mishnah can be found in Socrates’s dialogue with Callicles: “Call.: What do you mean by one who rules himself? Soc.: Nothing recondite; merely what most people mean—one who is temperate and self-mastering, ruler of the pleasures and desires that are in himself ” (Plato, Gorgias, 491). English translation based on Plato, Symposium, Gorgias, trans. W. R. M. Lamb, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 166 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 410–11. See also what Clinias says in Laws: “It is just in this war, my friend, that the victory over self is of all victories the first and best while self-defeat is of all defeats at once the worst and the most shameful. For these phrases signify that a war against self exists within each of us” (Plato, Laws 1:626e). For English translation, see Plato, Laws, trans. R. G. Bury, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 268 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 8–11. Compare also: “In temptations to anger a precept ready to thy hand is this: to be wroth is not manly, but a mild and gentle disposition, as it is more human, so it is more masculine. Such a man, and not he who gives way to anger and discontent, is endowed with strength and sinews and manly courage” (Marcus Aurelius, Communings 11:18 [trans.: 58:310–11]).

403

404

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

conquers his passions, the wealthy man who rejoices in his portion, and the one who honors others all share the esteem attained by means of inner efforts, and not outer ones. The personal prayers of the sages set forth in Tractate Berakhot likewise attest to their inner aspirations for self-control and abstention from negative feelings.163 Some of these aims are based on ways of thought that find expression in several teachings in Tractate Avot, such as: “R. Eliezer says: Let the honor of your fellow be as precious to you as your own” (2:10); “R. Joshua says: The evil eye, the Evil Inclination, and the hatred of mankind drive a man out of the world” (2:11); “R. Eliezer ha-Kappar says: Envy, lust, and honor take a man out of the world” (4:21). In the medieval period, the emphasized inwardness of the above rabbinic dicta evolved into a comprehensive doctrine that placed innerness at the center of religious life. This found especial expression in the book Ḥovot ha-Levavot by Bahya ibn Paquda and in the ethical teachings of Ashkenaz pietists. This conception is succinctly formulated by ibn Paquda in his introduction to Ḥovot ha-Levavot: Inward obedience, however, is expressed in the duties of the heart, in the heart’s assertion of the unity of God and in the belief in Him and His book, in constant obedience to Him and fear of Him, in humility before Him, love for Him and complete reliance upon Him, submission to Him and abstinence from the things hateful to Him. Inward obedience is expressed in the consecration of all our work for His sake, in mediation upon His graces, in all the duties performed by faith and conscience without the activity of the external body-members.

Thus I have come to know for certain that the duties of the members are of no avail to us unless our hearts choose to do them and our souls desire their performance.164 This interiorization was based on the notion that “according to the suffering so is the reward.” As Joseph Dan explained, in the thought reflected in medieval mussar literature, “it is not the realistic, material aspect of observance of the commandments that gives it its important religious significance, but rather the inner aspect, the psychological process that accompanies the performance of the commandments, or overcoming the

163 BT Berakhot 16b-17a. 164 Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, introduction (trans.: The Book of Direction, 89).

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

urge to commit a transgression.”165 In this spirit, R. Nissim ben Reuben Gerondi interpreted the Talmudic dictum “The Holy One, blessed be He, requires the heart”: For the essence of this level is not “wisdom,” rather, the complete intent in good deeds, for the final intent of good deeds is not that they be done, but kavanat ha-lev within them. See what is the meaning of intent, for one whose intents adhere to the Lord, may He be blessed, also when he is engaged in mundane affairs, matters of business and property, he fully serves the Lord, may He be blessed. But one whose intents do not adhere to the Lord, may He be blessed, also when he thinks to serve the Lord, he rebels against Him. For the prophet spoke in a similar vein: “Because that people has approached [Me] with its mouth and honored Me with its lips, but has kept its heart far from Me” [Isa. 29:13]; and it is said: “You are present in their mouths, but far from their thoughts” [Jer. 12:2].”166

One of the unique ways for intensifying this mental process to be found in the medieval mussar literature is “remembering the day of death,” as was noted by Avriel Bar-Levav.167 This concept first appears in Sefer ha-Yashar, that is traditionally attributed to Rabbenu Tam, while scholarly research places its authorship in the circle of the early Geronda Kabbalists,168 chapter thirteen of this work contains a narrative of a person who sneaked into a graveyard at night, where he reproached himself: What hope is there for you, and what will your answer be on the day that you will lie here, and what will be your response, [you who are] the enemy of your own soul? Why did you sell yourself and act willfully, but of this condition you did not think, and in whom can you trust? Where are your helpers, where are those who love you and are faithful to you, and where 165 Dan, Ethical and Homiletical Literature, 63. See ibid., 121–45, for the expressions of the orientation that Dan indicates as characteristic of the ethical-didactic literature of the Ashkenaz pietists. See also Yitzhak Baer, “The Religious-Social Tendency of ‘Sepher Hassidim,’” Zion 3 (1938): 1–50. 166 Nissim ben Reuben Gerondi, Derashot, ed. Leon A. Feldman (Jerusalem: Shalem, 1973), derush 6, 103. 167 Avriel Bar-Levav, “Story, Ritual and Metaphor: Contemplating the Day of Death as a Spiritual Exercise and the Internal War in Jewish Ethical Literature,” in Peace and War in Jewish Culture [Heb], ed. Avriel Bar-Levav (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2006), 145–63. 168 Shimon Shokek, “The Relationship between Sefer Ha-Yashar and the Gerona Circle” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 6, no. 3–4 (1987): 366–73.

405

406

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

then are those who know you? Let them arise and save you in the time of your calamity. You did and you shall bear [the consequences], you sowed and you shall reap. You spurned, and you shall be spurned. Submit, my foolish soul, whose Rock you disgraced and whose honor you have profaned. Know your origin and be cognizant of your root. Excrement is your home, and your splendor—the earth and the putrid will overcome you, worms will partake of you, and the tongues of flame will consume you.169

R. Isaiah Horowitz incorporated this tale in his Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, as part of the detailed instructions for the spiritual exercises connected with remembering the day of death.170 The ceremony suggested by the book is to be held once a month, for the purpose of the healthy person’s self-awakening to repentance, by means of his contending with the recollection of death. “He is to arouse himself,” in the wording of Sefer ha-Yashar, is, as Bar-Levav defines this, a massive attack against the self by the self.171

Repentance and Self-Awareness In the introduction I cited the argument by Muffs that the Biblical idea of repentance originated in the change that occurred in the Bible’s conception of sin. Sin, which was first perceived as a kind of objective physical malady that necessarily leads to punishment, eventually became a sort of subjective mental illness that could be healed by means of the sinner’s repentance. According to Muffs, repentance is an inner psychic process comparable to psychiatric treatment.172 According to Urbach, so that man would not lose the ability to repent, the rabbis were inclined to limit the power of the attribute of din [strict judgment)]173 This orientation was expressed, inter alia, in takanat ha-shavim,174 that was instituted by the School of Hillel to facilitate repentance by

169 Sefer ha-Yashar, ed. Joseph Dan (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1986), 27. 170 Horowitz, Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, vol. 2, Pesaḥim, fol. 4d, gloss. For an extensive discussion of the text and its sources, see Avriel Bar-Levav, “The Concept of Death in Sefer ha-Ḥayyim (The Book of Life) by Rabbi Shimon Frankfurt” [Heb], PhD diss. (Hebrew University, 1997), 120–59. 171 Bar-Levav, “Story, Ritual and Metaphor,” 161. 172 Ibid., 16 n. 30. 173 Urbach, Sages, 1:460–62, 890–91. 174 BT Gittin 55a.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

transgressors. This most likely originated in the rabbis’ assumption that man possesses self-awareness and inner forces that enable him to repent. Bokser and Bokser wrote that the rabbis’ stress on the value of repentance reflects the great esteem in which they held the “inner man.”175 Now we can understand the basis of the rabbis’ claim that a person mired in a life of sin is capable of undergoing an intensive inner change during his lifetime, resulting in a true conversion.176 This claim is reflected with great clarity in the narrative of the repentance of R. Eleazar ben Dordai.177 The harlot’s mockery of R. Eleazar ben Dordai thoroughly shocked him, and caused him to put a stop to his lust-driven life and search for something that would help him to mend his ways. R. Eleazar’s revelation is encapsulated in the sentence: “This depends only on me.” According to R. Judah ha-Nasi, it is through this understanding that R. Eleazar swiftly gained eternal life, while others struggle for many years to acquire it. Maimonides’ definition of complete repentance in Mishneh Torah draws into close focus the interiorized and conscious nature of repentance: What is complete repentance? This is when the opportunity comes to repeat a transgression that one had already committed, but he refrains and does not commit it, because of his repentance, not out of fear, nor due to inability. . . . What is repentance? It consists of the sinner abandoning his sin, removing it from his thoughts, and resolving in his mind never to repeat it. . . . If one confesses verbally, but did not resolve in his mind to abandon it—this is like immersing with a reptile in his hand [which invalidates the immersion].178

Evidence of the existence of extremely high self-awareness as early as the beginning of the Mishnaic period is to be found in the teachings of Hillel: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am for myself only, what am I? And if not now, when?179

175 Ben Zion Bokser and Baruch M. Bokser, “Introduction,” in The Talmud: Selected Writings, ed. B. Z. and B. M. Bokser (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 53–55. 176 On religious conversion, see James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 189–258. 177 BT Avodah Zarah 17a. 178 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hil. Teshuvah [Laws of Repentance] 2:1–3. 179 M Avot 1:14. For English translation, see Chapters of the Fathers, trans. Abraham J. Ehrlich and Avner Tomaschoff (Jerusalem: Department for Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora of the World Zionist Organization, 1984), 41.

407

408

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

It was said of Hillel the Elder that when he would rejoice at the Simḥat Beit ha-Sho’evah, he said thus: “If I am here, everyone is here; but if I am not here, who is here?” He would say thus: “My feet lead Me to the place that I love; if you will come into My House, I will come into your house; but if you will not come into My House, I will not come into your house,” as it is said, ‘in every place where I cause My name to be mentioned I will come to you and bless you’ [Exod. 20:21].”180 Hillel would say: My humiliation is my exaltation, my exaltation is my humiliation, which is the meaning of “who, enthroned on high, sees what is below” [Ps. 113:5–6].181

Urbach maintains that in these dicta Hillel clearly acknowledges man’s free choice and his absolute responsibility for his actions.182 According to him, R. Akiva continued this emphasis of the principle of free choice, while at the same time adhering to the principle of Divine Providence.183 For Flusser, these teachings attest to a considerable degree of self-awareness, that reflects highly significant existential thought that ensued from Hillel’s personality and the crisis-laden nature of his time.184 Hillel established the self as the starting point from which man begins to act in the world as a whole, and specifically, in his religious life. He is not a solipsist, because he argues that there is no worth to the life and deeds of a man who acts in a void, when he is a man unto himself, with no other and without God. At the same time, Hillel broadcasts great confidence in his inner strength. His dictum in Tractate Avot illustrates the importance of the here and now. Personal responsibility obligates a person to act, and struggles against postponements and evasions. The description of Simḥat Beit ha-Sho’evah is not coincidental: Hillel spoke on the background of religious ecstasy, in which Hillel himself might have actively participated. Hillel’s statement gives expression to a mystical experience connected with the conceptual interiorization of man being created in the image of God.185 Nor is the blurring 180 BT Sukkah 53a. 181 Lev. Rabbah 1:5, ed. Margulies, 17. 182 Urbach, Sages, 1:258, based on Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, version B, chap. 27, and Sifre on Deuteronomy, Haazinu 329, ed. Finkelstein, 379. 183 Urbach, “Studies in Rabbinic Views,” 462–71. 184 See Flusser, Judaism, 509–14, who compares Hillel’s self-awareness with that of Jesus. 185 On this point I agree with Lorberbaum, In God’s Image, 178–80, that Hillel’s dicta are not to be viewed as indicative of high self-awareness (as Flusser asserts), but as

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

of the boundary between God’s words and those of Hillel, that climaxes in the dictum in Lev. Rabbah, mere happenstance. This vagueness reflects the profound influence of the notion of man’s creation in the image of God on Hillel’s existentialist philosophy. The rabbinic teachings on the Divine Presence abiding among ten worshipers, or three judges, or two who study Torah,186 should be classified as existential. “R. Akiva expounded: When a man and wife are worthy, the Shekhinah [abides] among them; when they are not worthy, fire consumes them.”187 Prayer, Torah study, judgment, coupling, and giving birth are acts perceived by the authors of these teachings as creating a godly reality. Human activity that is directed to the divine actualizes the Godhead in the world. Hillel’s statement at the Simḥat Beit ha-Sho’evah: “If I am here, everyone is here; but if I am not here, who is here?” might attest that the “I” that is directed to the divine also causes the divine to exist.

Faith as a Source of Existence A discussion of paradoxical beliefs, that of Abraham and that of the Christians who believe in the crucified Messiah, is at the heart of Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy.188 He maintains that the Christian believer’s redemption lies in his inner belief in the messianic paradox, similar to that of Abraham that led to his willingness to sacrifice Isaac and in his inwardness to go beyond the world.189 Sagi sums up Kierkegaard’s conception of belief in the latter’s formulation in The Sickness Unto Death: “[In] Christianly, however . . . to believe is to be.”190 To what extent are arguments of this sort applicable to Jewish thought? In his comprehensive study of the evolution of the term bitahon [trust in God], Werblowsky asserted that Psalms is a book of faith, hope, and trust.191 expressing the belief on God’s presence in man, to the extent of identifying the self with God. 186 M Avot 3:2; BT Berakhot 6a. 187 BT Sotah 17a. 188 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 45–46; Sagi, Kierkegaard, 86–93. 189 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 45–46. 190 Cited by Sagi, Kierkegaard, 86; the citation is from Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, ed. and trans. Hong and Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 93. 191 R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, “Faith, Hope and Trust: A Study in the Concept of Bittahon,” Papers of the Institute of Jewish Studies 1 (1964): 101.

409

410

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The faith of Psalms assumes God’s love and compassion: “To proclaim Your steadfast love at daybreak, Your faithfulness each night” (Ps. 92:3). These motifs are the underpinning for the development of the concept of faith in rabbinic thought. Urbach agrees with Werblowsky’s analysis, adding that the term emunah (faith, belief) has the same meaning in the rabbinic literature as it originally had in the Bible, namely, trust in God.192 Belief, in rabbinic thought, is not only the correct path to follow; those possessing it are rewarded.193 In the world of the rabbis, by the power of faith, God’s promise will be fulfilled for His people. From this perspective, it would be difficult to link the concepts of faith and trust in God that are typical of rabbinic thought with the existential aspects of belief described above. Faith that is merely hope, “insurance” for the future, or a painkiller, could hardly be deemed existentialist. Notwithstanding this, as Werblowsky showed, along with the pragmatic aspect of the rabbis’ concepts of faith and trust in God, these notions also refer to an inner mental state that prevails over the world, as is implicit in what is related of Hillel: It once happened that Hillel the Elder was coming from a journey and he heard an outcry in the city. He said: ‘I am confident that this is not coming from my house.’ Of him Scripture says: ‘He is not afraid of evil tidings; his heart is firm, he trusts in the Lord’ [Ps. 112:7].194 192 Urbach, Sages, 1:31–36. Urbach maintains that Philo’s discussion of faith as man’s general relation to God, the product of intellectual study, and even knowledge and mystical cognition, expands the meanings of faith as trust in God. Consequently, according to Philo, intellectual study of the concept of God and mystical cognition can provide the believer with the experience of trust in God. Werblowsky, in contrast, emphasizes the difference between Philo and the rabbis on this point; see Werblowsky, “Faith,” 103. 193 Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ismael, Vayehi 6, on Exod. 14:31, ed. Horovitz and Rabin, 114. See Werblowsky, “Faith,” 106–107. 194 BT Berakhot 60a. See Werblowsky, “Faith,” 113–14. Kaminka connected this dictum with the character trait of ataraxia (calmness in the face of life’s events) that the Stoics developed and held in esteem. He cites Epictetus, from his Encheiridion, 18 (for English translation see Epictetus, Encheiridion, trans. W. A. Oldfather, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 218 [London: Heinemann, 1979], 496–97): “When a raven croaks inauspiciously . . . say, ‘None of these portents are for me’” (see Kaminka, Studies in the Bible, 47–48). In general, Kaminka depicts Hillel as one of the great Stoic philosophers, and compares his teachings with those of the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. (Researchers of Stoicism distinguish between the ataraxia of the Epicureans, which originated in steadfastness of the person faced with the silence of the gods who lack comprehension of what occurs in the world, and that of the Stoics, who sought mental serenity in their desire to free themselves of the passions. See Steven K. Strange, “The Stoics on the

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

Some of the midrashim on the Binding of Isaac, as well, also relate to faith as an inner mental state, in the spirit of Kierkegaardian existentialism.195 It should be stressed in this context that, along with these interiorizing midrashim, there is a rich aggadic tradition that turns the Binding narrative into a model for martyrdom, that is, the externalization of this narrative, contrary to the simple meaning of the Biblical text.196 The description in Tractate Berakhot of the death of R. Akiva, which subsequently served for centuries as the archetype of martyrdom, indicates the clearly existential nature of this episode: Our masters taught: Once the wicked government issued a decree forbidding Jews to study and observe the Torah. Pappus ben Judah came and found R. Akiva publicly gathering assemblies and occupying himself with the Torah. He said to him: “Akiva, Do you not fear the government?” He replied: “I will tell you a parable. To what is this comparable? To a fox that was once walking alongside a river, and he saw fishes going in swarms from one place to another. He asked them: What are you fleeing from? They told him: From the nets cast for us by men. He said to them: Would you like to come up onto the dry land, so that you and I can live together, like my ancestors lived with your ancestors? They asked him: Are you the one whom they say is the cleverest of animals? You are not clever, but foolish! If we are afraid in the element in which we live, how much more so in the place where we would die! So it is with us. If it is so with us now, when we sit and study the Torah, of which it is written, “for that is your life and the length of your days” [Deut. 30:20], if we were to go and neglect it, how much more so! It was said that shortly afterwards R. Akiva was arrested and thrown into prison, and Pappus ben Judah was arrested and imprisoned with him. He [R. Akiva] asked him: “Pappus, who brought you here?” He [Pappus] replied: “Happy are you, R. Akiva, that you have been seized for occupying yourself with the Torah! Woe to Pappus, who was seized for worthless things!” When R. Akiva was Voluntariness of the Passions,” in Stoicism: Traditions and Transformations, ed. Steven K. Strange and Zack Zupco [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], 23–52). 195 Gen. Rabbah 55:1, 2; 56:4, 8. 196 See, for example, Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ismael, Baḥodesh 6, ed. Horovitz and Rabin, 227. See Spiegel, Last Trial; idem, “In Monte Dominus Videbitur: The Martyrs of Blois and the Early Accusations of Ritual Murder” [Heb], in Mordecai M. Kaplan Jubilee Volume, ed. Moishe Davis (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1953), Hebrew section, 267–87; idem, “The Legend of Isaac’s Slaying and Resurrection” [Heb], in The Abraham Weiss Jubilee Volume, ed. Samuel Belkin (New York: Abraham Weiss Jubilee Committee, 1964), Hebrew section, 553–66.

411

412

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

brought forth to be executed, it was the time of the Reading of the Shema, and while they combed his flesh with iron combs, he accepted upon himself the yoke of the kingship of Heaven [i.e., by proclaiming Shema-“Hear, O Israel”]. His students asked him: “Our master, even to this point?” He said to them: “All my days I was troubled by this verse: ‘[You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and] with all your soul’ [Deut. 6:5; part of the passages comprising the Reading of the Shema], [which I interpret:] even if He takes your soul. I said: When will I have the opportunity to fulfill this? And now that I have the opportunity, shall I not fulfill it?” He prolonged “One” [in “Hear (Shema), O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”— Deut. 6:4], until his soul expired [while saying] “One.”197

Urbach already observed that R. Akiva and his students explicitly observed the commandments, openly challenging the authorities, since the Romans had not forced them to commit transgressions the commission of which is punishable, by Jewish law, by the death penalty, and for which one is to “be killed rather than transgress.” According to Urbach, R. Akiva’s dying words are unparalleled except for the conduct and words of Socrates before his death.198 Urbach maintains that R. Akiva’s way was that of individuals, divorced from thoughts of reward and punishment.199 For Urbach, the intriguing comparison between the two cases demonstrates that Socrates taught a way for individuals, while R. Akiva and his students, who followed in his path, not only enabled the continued existence of the Torah and its observance, they also “radically transformed the evaluation of the relationship between the troubles and tribulations that befall the individual or the community, and sin and iniquity.”200 The comparison with Socrates draws this into closer focus, since the Greek philosopher believed in the immortality of the soul and included this argument in his willingness to drink the cup of poison.201 R. Akiva, in contrast, did not mention such considerations, nor the belief in the World to Come. It was the Talmudic narrator who could not bear the contradiction between R. Akiva’s teaching and his bitter end. The narrator answers the question he has the ministering angels ask: “Such Torah and such reward?” with an exegesis of Ps. 17:14: “from metim [understood here as: those that 197 BT Berakhot 61b. See the parallels: PT Berakhot 9:7; Sotah 5:7. 198 Urbach, Sages, 1:443–44; see also idem, “Ascesis and Suffering,” 60 ff. 199 Urbach, Sages, 1:417. 200 Ibid., 443–44. 201 Plato, Apology, 41 (trans.: 140–45); idem, Phaedo, 117 (trans: 398–401).

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

die] by Your hand, O Lord.” He replied to them (from the same verse): “Their portion is in life.” A heavenly voice went forth and said: “Happy are you, R, Akiva, for you are destined for the life of the World to Come.”202 In the original verse the word metim means “men,” as in Deut. 2:34: “metim, women, and children.” The exegete, however, interpreted the word as referring to the dead, and therefore expounded this as referring to the life in the World to Come that is assured to the deserving individuals who die in this world. The fox parable definitely shows that for R. Akiva, it was the Torah and its study that imparted purpose to his life. The Tanna compares Torah study and observance of the commandments to fish in water, without which they would lose their life force. The moral of this parable is therefore that, without Torah, life would be meaningless for R. Akiva. It is the Torah that gives him a reason to live. His death while declaring “One” is not a prayer. R. Akiva does not shout, as did Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). Rather, he continued his Torah study until his dying breath, since the reading of the Shema is an obligatory daily Torah reading. In the example R. Akiva left for the following generations, more than he professes his faith, he declares his adherence to the study of the Torah and its commandments. For R. Akiva, Torah is the elixir of life, and without it existence has no meaning. Accordingly, his willingness to die for the observance of the Torah could possibly not be seen as a martyric act, in the sense of attesting to the depth of his faith, as is attributed to those who died for their faith in the Hasmonean and the medieval periods. In light of the fox parable, the realization of the love of God to the extent of taking R. Akiva’s life is a declaration of unwillingness, and perhaps inability, to live without the Torah. R. Akiva’s existentialist stance makes the Torah, with all its contents, the meaning of existence, without which life is not worth living. The fox parable teaches that it is not the choice of death, nor the desire to die a martyr’s death, but rather the existential necessity, that underlies the act; the depth of the existential meaning that the Torah imparts to its students is what impels fidelity to it, unto death.

202 BT Berakhot 61b.

413

414

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Belief in God’s Morality as an Expression of an Existentialist View R. Simlai’s exposition in Tractate Makkot in which faith (at least according the understanding of R. Nahman bar Isaac) is the precis of all the commandments presents a clearly existentialist conception of faith, which, however, is not identical with Kierkegaard’s paradoxical faith: Six hundred and thirteen commandments were given to Moses, three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions, corresponding to the number of solar [year] days, and two hundred and forty-eight positive commandments, corresponding to a person’s limbs. . . . David came and reduced them to eleven. . . . Amos came and reduced them to one, as it is said, “Thus said the Lord to the House of Israel: Seek Me, and you will live” [Amos 5:4]. R. Nahman bar Isaac objected to this: Might this [not be understood as:] Seek Me by [observing] the entire Torah and live? But Habakkuk came and reduced them to one, as it is said, “But the righteous man is rewarded with life” [Hab. 2:4].203

Urbach argued, based on this dictum by R. Simlai: “It is true that a man may become meritorious by virtue of a single precept, but only if this precept has special and all-embracing significance.”204 Solomon Schechter’s discussion of the teaching emphasized the specific moral nature of these meanings: The drift of this whole passage shows that the homily was not so much intended to urge the necessity of carrying out all the commandments with their numerous details, as to emphasise the importance of the moral laws, which themselves, nevertheless, may be compressed into the principle of seeking God, or of faith in God.205

The reductionist nature of the exposition, from 613 commandments to a single one, reveals a clearly moralistic orientation. Since the original context in Habakkuk refers to the prophet’s moral rebuke and because of his expectation that righteous judgment would be meted out to the unjust the main practical significance of the Torah for him lies in the realization of God’s will to do what is good and upright in the social-moral sphere. R. Simlai’s exegesis does not disparage the observance of the manifold 203 BT Makkot 23b–24a. 204 Urbach, Sages, 1:345. 205 Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 140.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

commandments. It comes to teach both the moral purpose of the commandments and belief in the God of goodness, as well as righteousness as inherently demanding that the believer realize those values. Abba Saul’s dictum: “O be like Him! Just as He is gracious and merciful, so be you also gracious and merciful”206 reflects this view.207 R. Simlai’s teaching highlights the conception that faith contains the obligation of moral conduct.208 It also corresponds to the teaching of the House of Hillel in various aspects.209 This facet of the interiorization of faith as an existentialist conception, that, by force of its moral content, imparts meaning and purpose to the life of the individual, is shared by rabbinic thought and the Christian notion of faith.210 The following passage by Paul attests to the commonality of one of the elements of his conception of faith and one of the meanings embodied in R. Simlai’s exposition: For he is not a real Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real

206 Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Shirata 3, ed. Horovitz and Rabin, 127, and the parallels there; trans.: Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 2:25). 207 “He, then, that is to become dear to such a one [that is, God] must needs become, so far as he possibly can, of a like character” (Plato, Laws, 4 [trans.: 294–95]). And also: “Would you win over the gods? Then be a good man. Whoever imitates them, is worshiping them sufficiently” (Seneca, Epistulae Morales 95 [trans.: 77:90–91]). See also Kaminka, Studies in the Bible, 55. 208 The dictum by R. Simlai in the name of R. Eleazar ben Simeon (BT Sanhedrin 98a): “The son of David will not come until all judges and officers are gone from Israel, as it is said, ‘I will turn my hand against you, and smelt out your dross as with lye. . . . I will restore your judges as of old’ [Isa. 1:25–26]” attests to R. Simlai’s moralist conception, as was noted also by Federbusch: “When the heart is refined of all evil, then I will remove the judges that you originally had, for the moral sentiment alone will suffice to govern the good relations between man and his fellow” (Federbusch, Jewish Ethics and Law, 36–37; see also n. 10). See Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, “Divine Command Morality and Jewish Tradition,” Journal of Religious Ethics 23, no. 1 (1995): 39–67. 209 That is, Hillel’s response to the heathen who came to convert on one foot (BT Shabbat 31a); and to the acceptance of the yoke of Heaven “as an event that is mainly inwardly experiential, and requires neither separation from the routine of life nor any ceremonial trappings” (Knohl, “Accepting the Kingdom of Heaven,” 26–27). 210 Flusser noted that Paul’s doctrine and his commentary to the verse “He through faith is righteous shall live” (Romans 1:16–17) threw together different elements that were not necessarily connected to one another; see Flusser, Jewish Sources, 378–79; cf. Urbach, Sages, 1:34.

415

416

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal. His praise is not from men but from God.211

“[C]ircumcision is a matter of the heart” has two sources: the books of Deuteronomy and Jeremiah.212 This is in the spirit of Jesus’ moral demands in the Sermon on the Mount, which morally expands the commandments of the Torah, without calling for their annulment.213 As Paul expressly states,214 it was only out of his despair at man’s sins and the exteriorization of life according to the Torah that Jesus replaced the aspiration for intentional interiorization in the spirit of prophetic morality with the power of faith: “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.”215 For Paul, the verse “But the righteous man is rewarded with life” combines two different meanings: (1) what is also implicit in the teaching of R. Nahman bar Isaac, who understood the verse in its inner moral sense; (2) the understanding already present in the Essene interpretation, that took the verse as faith in the “Teacher of Righteousness.” A similar interpretation resurfaced in the Sabbatean movement, which had the verse refer to Sabbatai Zevi the messiah.216 The major deviation from the framework of the faith of the rabbis is connected with what Flusser described as the linkage of Jesus’s act of salvation with the notion of “justification by faith”: the belief in Jesus’ paradoxical messianism, as affording the believer personal salvation and redemption. In this context, the interiorization of faith, in the Kierkegaardian sense, exists in Judaism only in these exceptional instances of the Judean Desert sect and Sabbateanism, since it is absent from the thought of the rabbis.217 The Pauline deviation might be considerably more minor than the Sabbatean, for, according to Paul, faith does not mean nihilism, despite its antinomianism: “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.”218 Paul did not see a necessary connection between the faith that replaced the law 211 Romans 2:28–29. 212 “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart” (Deut. 10:16); “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart” (Deut. 30:6); “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of you heart” (Jer. 4:4). 213 See Flusser, Jewish Sources, 226–34, “The ‘Torah’ in the Sermon on the Mount.” 214 Romans 3:9–19. 215 Ibid. 3:28. 216 Elqayam, “Mystery of Faith,” 46. 217 Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi; The Mystical Messiah, trans. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 720. 218 Romans 3:31.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

of the Torah and nihilism. This distinction alludes to affinity between the element of interiorization by means of the Pauline teaching of faith and the position of rabbis such as Hillel and R. Simlai. The interiorization of faith does not mean nihilism, although it might turn into the symbolic reduction of the commandments, as in the exposition of R. Simlai, and it could be transformed into the abrogation of the commandments, as in Pauline doctrine. Sabbatean antinomianism, in contrast, seems to fundamentally differ from the Pauline version.219

Faith as an Expression of an Existentialist Position in Medieval Thought Werblowsky wrote of the great change that the meaning of the concepts of faith and trust in God had undergone in medieval Jewish thought under Muslim Sufi influence.220 This spirit, that Werblowsky finds originating in the Sufi idea of tawakkul, is encapsulated in a narrative that Ibn Paquda includes in Ḥovot ha-Levavot: It is told of an ascetic that he traveled to a distant land to find his livelihood. This happened before he began the ascetic way. In the town to which he came he met an idol-worshipper, and he said to him, ‘You people, in worshipping these idols, are in a state of utter blindness and little discrimination!’ The Magian asked him, ‘What do you worship then?’ The ascetic answered, ‘I worship the Omnipotent Creator, the One Provider, the Fosterer Who is unequalled by anyone.’ Said the Magian, ‘But your behavior contradicts your words!’ When the ascetic asked him to explain what he had said, the Magian replied, ‘If what you have claimed were true, He would have supplied you 219 Scholem argued that Sabbatai Sevi’s nihilism was a consequence of his psychopathological personality. However, according to Elqayam, Nathan of Gaza claimed, in practice, that this nihilism resulted from Sabbatai Sevi’s fierce longing for the God of his faith, that is, “faith is the basis of nihilism” (Elqayam, “Mystery of Faith,” 192–94). Elqayam also maintains that Sabbateanism prior to the apostasy was “a movement of spiritual redemption, whose ideological basis was that ‘man is capable of delivering souls.’ The salvation of the believer is acquired by boundless and limitless belief in the Messiah. The inner core of the Sabbatean ideology does not consist solely of the Jewish people’s return to the Land of Israel. The spiritual rectification of the Jewish people consists, first and foremost, of its belief in the Messiah. In other words, for Nathan of Gaza, the Sabbatean movement was Sabbaticentric, and the individual and the human being acquires his final redemption through attachment to Sabbatai Sevi” (ibid., 76). 220 Werblowsky, “Faith,” 118–39.

417

418

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

with your livelihood in your own town as He does here. In that case, you would not have had to undertake the journey to this town, which is very far from yours.’ The ascetic saw that his own argument had no basis, so he returned to his own town and started being an ascetic from that time on, never travelling again.221

The concept of trust in God was perceived by medieval authors as total and unmitigated reliance on God, which became an outstanding religious ideal. This ideal reflected the way of R. Simeon bar Yohai, who emerged from the cave with his son and burnt those who “forsake eternal life and engage in temporal life” with his gaze. According, however, to the Talmudic narrative, this uncompromising attitude was rejected by the Heavenly voice that told R. Simeon bar Yohai and his son: “Have you emerged to destroy My world? Return to your cave!”222 Werblowsky noted the necessity of distinguishing, in this context of the total trust in God, between mystical pietism, which means killing the self in order to live in God, and the religious pietism of building one’s life on “the rock which is God.”223 Such a division ignores the existence of the two aspects in the religious life of the individual, as is taught by a number of major religious works, such as Ḥovot 221 Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar ha-Bitaḥon, introduction (trans.: The Book of Direction, 228). This narrative is identical, in part, to the narratives related by the Indian saint Ramakrishna. The text itself is indicative of Persian, and perhaps Indian, elements that were known to R. Bahya. If this were a direct Sufi influence, it is not inconceivable that he would have preferred to allude to it, and not to a substantive religious lesson that he learned from a heathen. (It is also quite possible that the ascetic was a Sufi who learned this from the Amgoshi.) A conceptual formulation of this idea appears earlier in the same chapter: “For if a man relies on someone other than God, God removes His Providence from him and entrusts him to whomever is the object of his trust. . . . Another advantage for him who relies on God is that he can free his mind from the affairs of this world and purify his soul for works of worship, so that in the peace of his mind and the tranquility of his soul, in his little concern with the affairs of this world, he is very like the master of alchemy who is well-versed in both its theory and practice” (ibid. [trans.: The Book of Direction, 221–23]). 222 BT Shabbat 33b. 223 Werblowsky, “Faith,” 120–21. Werblowsky finds here the division between mystical, intellectual, or experiential-psychological religiosity practiced by Maimonides and the Baal Shem Tov and the prophetic religiosity that is often characteristic of the medieval ethical literature, from Ḥovot ha-Levavot to the Mussar movement (ibid., 139). This approach also fashioned Rivkah Shatz-Uffenheimer’s conception of Hasidism. It is indebted to the major influence of the Christian quietist model on the understanding of Maimonides and the Baal Shem Tov, but it cannot withstand critical scrutiny. See chapter four of my Human Temple, esp. 176–78.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

ha-Levavot.224 Werblowsky argues that the conception of total trust in God, too, has a patently psychological aspect: this is an existentialist mental state.225 As to the advantages of reliance upon God in the world, they are the following: a tranquil heart, free of worldly interests; a peaceful soul, undisturbed and unworried by the loss of bodily desires; a state of rest, ease, and security in the world, as it is said (Jer. 17:7 f.): ‘Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose trust the Lord is.’226

It is noteworthy that in the Zohar the term “faith” does not have an existential sense of adhering to God. The phrase “raza demehimnuta” [the secret of faith], that frequently appears in this work, often denotes various aspects of the Zoharic theosophic doctrine, the father figure, the secret of the chosenness of the Jewish people, or the secret of the relationship between male and female.227 Accordingly, interiorizing meanings, in the sense in which they are discussed in the current book, are not to be ascribed to the Zoharic concept of faith. The main expression of an existential conception in the Zohar is to be found in Kabbalistic reasons for the commandments and in its perception of the Kabbalistic kavanot, that are based on theurgic thought (see below).

224 Werblowsky describes Ḥovot ha-Levavot as a book of religious pietism, which states that the end goal of worship is love of God (that Werblowsky sees as mystical): “It is a yearning of the soul, the desire of its very substance to be attached to God’s supreme light. The soul is a simple spiritual substance which inclines by its nature to the spiritual beings that are like itself, and rejects by its nature the coarse bodies which are unlike it” (Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar Ahavat Hashem, chap. 1 [trans.: The Book of Direction, 427]). In my opinion, a book such as Ḥovot ha-Levavot refutes Werblowsky’s conception, since it speaks about two different types of religiosity: mystical pietism and prophetic mysticism. The pietism that Werblowsky calls “mystical” does not mean the death of the quietist self, and therefore is not necessarily opposed to pietism he terms “prophetic.” 225 Werblowsky, “Faith,” 130. 226 Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar ha-Bitaḥon, introduction (trans.: The Book of Direction, 227). 227 See Yehonatan Garb, “The Secrets of Belief in the Zohar” [Heb], in On Faith: Studies in the Concept of Faith and Its History in the Jewish Tradition, ed. Moshe Halbertal, David Kurzweil, and Avi Sagi (Jerusalem: Keter, 2005), 294–311.

419

420

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The Reasons for the Commandments and the Doctrine of Kabbalistic Kavanot as Existential Interiorization “All the commandments of the Torah, whether positive or negative, are a means to the attainment of human perfection.”228 This statement by R. Joseph Albo, the author of Sefer ha-Ikarim, reflects an entire school of Jewish thought throughout the ages that rebuts the conception set forth in Sifra: R. Eleazar says: From where [is it learned] that a person should not say, I do not want to wear shatnez [forbidden mixed fibers], I do not want to eat pork, I do not want to engage in forbidden sexual relations. Rather, [he should say,] I want, but what can I do? My Father in Heaven has decreed [forbidding this] for me.229

The idea adopted by Albo, similar to that professed by R. Saadiah Gaon,230 is based on a number of rabbinic dicta that, too, stress the essentiality of knowing the reasons for the commandments. This knowledge enables the one observing the commandments to realize the full educational and ethical potential of each commandment. “If you keep My commandments and do them” [Lev. 26:3]—R. Hama bar Hanina said, If you keep the Torah, I will account it for you as if you had made them, as it is written, “and do them.”231

228 Joseph Albo, Sefer ha-Ikkarim 3:27. For English translation,see Joseph Albo, Sefer ha-Ikkarim, ed. and trans. Isaac Husik (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1929), 254. 229 Sifra, end of Kedoshim, ed. Weiss, fol. 93d. On laws without rational explanation [ḥukim] and divine decree [gezerah], see Num. Rabbah 19:1, 2, 5, 8. 230 “Our Master, exalted and magnified is He, has made it known to us that, when the instances of obedience on the part of His servants predominate, they are accounted unto them as merits, whereas when those of disobedience are predominant, they are accounted as demerits. . . . Moreover, these activities of men leave their traces upon the latter’s souls, rendering them pure or sullied. . . . when the merits predominate in the soul, the latter is thereby purified and rendered luminous. . . . On the other hand, when the demerits are in the majority in it, the soul becomes turbid and darkened” (Saadia Gaon, Book of Beliefs and Opinions, treatise 5, chap. 1). English translation based on Saadia Gaon, Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Samuel Rosenblatt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), 295–97. 231 Lev. Rabbah 35:7, ed. Margulies, 825. See BT Sanhedrin 99b: “Raba said: As though he had made himself, as it is said, ‘and do them [otam]’ [Deut. 29:8]—do not read otam [‘them’], but atem [‘yourselves’].”

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

In this understanding, observance of the commandments is perceived as human activity that vivifies man himself, as if he “does” (that is, creates) himself. Joseph Dan observed that the assigning of rational reasons to the commandments, that is characteristic of the medieval Jewish philosophers, means the internalization of religious life. “If a commandment has a rational reason, then its observance constitutes the fulfillment of a spiritual-inner need that is dictated by the intellect, and not the acceptance of the yoke of an incomprehensible tradition.”232 This notion underwent significant development in the theosophic Kabbalah, as Gottlieb explains: The view of the Kabbalists is not to be termed an anthropocentric one. It is clearly theocentric. Man’s importance is obviously inestimable, since he is capable of acting and bringing benefit above, but the main purpose of his actions is not on account of man, rather, the ultimate consequence is that man and the world as a whole benefit from the fullness caused in the divine world by the observance of the commandments with the desired intent . . . the notion that man is at the center for the sake of the Above is a constant chord, from the early Kabbalists to the later ones.233

The theurgic element in theosophic Kabbalah presumably runs counter to the conception of the commandments as imparting perfection to man, since this element implies that the aim of the commandments is to effect change for the Godhead. Making man essential, however, for the divine existence in the world by means of the act of the commandments indirectly affords man new and profound existential meaning. This turnaround originated in Nahmanides’ commentary to Exod. 29:46 (that is based also on Ibn Ezra’s interpretation of this verse): “And they shall know that I the Lord am their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt that I might abide among them, I the Lord their God”: “that I might abide among them”—on condition that I abide among them; this is Rashi’s language. . . . But Rabbi Abraham [Ibn Ezra] said, I brought them out from the land of Egypt only that I might abide among them. This is the meaning of [Exod. 3:12] “you shall worship God at this mountain.” He explained this well, and if so, there is a great secret in this matter. According 232 Dan, Ethical and Homiletical Literature, 58–59. See also Isaak Heinemann, The Reasons for the Commandments in Jewish Thought: From the Bible to the Renaissance, trans. Leonard Levin (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2008), chaps. 3 and 5 (15–33, 47–50). 233 Gottlieb, Studies, 31–32.

421

422

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

to the plain sense of this, the Divine Presence [abiding] among Israel was for the sake of those below, and not for the sake of Above. Rather, this is similar to what Scripture said [Isa. 49:3]: “Israel, in whom I glory”; and Joshua said [7:9]: “And what will You do about Your great name?”, and many verses come here [i.e., to express this thought].

Thus, Nahmanides views the conception that the indwelling of God is for the needs of the people and the individual is the simple meaning of the verse, while in the esoteric understanding, the Divine Presence’s indwelling among Israel serves God’s needs. When He dwells among them, God’s power increases. Observance of the commandments for the sake of Above that became a fundamental principle in the Sefirotic Kabbalah, and especially in the Zohar—infused the Kabbalist’s life with a new sense of purpose. Ra’aya Mehemna states, on the commandment to retell the Exodus from Egypt on the night of Seder: “by this narration Israel give strength to their Master.”234 Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, based on an explicit teaching in the Zohar on this issue, explains this conception: R. Aha explained: “Observe them, just as I command you” [Jer. 11:4]— according to the esoteric teaching written by the Kabbalists, that [divine] service is for the sake of Above, and it is as if Israel, by [performing] the commandments, act and rectify the glory of the Supreme One. This is explained in the Zohar,235 as follows: “Well, one who fulfills the commands of Torah and walks in [God’s] ways, makes Him above, as it were. The blessed Holy One says, ‘It is as if he made Me!’.”236

Man’s responsibility for God is assumed by the Kabbalistic awareness that by the very observance of the commandments, and even more so by the Kabbalistic theurgic intents that accompany prayer, the servant of God contributes to His empowerment and the strengthening of His presence and influence in the world. This existential notion has varied meanings— placing of human responsibility at the center of religious life, mainly—since man’s responsibility for the upper worlds returns to man himself as divine emanation. The Kabbalist assumes the existence of a direct connection

234 For the entire passage from the Zohar, see the discussion above, chapter four, 314–18. See also a similar teaching in the context of Rosh Hashanah: Zohar 2:32b; 3:99b. 235 Zohar 3:113a (trans.: Matt, Zohar, 8:230). 236 Horowitz, Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit 3, Torah she-bi-Ktav 4:2:9a.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

between Kabbalistic occupation with and knowledge of the worlds within the Godhead, walking in the ways of the Torah, and man’s personal fate: How deeply humans should know and contemplate the ways of the blessed Holy One, for every single day a voice issues, proclaiming: ‘Beware, inhabitants of the world! Lock the door of sin; keep away from the seizing net, before your feet are caught!’ A wheel spins constantly, ascending and descending. Woe to those whose feet are pushed away from the wheel! They fall into the depth concealed for the wicked of the world.’237

The development of the idea of rectification in Lurianic Kabbalah gave redoubled force to this direction, and infused almost every moment in the Kabbalist’s life with profound meaning for the existence of the world. Consequently, the Kabbalist lives with the existential inner consciousness that his actions and intents influence the world’s existence, for which, in effect, he bears personal responsibility.

Existence by Power of Love: Existentialism and Mysticism in the Book Re’shit H. okhmah We examined the parable “As face answers to face in water” in R. Elijah de Vidas’s R’eshit Ḥokhmah in the discussion of “Introspective Contemplation of the Psyche as Fashioning Conceptual Interiorization in Kabbalah.”238 The continuation of de Vidas’s explanation of the parable reveals the existential aspect, with mystical dialogical features, that underlies this thought: Let us try to understand the deep meaning of this parable. In order to look at your reflection in a body of water you need two things: water and a vessel. As explained in the Tikkunim, in several places: 239 If you are lacking either one of these, you will not be able to see your face. In the same way, you also need both heart and soul. The nefesh-soul dwells within the heart. The heart is your vessel, while your nefesh is the water in the vessel. A heart without a nefesh is like a vessel without water. And conversely, when you look into water not contained in a vessel you cannot see anything, 237 Zohar 2:220a-b (trans.: Matt, Zohar, 6:259). On the existential aspect in the Zohar, see Heschel, “Mystical Element,” esp. 934–36. 238 See above, chapter four, 318–21. 239 Tikkunei Zohar 69, fol. 110b.

423

424

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

for it is the very nature of the vessel that causes the form to reflect itself. Water is a simple substance and due to its simplicity the form reflected in it goes through it and beyond it if there is no barrier to crystallize it. An example of this is the sea, for instance, where you cannot see your reflection because the water is allowed to spread without a vessel to contain it, this is very much like a polished mirror: if there is no thick layer behind it to retain the form in the surface of the mirror you will not see a thing. In the same way, you will not love another unless you are able to see him, so that when your own love is aroused, it will arouse the love of your friend for you. The very act of looking at your reflection in the water serves to arouse love. The desire of your nefesh within your heart arouses the nefeshsoul within your friend’s heart. The two souls will be bound one to the other with love, even though one may be distant from the other. For water—that is, the nefesh-soul—is the ethereal, spiritual substance, a part of God above. Consequently, there is no separation from soul to soul, even though they are enclosed in different vessels. This is similar to the essence of the Divine, which manifests itself in the vessels of the sefirot: the essence of the Divine inner space is one and unified, even though the vessels containing it have different manifestations. The Ra’ya Mehemna compares the inner space of the sefirot to water spread out in different vessels; should the vessels break, the water would return to its source. The identity or nature of the vessel is inconsequential; all the water would return to the same source, as it was before. Now, I am not explaining the concept of direct and reflected light, equivalent to that of the “face-toface” relationship, for I rely on what my master, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, of blessed memory, has already expounded. . . . The parable of the reflecting water teaches us that it is impossible for a man to attach himself to his Maker in the mystery of love at the level beyond the realm of Atzilut-Closeness. As corporeal beings, we are unable to grasp a totally abstract concept of love, just as we cannot grasp incorporeal God; He is beyond our perception and understanding. In the same way, we cannot love a soul without its bodily cover. Although there is no body to speak of on high, when we speak of a visible cover we are referring to God’s actions as these are revealed to us. This is like the nefesh-soul revealing itself through its deeds, for before it was enclosed in the body it had no deeds. Says the Ra’ya Mehemna [Zohar 2:42b], as follows:

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

Before the Holy One created the form of the world, [that is, the general blueprint of the world in the realm of Atzilut,] and designed [the different sefirot,] He was in the world, without any distinguishable shape or form, [One who wants to learn about the Supreme Being before His manifestation in Atzilut] is therefore forbidden to mentally ascribe any form or appearance to the Divine Presence before the level of Creation, not even by means of the letter Heh, nor Yud, nor by calling the Ineffable Name, nor by any letter in the world. And if man attaches [himself to God], his soul will be in the secret of sublime life, which spreads into the vessels which are His sacred Names, that is “While you, who held fast to the Lord your God, are all alive today” [Deut. 4:4]. This means that they hold fast to the blessed eternal life, that is one with His Name. He and His Name are one, the Lord is His Name, and when man attaches himself to his Creator with a passionate love involving both body and soul [- not only the feelings of the soul, but also the quality of the Torah observance performed by the body, which serves as a vessel to hold on to the feelings -] he causes his Creator to cleave to him, like water reflecting a loving face.240

Similar to the conception of the Sefirot as implements that uniquely fashion the abstract divine emanation within them, De-Vidas maintains that man’s uniqueness is a product of the combination of the abstract spiritual inner essence and the specific form. Restated, the human individuum contains that same abstract inner essence. Human love is directed to another specific entity; if this entity were not to exist, this mental energy would remain in the realm of the intangible. The other person—who is compared to the “thick layer” that prevents the rays of light from escaping from the mirror’s polished glass—absorbs the spiritual inner essence of the person facing him, and reflects back this love: “you will not love another unless you are able to see him, so that when your own love is aroused, it will arouse the love of your friend for you.” The uniqueness of love consists of its unification of the inner spirituality of a person and his fellow as it overcomes the barriers erected by individuals. “The two souls will be bound one to the other with love, even though one may be distant from the other.” 240 De-Vidas, Re’shit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Ahavah 1:28–30. English translation based on Elijah ben Moses De-Vidas, The Beginning of Wisdom: Unabridged Translation of the Gate of Love, trans. Simcha H. Benyosef (Hoboken: Ktav, 2002), 21–23.

425

426

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

As opposed to the claims that unio mystica is essentially nihilistic, human love, that overcomes distance by means of a mental bond, is seen here as a model of the love between man and God. This love is not explained in terms of divine grace. To the contrary: as a result of man’s spiritual awakening, that develops a relationship of mental love and adherence, he “causes his Creator to cleave to him.” This parable reveals the existential-dialogical nature of the devekut known as “mystical devekut,” which subsequently became characteristic of many streams within Hasidism.241

Equanimity from an Existentialist Perspective It is told of a pious man that he said to his friend, ‘Have you become equal?’ The friend asked, ‘What does that mean?’ The pious man replied: ‘That praise and blame are equal in your eyes.’ Upon the friend’s negative answers, the pious man continued, ‘Then you are not there yet. Exert yourself. Maybe you will reach that stage, which is the highest stage of virtue and the height of what is praiseworthy.’242

As Gries showed, “The directive for equanimity advises man to seek to strive to reach a state of indifference to the attitude of people to him, and generally, to the advantages and disadvantages of this world, and its riches and honors.”243 In his discussion of the value of equanimity in the world of Ashkenaz pietists and in the writings of R. Isaac the Blind, Scholem asserted that this value, that is absent from the world of the rabbis, made its way from the Stoic ataraxia into the world of Ashkenaz pietists through the Christian monastic culture.244 Idel brings the description of equanim241 Zeev Gries was the first to discover the centrality of the idea of ahavat ḥaverim [the intense fraternal love among Hasidim] in nascent Hasidism, especially in the circle of R. Abraham of Kalisk, and its sources in the Platonic erotic mythos presented in the Symposium, which was midrashically transferred to the world of medieval Jewish thought. See Zeev Gries, “From Myth to Ethos: On the History of Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk” [Heb], in Nation and History: Studies in the History of the Jewish People, ed. Shmuel Ettinger (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1984), 2:117–46, esp. 120–26, and see there note 13 concerning the rabbinic sources and the Platonic idea. (Gries directly connected this issue with Buber’s conception of Hasidism as “Kabbalah that became ethos.”) 242 Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar Yiḥud ha-Ma‘aseh, chap. 5 (trans.: The Book of Direction, 291). 243 Gries, Conduct Literature, 210. 244 Scholem, Major Trends, 96–97. See also Haym Soloveitchik, “Three Themes in Sefer Hasidim.” AJS Review 1 (1976): 328–29; see above, 410 n. 194.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

ity in Maimonides’ epistle to R. Hisdai245 as reflective of the conception of equanimity that is the closest to the Stoic apatheia, which views indifference as a goal in itself. Gottlieb, and especially Idel, showed that the main thrust of the discussion of equanimity in the Kabbalistic literature entails the attainment of the spirit of divine inspiration and prophecy.246 Nonetheless, we should realize that all the writings that present equanimity as a phase to the attaining of conjunction, or even the spirit of divine inspiration or prophecy, contain an existential aspect of equanimity alongside its mystical function. The ideal of equanimity reflects the absolute preference of the inner instead of the outer and emphasizes the desire for liberation from the despotism of the “world,” in all its layers, as regards man’s inner position regarding his self and his life. Equanimity is a primary condition for the construction of spiritual independence in all planes, including the spiritual-mystical.

Seclusion from an Existential Viewpoint Pachter noted that in Milei de-Shemaya by R. Eleazar ben Moses Azikri the consciousness of death and of personal insignificance becomes an existential consciousness, in a formulation similar to the modern:247 How will you not be secluded with Him, may He be blessed, for most of your time you are alone, alone in your mother’s womb. When you sleep, the body is alone and the soul is alone. When you go, [you are] apart in the grave; the body is apart in the grave, and the soul is apart in Paradise, every righteous one is given a habitation as befits his honor (following BT Shabbat 152a). This is certainly so in Gehinnom, for the wicked perish in darkness (I Sam. 2:9), that is, by themselves. Accordingly, heed my voice, go with Him always, do not depart from Him for a moment; for if you seek Him, He will seek You (following I Chron. 28:9), He will not leave you. How fine and pleasant is 245 Idel, “Hitbodedut as Concentration” (English), 146–47 n. 35. 246 Gottlieb, Studies, 44; Idel, “Hitbodedut as Concentration” (English), 112–14, 122–25. See the citation by R. Hayyim Vital, and in Re’shit Ḥokhmah, of the different versions of the equanimity tales in the writings of R. Isaac of Acre. 247 Milei de-Shemaya, ed. Pachter, 70–74. R. Eleazar Azikri’s work Milei de-Shemaya is preserved in a single manuscript, now among the holdings of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. This composition is the source of the “Divrei Kibushin” [“Words of rebuke”] chapter in the last part of Sefer Ḥaredim, a well-known book of ethical teachings that Azikri composed in Safed in the sixteenth century. See Milei de-Shemaya, ed. Pachter, 11–23; Dan, Ethical and Homiletical Literature, 209–10.

427

428

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

His accompanying, may He be blessed, for He is the Father who created you, fashioned you and made you endure (Deut. 32:6).248

The only refuge from man’s profound solitude as he stands alone before death is seclusion with God, who is in all and who fills all, for “His presence fills all the earth” (Isa. 6:3). Azikri’s methods for seclusion apparently included the mystical techniques of yihud and the combination of divine Names, imagery, and contemplation of the divine light.249 From this perspective, he does not blaze new paths but rather alludes to existing methods, which I discussed above in chapter three. This passage is singular in the explicit connection it draws between the inwardly focused experience and man’s existential situation. Seclusion together with God is the only remaining solution for man in his loneliness and nullity: The world is a stormy sea, the body is a heap of dust within which is the soul. Man stands on the heap with the Tree of Life spread out over him. If he is a man of discernment, he will strongly hold onto the tree, for today or tomorrow the waves of the sea will smash against the heap and destroy it, and if he will not be bound to the tree the sea will wash away the mound. This is the meaning of the verse, “She is a tree of life to those who grasp her, and whoever holds on to her is happy” [Prov. 3:18]. And it is written, “Therefore let every faithful man pray to You in a time when You may be found” [Ps. 32:6], that is, death, as it is written, “an escape from death” [Ps. 68:21], as this is explained in Tractate Berakhot [8a]. “That the rushing mighty waters not overtake him” [Ps. 32:6]: “him”—this is the soul, “You shelter me, etc.” [v. 7].250

Azikri’s conjunction with God by means of the divine soul within him is the way to overcome the sea of life—the waves that inundate man, and which will finally best him in death. Prayer and devotion to God by means of solitude are the elixir of life, against the elixir of death that lurks in every corner, and is always present in man’s consciousness. Azikri bases this on two verses from the book of Psalms (32:6–7): “Therefore let every faithful man pray to You in a time when You may be found, that the rushing mighty waters not overtake him. You are my shelter; You preserve me from 248 Milei de-Shemaya, ed. Pachter, para. 160. 249 “Imagine that you sit alone and are silent, for only the Lord exists in truth, and before Him you must stand in awe” (ibid., para. 121). 250 Ibid., para. 141. See para. 102. On the comparison of the world to the sea, see also Zohar 2:196a.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

distress; You surround me with the joyous shouts of deliverance. Selah.” These passages by Azikri seem to be an almost literal interpretation of the verses from Psalms. He sheds light on their existential character, and on their mystical and inward-focused meaning. He finely expresses in the following words the nature of the mystical inward focusing that aids him to overcome his solitude and his feeling of nullity: Ani Vaho [referring to God], bring salvation, for I have eyes only for Him, as if there is no creature in the world to disturb me, I am secluded with Him. He, too, may He be blessed, he has no eyes except for me, that is, “My beloved is mine and I am his” [Cant. 2:16], and so should every one of Israel say.251

Actually, a person does not seclude himself with God. Rather, he is within God; he feels that he is conducting an intimate dialogue with God. The transition from an almost dialogical existential experience to one of mystical inward focusing is evident in what Azikri writes.252

The Intensification of the Existential in Hasidism Many of the aspects discussed in this chapter, such as the struggle with the Evil Inclination, the emphasis on inner intent, ḥeshbon nefesh [spiritual accounting], and solitude, assumed more central standing in the world of the early Hasidic masters. The unique contribution of Hasidism to the doctrine of the struggle with the Evil Inclination was discussed above; now we will examine additional aspects in which we see the special path taken by the Hasidic masters to intensify the existential in their thought. In his Tales of the Hasidim, Buber adapted from the book Beit Rabbi the story of R. Schneur Zalman of Liady and his conversation with the detective who came to interrogate him when he was incarcerated in the prison in St. Petersburg, after being falsely accused by Mitnagdim [the opponents of Hasidism]: He [the chief of the gendarmes] began to converse with his prisoner and brought up a number of questions which had occurred to him in reading the Scriptures. Finally he asked: “How are we to understand that God, the all-knowing, said to Adam: ‘Where art thou?’” 251 Milei de-Shemaya, ed. Pachter, para. 57. 252 See Martin Buber, “God and the Soul,” in Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon, 1960), 183–87.

429

430

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

“Do you believe,” answered the rav, “that the Scriptures are eternal, and that every era, every generation, and every man is included in them?” “I believe this,” said the other. “Well then,” said the zaddik, “in every era, God calls to every man: ‘Where are you in your world? So many years and days of those allotted to you have passed, and how far have you gotten in your world?’ God says something like this: ‘You have lived forty-six years. How far along are you?’’ When the chief of the gendarmes heard his age mentioned, he pulled himself together, laid his hand on the rav’s shoulder, and cried: “Bravo!” But his heart trembled.253

In his analysis of this narrative, Buber noted the existential nature of R. Schneur Zalman’s response, as he indicated that God’s question is not to hear something from man that He does not know. Adam hid in order to evade responsibility and the consequences of his actions. Every man actually finds himself in such a situation. “God’s question means to stir us up, it means to destroy our hiding places, it means to show us where we went astray, it means to awaken in us a strong will to extricate ourselves.”254 R. Schneur Zalman, a disciple of the Maggid of Mezheritch, reveals the existential motive that underlies the desire for direct contact with God, which was characteristic of the maggid’s school. Taking a spiritual accounting and the search for the deep purpose of life drove the maggid and his disciples to long for substantive experiential contact with the divine. In Human Temple, I showed that the sweeping argument made by Gerschom Scholem and his students, led by Rivkah Shatz-Uffenheimer, of the absence of existential elements in Hasidism, and especially in the school of the maggid, does not stand the test of reality, even if many teachings from this school seek to marginalize their existential dimension.255 This story about R. Schneur Zalman reflects the clearly existential basis for the singular spiritual path of the Baal Shem Tov and the maggid and his disciples. The question “Where are you?,” as Buber explains, is the basis for the demand for a spiritual accounting. The spiritual desire and spiritual efforts of the early Hasidic masters to attain contact with the divine and effect its indwelling within man are the answer that they gave to the existential 253 Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1962), vol. 1: The Early Masters, 268–69. 254 Matin Buber, The Way of Man According to Hasidic Teaching, trans. Bernard H. Mehlman and Gabriel E. Padower (Woodstock: Jewish Lights, 2012), 10. 255 Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, 67–92; Margolin; Human Temple, 170–215.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

question. The spiritual way of these Hasidic masters has two aspects: prayer, Torah study, and the observance of the commandments, on the one hand; and, on the other, avodah be-gashmiyut [the worship of God through corporeality], which is the expansion of spiritual endeavor to all facets of material life, beyond the mandates of the Torah.256 Unlike the relatively few existential teachings of the maggid and many of his disciples, numerous teachings of R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye are replete with existential chords, especially as regards the notion of avodah be-gashmiyut. He directly connects the mythical image of the angel Metatron-Enoch as a shoemaker who effects mystical unions with each stitch he takes257 with the Baal Shem Tov’s exposition on the verse “Whatever it is your power to do, do with all your might. For there is no action, no reasoning, no learning, no wisdom in Sheol, where you are going” (Eccl. 9:10). In the Baal Shem Tov’s understanding, the verse links thought and action, and this notion appears many times in R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye’s writings:258 It should further be said that I heard in the name of my teacher the interpretation of the verse “Whatever it is your power [to do], do with all your might. For there is no learning, no reasoning in Sheol” [a paraphasing of Eccl. 9:10]. For the matter of Enoch Metatron, who would achieve mystical unions [yiḥudim] with the Holy One, blessed be He, with every stitch [Midrash Talpiyot]. Thus, the thought is called Ein Sof havayah [i.e., YHWH as unlimited], and the act is called [i.e., alluded by] Adonai [= the aspect of God in the natural world], and when the act is joined with the 256 On avodah be-gashmiyut in early Hasidism, see the extensive discussion: Kauffmann, In All Your Ways. Kaufmann distinguishes between nine different models of avodah be-gashmiyut in nascent Hasidism (ibid., 249–392). In the current discussion I do not delve into these distinctions, but rather examine the existential aspects of the notion. 257 See Moshe Idel, “Enoch—The Mystical Cobbler” [Heb], Kabbalah 5 (2000): 265–86. 258 “‘And his hand [ve-yado, which contains the letter yud] was holding on to the heel of Esau’ [Gen. 25:26]—by yud [which symbolizes] thought, [Jacob] would connect [to] the heel of asiyah [“action”; associatively, Esau (Eisav) is connected with asiyah], and [therefore, Jacob now] is called ‘Israel’ [which symbolizes Jacob’s connection to God in thought]; thought is called Ayin [“Divine nullification nothingness”] and is effected by the ego becoming Ayin, as I heard from my teacher [the Baal Shem Tov]. ‘Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might’ [Eccl. 9:10], and ‘a wise man’s talk brings him favor’ [Eccl. 10:12]” (Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Zofnat Paaneah 3d, ed. Nigal, 15). See idem, Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef, Lekh Lekha, end of para. 2, 56; Vayera, para. 1, 59–60; Vayeshev, para. 3, 105; Vayehi, para. 3, 127; Shemot, para. 6, 139; Bamidbar, para. 1, 440; Vaetḥanan, para. 2, 617; Zofnat Paaneah, fol. 84b, ed. Nigal, 363–64; 95b, ed. Nigal, 412–13), and more.

431

432

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

thought at the time that act is conducted, this is called the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Presence. This is the meaning of the verse, “Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might” [Prov. 9:10]. That is to say, the thought is called wisdom [ḥokhmah, as in some power [koaḥ mah]; “do [the act] with all your might”—which is the thought, to join the two together, which is the union of the Holy One, blessed be He, for “there is no [action, no reasoning, no learning, no wisdom] in Sheol” [Eccl. 9:10]. The word “alef-yud-nun” is used [with meanings] both above [Ein in Ein Sof, with the meaning of limitlessness] and below [ayin = nullity, a reference to Sheol], that is to say, if you do not believe in this, ask [ve-tish’al], and doubt this, then “there is no wisdom, no reasoning, in Sheol,” and “a wise man’s talk brings him favor” [Prov. 10:12].259

R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye’s interpretation of this verse does not continue Zoharic tradition, and the word koaḥ [“might”] is understood here as an abbreviation of ḥokhmah [“wisdom”]. Since the Zohar interprets ḥokhmah as koaḥ mah,260 R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye reverses the direction of the exposition and interprets the word bekoḥakha in the verse (“with all your might”) as ḥokhmah—wisdom. Now, it is not the union within the Godhead that is the goal of the unification but rather the unification between God as Ein-Sof and the world of action itself. The union is between the thought that focuses on God as limitlessness and human action that exists by force of the divine vitality that is emanated within this world. The act, which is called “Adonai” or “Shekhinah,”261 is no longer an abstract supernal Sefirah, it rather is the divine within the world. Because it possesses such a quality, this Shekhinah may be linked to “whatever it is in your power to do,” on condition that the action be “be-kokhaha,” that is, with wisdom, together with thought. R. Jacob Joseph gives the end of the verse from Ecclesiastes a clearly existential meaning. The conclusion of the verse: “there is no wisdom, no reasoning, in Sheol” is now equivocal. If a person connects Sheol, this lower world, with the “Ein”—that is, connects 259 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef, Vayera, para. 1, 59–60. See the collection of dicta on this issue in Ba‘al Shem Tov al ha-Torah, ed. Wodnik, 1:107–12. 260 See Zohar 3:235b: “And the secret of the matter [is in the verse]: ‘Who is she that comes up from the desert like columns of smoke’ [Cant. 3:6]—this is the smoke of the woodpile on the Altar that rises from the heart to the mind, which cannot be moved from its place by all the winds in the world. [The letters of the word] ḥokhmah [form the two words]: koaḥ mah: koaḥ [“strength”] in the heart; mah [“what”] in the mind.” 261 On the name Adonai as an appellation for the tenth Sefirah, see Gikatilla, Sha‘arei Orah, 53–61.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

Ein-Sof with the affairs of the lower world—then there are wisdom and reasoning in the world. If, however, one does not believe in such a possibility, then there will be no wisdom and reasoning in the world and, in such a situation, life loses its meaning.262 Unlike R. Jacob Joseph, such a union did not suffice for the maggid and his disciples, who sought to live even in the lower world with a divine, unlimited, and unified consciousness. This aspiration, which is characteristic of the school of the maggid, gives the impression that their idealistic conception leaves no room for concern for the self, as regards both the needs of routine physical existence and the psychological aspects of life and its distresses. For example, R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, a disciple of the maggid, frequently sets forth this notion in his teachings, in which he declares that man must not engage in his religious service for any self-benefit: This is the meaning of what Hillel said [according to M Avot 1:14]: “If I am not for myself ”—for my own needs, but only for the sake of the Creator, blessed be He—“who will be for me [mi li, abbreviated: mem-lamed, forming the word “mi]” (commentary of Rashi: [mem-lamed] is read mi,” which is language alluding to the Concealed One, Ein Sof, as it is said [Isa. 40:26]: “Who created these?”)—He will be for me. But when I am for myself, for my own needs, what am I? For he serves himself . . . Similarly, Hillel also said: “at the Simḥat Beit ha-Sho’evah, he said thus: ‘If I am here, everyone is here; but if I am not here, who is here?’” [BT Sukkah 53a]. The intent, too, is as was stated above: “If I am here”—that my intent is for my needs, and not to please my Creator, then “everyone is here,” meaning, all instances of evil that, as is known, derives from this. “But if I am not [ein] here, who is here?” This means that Ein-Sof, blessed be He, is here [reading this as: “But if ein is here”]. For even if Simḥat Beit ha-Sho’evah [literally, “the Rejoicing at the Place of the Water-Drawing, on the Sukkot festival”] is so called because the spirit of divine inspiration is drawn from there [PT Sukkah 5:1], nonetheless, if the intent of the joy at this Rejoicing was merely to draw ruaḥ ha-kodesh [the divine spirit], this, too, would be deemed self-interest, rather, it is minor self-interest. This is the meaning of what was said, “The Torah is not fulfilled.” This means that there is Torah in everything, rather, it fell in that breaking [of the vessels], and it must be raised up. Only, it is established, as was said, only by the one who renounces the world [literally, “kills himself ”] 262 See my extensive discussion: Margolin, Human Temple, 234–42.

433

434

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

for it. This means that he has absolutely no intent for his own needs and will negate any need of his own, he will act only to please his Creator. This is also the meaning of [BT Tamid 32a] “the one who wishes to live, let him kill himself.” The meaning of “the one who wishes to live” is to bring additional vitality within himself, like the Tabernacle; and also to give life to the thing with which he is occupied, that until now was in [the state of] the breaking. “Let him kill himself ”—let him kill is the language of descent, as is known— let him shed himself of any element of self-need.263

This illuminating interpretation of Hillel’s dicta, which is based on the dictum in the introduction to the Zohar,264 negates the spiritual worth of any personal aspect of the service of the Lord, arguing that man thereby serves himself. Such teachings from the school of the maggid provide the basis for the scholarly argument that existential aspects are absent from the thought of the maggid and his disciples.265 Even, however, in the above example, R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl’s reliance on the Talmudic teaching “the one who wishes to live, let him kill himself ” affirms that this is not to be understood literally. The negation of every existential dimension is, foremost, in the realm of material life. There is no point in turning to God with material requests, since proper worship is meant to uncover and be connected with the divine vitality that maintains all. “Killing oneself ” means killing the ego, in order to facilitate maximal contact with the divine vitality. The deeper strata of existence, however, are not abrogated due to this negation, since the intent of “the one who wishes to live, let him kill himself ” is not to physical life, but to life that is spiritually meaningful. R. Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, writes in the name of his grandfather: I heard from my grandfather, may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing, either in his name or in the name of Nahmanides, of blessed memory, that people will conceive the aspect of the commandment and the root of the commandment, how it is actually the life-force of his life and the life-force of all the worlds. . . . All will conceive [i.e., in their minds], they will fulfill the way of life [i.e., the commandments], such as the Patriarch Abraham, may he rest in peace, the root of every commandment and its secrets, how 263 Menahem Mendel of Chernobyl, Me’or Einayim, Yismah Lev al Avot, 350. 264 Zohar 1:1b. 265 See, for example, Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, 77–78, and the reference to Tzava’at Harivash.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

they illuminate man and all the worlds and vivify them. Man can attain the epitome of perfection only by Him. . . . This will be abrogated in the future, for the commandment will not be observed because it is a commandment from the Lord, blessed be He, and if it were not commanded he would not perform, rather, of itself, they would run to fulfill the commandment to give themselves life, as one runs after something that gives life in materiality, without any commandment.266

The concept of religious service as pleasing to the Lord means that man is illuminated by means of holy thoughts and proper intent in prayer and study; and the worship of God through corporeality causes the Divine Presence to dwell within oneself, and to transform oneself into a human temple, thereby vivifying one’s soul and the soul of the world. This is a type of religious existentialism that some have called mystical existentialism, in which spiritual vitalization fills man’s life with light and meaning, specifically because he is not concerned with corporeal affairs, but only with spiritual vitality.267 The extremism characteristic of the maggid and his disciples, who saw the very aim of “drawing the spirit of divine inspiration” as flawed, reveals their denial of the personal dimension in their spiritual lives. It also raised questions within the Hasidic world itself, and especially, the fear of spiritual pride concealed within the pretension of negating every personal dimension of worship. This critique, that began during the time of the Maggid of Mezheritch himself, as can be seen especially in the teachings of R. Phineas of Koretz, reached maturity in the teachings of R. Nahman of Bratslav (the Baal Shem Tov’s great-grandson), who was skeptical of the spiritual optimism from the school of the maggid:268 As regards submissiveness, the world errs greatly. For how greatly do we labor in [divine] services and prayer, in order to leave moḥin de-katnut [smallness and mediocrity] for moḥin de-gadlut [greatness]. Accordingly, it cannot be the case that one is submissive in a simplistic way, because then one would actually become small [or, mediocre]. Consequently, sense [da‘at] 266 Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, Degel Maḥaneh Efrayim, Tzav, 159. See above, chapter one, 145, in the text after n. 295. 267 In the tension between petitionary prayers and intellective devekut in prayer in the writings of R. Jacob Joseph in light of the Baal Shem’s teachings, see Margolin, Human Temple, 302–303. 268 On R. Phineas of Koretz’s position on this question and his influence on R. Nahman of Bratslav, see my Human Temple, 343–78, 436–39.

435

436

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

is necessarily in this, and therefore not every individual can be properly humble, only Moses, may he rest in peace, was more humble than any man on earth (Numbers 12). Our rabbis, of blessed memory, called improper humility flattery, as the Rabbis, of blessed memory, said (Sotah 41b) about the prophet Jeremiah.269

In other words, total self-negation of the sort advocated by the maggid and his disciples could easily become problematic, and even impossible. R. Nahman preferred the direct approach of supplication and crying out, in light of the distance from God. Just, however, as Hasidic masters such as the Maggid of Mezheritch were driven by existential motives that were concealed by their desire for the negation of the self, so too, some tzaddiqim whose spiritual focus was existential were propelled by their desire to negate the self and to unite with the divine. In his book Tormented Master Green already observed that, despite Joseph Weiss’s understandable identification of R. Nahman as a religious existentialist, due to his difficulty in directly sensing the divine reality,270 the mystical is evident in all his torot and tales.271 Just as the exalted states that are attained by spiritual efforts, by means of the inward focusing of this type (see above, chapter three), are temporary—and, mainly, momentary— states at the basis of which lies an existential driving factor, so too, the existential longings depicted by R. Nahman contain an echo of the experience of going beyond regular consciousness. R. Nahman’s parable of the heart and the spring that appears in his tale “The Seven Beggars” is undoubtedly one of the high points of the existentialist conception in Hasidism, and it is patently reminiscent of the Kierkegaardian view discussed above.272 269 Nahman of Bratzlav, Likkutei Moharan, 2 : 22. 270 See Joseph Weiss, Studies in Braslav Hasidism [Heb], ed. Mendel Piekarz (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1974), 87–95. On states of katnut and “unknowing” in the teachings of R. Nahman, see Ada Rapoport-Albert, “‘Katnut,’ ‘Peshitut,’ and ‘Eini Yodea’ of R. Nahman of Bratzlav” [Heb], in Studies in Jewish Religious and Intellectual History Presented to Alexander Altmann on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Siegfried Stein and Raphael Loewe (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979), Hebrew section, 7–33; Zvi Mark, Mysticism and Madness: The Religious Thought of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2009), 185–217. 271 Arthur Green, Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979), 317–18. On the mystical aspect of R. Nahman’s teachings, see Mark, Mysticism and Madness. 272 See above, 359–61, for discussion of the relationship between subjectivity and immanence in existentialist thought.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

There is a mountain. On the mountain there is a stone. From this stone, flows a Spring. Everything has a heart. Therefore the world as a whole also has a heart. The Heart of the World has a complete body, with face, hands, and feet. . . . However, a toenail of the Heart of the World has more of the essential nature of a heart than the heart of anything else. The mountain with the stone and the spring stands at one end of the world. The Heart of the World stands at the opposite end of the world. The Heart of the World faces the Spring and constantly longs and yearns to come to the Spring. It has a very, very great longing, and it cries out very much that it should be able to come to the Spring. The Spring also yearns for the Heart. The Heart has two things that make it weak. First, the sun pursues it and burns it. This is because it has such a desire, yearning to go and be close to the Spring. The second thing that weakens the Heart is the great longing and yearning that it constantly has toward the Spring. It longs and yearns so much that its soul goes out, and it cries out. It constantly stands facing the Spring, and cries out, “Help!” desiring it so very much. When the Heart wants to rest a bit and catch its breath, a great bird comes and spreads its wings over it, protecting it from the sun. It then can relax a bit. However, even when it is resting, it looks toward the Spring and yearns for it. One may wonder, since it yearns for it so much, why does it not go to the Spring? However, if it were to come close to the mountain, then it would no longer see the peak. It then could not gaze at the Spring, and if it stopped looking at the Spring, it would die, since its main source of life is the Spring. When it stands facing the mountain, it can see the peak upon which the Spring is, but as soon as it comes close to the mountain, the peak is hidden from its eyes. This is clearly demonstrable. If it could not see the Spring, then it would die. If the Heart died, then the entire world would cease to exist. The Heart is the life-force of all things, and nothing can exist without a heart. It is for this reason that it cannot go to the Spring. It therefore stands facing it, yearning and crying out.273 273 Nahman of Bratzlav, The Seven Beggars, 32–35.

437

438

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The different readings that have been offered for this tale fall into two main categories: those that stress the paradoxical nature of R. Nahman’s faith and are based in Weiss’s existentialist understanding; and those that argue for the existence of a mystical aspect, in light of Hillel Zeitlin’s interpretation.274 In my opinion, most scholars tend to ignore the general Hasidic context and the obvious affinity between central motifs in this tale and a number of important teachings in Likkutei Moharan. In the preceding chapter, I discussed R. Nahman’s assertion that “the essence of Godliness is in the heart.”275 Consequently, the claim in the parable that “everything has a heart. Therefore the world as a whole also has a heart” is R. Nahman’s way of formulating the Baal Shem Tov’s understanding of “His presence fills all the earth.” There is a divine spark in everything that longs for the spring, the source of fresh water that invigorates the heart, the divine element that is in all existence, and especially, in man. As, however, the parable shows, approaching the well is paradoxical: the closer we come to it, the harder it is to see it, since the hill from whose summit it issues forth increasingly hides it from those who approach. The servant of the Lord, who devotes his life to drawing near to his God, often finds himself very distant, as if all his spiritual efforts had brought him no closer to the focus of his longings. This sense of distance is compared to death, the feeling that his soul is liable to leave his mind and heart, and the divine within him is liable to die, due to the sense of his distance from the spring. In this literary fashioning R. Nahman expresses the notion of “the creatures dashing to and fro” that he discusses in Likkutei Moharan276 following on the original Hasidic teachings attributed to the Baal Shem Tov that speak of this concept.277 274 The existential interpretations are based on the article: Weiss, “The Kushya in the Teachings of R. Nahman,” in his Studies in Braslav Hasidism, 109–49, while the mystical interpretations rely on Hillel Zeitlin, R. Nahman of Bratzlav: His Life and Teachings [Heb] (Warsaw, 1910). For a comprehensive survey of the various interpretations, see Marianne Schleicher, Intertextuality in the Tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav: A Close Reading of Sippurey Ma’asiyot (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 584–92. Schleicher personally favored the mystical direction: using an intertextual approach, she links R. Nahman’s narrative with Psalm 61, following R. Nathan of Nemirov, and the wedding of a bride and groom with the unification of the Sefirot of Shekhinah and Tiferet in Zohar 2:169a–b. 275 Likkutei Moharan 1:49(4) (trans.: Likutey Moharan, 6:22–23); 2:56; see above, 326–27. 276 see Likkutei Moharan 1:4(9); 1:6(4). 277 “I heard from my teacher, regarding the matter of the creatures dashing to and fro, that after the soul was quarried from a holy place, it should always excitedly [turn] to the

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

What is unique to R. Nahman is his assertion that the very longings that are expressed in the crying out by the one who is desirous of reaching the spring constitute this drawing near. This is explicit in Teaching 25 of Likkutei Moharan, in which R. Nahman sets forth the most important advice to his followers to engage in solitary prayer as they cry out to the Lord: Seclusion is a very great attribute and greater than all, that is, a person must set for himself, at the very least, one hour or more, to seclude himself in some room or in the field, and to spread forth his speech between himself and his Maker, with pleas, claims, and stratagems, with pleasing, placatory, and appeasing words. He must entreat and petition before Him, may He be blessed, that He bring him closer to His service in truth. . . . This practice is great, to a very, very great degree. This is the way and very good counsel to draw near to Him, may He be blessed. For this is the general counsel, that includes all. For whatever he lacks in the service of the Lord, or if he is completely distant in everything from His service, may He be blessed, and he cannot open his mouth, to speak before Him, may He be blessed; and he desires and thirsts for this, but he cannot, this in itself is very good. He can make speech and prayer for himself from this, by itself, and for this itself he will cry out and plead before Him, may He be blessed, that he has become so distant that he cannot even speak. He will pray to Him, may He be blessed, and [engage in] petitions, that He have mercy on him and open his mouth, so that he will be able to spread forth his speech before Him. And know that several great renowned tzaddiqim related that they reached their level only by this practice. The discerning one will comprehend by himself the greatness of the degree of this practice, that ascends ever upward. This is suitable for everyone, from the smallest to the greatest. For all are capable of

place where it was hewn. Lest it become totally detached from the reality, it therefore is surrounded by the material, so that it should also engage in material matters, such as eating and drinking, worldly occupation [mainly with matters of livelihood], and the like, so that it would not be constantly in a state of excitement in the service of the Lord, may He be blessed, as regards the rectification and existence of the body with the soul. And similarly regarding [the lower and higher, respectively] levels of katnut and gadlut, and ‘a wise man’s talk brings him favor’ [Eccl. 10:12]” (Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef, Tazria, 312, and many additional places, such as Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef, Vayishlah, 99; Zofnat Paaneah 1a; 25c; Ketonet Pasim 13a). On the interpretation of the phrase “dashing to and fro” in Hasidism, see, for example, my Human Temple, 201, 216–24, 285–86.

439

440

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

engaging in this practice, and will thereby attain a great attribute. Happy is the one who grasps this.278

This path that R. Nahman set forth at the beginning of the nineteenth century attracted tens, and perhaps hundreds, of Hasidim in every generation, both during his lifetime and after his death. In the last decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, however, the spiritual distress of the time led thousands to follow this path.279 The experience portrayed in the tale and in R. Nahman’s teachings mentioned above is that of the distance between the godly source and the divine in man. The passages by R. Nahman are singular in the assertion that compassionate acts, prayer, and praise of God are themselves an overcoming of this distance; this notion itself, that originates in epistemological interiorization, which is cited in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, will be discussed in the following chapter. This statement, too, should not be accepted unreservedly, since R. Nahman understood the Baal Shem Tov’s parable of the walls as concealing God (which we shall discuss at the end of the following chapter) as existential and not cognitive. And likewise, what is related in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing. This is comparable to a certain king who placed a great treasure in a certain place, and by trickery he caused several walls to appear around the treasure. When people came to those walls, it seemed to them that they were actual walls, that were difficult to breach. Some of them immediately went back. Others breached the first wall, and came to the second, which they could not breach. Some breached more, but could not breach the remaining ones. Until a king’s son came. He said, “I know that all the walls are only trickery, and in truth there is no wall at all.” He went with certainty until he passed all of them. The wise man will learn the moral from this by himself: all the 278 Likkutei Moharan, 2 : 25. 279 I do not see any significant disparity between solitude and melody, to which Zvi Mark dedicated an extensive discussion in the context of the R. Nahman’s tale known as “The Beggar with a Speech Defect” (Mark, Mysticism and Madness, 166–68). Mark states that R. Nahman uses melody to overcome the void in a mystical way, as opposed to existential way, which is characterized by the tormented silence and the perceived distance from the divine source. It is doubtful whether this definition of melody is useful. If we assume that the possibility of connection between man and God is mystical, then R. Nahman’s approach is also mystical, simply because every prayer aspires to pierce the boundaries of the existence.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

hindrances, distractions, and temptations, which are of the aspect of walls, over the treasure of the fear of Heaven—in truth, they are nothing. The most important thing is to have a strong and resolute heart, and then there will be no hindrance.280

In the original parable, closeness to the king is the goal, while for R. Nahman, it is fear of God. The walls in the original parable are screens that conceal the king, while in R. Nahman’s telling, they are obstacles in the way of belief itself, and especially monetary and familial barriers that keep the Hasid from attaining the closeness of the tzaddiq in whom he believes; these obstacles can be overcome by means of a strong and courageous heart. In light of the heart and spring parable and Teaching 25, we may state with certainty that R. Nahman’s “strong heart” refers to longing in crying out and solitude. They themselves are godly, they are an expression of the heart that desires the spring, which it can approach only by means of faith. The Baal Shem Tov’s great-grandson could not accept the initial meaning of the parable, and beginning in the nineteenth century, other tzaddiqim and Hasidim began to give a clearly existential interpretation to central Hasidic ideas. By means of belief and longing, the Hasid realizes the godly within himself. The desire to be in proximity to God that he expresses in his prayers and crying out, itself changes his condition from katnut de-moḥin to gadlut de-moḥin. For R. Nahman, overcoming states of katnut is the end goal of religious service,281 in a direct continuation of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings on states of katnut and greatness as existential conditions in man that drive the Hasidic spiritual yearning for God’s closeness. The conscious preference for the existential orientation that began in the doctrines of R. Phineas of Koretz and R. Nahman of Bratslav reached its peak in Polish Hasidism in the school founded by “the Holy Jew,” R. Jacob Isaac of Przysucha, after he left the court of the Seer of Lublin. His successor, R. Simhah Bunim of Przysucha, was the teacher of many of the leading Polish tzaddiqim, including R. Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, R. Isaac Meir of Gur, R. Hanokh Henikh of Aleksander, and R. Mordecai Joseph of Izbica. 280 Nahman of Bratzlav, Likkutei Moharan, 2 : 46. See Moshe Idel’s interpretation of the original parable and its Bratslav version: Idel, “The Parable of the Son of the King and the Imaginary Walls in Early Hasidism” [Heb], in Judaism: Topics, Fragments, Faces, Identities: Jubilee Volume in Honor of Rivka Horwitz, ed. Haviva Pedaya and Ephraim Meir (Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2007), 87–116. 281 See above, n. 269.

441

442

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

In the Hasidism of Przysucha, the pursuit of the inner truth, that was characteristic of R. Phineas of Koretz and R. Nahman of Bratslav, became a founding principle in light of the Talmudic dictum of R. Hanina: “The seal of the Holy One, blessed be He, is truth”:282 “Keep far from a false matter” [Exod. 23:7]—I heard in the name of holy rabbi, R. Simhah Bunim of Przysucha, may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing, that we have not found any keeping far [i.e., banning, expelling, or deporting] in the entire Torah. Only the sages instituted [such measures]. As, however, regarding falsehood, the Torah itself commanded such keeping far. It is learned from this that a false matter is a great transgression. . . . One time, after Rosh Hashanah, when the rabbi, our master, may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing, took his leave of his disciples, he said to each one, “I ask a single thing of you, that you promise to obey me.” Each one certainly answered him that he would obey him. Then he said to him, “that he asked him not to utter any falsehood, but only the truth,” and he said this to each one.283

In these Polish Hasidic courts, placing the truth at the center of religious life entails a gradual retreat from the identification of belief with the experiential devekut [devotion] that was characteristic of nascent Hasidism, and exchanging this devekut with notions of existential belief that are not identified with it.284 R. Nahman ‘s disciple R. Nathan writes: For it is the nature of mohin de-katnut [= katnut de-mohin] that one who has a great mind and truly knows, understands, and is cognizant that the ways of the Lord cannot be comprehended, and draws down to himself true belief . . . and the main miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea was that they merited then to release themselves from their [rational] mind completely, and only to cry out to the Lord and be strengthened in belief alone, and they jumped

282 BT Shabbat 55a; Yoma 69b; Sanhedrin 64a. On truth in the writings of R. Phineas of Koretz and R. Nahman of Bratslav, see Margolin, Human Temple, 268–70, 437–38. 283 Simha Bunim of Pzhysha, Kol Mevaser, ed. Yehuda Menachem Baum (Raananah, 1988), vol. 1, Mishpatim, para. 16–17, 107. On the quest for the truth in the study hall of R. Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, see Abraham J. Heschel, A Passion for Truth (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973). 284 See Ron Margolin, “On the Essence of Faith in Hasidism: An Historical-Theoretical Perspective,” In Faith: Jewish Perspectives, ed. Avi Sagi and Dov Schwartz (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013), 302–66.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

into the sea based only on belief. By this they removed the hold of the husks, which are the heresies.285

The Bratslav leap of faith is reminiscent of Søren Kierkegaard, who argued that belief cannot be based on objective proofs, and especially not on philosophical thought, such as that of Hegel, but rather on subjectivity and individualism.286 This conception is close to the statement by R. Menahem Mendel of Kotzk: “I would not worship the God that my small intellect is capable of cognizing and understanding.”287 Their staunch commitment to the truth led the nineteenth-century Hasidic masters to the medieval meanings of belief that were based on the distinction between knowledge and faith. Hasidic belief in this period was singularly thought to be a personal existential necessity and not dogma externally imposed on the believer. The emphasis placed on the importance of the individual aspect of religious worship was one of the cornerstones of Przysucha Hasidism. Each Hasid had to search within himself for the manner in which he could be in relationship with God, in a manner that would vitalize him, since the secret of the relationship with God was to be found within this life force. Genesis 26 tells of the wells that Abraham’s servants had dug and which were stopped up by the Philistines, and of Isaac digging them anew: “And the Philistines stopped up all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of his father Abraham, filling them with earth” (v. 15). The Biblical narrative, however, speaks only of the digging of new wells by Isaac’s servants when it relates: “But when Isaac’s servants, digging in the wadi, found there a well of spring water” (v. 19). R. Simhah Bunim writes on this: For the entire way to the Lord in which one engages, a person must have inner vitality, and if he lacks inner vitality, he does not ascend. Now, the Philistines, too, wanted to follow in the ways of the Patriarch Abraham, may he rest in peace, and they did as the Patriarch Abraham did, but there was no inner vitality in this, and this was the stopping up of the way, understand this. The Patriarch Isaac wanted to dig this well, even though he had his own ways to the Lord. Nonetheless, he did not refrain from digging his father’s 285 Nathan (Sternhartz) of Nemirov, Likkutei Halakhot (Jerusalem, 1985), Oraḥ Ḥayyim, part three, Laws of Passover 7:23, 308. 286 See Aylat-Yaguri, Human Dialogue, 77–78. 287 Yehudah Leib Levin, Beit Kotsk—Ha-Saraf: Biography of the Great Admor of Kotsk [Heb] (Bnei Brak: Harim Levin Publishers, 1972), 85.

443

444

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

well, as is written. Afterwards, he himself dug wells. For every Israelite who embarks on the service of the Lord, may He be blessed, must dig in his self a well by means of which he will be able to adhere to his Creator, may He be blessed and exalted. In the beginning, this well is not perfect in itself, because good and evil are mingled within his self. This is called Esek, because they contended [hitasku] with him.288 After that, when he leaves the level that has no inherent restraint, then he is on the level of Sitnah.289 For Satan stands opposite him and confuses him. Then he comes to a broad [rahavah] level, and is called Rehoboth.290 As Scripture says [Prov. 16:7]: “When the Lord is pleased with a man’s conduct, He may turn even his enemies into allies,” and this is the secret of the wells.291

Religious service is stopped up when it is not performed from within inner vitality. Isaac began by redigging his father’s wells that had been stopped up, but he found the spring water [mayim hayyim—literally, “living water”] in the well that he dug himself. Each individual must find this vitality within himself after a protracted process of gradual inner search. In the beginning, negative motives are part of this activity, which therefore entails inner struggles against these negative factors. It continues with battles with the external world in the face of external oppositions, and in the culmination of the process, connecting to the inner life force overcomes all the inner and outer difficulties. The key to this process is to be found in R. Simhah Bunim’s personal instruction: the individual “must dig in his self a well by means of which he will be able to adhere to his Creator.” This directive is identical to the concluding words that he added to the famous tale of the treasure that he would relate to those who came to his court: Rabbi Bunam used to tell young men who came to him for the first time the story of Rabbi Eisik, son of Rabbi Yekel in Cracow. After many years of great poverty which had never shaken his faith in God, he dreamed someone bade him look for a treasure in Prague, under the bridge which leads to the king’s palace. When the dream recurred a third time, Rabbi Eisik prepared for the 288 Based on the verse “the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, ‘The water is ours.’ He named that well Esek, because they contended [hitasku] with him” (Gen. 26:20). 289 See Gen. 26:21. 290 See Gen. 26:22. 291 Simha Bunim of Pzhysha, Kol Simḥah, ed. by Yehuda Menachem Baum (Raananah, 1988), Toledot, para. 7, 38.

Existential Aspects of Inner Religious Life  •  CHAPTER FIVE

journey and set out for Prague. But the bridge was guarded day and night and he did not dare to start digging. Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morning and kept walking around it until evening. Finally the captain of the guards, who had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something or waiting for somebody. Rabbi Eisik told him of the dream which had brought him here from a faraway country. The captain laughed: “And so to please the dream, you poor fellow wore out your shoes to come here! As for having faith in dreams, if I had it, I should have had to get going when a dream once told me to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew—Eisik, son of Yekel, that was the name! Eisik, son of Yekel! I can just imagine what it would be like, how I should have to try every house over these, where one half of the Jews are named Eisik, and the other Yekel!” And he laughed again. Rabbi Eisik bowed, traveled home, dug up the treasure from under the stove, and built the House of Prayer which is called “Reb Eisik’s Shul.” “Take this story to heart,” Rabbi Bunim used to add, “and make what it says your own: There is something you cannot find anywhere in the world, not even at the zaddik’s, and there is, nevertheless, a place where you can find it.”292

In his interpretation of this tale, Buber argued that the central idea is that “there is a certain ‘something’ that can be found only in one unique place in the world. That ‘something’ is a great treasure, namely, the fulfillment of one’s existence. And the place where this treasure may be found is the place where one stands.”293 Gerschom Scholem vigorously attacked the expression “the fulfillment of one’s existence,” asserting that it reflects Buber’s existentialist dialogical philosophy more than it represents the world of the Hasidim.294 However, linking the tale of the treasure to R. Simhah Bunim’s exposition of Gen. 26:15–19 supports Buber’s existentialist understanding to a not inconsiderable degree. The discovery of the treasure is identical to the finding of the spring-living water in Isaac’s well that is compared to inner vitality, on which connection with the Godhead is conditional. By saying that the treasure is to be found only “where one stands,” Buber refers to the I-Thou relationship that is directed to the here 292 Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, vol. 2: The Later Masters, 245–46. 293 Buber, Way of Man, 24. 294 Gershom Scholem, “Martin Buber’s Interpretation of Hasidism,” in Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays in Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1995), 234–50.

445

446

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

and now, in the spirit of his distinction between ordinary I-It relations and the I-Thou relationship, that infuses every encounter with the world and with other people with significance. This relationship transforms such meetings into an encounter with the Eternal Thou (Buber’s term for the divine), as well. R. Simhah Bunim formulated the connection between the personal inner stance and connection with God in more traditional terms: “and if he lacks inner vitality, he does not ascend.” The ascent, even according to R. Simhah Bunim, however, is totally dependent on a person’s ability to connect in his inner self with that which vivifies him. This is not a way that is conditional on a mystical withdrawal from the world, but on the preference of the inner to the external. This is an inner connection to the actions and inner reflections that animate a person and enable him to adhere, to come into contact with the source of vitality that is external to him. In this manner a person may attain inner elevation, but this should not necessarily be identified with an external ascent directed to detachment from the world in order to be liberated from it. A study of epistemological interiorization, which is the subject of the next chapter, will reveal its conceptual roots in various Jewish sources, and its epitome in the sentence: “Where man thinks, there he is,” that is frequently cited in the name of the Baal Shem Tov.

Chapter Six

Epistemological Interiorization

The idea that the mind creates and fashions man’s conceptions, knowledge, and consciousness—and not independent external reality—is shared by a diverse range of epistemological conceptions and doctrines. These doctrines, which relate in different ways to the inner nature of human cognition, have diverse and far-reaching consequences for traditional religious insights. They radically alter both a person’s self-perception and the nature of the relationship between man and God, from unio mystica to conceptions that negate any possibility of knowing God and even lead to total secularization.

Epistemological Interiorization in Indian Religious Thought The late Vedic period in India (from the ninth to the seventh centuries BCE) not only witnessed the initial development of ritual interiorization, in the sense discussed in chapter one,1 it also saw the beginnings of a more radical form of interiorization. According to Shlomo Biderman, There came a time . . . when Indian culture came up with what to my mind is one of its most fascinating innovations: the possibility of the internalization of ritualistic activity.

1 See above, chapter one, 72–3.

448

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The idea of internalization arose out of the process of individualization of the person performing the ritual. The sacrificer himself began to take an increasingly more significant role in the ritual. Correspondingly, the material and more concrete aspects of the ritual act became redundant. If the meaning of sacrifice lies within man and man alone, there is no reason not to “place” inside him the actual sacrificial act itself and thus, plainly, ritual is transformed from a physical occurrence to mental event.2

The Indian sacrificer, who discovered that the structure and strictures of the rite are present in his consciousness, could now “enter” them instead of conducting them in an outer, behavioral manner. The following Tamil narrative, Periya Puranam by Sekkilaar, that was composed in southern India in the twelfth century CE, illustrates how the inner, intellective plane served as a substantive substitute for the external ritual act in Tamal Hindu culture: Pusalar was a Brahmin of Thiru Ninravur in Thondai Mandalam. He excelled in the mental worship of the Lord. Mental worship is thousands of times better than external ritualistic worship. Mental worship soon leads to samadhi (superconscious state) and self-realization. Pusalar strongly desired to build a temple for Lord Siva, but he did not have the money for it. So, mentally he gathered the necessary materials for the purpose. He laid the foundation stone on an auspicious day. He raised the temple and even fixed an auspicious day for the installation of the deity in it. The Kadava king who was also a great devotee of Lord Siva had built a magnificent temple in Conjeevaram. By chance, the king also had fixed the same date which Pusalar had mentally chosen for the installation of the Lord in his temple. The Lord wanted to show the king the superiority of Pusalar’s great devotion. So, the Lord appeared in the king’s dream and asked him to postpone the installation ceremony in his temple, as Siva would be going to the temple constructed by His devotee at Thiru Ninravur. The king woke up from sleep and was intensely eager to have the darshan of the devotee mentioned by the Lord and also to have a look at the great temple Pusalar had built, which the king thought would be far superior to his temple. 2 Biderman, Crossing Horizons, 59.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

The king came to Thiruninravur [sic] and searched all over the place for the temple—he could not find any. Then the king enquired about Pusalar. He found out Poosalar’s [sic] house and approached him. Pusalar was stunned when he heard of the king’s dream. Soon, Pusalar recovered and was filled with joy. He thought, “How kind and merciful is the Lord. I am only a wretched creature and He has accepted my mental shrine as His Abode. I am really blessed.” Pusalar Nayanar told the king that that temple was only in his mind. The king was greatly surprised to hear this. Admiring Pusalar’s devotion, the king fell at Pusalar’s feet and worshipped him. Pusalar installed the Lord in his mental temple and continued to worship Siva till he attained the Lord’s abode.3

The fusion at the end of the Indian narrative follows the culmination of a long process of inner mental worship which occurs in the inner world of the devotee. This experience is enabled by ritual interiorization based on the assumption that inner thought is the venue for the true encounter between God and man. Biderman maintains that such a process could happen in India because the concept of “God” in Indian culture was not dependent on the assumption of divine transcendentalism, and, unlike Western culture, this assumption is absent from the Indian ritual relationship between man and God.4 I will argue below that, despite theological differences with regard to transcendence between Indian culture, on the one hand, and Jewish, Muslim, and Western cultures, on the other, extremely significant epistemological interiorization developed in Western culture, Islam, and Judaism on religious and philosophical planes. Along with transcendental thought, substantive immanent elements—that are less marginal than is usually thought—were, and still are, to be found in these cultures.5 3 G. Vanmikanathan, The Sixty-Three Nayanars, 56: “Pusalar,” by Swami Sivananda, accessed January 26, 2014, http://www.skandagurunatha.org/deities/siva/nayanars/56. asp; based on Periyapuranam, ll. 4175–4193. 4 Biderman, Crossing Horizons, 59. 5 For an example of epistemological interiorization in Western thought parallel to the preceding Hindu narrative, see the discussion of inner or mental pilgrimage through the city of Jerusalem in sixteenth-century Christian manuscripts and its sources: Hanneke von Asperen, “‘As if They Had Physically Visited the Holy Places.’ Two Sixteenth-Century Manuscripts Guide a Mental Journey through Jerusalem (Radbound University Library, Mss. 205 and 233),” in The Imagined and Real Jerusalem in Art and Architecture, ed. Jeroen Goudeau, Mariette Verhoeven, and Wouter Weijers (Leiden: Brill open e-book collection, 2014), 190–214.

449

450

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Sufi Epistemological Interiorization Sufi epistemology is not concerned with understanding the nature of cognition per se; rather, it teaches how certain knowledge may be attained by means of inner contemplation. In his discussion of Sufism, Goldziher asserted: When the temporal associates with the eternal, it has no existence left. You hear and see nothing but Allah when you have reached the conviction that nothing besides Allah exists; when you recognize that you yourself are He, that you are identical with Him; there is nothing that exists except Him.6

In a well-known and widely disseminated Sufi composition, Ar-rasa’il al-qushayriyya [The Epistle on Sufi Knowledge], written by Abu’l-Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 1074), the chapter called “Awareness [of God]” [muraqaba] contains what is arguably one of the most important sources for epistemological interiorization in both Sufi and medieval Jewish thought:7 “He [= al-Qushayri] then said: ‘Tell me what is doing the beautiful (ihsan)?’ The Prophet answered: ‘To worship God as if you see Him, for even though you may not see Him, He [always] sees you.’” [Here the Prophet] alluded to the state of awareness [of God], for awareness is the servant’s knowledge that [his] Lord—praise be to Him—is always watching him. The servant’s perseverance in this knowledge is nothing but his awareness of his Lord, which is the source of all good for him. He will arrive at this stage only after he has completed the stage of self-scrutiny (muhasaba). For when he takes account of what he has done in the past, corrects his [inner] state in the present, follows the path of Truth, takes good care of his heart in dealing with God Most High, stays with God Most High in every breath he makes, and observes God Most High in all his states, he will then realize that God— praise be to Him—is watching over him, that he is close to his heart, that he knows [all] his states, watches [all] his actions and hears [all] he says. Whosoever neglects all of this is shut off from attaining God, not to mention from the true realities of closeness [with Him]. I heard Shaykh `Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami—may God have mercy on him—say: I heard Abu Bakr al-Razi say: I heard al-Jurayri say: “Whosoever has not firmly established [God-fearing] piety and [constant] awareness 6 Goldziher, Introduction, 144. 7 See below, 488–92, the discussion of epistemological interiorization in Maimonides, Guide 3:51.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

between himself and God Most High will never attain unveiling and witnessing.” I heard the master Abu `Ali al-Daqqaq—may God have mercy on him—say: “A ruler once had a vizier. One day, when the vizier was standing before him, he turned to one of the ruler’s slaves present there, not out of suspicion but because of a noise or movement that he sensed from them. It so happened that at that very moment the ruler looked at the vizier. The latter was afraid that the ruler would imagine that he looked at them out of suspicion, therefore he continued to look sideways. From that day on, whenever the vizier entered in the ruler’s presence he would always look to the side, so that the ruler thought that this was part of his inborn character. Now, this is one creature’s awareness of another creature. What, then, should be the servant’s awareness of his [divine] Master?” I heard a Sufi say: “One ruler had a slave, whom he liked more than his other slaves, although he was neither more valuable, nor more handsome than the rest. When people asked him about this, he decided to show them that that slave’s service was superior to that of his other slaves. One day he was riding with his entourage. In the distance was a snow-capped mountain. The ruler looked at the mountain, then lowered his head. [Suddenly,] the slave urged his horse to run and galloped off. The people [in the entourage] did not know why he did so. After a short while the slave returned carrying with him some ice. The ruler asked him: ‘How did you know that I wanted ice?’ The slave replied: ‘You glanced at it [the mountain], and the glance of the ruler is always for a purpose.’ The ruler said: ‘I have singled him out for favor and liking, because for everyone there is an occupation, and his occupation is to take note of my glances and to be aware of my moods.’” A Sufi said: “Whosoever is aware of God in his thoughts, God will protect his limbs [from any sin].”8

Diana Lobel noted the importance of this text on the interiorization processes in medieval Jewish thought, following the adoption of the idea it embodies by R. Bahya ibn Paquda in his book Duties of the Heart.9 According to Lobel, the process described by al-Qushayri is the interiorization of what at first glance seems to be external consciousness. The process begins with the awareness that God watches over man. The more aware he becomes of God’s providence, the greater its presence in his consciousness, 8 Abu ’l-Qasim Al-Qushayri, Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism [Al-Risala al-qushayriyya fi‘ilm al-tasawwuf], trans. Alexander D. Knysh (Reading: Garnet, 2007), 203–204. 9 See below, p. 481 n. 102.

451

452

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

until he reaches the state that Sufis call mushahada, that is, the witness of God within one’s heart.10 In my opinion, this text can be understood more fully if we link it with another teaching of al-Qushayri in a letter in the name of his teacher Abu `Ali al-Hasan b. `Ali b. Muhammad al-Daqqaq: “The moment is what you are in [now]. If you are in this world, then your moment is in this world. If you are in the Hereafter, then your moment is the Hereafter. If you are in joy, then your moment is joy. If you are in sorrow, then your moment is sorrow.” By this he meant that a moment is a state that dominates a person.11

The Sufi concept of moment [waqt] refers to mystical time, the eternal present. Najm al-Din Kubra (died 1221) wrote about the moment: Being in the moment is the condition for proper witnessing, in which man and the beloved God witness each other: God witnesses man in all his actions and deeds, good as bad—even the look he directs to someone, or when he listens to another; and man witnesses God in every situation in which God places him, whether friendship or calamity.12

The passage by Kubra connects the two passages cited from the epistle of al-Qushayri. Sufism maintains that self-scrutiny [muhasaba] leads to awareness (of God) [muraqaba], which in turn results in the witnessing of God within one’s heart [mushahada]. This linkage is conditional on liberation from time and immersion in the moment itself, which lacks past or future, by deep concentration on the awareness of God, who is watchful of man. Inner intellective concentration on God’s watchfulness of man enables the latter, who is watchful of God, to tangibly and inwardly sense God’s gazing upon him. The content of the innermost thoughts becomes a completely tangible reality for the person who thinks them. In Sufism, the traditional religious belief in Divine Providence, that assumes the existence of a God who is external to man and who watches over him, is acquired in a completely conscious manner by means of a clearly inward epistemological process. Epistemological interiorization, in this case, does not contradict the perception of the external reality, it rather establishes it. 10 Diana Lobel, A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue: Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 224–26. 11 Al-Qushayri, Epistle on Sufism, 75. 12 Sviri, Sufis, 214; rendered from Najm al-Din Kubra, Fawa’ih ad-djamal wa-fawatih al-djalal (Weisbaden, 1957), 50, para. 104.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

Epistemological Interiorization in Western Thought In Greek philosophy, Plato’s cave metaphor emphasizes the subjective nature of human thought. Plato used his doctrine as he sought to free human thought from the bonds of subjectivity. The Platonic doctrine, that stresses the body-soul and subjective-objective dichotomies, therefore laid the foundation for a considerable number of attempts to overcome the spiritual tension intensified by this dichotomous conception.13 Aristotle argued, by means of his matter and form doctrine, that the knowing soul absorbs only the form of something. In the cognitive act, the intellective form of a thing enters the soul. We must understand as true generally of every sense that sense is that which is receptive of the form of sensible objects without the matter, just as the wax receives the impression of the signet-ring without the iron or the gold, and receives the impression of the gold or bronze, but not as gold or bronze.14

That is, in the intellective act, the subject is the same as the object, in that they both are form. Consequently, cognition is effected by identification with the object,15 while the reality of the consciousness is inner. This philosophical approach was the starting point for both objective doctrines that emphasize the identification between inner cognition and the outer reality, and those that stress the subjective nature of cognition. Plotinus’ detailed discussion of this issue led to his identification of all cognition with self-knowledge: If therefore Intellect’s intellection is the intelligible, and the intelligible is itself, it will itself think itself: for it will think with the intellection which it is itself and will think the intelligible, which it is itself. In both ways, then, it will think itself, in that intellection is itself and in that the intelligible is itself which it thinks in its intellection and which is itself.16

13 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1985), 39–40. 14 Aristotle, On the Soul 2:12, 424a. for English translation, see Aristotle, On the Soul, transl. W. S. Hett, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 288 (London: Heinemann, 1975), 136–37. 15 On the Indian parallels to the Western notion of cognition effected by identification with the object, see Aurobindo, The Life Divine (Calcutta: Patro-Arya, 1943), 164. 16 Plotinus, Ennead V:3: “On the Knowing Hypostases and That Which Is Beyond,” 5 (trans.: 444, 88–89).

453

454

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Plotinus’ formulation can be summed up in the statement that whatever we perceive originates within ourselves. Any knowledge, whether it relates to the outer or the inner worlds, is actually the knowledge of ourselves, because it occurs within us. According to Plotinus, people’s usual division of their thought between the world and their self-perception is, in fact, arbitrary and not substantive. The medieval philosophers, as did Maimonides, explained sensation and cognition in general in that the consciousness absorbs within itself the forms of known things. The known thing is present by its form, which is, as it were, its representative within the intellect, and the intellect identifies with it. This way of existence of the known within the knower was called “objective reality.” Objective reality is therefore, in both Scholastic language and the language of Descartes and Spinoza, a reality that is solely within the consciousness, unlike our current usage, for we call this reality subjective, specifically.17

Another direction in Western thought that led to epistemological interiorization is related to the attempts to overcome the skepticism that 17 Bergmann, Introduction, 91. Based on what Aristotle said in Metaphysics 11:9 on self-perception, Aristotelian philosophers (including Maimonides) developed the assertion that God is the mind or the intellect, the thinker, and what is perceived (the terminology follows Efros, Philosophical Terms, 113, 81, and 71, respectively). Pines maintains that Aristotle’s original intent was limited and excluded the perception of ideas from the divine perception (Pines, Studies, 140). In medieval thought, in order to overcome heresy, the Aristotelian idea evolved into the ontological argument of Anselm of Canterbury: God exists in mind, meaning, in the intellect. “Why, then, has the fool said in his heart, there is no God (Psalms xiv. 1), since it is so evident, to a rational mind, that you do exist in the highest degree of all? Why, except that he is dull and a fool? How the fool has said in his heart what cannot be conceived. . . . [T]here is more than one way in which a thing is said in the heart or conceived. For, in one sense, an object is conceived, when the word signifying it is conceived; and in another, when the very entity, which the object is, is understood. In the former sense, then, God can be conceived not to exist; but in the latter, not at all. For no one who understands what fire and water are can conceive fire to be water, in accordance with the nature of the facts themselves, although this is possible according to the words. So, then, no one who understands what God is can conceive that God does not exist; although he says these words in his heart, either without any or with some foreign, signification. For, God is that than which a greater cannot be conceived. And he who thoroughly understands this, assuredly understands that this being so truly exists, that not even in concept can it be non-existent. Therefore, he who understands that God so exists, cannot conceive that he does not exist” (Anselm, Proslogion 3:11–4:8).

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

reached its pagan apex in the Pyrrhonian sect. Augustine prevailed over skepticism by asking: “who would doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? For even if he doubts, he lives.”18 He based the validity of cognition on the certainty of human existence and subjective inner contemplation: For we both are and know that we are, and we love our existence and our knowledge of it. Moreover, in these three statements that I have made we are not confused by any mistake masquerading as truth. For we do not get in touch with these realities, as we do with external objects, by means of any bodily sense. We know colours, for instance, by seeing them, sounds by hearing them, odours by smelling them, and hard and soft objects by feeling them. We also have images that closely resemble these physical objects, but they are not material. They live in our minds, where we use them in thinking, preserve them in our memory, and are stimulated by them to desire the objects themselves. But it is without any deceptive play of my imagination, with its real or unreal visions, that I am quite certain that I am, that I know that I am, and that I love this being and this knowing.19

Taylor wrote at length that Western thought began its journey towards Cartesian epistemological interiorization in the thought of Augustine.20 He maintained that Augustinian interiorization was made possible by the conception of the self as unified that characterizes the Platonic doctrine and which Augustine knew from Plotinus.21 In Descartes’ thought, the recurring Aristotelian idea mentioned above, as well as (in an Augustinian spirit) skepticism as a starting point for the acquisition of a new certainty, are the building blocks of the “new 18 Augustine, On the Trinity, 10:10. For English translation, see Augustine, On the Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna, ed. Gareth B. Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 55. 19 Augustine, City of God 11:26 (trans.: City of God, 530–33); see R. A. Markus, “Marius Victorinus and Augustine,” in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. Arthur Hilary Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 362–73. 20 “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that it was Augustine who introduced the inwardness of radical reflexivity and bequeathed it to the Western tradition of thought. . . . The modern epistemological tradition from Descartes, and all that has flowed from it in modern culture, has made this standpoint fundamental—to the point of aberration, one might think” (Taylor, Sources of the Self, 131). See his discussion of Augustine, 127–42; and of Descartes, 143–58. 21 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 120, 127; and see his discussion of Plato, 115–26.

455

456

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

philosophy.” Descartes’ statement: “cogito ergo sum,” or in the formulation in Meditations: “ego sum, ego existo,” destroyed scholastic philosophical foundations, undermined accepted ways of thinking and placed man at the center as the basis for certainty and the truth.22 In the new philosophy, even more than in the classical, human thought, with its characteristic categories, is a geometric point from which man’s entire perception of reality ensues. Descartes’ formulation—and especially its later Kantian and Husserlian versions23—was meant “to ensure actual objectivity by force of cognition itself.”24 Although Kant taught that subjectivity is the source of objectivity itself and attempted to overcome the contrast between the subjective and the objective,25 his doctrine was interpreted in both a subjective direction, by Schopenhauer, and objectively, by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The preference for the interior over the external characteristic of existential orientations in philosophy and religion, and especially in the work of Kierkegaard, does not necessary derive from either Aristotelian or Cartesian epistemology. This is reflected in the history of Western thought, which branched off in contradictory directions on this question. Nevertheless, a study of the teachings of Augustine and Plotinus in antiquity, Schopenhauer’s subjective interpretation of Kant in the modern period and, especially, of the new existential philosophies, reveals how, in certain philosophical doctrines, epistemological interiorization provided a conceptual foundation for extreme subjectivity. Jean-Paul Sartre, in opposition to such directions of thought, claimed: “But the subjectivity which we thus postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual subjectivism, for as we have demonstrated, it is not only one’s own self that one discovers in the cogito, but those of others too. Contrary to the philosophy 22 Samuel Hugo Bergmann, History of Philosophy from Nicolaus Cusanus to the Age of Enlightenment [Heb] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1974), 1:174; Abraham Zevie Bar-On, Ontological Analysis: The Classical Model, trans. Leon J. Schramm (Lanham: University Press of America, 1996), 114–34. “It was again a revolution in philosophy that Descartes took as his starting point not external objects supposedly known but the conscious self. The Renaissance had rediscovered the individual; Descartes made him the hitching post of his philosophy. ‘I see clearly that there is nothing which is easier for me to know than my own mind’” (Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins [New York, Simon and Schuster, 1961], 765). 23 Nathan Rotenstreich, “Introductory Chapters” [Heb], in Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, trans. Nathan Rotenstreich (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1985), xxiv–xxvii. 24 Ibid., xxxv. 25 Ibid., xviii.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say ‘I think’ we are attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we are just as certain of the other as we are of ourselves.”26 The following discussions of a number of philosophical doctrines will show that viewing man and his thought as the basis of certainty and truth does not necessarily lead to extreme subjectivity, inward focusing, or introspective contemplation, with the consequence of stripping objectivity of any significance. Nevertheless, one who turns to inner directions of this sort, to the extent of negating the external reality, could find conceptual justification for this path in epistemological interiorization and the thought based on it. To a certain degree, we can say that epistemological interiorization can support any of the other interiorization orientations we have discussed in this book. Yet, an individual who engages in such interiorization need not necessarily adopt any specific worldview and way of life grounded in these orientations. Personal, cultural, and other factors influence the interpretive directions that people have given, and still give, to their understanding of the subjective nature of human cognition. Kierkegaardian existentialist philosophy does not give an unequivocal answer to the question of the extent to which the idealization of subjectivity necessarily means epistemological subjectivism. Kierkegaard, too, did not regard interiorization as the negation of objectivity. He stressed that the difference between the search for objective truth and that which seeks subjective truth ensues from the substantive difference regarding the object of the search: When truth is asked about objectively, reflection is directed objectively at truth as an object to which the knower relates. Reflection is not on the relation but on its being the truth, the truth that he is relating to. If only this, to which he relates, is the truth, the true, then the subject is in the truth. If the truth is asked about subjectively, reflection is directed subjectively on the individual’s relation; if only the how of this relation is in truth, then the individual is in truth, even if he related in this way to untruth.27 26 Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, 45. 27 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 167–68. Sagi explains Kierkegaard’s subjectivity as follows: “Kierkegaard does not equate subjectivity and the turn inwards with theoretical reflection. In the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he clarifies that the turn inward is the inwardness of self-activity, and thus an act of the concrete self rather than of reflection” (Sagi, Kierkegaard, 142). See also Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 243–47.

457

458

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The meaning of this notion for religion and religious terminology finds full expression in Kierkegaard’s thoughts on the nature of faith; Immanently (in the imaginative medium of abstraction) God does not exist or is not present—only for the existing person is God present, i.e., he can be present in faith. . . . If an existing person does not have faith, then [for him] God neither is nor is God present, although understood externally God nevertheless eternally is.28

Kierkegaard’s existentialist interiorization is not necessarily epistemological. The nature of cognition is of no concern to Kierkegaard, who explored the inner meanings of faith. Although he was influenced by Kant and opposed Hegel’s interpretation of Kant, Kierkegaard saw no need to address the question of subjectivity and objectivity. The latter, which he identified with the outer, is, so he argued, concerned with the question of “what,” and the (inner) subjective, with the question of “how.”29 For Kierkegaard, epistemological interiorization does not itself favor inwardness or outwardness, subjectivity or objectivity. This decision is one of will, of faith. Despite the above, understanding the inner essence of human cognition may well liberate man from this dichotomy and the need to choose between objectivity and subjectivity. Kierkegaard, like Augustine, chose 28 Kierkegaard, Journals: VII1 A 139 n.d., 1846, para. 1347 (cited in Sagi, Kierkegaard, 143). And in a different formulation: “God is subject and therefore for subjectivity in inwardness” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 168); see also ibid., 179, 218–219; Sagi, Kierkegaard, 141–47. Additionally: “Christianity is spirit; spirit is inwardness; inwardness is subjectivity, subjectivity is its essential passion, as its maximum an infinitely, personally interested passion for one’s eternal happiness” (Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 33). See Sagi, Kierkegaard, 118; see also ibid., 102. 29 See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 518–19: “It is said that in England a man was attacked on the highway by a robber who had made himself unrecognizable by wearing a big wig. He rushes at the traveller, seizes him by the throat and shouts: Your purse! He gets the purse, which he keeps, but throws away the wig. A poor man comes down the same road, puts on the wig and arrives at the next town where the traveller had already raised the alarm. He is recognized, arrested and is recognized by the traveller, who swears that he is the man. By chance, the robber is present in the courtroom, sees the misunderstanding, and addresses the judge: ‘It seems to me that the traveller has more regard for the wig than for the man,’ and he asks to be allowed to make an experiment. He puts on the wig, seizes the traveller by the throat, crying: Your purse!—and the traveller recognizes the robber and offers to swear to it—the only trouble being that he has already taken an oath.” According to Kierkegaard’s explanation, the traveller was attentive to the “what,” and completely ignored the—truer—“how.”

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

subjectivity, not by negating objectivity, but out of an awareness of the primacy of subjectivity. There is a ‘how’ which has this quality, that if it is truly given, then the ‘what’ is also given; and that it is the ‘how’ of ‘faith’. Here, quite certainly, we have inwardness at its maximum proving to be objectivity once again. And this is an aspect of the principle of subjectivity which, as far as I know, has never before been presented or worked out.30

Wittgenstein and the philosophers of language—who exchanged Husserl’s occupation with the science of logic with their exploration of the structure of language, continues his struggle against psychologism,31 while refraining from metaphysical meanings: “Put a ruler against this object; it does not say that the object is so-and-so long. Rather, it is in itself—I am tempted to say—dead, and achieves nothing of what a thought can achieve.”—It is as if we had imagined that the essential thing about a living human being was the outward form. Then we made a lump of wood into that form and were abashed to see the lifeless block, lacking any similarity to a living creature.32

Wittgenstein’s example speaks of the vivifying power of thought, that is, the meaning that language imparts by means of thought—without which the physical world and physical actions are as if dead. How does it come about that this arrow > points? Doesn’t it seem to carry within it something extraneous to itself?—“No, not the dead line on paper; only a mental thing, the meaning, can do that.”—That is both true and false. The arrow points only in the application that a living creature makes of it. This pointing is not a hocus-pocus that can be performed only by the mind.33

Wittgenstein substitutes the metaphysical meaning of the concept “mind” with an explanation of the mental connection between the signifier 30 Kierkegaard, Journals, entry 1021, 355. 31 Bergmann, Contemporary Thinkers, 86–87; Carnap, “The Rejection of Metaphysics,” 31–34. 32 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 430. 33 Ibid., para. 454; Edna Ullman-Margalit, “Introduction” [Heb] to Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Edna Ullman-Margalit (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995), 21–22.

459

460

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

and the signified that imparts meaning to the sign. The arrow does not create a world; it is mental intentionality that produces meanings. In these observations, Wittgenstein repeatedly emphasizes the creative force in thought. The question of the connection between mental creativity and the world external to it remains. Obviously, he does not argue for the existence of an inner world that is independent of outer events or that brings them into existence. Nonetheless, he distinguishes between actions lacking intentionality (that are dependent on external events) and intentional actions (that are independent of such factors). That is, mental activity is capable of creating worlds that are not dependent on external events.34 Wittgenstein also sought to be released from the discussion of subjectivity and objectivity. He spoke of cognitive links that generate meaning that is not included in one of these categories.35 The philosophy of language sets aside the meaning of epistemological interiorization, in the sense it had in Husserl’s phenomenology. Notwithstanding this, interiorization, in terms of attention paid to the function of the consciousness, without attributing to it the creation of things, is still present within the context of the philosophy of language. This philosophy does not offer alternative metaphysical explanations, but rather reveals the absurdity of such explanations, while teaching that interiorization and psychologism are not synonymous.36 In the middle of the twentieth century psychological and psychiatric studies, along with the philosophy of language, began to contribute to a new understanding of the nature of human cognition as regards perception and paranormal phenomena (especially hypnosis). 34 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, paras. 462–465. 35 G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, “Wittgenstein,” in Modern Trends in Philosophy [Heb], ed. Asa Kasher and Shalom Lappin (Tel Aviv: Yahdav, 1982), 205–30, esp. 225–26. 36 Clarence Irving Lewis, one of the founders of American conceptual pragmatism, wrote of the mind knowing itself: “Those ‘theories of knowledge’ which reverse the direction of explanation and give a causal, natural-scientific account, merely substitute a more or less uncritical and psychological methodology, based upon dubious assumptions, for their proper business. Transcendentalism is, in general, the result of the opposite fallacy of attempting to base everything on the theory of knowledge. It tries to suppress, as superfluous or merely secondary, all natural-scientific explanation of those phenomena of which it takes cognizance, and to substitute for it an analysis of our knowledge of these phenomena. Thus it ends by identifying cognition and creation, by affirming that there is no ratio essendi save the ration cognoscendi, the content of knowledge or the mind. The characteristic result is the reduction of the reality which appears to the appearance itself, and the elevation of the mind above appearance to a realm in which it is not knowable as other things are known” (Lewis, Mind, 426–27).

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

Experiments have acquainted us with a paradoxical fact: man can see “correctly” only because of his imagination. The human eye, optically speaking, is a piece of bad workmanship. . . . it is quite miraculous that our nervous systems manage in the end to synthesize the defective and distorted information received about our environment into images tallying with a reality of which the nervous system seems to have no direct grasp.37

Hollenback maintains the existence of continuity between imaginary, hypnotic, and ecstatic states, in opposition to our natural tendency to substantively distinguish between cognitive perception and such states.38 Based on studies of hypnosis and psychiatry,39 he argues that mystical experiences, ecstatic experiences, and hypnotic trances represent states that share the psychological mechanisms that drive our cultural assimilation mechanisms, which enable us to find our place in the world. This notion, which is based on physiological claims, gives the imaginative faculties a higher standing within human perception as a whole, and reduces the gap between cognitive states considered to be normal and other cognitive states. Hollenback does not formulate a subjective cognitive doctrine, he rather offers an explanation that emphasizes the dependency of all human perception on imaginative faculties. This concept assumes the existence of a necessary disparity between the outer reality and the ways in which it is perceived by human cognition: Each individual has to create a meaningful and coherent picture and experience of the world in which he lives. He does this through enculturation. The resultant mental and experiential structure represents, to a significant degree, the way others have molded his imagination so that it presents to his consciousness an image and experience of the world that corresponds to their suggestions of what it ought to be. Consequently, enculturation is an attenuated form of hypnotism; both processes involve a human being in situations where others bombard his mind with suggestions that he more or less uncritically accepts. In the case of enculturation, this structure of suggestions acquires a great deal of stability and gradually becomes a worldview he shares with others.40 *** 37 Droscher, Magic of the Senses, 3–4. 38 Hollenback, Mysticism, 180–88, 282. 39 Hollenback’s starting point is Droscher’s Magic of the Senses; see Edmunds, Hypnosis and Psychic Phenomena; Needles, “Stigmata”; Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious. 40 Hollenback, Mysticism, 185.

461

462

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The above brief collection of different religious conceptions of human cognition suggests fruitful ways in which contemporary understandings of epistemological interiorization could be developed within religious doctrines in general, and specifically those that appear in the following Jewish sources. The interest that these notions arouse today is directly connected to their striking a similar chord with the twentieth-century ideas we have surveyed. While the possibility of verifying religious metaphysical thought was seriously undermined by modern philosophy, the religious concepts that reflect epistemological interiorization are much closer to contemporary thought.

Epistemological Interiorization in the Jewish Sources With the exception of the writings of Philo,41 the nature of the inner intellective processes by which prophetic cognition could be explained was first discussed by medieval Jewish philosophers, who were acquainted with the great Muslim philosophers. The premedieval Jewish literature, however, also contains not inconsiderable traces of conceptions that offer insights into the inner nature of human cognition, and especially divinely inspired prophetic cognition. The different Jewish sources that we will discuss below are unique in their understanding of the dependency of various perceptions of man’s inner processes.

The Place of Divine Wisdom and Inspiration in the Bible According to Exodus and Numbers, not only prophecy, but also the artistic skill of the Tabernacle builders, as well as governmental wisdom, were perceived as wisdom that God emanates and causes to dwell within man. “I have endowed him with a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of craft” (Exod. 31:3).42 Wisdom is seen as divine in nature, to be emanated by God and placed within man. “I will come down and speak with you there, and I will draw upon the spirit that is on you and put it on them; they shall share the burden of the people with you” (Num. 11:17).43

41 See Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947), 2:3–72. 42 See also Exodus 31:6; 28:3; 35:31; 36:2. 43 And similarly, Num. 11:28–29; 27:18.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

In the book of Psalms, as Idel observed,44 the divine spirit is present in man, where it dwells as long as God leaves it there, which is the meaning of “do not take Your holy spirit away from me” (Ps. 51:13). This understanding of wisdom and the divine spirit dwelling in man must be hedged, in light of the Bible’s assumption that the source of wisdom and inspiration is in God, beyond man.45 Along with this fundamental assumption, the highlighting of wisdom and the divine spirit dwelling in man suggests that they are not totally outside man. Consequently, this idea constitutes the initial background for later conceptions that add to the meaning of this understanding.

Intentionality in the Purity Laws and Anticipated Abandonment In chapter one, I discussed thought and intent in rabbinic literature as they are expressed in the Orders of Kodashim and Nezikin as background for our discussion of ritual intent. In the current chapter, I wish to extend the discussion, based on the rabbis’ occupation with intellective intentionality. Neusner argues: The principal message of the Mishnah is that the will of man affects the material reality of the world and governs the working of those forces, visible or not, which express and effect the sanctification of creation and of Israel alike.46

Following this line of thought, Eilberg-Schwartz shows that the Mishnah classifies and determines permission or prohibition, fitness or invalidity, in accordance with the particular intent applied to specific objects. The theological underpinning of his conclusion is the conception of the Mishnah that the fashioning of the reality is influenced by a person’s thoughts and intents.47 He maintains that the Tannaim compared human intent to divine will. The Creation in Genesis was effected by the word of God; consequently, it occurred in His thought, as the rabbis teach. The rabbis accordingly deduce from this that human thought, too, has the power to

44 Idel, “Abraham Abulafia’s Work,” 108. 45 See Robinson, “Hebrew Psychology,” 370–71. 46 Neusner, Judaism, 271. 47 Eilberg-Schwartz, The Human Will in Judaism, 183.

463

464

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

fashion reality.48 In the realm of ritual purity, the Talmud draws a far-reaching conclusion: “Intent, in regard to impurity, is deemed as action.”49 A thorough study of the Mishnah’s understanding of the concepts of purity and impurity reveals the incontrovertible existence of epistemological interiorization in the world of the Tannaim. The Biblical purity laws clearly indicate that fresh water—from a spring, well, or ritual bath, is pure and cleanses. Fresh water was seen to be bearing the seeds of life, which explains its power.50 The law set forth in Lev. 11:38 states that food that has come into contact with the carcass of a swarming thing (contact with which imparts impurity) shall be deemed impure only when the food comes into contact with water: “but if water is put on the seed and any part of a carcass falls upon it, it shall be unclean for you.” According to this conception, the life force in food is actualized in the contact between the dry food and the vitalizing water. The swarming thing that imparts impurity harms the life force with which the water infused the food. The Bible does not relate to questions of intentionality. The tractate of Makhshirin, which is concerned with this issue, begins as follows: Any liquid which was desired at the beginning though it was not desired at the end, or which was desired at the end though it was not desired at the beginning, comes under the law of “but if water is put.” Unclean liquids render unclean whether [their action] is desired or is not desired. 51

48 Ibid., 182–84, 95–143. This conception is inconsistent with the following teaching ascribed to R. Johanan ben Zakkai: “Rabbi Johanan answered: ‘By your lives, I swear: the corpse does not have the power by itself to defile, nor does the mixture of ash and water have the power by itself to cleanse. The truth is that the purifying power of the Red Heifer is a decree of the Holy One. The Holy One said: “I have set it down as a statute, I have issued it as a decree. You are not permitted to transgress My decree. ‘This is the statute of the Torah’ (Num. 19:1)” (Pesikta de-Rab Kahana 4:7). English translation based on Pesikta de-Rab Kahana, trans. William G. Braude and Israel J. Kapstein (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1975), 82–83. On realistic and nominalistic conceptions of the halakhah, see Yohanan Silman, “Halakhic Determinations of a Nominalistic and Realistic Nature: Legal and Philosophical Considerations” [Heb], Dine Israel 12 (1984–1985): 85–93. 49 BT Kiddushin 59b and Rashi, s.v. De-khi Ma‘aseh. 50 See Rashi on BT Betzah 17b, s.v. Ve-Shavin. See Yosef Schaechter, “The Kohen: His Nature and Character according to Ernst Fuhrmann” [Heb], in ibid., Contemporary Judaism and Education (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1966), 220 (this article is based on Ernst Fuhrmann, Himmel, Welt und Holl [Berlin, 1925]). 51 M Makhshirin 1:1.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

The Mishnah adds the distinction that food that came into casual contact with water, not out of the intentional desire that the water be used for the purpose of eating, does not impart impurity, even though this foodstuff had come into contact with a defiling element. The Mishnah later illustrates the principle: If one carried up his fruit to the roof because of maggots, and dew descended upon it, it does not come under the law of “but if water is put.” But if his intention was for this purpose, it comes under the law of “but if water is put.”52

If the eater did not come into contact with the food by an intentional act, and this was not according to the will of the fruit’s owner, the fruit is not deemed unclean if it comes into contact with a defiling element.53 Thus, according to the Mishnah, the status of the food as impure or pure is determined in accordance with a person’s intentionality.54 Impurity and purity are mental, and not physical, states, for if intent is lacking, contact with the carcass of the swarming thing does not impart impurity; while in a situation of intentionality that is externally identical to the preceding case, it does defile. The principle established by the Mishnah limits the power of thought in comparison with that of action, but we cannot understand the innovation of the rabbis in regard to the Biblical law without taking into account the principle of intentionality.55 The discussions in Makhshirin substantively differ from the rabbis’ concern with intent in the Order of Nezikin and with the observance of purely ritual commandments, which we discussed above.56 The mishnayot in Makhshirin belong to the same intellective world as the discussions by the rabbis of the concept of pigul as regards the offering of sacrifices.57 It is argued in the latter that a sacrifice that was ab initio fit becomes unfit ex post facto based on the thought that invalidates it. Epistemological 52 53 54 55

Ibid., 6:1. See also Urbach, Halakhah, 191–93. See above, 22 n. 42 “All vessels become susceptible to uncleanness by intention [lit., ‘thought’], but they cannot be rendered insusceptible except by a change-effecting act, for an act annuls an earlier act as well as an earlier intention, while an intention annuls neither an earlier act nor an earlier intention” (M Kelim 25:9; BT Shabbat 52b, 55b; Sukkah 14a; see also M Makhshirin 3:8; 6:1). 56 See above, chapter one, 83–95. 57 See the teaching by R. Akiva in Sifra (above, chapter one, n. 242).

465

466

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

interiorization is even more pronounced in the sphere of the purity laws because the gulf between the impure and the pure exists only in thought; the dimension of time does not have the meaning of effecting change, as it does in the sacrificial rite. This discussion clearly demonstrates such interiorization of key concepts in Judaism. It is not the physical contact per se that defiles, rather, impurity is determined by intentionality. In other words, intentionality creates the concepts, thereby determining in the reality of religious life what is pure and what not. One of the outstanding examples of the development of the general rabbinic conception of da’at [mind], and, specifically, of the mind of owners as determining legal standing of an object, is the Talmudic discursive unit known as “anticipated abandonment” [yeush she-lo mi-da’at] that is explored within the Talmudic discussion of the laws of lost objects.58 The discursive unit examines the possibility that the finder will be allowed a lost object that has no distinctive markings if the owner patently could not discern the loss of the object. The argument is advanced that when the owner realizes his loss of the object, he will despair of finding it, since it lacks markings. This possibility is rejected by Abbaye, who argues that since the owner did not know of the loss of the object when it was found, we could not possibly allow the object to the finder based on such reasoning. All the attempts to corroborate Raba’s claim of the existence of situations in which the finder will be allowed to take possession of the object, despite the owner’s lack of knowledge that the object is no longer in his possession, are rejected during the course of the Talmudic discussion: Anticipated abandonment [of the hope of recovering a lost article]—Abbaye maintains this is not abandonment. . . . They differ only when the article has no identifying mark. Abbaye says, This is not a case of abandonment, because he [the loser] did not know that he lost it. Raba says, This is abandonment, because when he becomes aware of its loss, he despairs [of recovering it], for he says to himself: “I do not have any identifying mark in it,” therefore it is as if he despaired from the moment [of its loss]. . . . This is a complete refutation of Raba, and the law is in accordance with Abbaye.59

58 On the uniqueness of the rabbinic conception of abandonment and despair in light of Roman law, see Solomon Zeitlin, “Derelicto in Tannaitic Jurisprudence,” in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, ed. Saul Liberman (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), Hebrew section, 365–80. 59 BT Bava Metzia 21b-22a.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

In my opinion, the lengthy discussion within this discursive unit, that concludes by determining the law in accordance with Abbaye, clearly shows the consensus of the Talmud’s redactors that the mind of the owner, that is, his intentionality, is what gives the object the new legal standing needed to change its ownership, in this case, to that of the finder. That is, a lost article without any distinctive marking is permitted to the finder, since the owner who is aware of this lack consciously despairs of the possibility of finding it, and thereby, in practice, transfers ownership to the finder. The importance of this issue for us lies in its emphasis of the owner’s thought as enabling the change in ownership of the lost object; while, in contrast, the act of finding the object, whose owner is unaware of its loss, cannot effect such a change. The mind of the owner, that is, his conscious thought, is a necessary condition for a change of ownership of his possessions, even in situations in which, in practice, he could not maintain his ownership. It is thought that fashions reality. According to Eilberg-Schwartz, this principle originates in the understanding that the world exists by the word of God, that is, God’s thought precedes physical reality.

Revelation and Divine Presence in Rabbinic Midrashim as Dependent on Man’s Thought and Personality Come and see how the [divine] voice went forth, coming to each Israelite in accordance with his strength: to the old, according to their strength; to the young, according to their strength; to the little ones, according to their strength; to the children, according to their strength; to the women, according to their strength; and even to Moses, according to his strength, as it is said, “As Moses spoke, God answered him by a voice” [Exod. 19:19]—in a voice that he could bear. It similarly says, “The voice of the Lord is with power” [Ps. 29:4]; not “with His power,” but “with power”—the power of each individual, and even of pregnant women, according to their strength. R. Yose ben Hanina said: If you wonder at this, learn from the manna, which descended [with a taste] according to the strength [i.e., need] of each Israelite. . . . R. Yose ben Hanina said: Just as the manna, which is all of one kind, became several kinds, for the need of each one, so, too, the voice, which had intrinsic power, changed for each individual, so they would not be harmed.60 60 Exod. Rabbah 5:9. See also 28:6; 29:1; 34:1; Mekhilta, Pesikta de-Rab Kahana, Tanḥuma, and Yalkut Shimoni on Exod. 19–20.

467

468

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Research on rabbinic thought has not devoted a great deal of attention to midrashim of this type. Abelson is the only scholar to realize that this is the source of the notion that an external voice must be accompanied by the inner understanding of the hearer, each according to his capacity.61 Abelson was interested in the question of immanence and transcendence, and accordingly stressed that the sanctity of the divine voice that was revealed at Sinai is, at the same time, both outer and inner. What is of importance for our discussion of epistemological interiorization is that the meaning of the outer voice (in this case, the thunder and lightning that the Torah attests were heard at Mount Sinai) is dependent on the understanding of each individual listener and the nature of his or her cognition. Different people heard different things. What Moses heard is not identical to what was heard by the young, children, or women. The midrash on Ps. 29:4 emphasizes that the verse does not say “the voice of the Lord is ba-koho [literally, ‘in His power’],” from which it deduces the profound significance of the Biblical wording “ko’ah [power],” instead of “koho.” Namely, the voice of the Lord is in the power of each separate listener. It is not the objective physical dimension of the voice that gives it its meaning, which is dependent on the personal comprehension of each listener.62 In other midrashic expositions the

61 Abelson, Immanence of God, 111. 62 An echo of this midrash appears in the following passage by R. Judah Loew ben Bezalel [Maharal] in the context of his notion of faith and trust in God (Ḥiddushei Aggadot, vol. 2 [Jerusalem, 1980], Sotah, 87): “You are to know and understand that faith is mainly to believe in Him, may He be blessed, for His power [has no limit] and He has all . . . on this account, when the time comes that He, may He be blessed, gives good, then He gives a person in accordance with how he believes in Him, that such is the greatness of His power and His ability. When, however, a person does not believe in Him and, as it were, lessens His power and His ability, and therefore when the times comes to see His power and His ability, he will know this only in accordance with his belief. All is in accordance with the person adhering to Him, may He be blessed; for when a person adheres to Him, may He be blessed, in regard to His providing for the world, without lack, this will be for him in the World to Come, as well.” According to Maharal, God’s power and abilities will be revealed to man in accordance with the latter’s faith. This teaching belongs to those that interiorize the routine doctrine of divine recompense. Reward and punishment, in the final analysis, is an inner, subjective matter. Different people who, externally, live at the time when God’s power will be manifest will not see the same things: the divine power will be known to each of them in direct relation to the degree of each one’s faith and trust in God. It is the inner belief that determines what will be revealed to a person in the world outside himself.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

motif of relativity appears in the reverse direction, to resolve the problem set forth in the following source: A Samaritan asked R. Meir . . . “Is it possible that the One of whom it is written, ‘For I fill both heaven and earth’ [Jer. 23:24], spoke to Moses from between the two side walls of the Ark?” He [R. Meir] said to him, “Bring me a large mirror.” He brought him, and he [R. Meir] said to him, “Look at your reflection in it.” He saw it large. He said to him, “Bring me a small mirror.” He brought him, and he [R. Meir] said to him, “Look at your reflection in it.” He saw it small. He [R. Meir] said to him, If you, who are flesh and blood, can change yourself at will, how much more so regarding the One, may He be blessed, at whose word the world came into existence! Thus, when He wishes, “For I fill both heaven and earth,” and when He wishes, he would speak with Moses from between the two side walls of the Ark.63

Urbach wrote: “The Rabbinic view is that God’s presence in the world and the modes of His theophanies are linked to man’s conduct and deeds.”64 Those who disagree with Idel (who maintains that expressions such as “adding power to the Dynamis” indicate theurgic conceptions in early Judaism)65 ignore, for instance, the rabbinic teachings mentioned above. The question of human influence on the power of God Himself is the subject of scholarly debate; however, as for man’s centrality concerning the nature of God’s revelation in the world, it is universally accepted that the rabbis gave considerable weight to the argument that man’s deeds and thoughts influence and fashion the manner of His presence and revelation in the world. This notion can have two main meanings: (1) despite the fundamental absence of any limitation of God, His presence and the ways in which He is manifest in the world are directly related to man’s behavior and thought; (2) the manner in which God is revealed in the world is directly 63 Gen. Rabbah 4:4. 64 Urbach, Sages, 1:51. “Scripture tells that whoever is meek will cause the Shekhinah to dwell with man on earth. . . . But whoever is proud of heart causes the land to be defiled and the Shekhinah to withdraw” (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Ba-Ḥodesh 9, ed. Horowitz and Rabin, 238; trans. based on Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 2:273–74; see also ibid., Nezikin 10, 282). See also the dictum by R. Eliezer: “Since he who clings to anything unclean, the spirit of uncleanness rests upon him, he who clings to the Shekhinah, the holy spirit should surely rest upon him” (Sifrei on Deuteronomy, 173). English translation based on Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, 201. 65 See Pesikta de-Rab Kahana 25:1; Lam. Rabbah 1:33; Lev. Rabbah 23:12; Num. Rabbah 9:1; Idel, New Perspectives, 158–59; Rosenberg, “Myth of Myths.” See above, chapter four, 318 n. 143.

469

470

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

influenced by the inner world of the individual to whom God is revealed. Both of these senses share their assumption of the existence of profound dependence and connection between God and man. The mirrors metaphor mentioned above raised the claim that what man sees is dependent on what he uses in order to see. The reflection is only as large as the mirror in which we choose to look. This metaphor emphasizes the subjective. Man’s view of himself changes in accordance with the means through which he looks. That is, this view is not uniform and fixed; likewise, there is no single mode of divine revelation, which is conditional. Although the moral of this parable explicitly mentions God’s will, the choice of the reflection parable to illustrate God’s arbitrary will is difficult. We might possibly offer two levels in the explanation of the mirrors parable: one, that is manifest and direct— God’s will; and the other, that is concealed and complex, and alludes to the dependency of the nature of God’s revelation upon the mirror in which we gaze, that is, the individual to whom He is revealed. As this was formulated by Abba Saul: “Be like Him: just as He is compassionate and merciful, you, too, be compassionate and merciful”;66 or: “‘You shall be holy’ [Lev. 19:2]. . . . Abba Saul says, What is the duty of the King’s retinue? To follow in the wake of the King.”67 Leon Roth68 argued that, despite this teaching by Abba Saul, the Jewish idea of resembling God should not be understood in this way, since “To whom, then, can you liken Me, to whom can I be compared?” (Isa. 40:25). Roth chose the exegetical position that “the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: Go tell the Israelites: My children, just as I am pure, so you, too, be pure; just as I am holy, so you, too, be holy.”69 In this spirit, Roth explained that wherever man is called upon to be holy, something negative is to be found. In the same article, further to his discussion of the notion of in imitatio Dei in the well-known Christian book De Imitatione Christi by Thomas à Kempis, Roth states: “A positive moral can be based on the doctrine of in imitatio Dei only on condition that there stands before us, instead of God, a man like us, whose thoughts are our thoughts, and

66 Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Shira 3, on Exod. 15:2, ed. Horowitz and Rabin, 127 and parallels. 67 Sifra, Megillat Aḥarei Mot 9:1, ed. Weiss, fol. 86c. 68 See Leon Roth’s article: “On Imitatio Dei and the Idea of the Holy,” in Roth, Religion and Human Values [Heb] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1973), 20–30. 69 Lev. Rabbah 24:4.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

our ways are his ways.”70 Since Abba Saul could not be thought to believe in Jesus, then, even according to Roth the rationalist, the Tanna’s dictum obviously reflects a different stance regarding God.71 Abba Saul’s view, however, assumes conceptual, and perhaps epistemological interiorization that speaks of an inner connection between man’s thoughts and God’s. Abba Saul therefore assumes that in imitatio Dei means copying His thoughts and ways. Since Abba Saul accepts the possibility, and even necessity, of imitating God, we may assume that he also maintains that a person’s inner self is directly linked to God. This demand must presuppose the possibility of the potential for such identification and connection. If Abba Saul did not assume this bond, then he would postulate, as does Roth, an unbridgeable chasm between God and man. Only if we postulate the existence of such a connection between man and God, even if this is not actual identification, can we demand of man to imitate his Maker. Abba Saul posits the existence of divine behaviors and thoughts in man that are in imitatio Dei, such as: last in deed, first in thought.72

The Distinction between Sensory and Inner Rational Perception in the World of the Tannaim and Amoraim “One who is blind may recite the Shema with its benedictions and interpret. R. Judah says, One who has never seen the light may not recite the Shema.”73 70 Roth, Religion and Human Values, 25. 71 Once again, we see how the twentieth-century study of rabbinic thought has difficulty in accepting the conceptions of rabbis that are inconsistent with the transcendental conception of God. See Urbach, Sages, 1:37–41; and for an opposing opinion: Lorberbaum, In God’s Image. 72 Following R. Akiva, Heschel maintains that devekut is of inner religious significance, meaning that this term refers to inner connection with God. In contrast, the school of R. Ishmael maintains that devekut to God’s attributes is moral and practical, because theoretical thought is limited and cannot admit individual adhering to the Shekhinah. Abba Saul and the Palestinian Amora R. Hama son of R. Hanina (BT Sotah 14a) remove the demand for devekut from within the relations between man and God and position it in the plane of interpersonal action (Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 190–93). I cannot accept that Abba Saul’s teaching is purely behavioral, as is implied in Heschel’s analysis. I also maintain that the second approach is not only oriented outside of the human self. Rather, it reflects conceptual and epistemological interiorization, while R. Akiva’s stance is an example of inward focusing. 73 M Megillah 4:6. 4:3 reads: “If there are less than ten present they may not recite [porsin] the Shema with its blessings.” Rashi understands this to mean that one who comes late

471

472

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

This mishnah is followed in the Babylonian Talmud by a discussion based on an additional disagreement of the Tannaim with R. Judah on a similar question: It has been taught: Many have discerned sufficiently to expound upon the Merkabah, and yet they never saw it? R. Judah [said]: There [i.e., regarding the Merkabah] all depends upon the discernment of the heart, and he has intent and understands. Here [regarding the blessing on the creation of the lights], however, one [recites] for the benefit derived, and he derives no benefit.74

The authors of the baraita apparently maintained that a lack of physical sight does not necessarily preclude intellective understanding and knowledge, and therefore objected to R. Judah’s opinion. R. Judah most likely felt that just as one blind from birth who recites the “Blessed . . . lights” benediction seems to give false testimony, so, too, someone who never saw the Heavenly Chariot but nevertheless speaks of it is lying.75 The Amoraim compared discerning the Merkabah, which is not possible with sensory sight and is done, so they assert, by means of “the discernment of the heart,” with a blind person’s reading of the Shema. This implies that, according to the objecting Amoraim, an intellective comprehension of the content of the “who creates light” blessing that precedes the Reading of the Shema is required of the blind person in order to read the Shema. They argue that this can be attained by someone who never saw sunlight with his own eyes. Consequently, we may conclude that the term “the discernment of the heart” teaches of a sort of intellective understanding that the sages regarded as not conditional upon sensory perception. This comprehension is similar to what can be imparted to a blind person regarding the sunlight, even though he cannot see it.76 to the synagogue may pores, that is, divide the Reading of the Shema, and recite aloud only the part that requires a quorum of ten, that concludes with the Yotzer Or [“who forms light”] blessing (which is the first blessing before the Reading of the Shema), skip the rest of the Reading of the Shema, and continue directly to the first three blessings of the Amidah. This ensures that he will recite these blessings, that are of greater sanctity, in the presence of the quorum of worshipers before they leave after having finished their prayer. The Geonim interpret this to mean that the recitation of the blessings of the Reading of the Shema may be begun only in the presence of ten worshipers. 74 BT Megillah 24b. 75 See Urbach, “Traditions of Merkabah Mysticism,” 7 (republished in idem, Sages, 492) n. 25. 76 See also Halperin, Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature, 172–75.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

Even according to those who assert that this baraita was stated and interpreted by those who themselves did not delve into the secrets of the Divine Chariot,77 this teaches that Babylonian Amoraim, and perhaps also the Tannaim who authored the baraita, distinguished between sensory and inner intellective perception. The latter is not effected by means of the external senses, nor is it dependent on them. These sages saw the activity of Yordei ha-Merkabah as belonging to this category. This is undoubtedly the understanding of the Tosafists, as we learn from their interpretation of “the discernment of the heart”: “be-ovanta, with [the letter] bet, the wording of havanah [understanding], as they said regarding the Merkabah.”78 Regarding the mystical activity of Yordei ha-Merkabah, Liebes, too, draws a distinction between the self-perception of the Merkabah mystics (the authors of the Heikhalot literature) and the understanding of the Tannaim and Amoraim, who possibly did not engage in such activity.79 The claim of a distinction in the world of the rabbis between external sensory perception and inner intellective perception that is independent of the senses is supported by the exposition of Ezek. 1:1 by Origen of Caesarea in the third century: “the exiles ‘contemplated with the eyes of the heart’ what Ezekiel ‘observed even with the eyes of the flesh.’”80 This demarcation drawn between inner sight and physical vision reflects an accepted distinction, as is also indicated by a later text published by Adolph Jellinek as “Haggadat Shema Yisrael [Schma- Hagada]”: “You, too, saw the great revelation in the understanding of your heart, your mind, and your soul.”81 Inner sight is not identical with outer vision, but it is actual sight. Those of later generations who were not present at the Giving of the Torah at Sinai or who did not see what the prophet saw can see in their mind’s eye—that is, their inner perception—inner visions that are identical, at least in certain aspects, if not more, with external sights. 77 See ibid., 175–77. 78 Tosafot, BT Avodah Zarah 28b, s.v. Shuraini de-Eina. See the interpretation of Rabbenu Hananel, cited above, chapter three, 236, n. 80. 79 Liebes, The Sin of Elisha, 1–10. See the discussion above, chapter three, 233–43. In the current discussion I wish to distinguish between the question of the essential nature of the mystical experience of yordei ha-Merkabah themselves and later understandings of this epistemological interiorization. Even if it could be empirically proven that R. Hai Gaon errs regarding the nature of the experience of yordei ha-Merkabah, his opinion is still of great value for understanding his cognitive worldview. 80 David J. Halperin, “Origen, Ezekiel’s Merkabah, and the Ascension of Moses,” Church History 50 (1981): 273–74. 81 Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrasch, 5, 165–66.

473

474

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Imagination and Epistemological Interiorization in the Writings of R. Hai Gaon R. Hai Gaon’s response to a query addressed to him concerning the nature of a narrative in BT Hagigah 14b on the four who entered the “Garden” opens a gateway to our understanding of his positions concerning epistemological interiorization: R. Akiva said to them: “When you arrive at the stones of pure marble, say: Water, water!”—the interpretation: whoever arrives in his vision to that place, it seems to him that there is much water there, but [actually] there is no water. Rather, a mere image appears to him, and if he were to say, “This is water,” he is pushed back, for he speaks falsehood. This is explained in Heikhalot Rabbati in this wording, because the gatekeepers of the sixth chamber pour a thousand thousands waves of water, but there is not a single drop in it. Rather, [this is] the ether of the brilliance of pure marble stones that are included [variant: pure] in the chamber, the brilliance of whose surface resembles water.82

In R. Hai Gaon’s explanation, R. Akiva cautions those gazing upon the Merkabah against blurring the boundaries between outer reality and inner vision. At a certain point, the one gazing upon the Merkabah is liable to suffer from sensory deception that will lead to cognitive breakdown. This, according to R. Hai Gaon, is the danger awaiting those who enter the “Garden.” And this was R. Akiva’s power: at the very heart of his inner sight, he also kept his outer consciousness, and forestalled any confusion between the worlds. This blurring undoubtedly was responsible for Ben Zoma losing his mind, and perhaps also for Elisha ben Abuya’s apostasy and Ben Azzai’s death. This distinction between inner sight and outer reality is somewhat reminiscent of the state that Philo calls “sober intoxication.”83 Elliot Wolfson identifies the interiorization of which R. Hai Gaon and R. Nathan of Rome speak with the imagination, in the sense of an image or “phantasm within the mind.” He bases this on the closeness of their conception with what R. Hananel writes on prophecy in his commentaries to BT Berakhot 7a and Yevamot 49b. Wolfson maintains that R. Hai Gaon’s 82 Lewin, Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 4: Chagiga, 61. See also Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome, Arukh ha-Shalem, s.v. Pardes, Avnei shaish tahor. See above, chapter three, 235, n. 73. 83 See above, chapter three, 223, n. 32; Urbach, “Traditions of Merkabah Mysticism,” 17 (republished in idem, Sages, 502) nn. 71–72.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

conception of imagination deeply influenced R. Judah Halevi and fashioned the conception of R. Eleazar of Worms and the Ashkenaz pietists, that he characterized as clearly docetic.84 Wolfson’s claim that R. Hai Gaon does not substantively distinguish between the visions that are revealed to Yordei ha-Merkabah and prophetic visions is grounded in the Gaon’s opposition to the position advocated by his father R. Samuel Gaon, that is set forth at the end of the responsum. As the responsum indicates, his father thought that such sights are seen only by prophets . . . and even the case of R. Akiva, who saw the Heikhalot, and what is said about R. Nehunya ben ha-Kanah, about R. Ishmael, and the like, we say that all these are not the law [halakhah].

R. Hai Gaon, in contrast, maintained that the Holy One, blessed be He, performs miracles for the righteous and great wonders, and it is not beyond Him to show them in an inner manner the sights of His Heikhalot and the watches of His angels.85

Wolfson asserts that, for R. Hai Gaon, the image that appears to prophets and/or Yordei ha-Merkabah is a product of the imagination: Earlier aggadic traditions concerning this demut are semantically transformed, so that demut becomes dimyon in the sense of an image or phantasm within the mind. The midrashic usage of dimmuyot to connote the external forms (figurae) in which God appears in this context become psychic phenomena, mental constructs by means of which the glory is imaged or visualized. The ontological significance of demut is radically altered by this psychologistic reading.86

In Wolfson’s explanation, the Gaon sees imagination in a sense that is very like its usual modern meaning. Subjective imagination enables us to 84 The term docetism is derived from the Greek dokeo [“to seem”]. Docetism is the depiction of God with imagery that the imagination invents, out of an awareness that, in fact, God is abstract and imperceivable. The term refers mainly to the ideas of heretical sects in nascent Christianity, who refused to believe in the corporality of Jesus and argued that all the stories of his incarnation and his death on the cross were false. Wolfson asserts that the anthropomorphism in the Bible, in the rabbinic sources, and in medieval thought was meant to provide man with tools that would aid in imagining the transcendental God. 85 Lewin, Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 4: Chagiga, 15. 86 Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 146–48.

475

476

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

close the gap between the formal images of those gazing upon the Merkabah that are also portrayed in written texts, on the one hand, and, on the other, the objective desideratum, namely, the rational perception of God. Yair Lorberbaum has reservations regarding Wolfson’s discussions of midrashim in his docetic argument. Lorberbaum showed that the root dalet-mem-yud always appears in the Bible and the midrashim with the meaning of comparison; it is not connected with the concept of imagination (dimayon), and certainly not with the sense this concept has in medieval philosophy as a whole, and specifically in Maimonidean thought.87 A precise study of the Geonic responsa causes us to question Elliot Wolfson’s hypothesis that the use of the root dalet-mem-yud with the meaning of imagination, beginning in the world of R. Hai Gaon and his students, led to the complete identification of interiorization with imagination, in the sense of image or phantasm. I maintain that this root had many meanings in the time of R. Hai Gaon and his school. We may reasonably assume that for them, as well, the imaginative faculty or the imagination is one component in the assemblage of inner dispositions, and for them it was not capable of creative independent activity that does not rely on the other inner elements of the seer or prophet, for the following reasons: First: All the prophets looked within a speculum that does not shine, and it seemed to them that they saw a mirror. This is like an old person whose sight is dim, and sees the low as if it is high, one as two, and the like, but this is not so. This is what is written: “and spoke parables [adameh] through the prophets” [Hos. 12:11]—what they see is imaginary [dimayon] and not real [ikkar].88

Elliot Wolfson translated dimayon as “image,” and ikkar as “entity.” The passage itself, however, teaches that for R. Hananel, the sight seen by the prophet is a blurred vision of God, because direct and full sight of Him is 87 See Lorberbaum, In God’s Image, 30–36, for the midrash and his discussion: “R. Yudan said, Great is the power of the prophets, who liken the form to its Creator, as it is written, ‘And I heard the voice of a man between the banks of the Ulai’ etc. [Daniel 8:16, where it is made clear that the voice was that of God]. R. Yudan b. R. Simon said, We have other verses which display this more clearly than this one[, for example]: ‘Above the expanse that was over their heads was the figure of a throne with the appearance of sapphire-stone and above, on the figure of a throne was a figure with the appearance of a human being’ [Ezek. 1:26]” (Gen. Rabbah 27:1, ed. Theodor and Albeck, 255–56). See Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 36, on docetism. 88 Hananel ben Hushiel, commentary to BT Yevamot 49b.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

inconceivable. “What they see is imaginary [dimayon] and not real” therefore means that what is seen by the prophets is merely an approximate sight, that resembles, but is not identical with the true nature of God. Likewise, R. Hananel’s statement in his commentary to BT Berakhot 7a: “This teaches that a resemblance that can be seen is shown to each prophet” means that what is shown to each prophet is the most closely approximating vision that can be shown to that individual. According to this approach, the interiorizing terminology of R. Hai Gaon, R. Hananel, and R. Nathan, who also use the common phrase re’iyat ha-lev [literally, “what the heart sees”], as distinct from what the eye sees, need not be identified solely with imaginative power or the imagination. They would most likely also say that interiorization combines at least three forces that the Arabic and Jewish philosophical literature of their time counted as the “inner senses,” that, according to Harry Wolfson, originate in the Aristotelian doctrine of the soul: the imagination, cogitation, and memory.89 Second, the response to the query that was directed to R. Hai Gaon concerning the nature of magic substantively contradicts the argument that the Gaon and his students attributed the visions of those gazing upon the Merkabah or those of the prophets to their creative imagination.90 According to R. Hai Gaon, what is depicted in Dan. 10:7 can be interpreted in only two ways: (1) as a miracle, that is, divine intervention in man’s natural faculties, which changed Daniel’s faculty of sight, and enabled him to see the spiritual bodies, that cannot be seen with normal human senses;91 (2) as prophecy that is portrayed as identical to a dream, that is, an inner and involuntary event, passively being acted upon, and not willful activity. In his various writings, R. Hai Gaon repeatedly expresses the passive miraculous or prophetic conceptions. Spiritual vision is not an active initiative of the viewer but action that is taken within him—one that is brought about by inner forces. The viewer can make preparations that are essential for seeing the vision or for the prophetic event, but they themselves are dependent upon action taken by God. 89 Wolfson, “Internal Senses,” 71. 90 See above, chapter three, 235 n. 73. 91 “Spirit” here is most plausibly close in meaning to the spirituality that cannot be perceived by the normal senses. These spiritual sights are of interim realities between the material and divine worlds. See Pines, “On the Term Ruḥaniyyot.”

477

478

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

There are books, names, seals, great and minor heavenly chambers, the angel of Torah and other mishnayot, that the one who sees them becomes alarmed. This was so for our ancestors and for us, as well, that they may be attained only in purity, with trembling, and perspiration. We also heard reliable reports that several engaged in this and were quickly lost, and all this is for the sanctity of the Lord, the sanctity of the shekhinot [i.e., the places where God is present] and the surrounding angels, and the sanctity of the Heavenly Chariot; and the angels tremble around the one who engages in such activity.92

The personal nature of such matters indicates that addressing R. Hai Gaon on the question of entering the “Garden” was not coincidental. The ones who posed the question might have heard reports of his personal experiences. This is also in line with his father’s opposition (see above), that was discussed in more fundamental fashion in the beginning of his response. As we have seen, R. Hai Gaon personally identified with the first position: “For the Holy One, blessed be He, might perform miracles for the righteous, which are as the wonders performed for the prophets.” What, then, is the meaning of R. Hai Gaon’s comparison of the righteous, who are “those who see inwardly visions of His heavenly chambers and the watches of His angels,”93 with the wonders performed for prophets? His lengthy discussions on this point within his response on magic clearly show the importance he placed on the argument that neither visions nor prophetic wonders “can be performed by a creature.”94 We learn this from the Gaon’s response to the question which he himself raises, after having explained the opinion that “these visions are seen only by prophets,” which is his father’s view, but which he opposed: And if you were to say that wonders are performed for the totally righteous, as well, to show their righteousness, it might be that if there were to be many righteous in the world, these actions would increase in the world. They would be customary, and would not be as wonders that are performed only occasionally and infrequently, so that when they are performed, people are amazed at them. But when they multiply, they will be as all of the mighty acts of the Holy One, blessed be He, that are customary in the world, and the sun’s returning from west to east will be in people’s eyes as its going forth 92 Lewin, Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 4: Chagiga, 21. 93 Ibid., the end of the responsum (15). 94 Ibid., 19.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

from east to west—for neither one nor the other can be done by any creature. Rather, this is a wonder, for it is not as is customary in the world, the Creator does not perform it frequently, and it is perceived only as a marvel [mofet]. This is not a proof [ot], for this is a constant occurrence, and if the former shall be as the latter, it will not astonish, and it will cease to be a wonder.95

The uniqueness of the prophetic mofet or ot for R. Hai Gaon lies in its being an exceptional change from the way of the world, which can be performed only by God, and not by man.96 The change in the ways of nature, that is obvious to all as humanly impossible, attests that the prophet acts in the name of God. The Gaon assumes a basic equivalence between the prophetic visions and the visions experienced by the one gazing upon the Merkabah, because as regards the latter, as well, he argues for a change effected by divine intervention, namely, spiritual sight. R. Hai Gaon depicts for his questioners a future situation in which the righteous who see divine visions will increase. In such a state of affairs, these visions will lose their wondrous significance by becoming routine. From this perspective, after the divine visions have become commonplace, their identity with the prophetic wonders will presumably cease. Consequently, what common basis will come into being in the future between the prophetic vision and the viewing of divine sights by the righteous? We are forced to conclude that divine intervention changes man’s regular perception and occurs within him, by means of the inner senses and not the usual external ones. Gazing upon the “Garden,” which is no longer a prophetic wonder because it is experienced by many, does not occur solely by human power. Rather, like the wonders performed for the prophets (and in this respect will always remain miraculous), it is the consequence of an event that is conditional in some way or another upon divine will. This is after man had made the necessary preparations, “in purity, with trembling, and perspiration,” and is found worthy of engaging in all those books and divine names. 95 Ibid., 19. 96 “The proof [mofet] of prophecy which is recognized as the angel of the Lord and His emissary must have two attributes, if one of which is missing, the proof of prophecy will not occur. One of them is that it be from an act of God, something that no creature could perform and does perform, save only the Creator, and is not part of how He directed the world, rather, He changed the ways of the world that he had instituted, such as the wonders that were done for Moses. . . . And if the prophet said that my wonder is something that a creature can perform, whether man or demon, even if he did [this], this does not suffice for him to be believed” (ibid., 26–27).

479

480

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The general picture that emerges from this is different from that generally depicted in the scholarly literature regarding R. Hai Gaon’s stance on gazing upon the Merkabah. His attitude is definitely favorable, albeit extremely cautious and based on the following assumptions: 1) Beyond the corporeal world, that is perceived by means of the five external senses, exist spiritual realities that are closer to the divine. 2) Individuals who are on a high level (whom he calls “the righteous”) are capable of connecting with these realities and contemplating them. 3) This happens by God’s will and intervention, similar to the occurrence of miracles, after all the necessary preparations have been made by the righteous. 4) This contemplation is not conducted by means of the external senses, but rather by the inner forces. The images that arise within the contemplator’s inner self and are perceived in his cognition as reflective of God, and therefore are stored in his memory, do so in accordance with his world and level: “He shows to each prophet the image that he is capable of seeing.” If the inner vision were solely the product of the imagination, the contemplator could not identify it as a divine vision; and this argument is only strengthened by the claim that this is merely a proximate sight. Since the vision occurs within one’s inner world, that also includes the ability to assess or know, then it is preserved in the consciousness as a divine vision. Without this mechanism, how could the Gaon explain the difference between what is like or proximate to God and false images? R. Hai Gaon’s sensitivity to the truth and the question of the veracity of the imagination’s activity emerges from his responsa.97 R. Hai Gaon, who compared divine visions with the prophetic wonder, would hardly have equated inwardness with subjective imagination, in the rigorous sense of the term. Notwithstanding this, he evidently thought that the spiritual images revealed in the viewer’s inner world are dependent upon his spiritual state and status. R. Hai Gaon’s rationalism is expressed in his discussion of the passive nature of epistemological interiorization. For the Gaon, the stress placed upon divine intervention ensures the truthfulness

97 “If he were to say to you, an elephant and a camel are fighting, and you see flies and gnats that are distant from that same place, and you see neither an elephant nor a camel closely, would you say, perhaps this is so, but God has not caused me to see it—then you will know that the one who imagines this is thought to be among the foolish” (ibid., 19).

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

of the sights revealed to the one gazing upon the Heavenly Chariot.98 This prevents the erroneous identification of false visions, the product of the viewer’s creative imagination, with divine sights. In my opinion, not only does this not negate the claimed affinity between R. Hai Gaon’s opinion and Sufi notions (first raised by Jellinek), it confirms and strengthens such an argument.99 In light of the above, R. Hai Gaon is to be regarded as the father of the school of passive epistemological interiorization that was active within the Jewish world throughout the medieval period, and that is also at the basis of the substantive spiritual disagreements within Hasidism.100

Epistemological Interiorization in H∙ovot ha-Levavot and Its Sources Diana Lobel noted that the tenth section of Sha‘ar Ḥeshbon ha-Nefesh, the eighth sha‘ar of Ḥovot ha-Levavot, that is of an exceptional mystical nature, is very similar to the writings of al-Qushayri and other Sufi thinkers that were discussed above.101 Like the latter, it maintains that constant thought of God’s Providence can lead to the realization in one’s inner being of God, who is present in the believer’s inner self.102 Bahya ibn Paquda combines Sufi epistemological interiorization with the Neoplatonist concept of the “eye of the intellect,” that teaches that the spiritual world can be received by means of inner conceptions that are acquired by what is called the “inner eye” and the “light of the intellect”:103 ‘The Lord looked forth from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any men of understanding, that did seek after God.’ (Ps. 14:2): When the believer thinks of this matter frequently and makes a reckoning with himself about it, God is ever present in his heart and he sees Him in his 98 Cf. Maimonides, Guide 2:36 and its beginning: “Know that the true reality and quiddity of prophecy consist in its being an overflow overflowing from God, may He be cherished and honored, through the intermediation of the Active Intellect. . . . It is not a thing whose lack could be made good or whose deficiency could be remedied in any way by means of a regimen” (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 369). See also Abraham ben Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 1:197–202. 99 See Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 170 n. 166. 100 See Margolin, Human Temple, 343–78. 101 See above, 451 n. 8. 102 Lobel, Sufi-Jewish Dialogue, 229–33. 103 See ibid., 230; see below on “the mind’s eye” (or “the eye of the intellect”) and “the heart’s eye.”

481

482

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

mind’s eye, forever fearing Him, glorifying His name, meditating upon the marks of His wisdom and reflecting upon His deeds and His management of His creatures, all of which are a proof of His greatness, omnipotence, wisdom, and unlimited ability. When a man perseveres in this, God soothes him and assuages his fear, revealing to him the secrets of His wisdom, opening for him the gate to His knowledge, undertaking to manage and direct him, and as it is described in the Psalm (23): ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ Thus this man reaches the rank of the highest of the sages, and of the loftiest position among God’s favorites. He sees without his eyes and hears without his ears; he talks without his tongue, senses things without his senses and perceives with no need of logic. He does not prefer one thing to another; he does not wish for a situation other than the one in which he finds himself. For God has chosen all for him and he has tied his own satisfaction to that of God and connected his love to God’s love, so that he loves what God loves and hates what is hateful to Him.104

Ibn Paquda, like the Sufi masters, argues that intellective concentration on Divine Providence is itself the key to the believer experiencing in his innermost self (in his “mind’s eye”) that God watches over him. He understands Psalms 23 to mean that the deep experience of Providence that the psalm depicts is attained by conducting an inner reckoning, that consists mainly of the thought that God watches over the believer. Thinking about Divine Providence can cause the believer to experience Providence on the deepest possible level. He senses inwardly the divine presence that accompanies him and does so unaided by the outer senses but in a manner no less substantive than with sensory perception. The believer’s inner experience that is deep in the thought of Providence is of the loss of his individual and personal desires, and he experiences all the will and feeling left within him as identical to those of God, who is with him. According to Lobel, this is a type of imitatio dei: the believer loves what God loves.105 Imitatio dei, in my opinion, is implemented by means of the principle of Providence, in the spirit in which it is described in the Sufi writings. Just as God watches over the believer, in his thought the believer gazes upon Him and engages in the same action, in the opposite direction. This mutual gazing cancels the

104 Bahya Ibn Paquda, Ḥovot ha-Levavot, Sha‘ar Ḥeshbon Nefesh, chap. 3 (tenth aspect) (trans.: The Book of Direction, 369). 105 Lobel, Sufi-Jewish Dialogue, 235 n. 52.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

distance between God and man, to the extent of experiencing the unity of the will of both man and God. This paragraph in Ḥovot ha-Levavot is the cornerstone for various formulations of epistemological interiorization in the Jewish thought of the past thousand years. Like the Sufi masters, Bahya ibn Paquda assumes that human existential distress, that is expressed, for example, in the believer’s sadness and fear, can be overcome by intellective contemplation of God’s Providence over man. The deeper the believer’s thoughts about God’s Providence, the more this Providence is sensed, by means of the experience of inner presence that he thereby attains. For Lobel, this is a sort of imitatio dei: just as God watches over and gazes upon me, I, too, look upon Him and the distance between us thereby vanishes, leading to tremendous inner closeness, that is expressed in the inner ability to see and hear Him. The actualization of the love between man and God is evident in the attainment of the unity of their wills.

Imagination and epistemological Interiorization in the Writings of R. Judah Halevi Judah Halevi uses terms similar to Bahya ibn Paquda’s “eye of the intellect,” but the connection between the inner eye and the imaginative faculty, on the one hand, and Halevi’s discussions of this faculty in his Kuzari, on the other, deserve of especial attention.106 We will begin with a somewhat disregarded aspect of the meaning of such concepts in the Kuzari: The Creator was as wise in arranging this relation between the exterior senses and the things perceived, as He was in fixing the relation between 106 Elliot Wolfson argues that the understanding of inwardness as imagination by R. Hai Gaon and his school greatly influenced Judah Halevi’s conception of “the heart’s seeing” and “the heart’s understanding.” According to Wolfson, Halevi’s understanding fundamentally differs from that of other contemporaneous Neoplatonist thinkers, such as Abraham Ibn Ezra. Wolfson notes the connection that Halevi drew between prophecy and seeing objective spiritual forms, which precludes arguing for the absolute psychologization of prophecy in Halevi’s doctrine. “The content of prophecy does not result from the prophet’s intellectual conjunction with the Active Intellect as mediated through his imaginative faculty; it is, rather, an objectively verifiable datum, although the means of verification may exceed the bounds of the normal processes of sense or intellection. For Halevi, that is, prophecy is more than a mere psychological state; it entails the same presumption of veridicality as normal sense experience, but in the case of prophecy the objective correlate of the vision is a spiritual form that, in the prophetic state, becomes tangible” (Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 165).

483

484

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

the abstract sense and the uncorporeal substratum. To the chosen among His creatures He has given an inner eye which sees things as they really are, without any alteration. Reason is thus in a position to come to a conclusion regarding the true spirit of these things. He to whom this eye has been given is clearsighted indeed. Other people who appear to him as blind, he guides on their way. It is possible that this eye is the power of imagination as long as it is under the control of the intellect. It beholds, then, a grand and awful sight which reveals unmistakable truths.107

In speaking of inner powers, Halevi refers to a broad spectrum of mental powers such as imagination or thought.108 Nonetheless, he imparts special meaning to the term “inner eye,” one that rules out its identification with the regular power of thought. Some people have the inner ability to see all things in their unchanging (that is, spiritual) aspect. Regular thought is characteristically analytical and differential. The “inner eye” is a term for a third factor, in addition to the imaginative and intellective faculties. Halevi generally argues that the intellect, as “the faculty of judgment, in order to pause again and again at the new products of imagination, correct or false.”109 Exceptional individuals possessing an inner eye see “grand and awful” spiritual forms—that teach of unquestionable truths—directly, with no need for separate intellectual analysis. This spiritual sight is unique in that it is not built of two routine phases, namely, seeing by means of the imaginative faculty and its confirmation or rejection by the thinking intellective faculty. Harvey maintains that the inner eye is a sort of “enhanced” imagination that is proximate, but not identical, to the imaginative faculty, and that is superior to the intellective faculty, since it is independent of external sensory perceptions.110 Halevi’s explicit description of inner sight111 tells of his acute awareness of the question of the veracity of such sights. He does not accept the questioning of their truthfulness by well-known philosophical arguments: “These things, which cannot be approached by speculation, have been 107 Halevi, Kuzari 4:3 (trans.: The Kuzari, 207). On this passage see Moshe Idel, “The World of Angels in Human Form” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3, no. 1–2 (1983–1984): 15–19; Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 213–18; Harvey, “Judah Halevi’s Synesthetic Theory,” 141–51. 108 See Halevi, Kuzari 3:5; Wolfson, “Internal Senses.” 109 Halevi, Kuzari 5:12 (trans.: The Kuzari, 261); see also 3:5. 110 For additional aspects of this issue, see Harvey, “Judah Halevi’s Synesthetic Theory,” 142–47. 111 Halevi, Kuzari 4:3.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

rejected by Greek philosophers, because speculation negates everything the like of which it has not seen.”112 He counters the Greek philosophers’ view, and asserts: “Nay, a prophet’s eye is more penetrating than speculation. His sight reaches up to the heavenly host direct, he sees the dwellers in heaven, and the spiritual beings which are near God, and others in human form.”113 Halevi famously opposed the philosophical conception of prophecy based on Aristotleanism, as it was formulated by al-Farabi in his book Beginnings and set forth by Halevi at the beginning of the Kuzari.114 In opposition to this notion, Halevi speaks of the inner eye “which sees things as they really are, without any alteration. Reason is thus in a position to come to a conclusion regarding the true spirit of these things.” Inner vision encompasses all and penetrates the deepest levels of reality, more than intellective sight, that relies upon the senses. This interiorization is not identical with subjectivity, but denotes the existence of a stratum, deeper than the regular, that is present in the human soul and that enables those who possess it to perceive the deep dimensions of the reality, that cannot be discerned by means of the senses. Both the Aristotelian conception and that of Halevi assume that human cognitio, both intellective and inner, reflect a reality beyond man, but Halevi posits the existence of more inwardly cognitive strata, that reveal another, divine, reality. He seeks to persuade the reader that prophecy did not (as philosophers assume) burst forth in a pure soul, become united with the Active Intellect (also termed Holy Spirit or Gabriel), and be then inspired. They did not believe Moses had seen a vision in sleep, or that some one had spoken with him between sleeping and waking, so that he only heard the words in fancy, but not with his ears, that he saw a phantom, and afterwards pretended that God had spoken with him.115

The singularity of Halevi’s understanding can also be seen in a passage in the Kuzari that clearly explains the conscious activation of the imaginative faculty by the pious man, who: forbids them evil inclinations of mind and fancy, forbids them to listen to, or believe in them, until he has taken counsel with the intellect. If he permits 112 Ibid. (trans.: The Kuzari, 210). 113 Halevi, Kuzari 4:3 (trans.: The Kuzari, 209). 114 Halevi, Kuzari 1:1. 115 Ibid. 1:87 (trans.: The Kuzari, 61).

485

486

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

they can obey him, but not otherwise. In this way his will power receives its orders from him, carrying them out accordingly. He directs the organ of thought and imagination, relieving them of all worldly ideas mentioned above, charges his imagination to produce, with the assistance of memory, the most splendid pictures possible, in order to resemble the divine things sought after. Such pictures are the scenes of Sinai, Abraham and Isaac on Moriah, the Tabernacle of Moses, the Temple service, the presence of God in the Temple, and the like. He, then, orders his memory to retain all these, and not to forget them; he warns his fancy and its sinful prompters not to confuse the truth or to trouble it by doubts.116

The images of God enable man to imagine Him, that is, to compare Him, by means of the inner eye, to the form closest to His essence, which is also nonsensory. Based on this comprehension, Halevi says that the pious man imagines to himself the Giving of the Torah or the Sanctuary, in order to artificially arouse the desired divine things. Since the pious man is convinced of the truthfulness of Scripture, that is based on the prophets’ inner-eye vision, he imagines them within him in order to vivify them within himself. This imagination is not unbridled, it rather is harnessed to copy the divine things to enable the inner consciousness to draw near to God—who is beyond all imagining—by using cultural imagery related to divine revelation. This is not interiorization based on freely ranging imagination, but rather active epistemological interiorization that combines all the inner powers: imagination, intellect (that is also called intellectual consideration or judgmental power), and memory. Elliot Wolfson correctly emphasizes the special standing of imagination for Halevi, but he finds this to be legitimate because it meets intellective tests that, so he maintains, are valid even if not identical to logical deductions. Such an intellective test consists of acceptance by the majority of the substantiality of spiritual experiences such as those of the prophets,

116 Ibid. 3:5 (trans.: The Kuzari, 138–39). Wolfson apparently refrained from referencing this passage. Halevi refers here to the pious individual, and not the prophet, but according to Halevi’s own description (especially ibid., 3:11; 5:20), they both see forms, albeit on different levels. According to ibid., 3:11, the pious individual also sees forms. A significant difference is that the prophet, in addition to seeing forms, is capable of performing wonders.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

on the one hand, and, on the other, Halevi’s synesthetic approach that was noted by Harvey.117 Various senses come into play in a synesthetic experience. Some people can see colors when they hear sounds, or the vice versa: smells and tastes can arouse sights and sounds.118 Harvey noted that Halevi assumed a synesthetic relationship between the inner eye and the outer senses, and therefore a nonphysical stimulus can be received by means of physical imagery. If what is heard can be seen or tasted (Exod. 20:15; Cant. 2:14), or what is seen can be touched or tasted (Exod. 10:21; Eccl. 11:7), then the divine, too, can be seen in various physical forms. . . . Prophetical anthropomorphisms are capable of expressing truths in a clear and understandable fashion (even though physical attributes do not relate to God or to the divine world).119

Halevi speaks of active epistemological interiorization, and not of simulation, in the modern creative sense of the term since he refers to inner perceptions that are based on a combination of the various inner powers, and not only on the imaginative faculty. From this respect, his idea is wellgrounded in medieval thought.120 Halevi is unique in the legitimacy he grants to conscious, intentional activation of these inner faculties in order to connect with God, while his predecessors, including R. Hai Gaon and his students, opposed activist approaches that, in their opinion, apparently called into question the truthfulness of inner experiences.121 Halevi most likely was familiar with the activist nature of the description of Yordei ha-Merkabah in the Heikhalot literature,122 while R. Hai Gaon preferred to disregard the patently activist nature of this literature. The disparity between the advocates of activism and the quietists is more pronounced when we consider that epistemological interiorization was 117 “Had the Greek philosophers seen them [the prophets] when they prophesied and performed miracles, they would have acknowledged them, and sought by speculative means to discover how to achieve such things. Some of them did, so especially gentile philosophers” (Halevi, Kuzari 3:4 [trans.: The Kuzari, 210–11]); see Harvey, “Judah Halevi’s Synesthetic Theory,” 151–53. 118 On synesthesia and the connection between perception of sights, colors, and sounds and other senses, see Cretien von Campen, The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007). 119 Harvey, “Judah Halevi’s Synesthetic Theory,” 147. 120 See Wolfson, “Internal Senses,” 69–85. For R. Hai Gaon, spiritual forms are tangible. 121 The activist nature of Halevi’s discussion of intent in prayer (Kuzari 3:5) is evident. For Halevi’s theurgic and applied inclination, see Pines, “On the Term Ruḥaniyyot.” 122 Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, 98–123.

487

488

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

common to different medieval Jewish circles. These orientations culminated in an open split with the ban that Rashba placed on R. Abraham Abulafia in the late thirteenth century,123 and once again awakened in the following centuries.124 Within the context of the tension between activism and passivity in the spiritual quest of the great Jewish masters for intimate contact with the divine, Judah Halevi provided new legitimacy for spiritual activism.

Epistemological Interiorization in Guide for the Perplexed 3:51 The Aristotelian epistemology adopted by Maimonides was not cognitive subjectivization because of its great confidence in the senses’ reception as “that which is receptive of the form of sensible objects without the matter.” Cognition as the subject’s identification with the object does not undermine the objective existence of sensory perceptions per se. This said and done, the doctrine of Providence that Maimonides developed, based on his philosophical thought, reflects outstanding epistemological interiorization: Providence watches over everyone endowed with intellect proportionately to the measure of his intellect. Thus providence always watches over an individual endowed with perfect apprehension, whose intellect never ceases from being occupied with God. On the other hand, an individual endowed with perfect apprehension, whose thought sometimes for a certain time is emptied of God, is watched over by providence only during the time when he thinks of God; providence withdraws from him during the time when he is occupied with something else. . . . The providence of God, may He be exalted, is constantly watching over those who have obtained this overflow, which is permitted to everyone who makes efforts with a view to obtaining it. if a man’s thought is free from distraction, if he apprehends Him, may He be exalted, in the right way and rejoices in what he apprehends, that individual can never be afflicted with evil of any kind. For he is with God and God is with him. When, however, he abandons Him, may He be exalted, and is thus separated from God and God separated from him, he becomes in consequence of this a target for every evil that may happen to befall him. For

123 Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, vii. 124 See my discussion of activism and passivity in the worship of God in nascent Hasidism: Human Temple, 343–78.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

the thing that necessarily brings about providence and deliverance from the sea of chance consists in that intellectual overflow.125

Another formulation of this idea, that also is noticeably present in later writings, appears in the writings of R. Abraham ben Judah, the student of Hasdai Crescas: Consequently, the measure of Providence that is existent in the reality changes in accordance with the differences between the recipients, whether more or less, among the species and their individuals. This is in accordance with each individual’s faculty and preparedness to receive.126

In the Maimonidean conception, Providence is an inner, intellective matter. When man’s thought is focused exclusively on God, then he is with God and God is with him. Maimonides took care not to formulate his doctrine in a way that would seem to deny the rabbinic conception of Divine Providence, but what he does not say speaks volumes. An examination of his argument shows that it is man’s thought that determines his position on the degree to which he is under God’s providential care. One whose thought is focused on God “rejoices in what he apprehends,” implying that he sees himself under Divine Providence, if only by the very—correct— thought to which he is connected. And when a person is distant from God in his thought, God’s providential care—and the sense of being under it— leaves him. In her analysis of the continuation of Maimonides’ discussion of Providence in chap. 52, Diana Lobel compares the image of the provident God in Sufi literature and in Ḥovot ha-Levavot, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Maimonidean depiction.127 She observed that, although Maimonides refers directly to what ibn Paquda wrote on this question in the tenth section of the eighth chapter of Ḥovot ha-Levavot, he replaced the medieval personification in the image of God with far-reaching rationalization. Maimonides asserts that, just as man perceives God with the eye of his intellect, what watches over us is “the intellect that overflows toward us and is the bond between us and Him, may He be exalted.”128 The Maimonidean 125 Maimonides, Guide 3:51 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 624–25). 126 Abraham ben Judah, Arba‘ah Turim, Vatican Ms. 250, 44, ll. 23–26, in Shalom Rosenberg, “The Arba‘ah Turim of Rabbi Abraham bar Judah, Disciple of Don Hasdai Crescas” [Heb], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3, no. 4 (1983–1984): 577. 127 Lobel, Sufi-Jewish Dialogue, 233–35. 128 Maimonides, Guide 3:52 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 629).

489

490

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

notion of Providence is thus a direct development of the epistemological interiorization in Ḥovot ha-Levavot. This interiorization, however, that he formulates in more rationalist fashion, in intellective terms that accord with his metaphysical and epistemological positions, is far removed from anthropomorphic descriptions, and favors more intellective formulations. Both the more anthropomorphic formulation of epistemological interiorization in Ḥovot ha-Levavot and Maimonides’ more rational treatment gave birth to varied forms of this idea in following generations. Lobel’s claim of a development of the personal dimension in Maimonides’ conception ignores the clearly existentialist dimension that emerges from the transferal of responsibility for the realization of Providence to the man who strives to remember God. For instance, in the beginning of 3:51 of the Guide, Maimonides writes: And David says [Ps. 16:8]: “I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not bend down”; he means to say: I do not empty my thought of Him, and it is as if he were my right hand from which, because of the rapidity of its motion, my attention is not distracted even for an instant, and therefore I do not bend down—that is, I do not fall.129

Rashi understands this verse to mean “in all my deeds, I have placed His fear before me. And why? Because He is always at my right hand to help me, lest I falter.” That is, in the simple meaning of the verse, “at my right hand” refers to God: therefore, since He is at my right hand lest I falter, I remember Him and fear Him. According to Maimonides, however, “at my right hand” refers to man, who does not forget his God for a moment, even though humans naturally tend to forget what is self-understood by them, like their right hand. The one, however, who remembers God is assured of not falling. In other words, human recollection creates Providence, that prevents man from falling. The interiorized and existential nature of the Maimonidean discussion in chap. 51 can be fully understood only at the end of the chapter. In this last section, Maimonides explores the meaning of the midrash which states that Moses, Aaron, and Miriam died by a kiss: [The Sages], may their memory be blessed, mention the occurrence of this kind of death, which in true reality is salvation from death, only with regard to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. The other prophets and excellent men are beneath this degree; but it holds good for all of them that the apprehension of 129 Ibid. 3:51 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 622).

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

their intellects becomes stronger at the separation, just as it is said [Isa. 58:8]: “And thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be at thy rear.” After having reached this condition of enduring permanence, that intellect remains in one and the same state, the impediment that sometimes screened him off having been removed. And he will remain permanently in that state of intense pleasure, which does not belong to the genus of bodily pleasures, as we have explained in our compilations and as others have explained before us.130

The wording “salvation from death” is crucial to an understanding of this matter. Humans dread death, which gives rise to many fears. For Maimonides, the greatness of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam was expressed in their freeing themselves of the fear of death in the very moment of their death. Their purpose was to indicate that the three of them died in the pleasure of this apprehension due to the intensity of passionate love. In this dictum the Sages, may their memory be blessed, followed the generally accepted poetical way of expression that calls the apprehension that is achieved in a state of intense and passionate love for Him, may he be exalted, a kiss, in accordance with its dictum [Cant. 1:2]: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.”131

Schwartz observes, in his annotations to his Hebrew translation of the Guide, that Maimonides used the Arabic “`ishq” for the Hebrew heshek [“passionate love”], which in Sufi mysticism denotes love of God.132 The essence of Divine Providence that, for Maimonides, is attained by remembering God plainly resembles that reached by Sufi devotion that is effected by such remembering.133 The devotee who concentrates on God in his consciousness actualizes, with this thought, his love of God, and in this way the terrors of outer life are negated in his inner self. By writing that removing God from one’s thoughts results in a loss of Providence, Maimonides does not intent to argue that a person’s inner thought about God effects change in the outer world, namely, preventing dangers and trouble. He does not mean that the person under Divine Providence is sheltered from the vicissitudes 130 Ibid. 3:51 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 628). 131 Ibid. 3:51 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 627). 132 Sviri, Sufis, 219–31; Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 137; and see her discussion of love of God in Sufism, ibid., 130–48. 133 On the Sufi remembrance of God, see ibid., 167–78.

491

492

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

of life. He, too, is exposed to them, like any other person, but inner intellective concentration on God gives a person pleasure and an inner spiritual happiness that leads to change in his attitude to life’s travails. Suffering and fear do not penetrate to his inner self, nor do they undermine his trust in God, rather, he is intimately connected to a stronger inner experience that protects him from the intrusion of pain and fear to the depths of his soul. We can safely state that Maimonides laid the foundations for the significant penetration of Sufi religious inwardness to the Jewish world.

Epistemological Interiorization in Early Kabbalah and in Abulafia’s Writings The literature of the Ashkenazi pietists and the early Kabbalists contains references to ruaḥ ha-kodesh (literally, “spirit of the holy”) as a special spirit of wisdom that rests upon man: The spirit of God is wisdom, and wisdom is called ruaḥ ha-kodesh, for ruaḥ ha-kodesh enters from wisdom, as happened to Ethan the Ezrahite. . . . It descended to his thought, and he came to know his Creator; and because he came to know his creator, ruaḥ ha-kodesh rested upon him. . . . It similarly appears in the books of the philosophers that we can bring ruaḥ ha-kodesh into ourselves. All the philosophers argue, saying that from speech alone, without action, they will bring ruaḥ ha-kodesh into themselves. [But] this is only the spirit of impurity . . . they say that this is ruaḥ ha-kodesh. For this reason, they do not deem a prophet to be better than any other person. Rather, they say that the prophets are philosophers, and that the Holy One[,blessed be He,] did not speak to them, rather they attained this from their mind, from themselves, to the extent that they could know the future . . . and they taught the world how it could exist.134

And in the Perush ha-Aggadot of R. Azriel: The meaning of “extra soul” [which a Jew is said to have on the Sabbath] is the extra ruaḥ ha-kodesh that is superior to other spirits, as it is written: “by virtue of his extraordinary spirit” (Dan. 6:4)—this is the spirit of wisdom and discernment which, by being ruaḥ ha-kodesh, possesses the faculty to 134 From the commentary to Sefer Shi‘ur Qomah, including fragments from Sefer Raza Rabba, cited in Scholem, Beginnings of the Kabbalah, 201 n. 1 (Scholem maintains that the text was already known in the ninth century).

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

understand and gain insight . . . and when the Sabbath departs [i.e., Saturday night] the ruaḥ ha-kodesh that was present in the soul returns to its place, and only a small part of this faculty remains.135

Nahmanides states, in his novellae on the Talmudic discussion of the dictum by R. Avdimi of Haifa that “since the day that the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to the wise” (BT Bava Batra 12a): “Although the prophecy of the prophets—which is sight and vision—was taken away, the prophecy of the wise—which is by means of wisdom—was not taken away, rather, they know the truth by means of the ruaḥ ha-kodesh within them.”136 All these writings, that differ from one another in a number of ways, share the belief in the existence of a special wisdom that resides within man, by means of which one can know God. The description of this wisdom as “ ruaḥ ha-kodesh within them” implies that knowledge of God does not come from external revelation, it rather is a product of exceptional intellective power, that is of divine origin, but which is present in man. Abraham Abulafia provides a different and more detailed explanation for the process of inner prophesying, based on his conception of language as not only facilitating the perception of the reality of the Active Intellect, but also enabling direct speech with it: The truthfulness of prophecy begins in the inner speech that is created within the soul, in seventy languages, with the 22 holy letters. They all combine in the mind in letter combinations, potentially from the power of speech, and in practice from the prophetic, Torah, godly Active Intellect. The imaginative faculty is influenced from this; from the imaginative to the aware, from the aware to the sensory, and from the sensory to the pictorial that is depicted in a book. This then comes back and reaches the lofty level: it is separated from the pictorial to the sensory, [from] the sensory to the aware, from it to the imaginative, and from it to the inner speaker, which is thought to be pictorial, from it to the prophetic, and from it to the Active [Intellect]. He will adhere to it after great and vigorous exercise, until the partial personal prophecy shall return to the form of its eternal general Cause, as it, and he and it will be one.137 135 Azriel. Perush ha-Aggadot, 96–97. 136 Nahmanides, Ḥiddushei ha-Ramban, Bava Batra, chap. 1, fol. 5b. 137 Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Sitrei Torah, MS. Paris 774 (cited in Idel, “Abraham Abulafia’s Work,” 14). See also Idel’s citation from Abulafia’s Mafteaḥ ha-Ḥokhmot (Idel, Language,

493

494

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

In his explanation of the cognitive element at the basis of his prophetic theory, Abulafia speaks of the possibility of a continuum between the human intellect and the Active Intellect. This possibility follows from his unique notion of language. As atoms in the material world, in the spiritual world letters are elements present in man and God. The substance of this elements ruaḥ ha-kodesh, described above as being present in man and originating in God: For all the letters are engraved in your heart, hewn from the ruaḥ ha-kodesh in your spirit. Therefore it is written, “One spirit of them”—this is the ruaḥ ha-kodesh that is engraved in you from the ruaḥ ha-kodesh in your spirit. Therefore it was said, ‘One spirit of them’—this is ruaḥ ha-kodesh that is engraved in you, from ruaḥ ha-kodesh itself, until you understand from your comprehension that ruaḥ ha-kodesh is within you—it speaks in you, and not outside you.138

Abulafia uses the Tablets of the Covenant allegorically to explain his fundamental idea of how human speech came into being from within divine speech: It is only that the hearts for Him are like parchment for us, i.e. matter that carries upon itself the forms of the letters inscribed in ink, manifest in the immediate material form. So too, for God, may He be exalted, the heart is like the tablets and the animating soul like ink, and the word that comes to it from Him is the perception in the likeness of letters written upon the tablets of the covenant, perceptible from both sides, inscribed on both of them so that they may be read front and back. And this is indicated in the verse [Ps. 139:5], “you have formed in me behind and before.” And although as regards God there is no speech of the type mentioned, from the point of view of the heart of the recipient it is construed as speech.139

As Idel showed, this passage indicates that the outer event of the writing of the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets was conveyed to man’s inner self. The letters that form language are not a human invention, they rather are of the divine essences that were given to man, within whom they Torah, and Hermeneutics, 22). 138 Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Otzar Eden Ganuz, cited in Idel, “Abraham Abulafia’s Work,” 108. 139 Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Or ha-Sekhel, MS. Vatican 233, fol. 122b (cited in Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, 43).

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

become human speech and writing. The sanctification of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, as the basic building materials of which all is created, in the spirit of Sefer Yetzirah, allows Abulafia to offer a theory based on the interiorization of human language, which is also, at the same time, its full deification. The parable of the loiterer and the king’s daughter cited by de De-Vidas in Re’shit Ḥokhmah, in the name of R. Isaac of Acre,140 reflects the incorporation of the various above conceptions into what is patently religious epistemological interiorization, that maintains that the consciousness’s focus on thought, with total liberation from the outer sensory world, is devekut (literally, “cleaving”; i.e., devotion) to God. The loiterer replaces his desire for the beautiful woman with thought of an abstract intellective image. He thereby is immersed in the thought of abstract beauty, which is a divine idea. R. Isaac of Acre’s parable contains much more than presenting ideal 140 See De-Vidas, Reshit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Ahavah 4:31. Translation from The Beginning of Wisdom, 105–106: “One day a king’s daughter left the bath-house and a man of the indolent type, who would spend his time sitting in corners, happened to see her. He let out a deep sigh, and said, “What a dream it would be if I could have her to myself, to do as I please!” The king’s daughter answered that this would happen in the cemetery, not here. When he heard her words, he rejoiced in the thought that she was telling him to go to the cemetery and wait for her there; she would come to him and he would do with her as he pleased. She, however, did not mean that at all, but rather that in the cemetery, the small is equal to the great, the old and despised to the respected. It is there that all would be equal, but not here, for it is not possible that a commoner get close to a king’s daughter. The man got up, went to the cemetery, and sitting down, he bound his thoughts to her, always thinking of her form. Such was his desire of her, that he divested his thought from all sensations, focusing his awareness on the form of that woman and on her beauty to the exclusion of everything else. Day and night he sat in that cemetery, eating, drinking and sleeping there, thinking that if she did not come today, she would come tomorrow: this went on for many days. Such was his distance from all worldly sensations and his concentration on that single thought: always meditating in his deep longing, so much so that his soul gradually separated herself from all worldly matters, including the thought of the woman in question. His soul attached itself to the Holy One, until within a few days, he became totally aloof from worldly sensations; yearning for the Divine concept, he went back to being a wholehearted servant, a holy man of God, and his blessing was effective for all passers by. Merchants and people riding or walking would go to him and receive his blessing, to the point that his fame became widespread.” On this parable and its development in the Kabbalistic literature and in Hasidic thought, see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 115–19; idem, “Female Beauty”; idem, Kabbalah and Eros (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 153–78.

495

496

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

love of God as total mental dedication. It also presents a well-formulated worldview that identifies devekut with God with divestment from the outer world and absolute intellective contemplation, that is, ideational contemplation. This gives the perfect servant of the Lord the ability to influence the world, due to his wholly dwelling within the world of the divine concept. This argument attests to R. Isaac’s basic assumption that the outer world is fashioned within the intellective one.

Epistemological Interiorization in the Zohar and among the Safed Kabbalists The Zohar explains that the “husband” in the verse “Her husband is known in the gates [ba-she’arim]” (Prov. 31:23) is “the blessed Holy One, who is known and grasped to the degree that each one opens the gates of imagination.”141 Scholarly opinion is divided on the meaning of this Zoharic passage. In one opinion, this permits the creation of a “private” myth, in accordance with the subjective spirit of the individual. This subjectivity does not detract from the truthfulness of the imagining, since the Zohar assumes that God exists in all the ways in which He is imagined.142 According to an opposing view, the Zoharic exegesis offers two complementary interpretations. In the first, God is known in the gates of the imagination; and in the second, He is known by means of the celestial degrees, the Sefirot, which are called “the entrances to the soul.” The meaning of these complementary understandings is that man is capable of imagining the Sefirot in his mind, and thereby God is known. This is not subjective mental cognition, it rather contains an objective element, because God is known in these gates (= the Sefirot).143 The first explanation, that has the Zohar referring to the inner imagining, meaning that it allows subjective mythopoesisa, corresponds to certain modern notions, but I find this highly questionable. It does not accord with the Zoharic understanding of the nature of thought, as expressed in the following passage, from the section known as Sitrei Torah (Secrets of the Torah), that is included in the Zohar on Genesis:

141 Zohar 1:103a; trans. Matt, Zohar, 2:133. 142 Yehuda Liebes, “Zohar and Eros,” 73. 143 Harvey, “Judah Halevi’s Synesthetic Theory,” 154.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

A thought that defiles its source produces a tree of deceit, because that thought ascends and changes soul for soul. The Tree of Life departs, and the Tree of Death takes hold of him, and it is from there that the soul comes. He has no branches; he never sees good; he is dry, with no moistness whatsoever; his fruit is as bitter as wormwood. Of him it is said “He shall be like a tamarisk in the desert, and shall not see when good comes” (Jeremiah 17: 6). A good thought, however, ascends to the upper world, holds fast to the Tree of Life, grasps its branches, and eats its fruit, and it produces every blessing and every kind of holiness, giving life to the soul and healing to the bones. Of him it is said “He shall be as a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, and shall not see when heat comes” (ibid., 17: 8). All the affairs of the world depend on thought and intention. Scripture alludes to this when it says “Sanctify yourselves, therefore, and be holy” (Leviticus 11: 44) because one can produce every kind of holiness by a good thought.144

The idea that “all the affairs of the world depend on thought and intention” could be interpreted as a clearly epistemological argument. Explaining this conception by means of the standard doctrine of reward and punishment, and as resulting from belief in Divine Providence, is undermined when we take into account the understanding of R. Moses Cordovero and his school. De-Vidas asserts in Re’shit Ḥokhmah145 that the Zohar’s discussion of sexual thoughts that are liable to lead to impurity146 comes to the generalization that good thought has the power to create a sanctified world, and bad thought, an impure one. He emphasizes that at the end of this Zoharic passage, a passage in Sitrei Torah notes the general power of thought to cause action: “Therefore prayer requires the will and intention to direct [one’s heart]. And similarly with all modes of serving the Holy

144 Zohar 1:154b, Sitrei Torah; trans.: Tishby, Wisdom, 3:1401. 145 De-Vidas, Re’shit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Qedushah 5:21–27, ed. Waldman, 2:76–78. 146 “Ordinary thought, that leads to impurity, as [the rabbis,] of blessed memory, said (BT Avodah Zarah 20b): ‘One should not engage in such thoughts by day, and come to impurity at night.’ . . . That is, he tarnished the sign of the covenant, which is called river and stream, the fount [literally, “source”] of Israel, which is the source from which the souls of Israel descend, and the issuing of that drop [of semen, from a nocturnal emission], from which it was fitting for a soul to issue forth in sanctity, went forth in vain by Lilith” (De-Vidas, Re’shit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Qedushah 5:26, ed. Waldman, 2:78).

497

498

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

One, blessed be He, intention and thought perform deeds and have consequences in whatever area is necessary.”147 De-Vidas stresses that the Zoharic teaching relates not only to the ritual framework, but to human life in its entirety. Just as good and proper thoughts create sanctity and purity, bad thoughts generate evil and impurity: For good thought ascends and unites with the Tree of Life, etc., all the words in the world follow thought and consideration. From this we find a third meaning, for every bad consideration to commit a transgression causes harm, just as thought of [performing] a commandment effects rectification for his soul.148

De-Vidas expressly describes how man is to sanctify his thought during prayer and Torah study, and when he performs his material actions: The main intent of a person’s thought in his prayer and Torah [study] should be to always have the intent to the Root of all, the Sustainer of all, Ein-Sof, may He be exalted.149 When one engages in Torah [study] and commandments his thought should only be to effect unification above. In consequence, such a person, even though he is in this world, his thought is not in this world, but in the World to Come. Consequently, he is sanctified in the World to Come, for even in the World to Come he is holy, and his level will not be as the rest of the people who simply [i.e., without higher intents] engage in Torah [study] and commandments.150

Thought is what gives things their essential nature. Accordingly, two people who perform the same act could be in completely different places, corresponding to the varying type of intellective intentionality of each. De-Vidas includes in Sha‘ar ha-Yirah [Gate of Fear] his conception of epistemological interiorization: Accordingly, when man is conjoined with the thought of his heart, he is conjoined with his inner self, and causes the thought to spread throughout the divine attributes [= the Sefirot], which causes Ein Sof and Keter Elyon to 147 Zohar 1:155b (trans.: Tishby, Wisdom, 3:1403); De-Vidas, Re’shit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Qedushah 5:26 (ed. Waldman, 2:78). 148 Ibid. 5:27, ed. Waldman, 2:78. 149 Ibid. 6:12, ed. Waldman, 2:50. 150 Ibid. 4:21, ed. Waldman, 2:53.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

spread, and all becomes a single unity. If, however, his heart is not whole, it is like a body without a soul, and will be like shattered vessels, that have nothing within.151

The concept of the imaginative faculty that emerges from these passages does not identify imagination with subjective creativity or with what a person invents, as Maimonides defines imagination.152 The inner imagination is effected by means of the inner intellective faculty that exists independently of the physical reality in which a person finds himself when he thinks. The degree of truthfulness of the imagined inner thought is determined by its content and not by the extent to which it corresponds to the outer reality. These passages from the Zohar and De-Vidas clearly indicate that, for them, when a person who engages in material matters such as eating or sexual relations thinks in his inner self/imagination of the supernal spheres, his thought is neither subjective nor imaginary (that is, capable of being refuted in terms of the degree of its truthfulness). Moreover, they perceive inner thought about God to be more truthful than the alternative thought, which is mainly identical to physical pleasure. A study of Iggeret ha-Kodesh attributed to Nahmanides, that is cited in its entirety in Re’shit Ḥokhmah,153 teaches of the cultural sources of the notion of the imagination’s power to create physical reality. The attempt by Iggeret ha-Kodesh, grounded in a familiarity with certain symptoms of rabies, to provide a scientific basis for the possibility of the imagination influencing reality hints at an explanation that moderns would call autosuggestive.154 151 Ibid., Sha‘ar ha-Yirah 15:53, ed. Waldman, 1:324. 152 See Maimonides, Guide 3:51. 153 De-Vidas, Re’shit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Qedushah 16:49–84, ed. Waldman, 2:465–98. On Iggeret ha-Kodesh that is attributed to Nahmanides, see Gershom Scholem, “Is Nahmanides the Author of Iggeret Ha-Kodesh?” [Heb], Kirjath Sepher 21 (1944–1945): 179–86; Shraga Abramson, “Iggeret ha-Kodesh Attributed to Nahmanides” [Heb], Sinai 46 (1982): 232–53. 154 “Do not be surprised concerning this matter, for it is a simple matter even in the eyes of the philosophers, for according to the thought in the mind of husband and wife at the time of coitus, the child will be prepared and fashioned for good or for evil. . . . Do not be astonished. There are more wondrous things in nature. A man is bitten by a mad dog, and is smitten with rabies immediately after that bite; because of that very thought as he conceives of the dog, they cannot bring him water, for as soon as they do, he imagines that he sees mad dogs in the water. Similarly, in his urine he imagines that he sees many small dogs, because by virtue of the many thoughts and confusion in his mind, he pictures in the urine what he conceives and feels in his mind” (Moses ben Nahman, Iggeret ha-Kodesh, 331–332). Translation from The Holy Letter: A Study

499

500

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

The shift to which the Zohar alludes, and which attains greater clarity in Re’shit Ḥokhmah, consists mainly in the claim that thought creates reality— an idea which is formulated as a cognitive principle, and not as an article of faith. In my assessment, this conception is also the assumption underlying the Kabbalistic doctrine of kavvanot (see chapter one). Concentration on the divine names that represent the different Sefirot, that enables the worshiper’s unification/connection with the divine forces, is effected by means of his thought that unites the Sefirot with one another in order to facilitate the flow of the divine emanation to this world. This activity is based on the assumption (see above) that thought is capable of altering the reality. The Zohar and the Cordoverian school, that, as is indicated, for example, by the writings of De-Vidas and R. Isaac of Acre, reflect this epistemological theory because, in effect, they assume the power of thought to change the reality in general, and that, specifically, man’s reality is determined by his thought. This idea is most evident in the instructions R. Joseph Karo received from his personal inner maggid, namely, that focus on the power of thought to fashion a person’s world and determine his actions.155

Epistemological Interiorization in Maggid Mesharim In the book Maggid Mesharim, R. Joseph Karo relays what his maggid spoke to him: While you are in this world you constantly declare the unity [meyahed] of the Lord your God. There is not a single moment in which you do not devote [meyahed] your thoughts to His Torah, His worship, and fear of Him. This is what [the Torah] said, “[You shall love] the Lord your God.” Consequently, when you separate from the material [i.e., die] your soul will certainly be one with your Maker. Since your meditations and thoughts are only of Him, you will necessarily adhere to the place where you think. The soul of your enem[ies], however, since their thoughts are not dedicated to the Lord, may He be blessed, but always meditate on their pleasures, they will be imprisoned in kaf ha-kela [a Kabbalistic concept based on the wording in I Sam. 25:29: “flung away as from the hollow of a sling”]. That is, if they think of food and in Jewish Sexual Morality, trans. Seymour J. Cohen (Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1993), 142–45. 155 On Karo’s maggid and its meaning as automatic speech or writing, see Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 9–23.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

drink they will adhere to those forces that are appointed over adultery; those who meditate on adultery will adhere to those forces that are appointed over that; and those who meditate on power and honor, they will adhere to those forces that are appointed over that. The result being, it is as if one flings his soul into kaf ha-kela. Since the ḥitzonim [external] forces control him, it is as if he is flung into kaf ha-kela—both those [forces] that come to control him by his meditating on a certain pleasure, and those that come to control him by a certain pleasure, with the result that it is as if he is slung between them. It is a law of nature that the soul adheres to the place of a man’s thoughts and meditations.156

The relationship between this passage ascribed to the maggid of R. Joseph Karo and Maimonides’ doctrine of Divine Providence is of special interest. To a certain extent, the maggid’s teaching can be seen as an expansion and explanation of the Maimonidean doctrine, even though the words of the maggid, unlike what Maimonides writes, refer to life in the World to Come: “when you separate from the material that your soul will be one with your Maker.” This attitude to the World to Come is concealed because of its reliance on man’s mental activity during his life in this world. Using the spiritualistic conception of powers (that draws upon the Kabbalistic literature), the maggid explains how, when man is distinguished from God by his thought, “he becomes . . . a target for every evil,” as Maimonides puts it. Basically, the maggid of R. Joseph Karo, too, maintains that human thought is the intellect that is activated by the Active Intellect. Human thought is always anchored in the essence on which it focuses. Just as the focusing of man’s thought on God, His Torah, and His service, which Maimonides calls the intention “to set their thought to work on God alone”157 enables man to adhere to Him, focusing on all sorts of material thoughts acts in parallel fashion. The combination of Aristotelian thought with the Kabbalistic thought on the “spiritual essence” of the material world as substance, despite its being described as external forces, imparts added force to the 156 Joseph Karo, Maggid Mesharim (Jerusalem, 1960), 56. The last part of the passage follows the translation in Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, 156; see also the note in the Hebrew edition: R. Yosef Karo, 156 n. 44. Mordechai Pachter noted the affinity between what the maggid said to Karo and what Azikri wrote in Milei de-Shemaya: “Here spirit holds fast to spirit, as it is said [Deut. 10:20]: ‘to Him shall you hold fast’—that your thought not leave the Lord for a single moment” (Milei de-Shemaya, ed. Pachter, para. 277). See also ibid., 86; Pachter, “Joseph Karo’s Maggid Mesharim as a Book of Ethics” [Heb], Daat 21 (1988): 64. 157 Maimonides, Guide 3:51 (trans.: Moses ben Maimon, The Guide, 620).

501

502

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Maimonidean notion of Divine Providence. For Maimonides, not thinking about the divine means privation/nonbeing [he’eder]. The Kabbalistic world replaces this concept with that of hitzonim [the “outer” aspects; also called kelipot-husks].158 Thought is more substantial than the material world, and the blurring of the distinction between life in this world and that in the World to Come is characteristic of the teachings of Karo’s maggid. This leads to the general conclusion that this principle encompasses both good and evil thoughts, and, additionally, is not limited to the World to Come, but also alludes to the life of this world: “It is a law of nature that the soul adheres to the place of a man’s thoughts and meditations.” Surprisingly, this teaching, that emphasizes the force of human thought as molding human reality, was fashioned from the combination of Maimonides’ Aristotelian notion of Providence and the Kabbalistic conception of evil. Obviously, we must also take into account the Kabbalistic idea of intent—which intensifies the spiritual power of thought—that underlies this conception. What R. Moses Cordovero writes in Sha‘ar ha-Neshamah of Pardes Rimmonim finely illustrates this position: As man fulfills the physical commandments, then they will be a body and dwelling for the spirituality of his intent, that is drawn from his soul, and the intent is garbed in the act of the commandment. Consequently, when there is no intent to the commandment, then, in truth, it is as a body without a soul. We derive from this that as long as a person’s intent in the act of the commandment increases, its spirituality will correspondingly increase, and will ascend higher and higher from level to level.159

The spirituality of the fulfillment of a commandment, that, according to the theosophic Kabbalistic understanding, influences the celestial spheres, is a direct function of the strength of human intellective intent.

Epistemological Interiorization in Hasidism Rachel Elior noted that R. Joseph Karo’s remark in his mystical journal that “you will necessarily adhere to the place where you think” foreshadowed the various dicta on this point that the Hasidic literature ascribes

158 See Scholem, “Sitra Ahra,” 56–59, 72–73. 159 Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, sha‘ar 31: Sha‘ar ha-Neshamah, chap. 31.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

to the Baal Shem Tov.160 The above survey of the expressions of epistemological interiorization in Ḥovot ha-Levavot, the Maimonidean doctrine of Providence, and the Kabbalistic literature teaches of the rich history of the various formulations of the idea that preceded that of R. Joseph Karo in medieval Jewish thought. The Baal Shem Tov might very well have adopted the formulation appearing in Maggid Mesharim, but he was distinctive in the centrality he imparted to this idea in the totality of his spiritual world. R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye states in the name of his teacher, the Baal Shem Tov: When one connects and bonds his thought to Him, may He be blessed, then all 248 of his limbs and 365 of his sinews follow the thought, and as I heard explicitly from my teacher, that where a person thinks, there he is, and “a wise man’s talk brings him favor.”161

I regard this short dictum, that appears in identical language in the teachings of the Maggid of Mezheritch and other Hasidic masters (albeit without attribution to the Baal Shem Tov), as the key to understanding the unique spiritual world of Hasidism.162 The true reality, in light of the expansion of this notion in the following teaching of the maggid, is not what is perceived by the senses (that is, the external appearance of the world), but what is perceived by the consciousness within us. Man lives within his thoughts in the broad sense of the term, that is, in what takes place in his inner consciousness. If we realize that the reality differs from what the

160 Elior, Rachel. “Joseph Karo and Israel Ba‘al Shem Tov: Mystical Metamorphosis— Kabbalistic Inspiration, Spiritual Internalization” Studies in Spirituality, 17 (2007): 267–319, esp. 292–301. See also, for the background of the Baal Shem Tov’s dicta, Gries, Conduct Literature, 217–218 and his reference to Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, fol. 189a. 161 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef, Ḥayyei Sarah, para. 3, 69. 162 Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow links this idea with another teaching of his grandfather: “I heard from my grandfather, may he rest in peace, that wisdom is called Kibroth-[ha]ttaavah [literally, the graves of desire], for when a person adheres to wisdom, naturally, all desires are nullified for him, and it therefore is called Kibroth-[ha] ttaavah. That is, by means of wisdom he receives and removes the power of desire from himself. . . . It is known that a person in his entirety is present where his wisdom is, for when a person thinks with wisdom, at that moment he totally adheres to wisdom, and whatever a person arouses in his thought, is aroused for him above” (Degel Maḥaneh Efrayim, Bereshit, 4). On this teaching, see Esther Liebes, “Love and Creation: The Thought of Baruch of Kosov” [Heb], PhD diss. (Hebrew University, 1997), 81–84.

503

504

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

senses teach us, then this knowledge enables us to to be present in another reality. The Maggid of Mezheritch sets forth this idea as follows: When a man desires to properly serve the Lord and adhere to Him, and then his thought goes to other matters of this world, and in truth, what a person’s thought thinks, there is the person himself, and in truth, “the whole world is filled with His glory,” no place is empty of Him. Every place where man is, he will attain devekut with the Creator, may He be blessed, from where he is, for no place is empty of Him; but He is there with the concealment of His presence, which is the aspect of behind, which is the lowest level. Be precise regarding this, for you know that thought which is not with God is necessarily with something material, and it is known that the material is the lowest of all the levels. But since no place is empty of Him, and God is in every place; and if this man is a good-hearted person, he can find in this thought itself in which he finds himself the divine within it, as is known from another place. Then he is called a repentant, and this is, as it were, a great delight for the Lord, may He be blessed.163

The parable of the palace and the barriers that is related in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, by both his disciple R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye and his grandson R. Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, in light of the above teaching by the maggid and its parallels in the thought of the Baal Shem Tov’s other disciples, explains the centrality of epistemological interiorization in Hasidism. Such interiorization is the cornerstone for all the other aspects of the inner religious life characteristic of this world:164 For I heard from my teacher, may his memory be for the life of the World to Come, a parable: He related, before the blowing of the shofar [ram’s horn] that a wise and great king who by ahizat einayim [trickery, although commonly rendered as “illusion”; see the discussion below] made walls, towers, and gates. He commanded that people come to him through the gates and towers, and he ordered that the king’s treasures be dispersed at each and every gate. 163 Dov Baer of Mezeritch, Maggid Devarav le-Yaakov, ed. Shatz-Uffenheimer, para. 142; see also the beginning of para. 82. The maggid also said: “And likewise, when a person thinks of material things he contracts, for wherever is his thought, he draws himself to there, for thought [builds] a whole structure [komah, literally ‘world’]” (ibid., para. 28). 164 On epistemological interiorization in the writings of the Maggid of Mezeritch, see Margolin, Human Temple, 184–91; and in the writings of R. Phinehas of Koretz, ibid., 264–68. On epistemological interiorization in the writings of R. Baruch of Kosov, see Liebes, “Love and Creation,” 81–95.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

Some went to one gate and went back, others, etc., until his son, his beloved, greatly exerted himself to come to his father the king, when he saw that there was no barrier separating him from his father, for all was trickery. The moral is understood, and “a wise man’s talk brings him favor.”165

The wording ahizat einayim that appears in each of the versions of this parable in the Hasidic literature is quite surprising: did the Baal Shem Tov mean to claim that the entire world is merely an illusion, as Moshe Idel renders this term?166 Ahizat einayim is a Talmudic idiom that appears in several places in the rabbinic literature, mainly in the context of texts that discuss sorcery.167 These sources show that this expression speaks of a manifestation that seems actual to the viewer, even though it is effected by magic, and in actuality is something else. Solomon Schechter asserted in the beginning of the twentieth century that the parable of the barriers is an expression of Hasidic immanence. He wrote: We must not interpret the parable to mean that Baalshem denied the reality or even the importance of the actual phenomenal world. The very contrary is the truth. The world is for him full of God, penetrated through and through by the divine, and therefore as real as God himself.168

165 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Ben Porat Yosef, Miketz, 339–40. The parable appears in longer versions in the same work, as well, in the sermon for Shabbat Teshuvah; Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, Degel Maḥaneh Efrayim, haftarah for Tavo, 257–58; ibid., Vayelekh, 264–65. An additional version of the parable appears in Likkutei Moharan 2:46. In my opinion, R. Jacob Joseph’s shorter version cited in the name of the Baal Shem Tov is the closest to the Baal Shem Tov’s original wording, because this is a transcription of a story that had been delivered orally. 166 See Idel, “Son of the King.” For additional scholarly discussions of this parable and for the disagreement between the scholars who interpreted the parable of the barriers as reflecting acosmist pantheism and Joseph Weiss, who argued that it is characterized by what he called “psychological pantheism,” see Solomon Schechter, “The Chassidim,” in idem, Studies in Judaism, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1896), 34; Gershom Scholem, “‘Devekut’ or ‘Intimate Contact with God’ in Early Hasidism” [Heb], in Scholem. Explications and Implications (Tel Aviv, 1975), 346–47; Weiss, “Early Growth,” 97–100; Rachel Elior, The Mystical Origins of Hasidism, trans. Shalom Carmi (Oxford: Littman, 2006), 75; Immanuel Etkes, The Besht: Magician, Mystic and Leader, trans. Saadya Sternberg (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 135–38; Margolin, “Essence of Faith,” 339–43; Kauffmann, In All Your Ways, 103–11, 411–12. 167 BT Sanhedrin 7:11; 67b. 168 Schechter, “The Chassidim,” 42.

505

506

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

This supports my argument that “ahizat einayim” does not mean illusion as regards the perceived world, but rather refers to the actions of God, who is compared to a magician. That is, the world was created as in an act of magic that causes us to see it as a solely material reality, without discerning the divine spiritual essence that fills it. The reality is infused with the divine, but we cannot see this, and it seems to us that the world’s materiality is a barrier, a series of impenetrable walls between us and the divine world. The expression “ahizat einayim” contains veiled criticism of the Holy One, blessed be He, who created the world by means of this magic, but at the same time, the awareness of this liberates man, and enables him to discern what the magic presumably keeps from him. The Baal Shem Tov’s statement “where a person thinks, there he is” means that he and his disciples thought that the inner intellective processes are substantive, and not illusory. At one and the same time, these inner processes both occur within man, and also fashion the reality beyond him by means of the manner in which we perceive this reality. It is only by means of correct thought of the divine that is present in the world (even though it is created in such a manner that we have difficulty in discerning this) that the person who adheres to this thought of the divine presence is capable of experiencing it and sense its reality. Man can overcome the illusion, that prevents him from seeing the divinity in the world, by means of the paradoxical thought that teaches him that, even though the external senses do not show this, the divine is indeed present in the world. A study of the interpretations by the Baal Shem Tov’s disciples strengthens this understanding. R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye stresses in what he wrote immediately after the parable quoted above that its moral is I likewise wrote elsewhere what I had heard from my teacher, may his memory be for the life of the World to Come, that man’s knowledge that the whole world is filled with the glory of the Lord, may He be blessed, and that every movement and thought, all is from Him, may He be blessed; then through this knowledge “all evildoers are scattered, etc.” [Ps. 92:10]. Consequently, all the angels and all the palaces, all is created and is made, as it were, from His essence, may He be blessed, like that snail whose garment is part of its body; and through this knowledge all evildoers are scattered, for there is no barrier or screen separating man from Him, may He be blessed, by this knowledge.169 169 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Ben Porat Yosef, Miketz, 340.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

This world appears to us as a series of barriers of materiality that separate us from the divine world, which presumably is located behind screen and curtain, but this view is erroneous. The world exists and is real, but we perceive it incorrectly as a result of the divine magic, that prevents us from seeing the divinity within it. Similar sentiments are expressed by R. Phinehas of Koretz: “All the world is the Holy One, blessed be He, by Himself, as it is said, ‘Like a snail whose garment is part of its body’ [Gen. Rabbah 21:5].”170 R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye states plainly, regarding the nature of these obstacles: The moral is understood, that the great, mighty, and awesome King, the King who enthrones kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, conceals Himself with several partitions and walls of iron, as it is stated in the Talmud [Berakhot 32b], from the day that the Temple was destroyed, etc., and the partitions are alien thoughts and the cessation of Torah [study] and prayer, as is taught in the Zohar [Naso, 123a]. For the hidden good is surrounded by the darkness and the husks, which is comparable to [the parable of] the king, etc. The discerning know that all the partitions and iron walls, and all the garbs and covers, are His quintessence, may He be blessed, and no place is empty of Him. Consequently, this is not concealment for Him, as I wrote elsewhere— ”our cattle [alufeinu] are well cared for [mesubalim]” (Ps. 144:14). For it is known that the aluf of the world [i.e., God] is everywhere, then He suffers [sovel] all, etc., see there, and “a wise man’s talk brings him favor.”171

The Baal Shem Tov and his disciples were not troubled by the question of the existence or nonexistence of this world, which, for them, is an illusion. They were concerned about the concealment of the divine, since their declaration that “the whole world is filled with His glory” contradicts ordinary sensory perception, which does not discern this. The existence of this world is a certainty. Hasidim succeed in reaching states that they call “bittul ha-yesh” [the nullification of material reality] and experiencing another reality for only short periods of time. Being convinced that the world cannot exist without the divine life force, they are troubled by their

170 Phinehas of Koretz, Imrei Pinḥas, vol. 1, para. 13, 327. 171 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Ben Porat Yosef, sermon for Shabbat ha-Gadol [5]525 [1765], 219. The verse from Psalms, which speaks of alufeinu (literally translated as “our cattle”), can be interpreted as referring to God, who is described as alufo shel olam—“the Supreme of the world.”

507

508

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

not experiencing the divinity that fills the world in the everyday, regular reality. R. Jacob Joseph explains in the comments that he added to another parable of the Baal Shem Tov, which speaks of a king and his son,172 that the king’s son represents man’s soul. The divine soul in man knows its source and does not fear the presumed obstacles that stand between it and its father, the king. R. Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, writes in a similar vein in his interpretation of the long version of the parable that he cites in his book: But whoever knows that all the things that conceal the face of the king are not concealment, for “the whole world is filled with His glory,” and shouts with a broken heart to his father—who is the Holy One, blessed be He, since he knows that He is a merciful King, and in His compassion He created the world and wants His godliness to be acknowledged, he knows that his soul was actually hewn from Him, as it is said [Gen. 2:7]: “He blew into his nostrils the breath of life.”173 ***

Hasidic epistemological interiorization both resembles and differs from that which is characteristic of the Indian world as it appears, for instance, in the Tamil narrative cited in the beginning of this chapter. In the Indian narrative, epistemological interiorization transfers ritual activity from the outer world to the inner realm. The substantiality of the inner world 172 “But it seems to me that, in a figurative way, the parable that I heard from my teacher, the parable of the son of the king who was sent far away to some village of little value, and when he spent much time there, a letter came from his father the king. He greatly desired to rejoice at it [the letter], but he feared that the villagers would mock him, saying, What is special about this day, and why does this son rejoice? What did the son of the king do? He called to the villagers, bought them wine and other intoxicating drinks, until the people rejoiced [due to] the wine. He found the time [right] to rejoice greatly in the joy of [receiving the letter from] his father, and ‘a wise man’s talk brings him favor’ [Eccl. 10:12]. The moral of this is clear, that the soul is ashamed to rejoice on the Sabbath in the pleasures of its Father, the King who enthrones kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, with the extra soul, which is the letter of greetings from its Father, because of the body, which is as a villager. Accordingly, the Torah commanded to give pleasure to the body on the Sabbath and festivals. Then, when the body rejoices in bodily pleasures, the soul is free to rejoice in the joy of cleaving to the King, the Holy One, blessed be He, and this suffices” (Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef, Ki Tavo, para. 1, 610). 173 Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, Degel Maḥaneh Efrayim, haftarah for Tavo, 258.

Epistemological Interiorization  •  CHAPTER SIX

prevails over that of the outer world, which it transforms. The Hasidim did not negate the traditional outer ritual life; for them, the outer, everyday ritual world has not been abrogated. Since their basic assumption is that a person is where he thinks, then the central problem, as they see it, is the attainment of the correct inner intentionality for their attitude to this world. This interiorization is directed to the outer world itself, and it enables them to perceive it differently. No longer as a material world that is completely detached from any divinity, but rather as the outer garb of the godly, which cannot be detached from His world, as “a snail whose garment is part of its body.”174 In certain respects, Chinese Taoism more closely resembles Hasidism on the question of the correct attitude to the outer world. Chuang Tzu, the Chinese sage who died in the early third century BCE, states: Suppose a boat is crossing a river, and another empty boat is about to collide with it. Even an irritable man would not lose his temper. But supposing there was someone in the second boat. Then the occupant of the first would shout to him to keep clear. And if the other did not hear the first time, nor even when called to three times, bad language would inevitably follow. In the first case the boat was empty, and in the second it was occupied. And so it is with man. If he could only roam empty through life, who would be able to injure him?175

The manner in which a person perceives himself determines his way in the world, and therefore fashions the reality in which he lives. When a person perceives himself as empty, nothing can harm him. In practice, this text demonstrates Taoist epistemological interiorization that resembles the Hasidic principle that, too, assumes the way in which man sees the reality fashions the reality of his life. Presumably, there is a vast expanse between the Taoist emptiness and the divine fullness of Hasidism, but this fullness, 174 Dror Yinon drew my attention to the fundamental similarity between the Hasidic way of thinking, described above, and Spinoza’s three levels of knowledge. According to Spinoza, knowledge of the third level is intuitive, based on the first two, and enables us to perceive the reality in a different manner. Despite the numerous objections raised against the resemblance between Hasidic thought and Spinozan pantheism, we can hardly disregard this fascinating phenomenological parallel. 175 Chuang Tzu, Chuang Tzu: Taoist Philosopher and Chinese Mystic, trans. Herbert A. Giles (London: Unwin, 1980), 191–92. This translation was first published in 1889. For a more recent translation, see idem, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, trans. Burton Watson (Columbia University Press, 1968), 212.

509

510

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

too, is dependent upon a person’s voiding himself of ego, which is identical to what Chuang Tzu describes in his story. The external aspect of Divine Providence in the monotheistic traditions underwent a profound process of interiorization in medieval Jewish thought. This process began with Ḥovot ha-Levavot and Guide of the Perplexed and reached its fullest expression in the literature of nascent Hasidism. In this thought, Providence is not something external to man, it rather is a product of his intellective-spiritual world, that is, of his innermost self. This upheaval was made possible by the epistemological interiorization that originated in antiquity, and reached maturity in the medieval period, as was described above. This interiorization is undoubtedly one of the high points of inner religion as a whole.

Afterword

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental

I. The Eighteenth-Century Shift to the Inner in Eastern European Jewry and in European Philosophy We have discussed various aspects of inner religious life, examining a broad range of sources with special focus on Jewish sources from the Bible to Hasidism. In opposition to the well-known Christian claims of the paucity of inner religious life in Judaism, this book has revealed the diversity of inner life that emerges from the sources. In many respects, this rich inner life reached its peak in the second half of the eighteenth century, when Hasidism emerged in Eastern Europe.1 Acutely sensitive to the various facets of inner Jewish life expressed in the Jewish sources, the Baal Shem Tov, his disciples, and their disciples in turn, revived ideas and ways of life from within this wealth of sources that characteristically focus on inner religious life. This focal point underwent sweeping change in the nineteenth century, when social life centered around the figure of the tzaddiq became the central characteristic of Hasidism; while in the twentieth century, this movement increasingly took refuge in Jewish law and tradition, as a shield 1 This thesis, discussed at length in my book Human Temple in the context of the Hasidic attitude to this world, the religious rite, and public leadership, is presented again in the last part of each chapter in the current book, with examples from the world of Hasidism, especially its first generations.

512

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

against the mass flight from Jewish Orthodoxy. The institution of the tzaddiq, on the one hand, and finding sanctuary within the sturdy walls of the halakhah (that reduced tension with the world of Torah scholarship as part of the common struggle against modernity), on the other, were widely perceived as evidence of the spiritual decline of Hasidism. The nineteenth century, however, also witnessed an important development in Hasidic inner religiosity. With the great changes resulting from the new historical and social circumstances in the background, and especially in light of exposure to accelerated secularization processes, some Hasidic leaders, headed by the disciples of R. Simhah Bunim of Przysucha (1765–1827), developed the existential dimension of religious life.2 In the formative years of Hasidism, Immanuel Kant was writing Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason in Königsberg. Kant’s books, which negated any possibility of religious knowledge, deepened the religious skepticism that was so common in nineteenth-century European thought and that had also penetrated the world of broadly educated European Jews. The latter found themselves compelled to contend with profound doubts that hastened the shedding of religious belief by many. For Kant, God is an object beyond experience. This explains his declaration that he “found it necessary” to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.” Following Kant’s declaration, religion can no longer make claims as valid as those based on our external knowledge of the world, and it rather must remain in the inner world of human faith. Nathan Rotenstreich explained Kant’s remark as follows: Knowledge means knowledge of the objects of experience, and only the determination of the boundaries of this knowledge—to the extent that we are cognizant of our inability to know the objects beyond experience, such as God—provides an opening for relating in a noncognitive manner to such objects. In other words, the dogmatic metaphysics based on the assumed possibility of knowing objects that are not within the experiential context must be abrogated to allow for faith, or to prevent nonfaith that contradicts morality.3 2 The life and teachings of R. Menahem Mendel of Kotsk mark the peak of this development, and graphically illustrate the tension generated in nineteenth-century Hasidism between communal life and inner religious life. See Heschel, Passion for Truth; Margolin, “Essence of Faith,” 355–60. 3 Rotenstreich, “Introductory Chapters,” ix–xi.

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

Patently, there was no direct connection (nor could there have been one) between the Kantian philosophical approach that was grounded in developments in Western philosophical thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the intensification of inner religious life characteristic of nascent Hasidism among Eastern European Jewry.4 Nonetheless, it is difficult to imagine that these were merely coincidental and not completely different reactions to the moods that crossed cultural boundaries and even entered the secluded world of Eastern European Jewry. While Kant defined the boundaries of pure reason and differentiated it from the religious realm, the Hasidim, who were far removed from his philosophical world, overcame their doubts and the weakening of their religious spirit by augmenting their religious inner world, as has been shown in this book. These diametrically opposed approaches shared the awareness that the sources of religious certainty are to be found in the depths of man’s soul, that is, in immanence. Regardless of the sources and causes of Hasidic inwardness, which is somewhat parallel to the German pietism in which the young Kant was raised,5 this inner focus contained the seeds for religious thought’s overcoming of Kant’s negation of the validity of external religious knowledge, since the rejection of the possibility of external knowledge did not cancel the substantiality of inner religious life.

II. Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Inner Religious Life The phenomenology of inner religious life employed in this book focuses on the religious individual’s inner world, unlike metaphysical theological discussions, that assume God’s external existence, wishes, and mandates. Phenomenology begins with the immanent dimension of religious life, when it is as isolated as possible from the transcendental starting point and from God’s demands in the realms of belief and action ascribed to Him and to His will. Separating the immanent from the transcendental is difficult, since both dimensions are interrelated in the religious sources. Religious 4 Salomon Maimon’s Autobiography includes an instructive report of his visit to the court of the Maggid of Mezeritch in the early 1770s, before the Maggid’s death and before Maimon’s arrival in Berlin. If Maimon, whom Kant praised as having the greatest understanding of his writings, had sensed any direct connection between the world of the Hasidim and the teachings of Kant, he undoubtedly would have reported this in his book. 5 See, for example, F. Ernest Stoeffler, German Pietism during the Eighteenth Century. (Leiden: Brill, 1973).

513

514

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

immanence assumes that it heeds transcendental voices, visions, and commands. The religious individual’s basic intentionality, in the sense assigned to it by Husserl, is directed to the transcendental. Beyond this, however, it assumes the possible future revelation of the transcendental in light of past revelations. The religious person’s intentionality is frequently directly aimed at a transcendental God, on the assumption that He commands him to act as he does. At other times, however, it is aimed indirectly, as, for example, in this individual’s participation in religious social life the contents of which are directed to the transcendental. Despite this difficulty, an attempt has been made in this book to explore the aspects of religious life with a shared focus on the human psyche. This included a clarification of the nature of the inner intent on which ritual acts are founded, the central standing that the religious individual affords to his innermost thoughts, and the special attention paid to the inner mental processes the believer undergoes. The Kantian ban on metaphysics, that came to dominate Western philosophical thought, has its beginnings in the empiricism of Berkeley and Hume, who laid the groundwork for the determination that arguments could not be made by means of the consciousness regarding what lies beyond it. This book, with its focus on inner religious life, accepts the philosophical argument that “epistemologically, any determination about transcendence must be stated and decided within the borders of immanence.”6 Based on this argument, we may state that of all the contents of religious life, the inner, psychological elements can still form the basis for a discussion of the philosophical meaning of such life, while refraining from entering the realm of theology. Our examination of inner religious life does not focus on the actual religious claims and beliefs that assume human knowledge of transcendence and its demands that disregard epistemological limitations, it rather is concerned with the human perspective. The study of religious commandments and practices, religious beliefs, or religious social structures using the conventional tools of the humanities and the social sciences significantly contributes to our understanding of historical phenomena, while taking into account the natural limitations of any historical research. The isolation, however, of immanent data of the type cited in this book will enable us to exceed the bounds of historical discussion, although

6 Avi Sagi, “Faith as Temptation,” in Faith: Jewish Perspectives, ed. Avi Sagi and Dov Schwartz (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013), 92.

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

still not entering the realm of theology, since our questions are directed to the meaning of contents within the bounds of immanence. Friedrich Albert Lange, Nietzsche’s teacher, ended his monumental work The History of Materialism (first published in Germany in 1865) with a description of the limitations of the Kantian negation of metaphysics and a presentation of two options for relating to the question of religion after Enlightenment rationalism: Kant has abandoned metaphysical inquiry into the true bases of all existence because of the impossibility of a certain result, and has limited the task of metaphysic to the discovery of all a priori given elements of experience. It is, however, questionable whether this new task is not equally impracticable; and it is no less questionable whether man, on the strength of the natural impulse to metaphysic which Kant himself maintains, will not continually make fresh efforts to break through the barriers of experience, and to build up into empty air brilliant systems of a supposed knowledge of the absolute nature of things. The sophisms by which this are possible are indeed inexhaustible; and while sophisms cunningly elude the position of criticism, a splendid ignorance easily breaks through all barriers with a still more brilliant success. . . . There are only two ways which can permanently call for serious consideration, after it has been shown that mere Rationalism loses itself in the sands of superficiality, without ever freeing itself from untenable dogmas. The one way is the complete suppression and abolition of all religions, and the transference of their functions to the State, Science, and Art; the other is to penetrate to the core of religion, and to overcome all fanaticism and superstition by conscious elevation above reality and definitive renunciation of the falsification of reality by myths, which, of course, can render no service to knowledge.7

The first glimmerings of Nietzsche’s thought, who proclaimed the death of God and attempted to formulate a new religion in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, are evident in this passage by Lange. Another way of implementing Lange’s second proposal developed in the twentieth century, as a consequence of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy. The researcher of religion Gerardus van der Leeuw presented his book, Religious Essence and 7 Frederick Albert Lange, The History of Materialism: And Criticism of Its Present Importance, trans. Ernest Chester Thomas (New York: Humanities Press, 1950), book 2, section 4, ch. 4, 342–44 (third set of pagination).

515

516

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Manifestation, first published in 1933, as a phenomenology of religion.8 Van der Leeuw attested that he took the term “epoche” from Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy and made it a cornerstone of the phenomenology of religion that he founded.9 In this manner van der Leeuw sought to offer a complete description of the religious phenomenon that separates it from a discussion of its significance. Van der Leeuw did not limit his inquiries to the realm of inner immanent life and felt free to discuss all aspects of religious life, including social elements and those pertaining to belief. For him, phenomenology was a theoretical methodology that could avoid theological, or antitheological, discussions during the course of the description itself, but, completely unlike Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy, he did not feel bound by epistemological limitations. Husserl’s successors, Heidegger and the French phenomenologists, most prominently Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, regarded immanence as a path that could not lead to any transcendence. French phenomenology has undergone a theological turn in recent decades.10 Differing from the direction that has taken shape since Spinoza’s immanent revolution, which transformed the transcendental from self-evident to impossible, the existence of the transcendent has recently been argued by means of a phenomenological discussion of human immanence. This change began in the work of Paul Ricoeur, and later on in that by the Jewish Emmanuel Levinas and the Catholic Michel Henry, and today, most notably in the writing of Jean-Luc Marion. Phenomenologically, this turn of events is problematic. Husserl already realized that transcendence itself is the object of immanence. The claimed existence of something beyond consciousness is intrinsically immanent, that is, an argument authored by consciousness itself. Theological discourse on transcendence, similar to that of the French phenomenologists mentioned, posits the existence of absolute transcendence the acknowledgement of which is independent of any immanence; while phenomenology is based on the argument that we know of transcendence only from within the immanent. That is, the transcendence of which religion speaks is absolute, 8 Van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence. 9 Ibid., 671–78. For the concept of Epoche in Husserl’s doctrine, see Husserl, Ideas, 51–62. 10 For a survey of this shift from a critical perspective, see Dominique Janicaud et al., Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 16–103. Janicaud noted that Heidegger himself already exceeded his teacher’s phenomenology by discussing the “phenomenology of the unapparent” (ibid., 28–34).

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

and is perceived as distinct from immanence; in phenomenological terms, however, the religious reality reflects the fact that this transcendence (God) is dependent upon the immanent (man). “Believers shape their attitude to God, they interpret God’s word, and ultimately, determine God’s standing in human reality.”11 Religious reservations concerning the exploration of various aspects of inner religious life (that were briefly discussed in the introduction, above) originate in the argument that, in practice, psychological religious contents undermine the independent existence in man of the absolute transcendent, and transform it into immanence. The theological turn in French phenomenology, as well, has met with vigorous objections, but from the opposite direction, since it uses a phenomenological methodology that accepts the limitation of immanence in order to firmly ground transcendence.12 Emmanuel Levinas, for example, sought what lies beyond human subjectivity, the transcendental, by means of a reworking of phenomenology. Levinas saw in the face of one’s fellow the transcendental Other, from which he attempted to expose breaches the boundaries of subjective awareness. Since he was totally skeptical regarding the possibility of reaching what is beyond subjectivity from within this subjectivity itself, Levinas focused on Otherness as the reflection of the transcendental.13 Sagi was critical of this reasoning: Beyond its deep religious and moral pathos, however, Levinas’ approach is hard to defend, given that any statement about the transcendent is made by consciousness and within its bounds. Even the statement that the transcendent imposes itself on the subject, that the subject is merely a witness to it and not its constitutive element, is made by consciousness, and hence within its bounds.14

In order to draw into sharper focus Levinas’s claim that he exceeded the limits of immanence, Levinas should be compared to Martin Buber. Levinas’s conception of the face is the conscious opposite of the example of the silent encounter between people sitting on park benches depicted by 11 Sagi, “Faith as Temptation,” 94. 12 See above, n. 10. 13 See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969); Eli Schonfeld, The Wonder of Subjectivity: A Reading of Levinas’s Philosophy [Heb] (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2007). 14 Sagi, “Faith as Temptation,” 92.

517

518

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

Buber in his essay “Dialogue.”15 Levinas saw in the face of the other absolute Otherness. Buber, in contrast, presents the possibility of opening up to the other as inherent to the encounter in silence. The Buberian encounter, which he claims goes beyond the subjective, is totally dependent upon human activity. According to Buber, the encounter itself takes place between the subjects, based on the subject’s inner awareness of his separateness and his possibility of encounter, despite the Otherness of one’s fellow. For Buber, the I-Thou encounter is also, at the same time, the encounter with the Eternal Thou. Buber, who could not accept the Kantian argument of the impossibility of facing the divine presence, seeks to rescue this possibility from within immanence itself. The immanent intersubjective encounter is also the encounter with the transcendental. Levinas, on the other hand, discovers total Otherness in the face of the other, and for him, total alienation is the point at which the transcendental absolute Otherness is revealed. Since this is not an encounter, but absolute Otherness, then, in contrast to Buber, who argues for the simultaneous existence of the immanent and the transcendental, for Levinas the transcendence seen through the immanent breaches the bounds erected by epistemology. Even the skeptic who relates to both thinkers as if they exceeded the bounds of human awareness would admit that Levinas’s crossing of this line is a theological leap, while that of Buber occurs within the immanent; the Buberian encounter happens between subjects. Some of Levinas’s students (obviously, not all) understood his thought as a call for religious repentance, to the extent of becoming ultra-Orthodox. Buber’s students, too, included both the secular and the religious, who shared his dialogic tradition of the immanent encounter between I and Thou, but differed on the question of the encounter between I and the Eternal Thou that, so he maintains, occurs concurrently.16 This brief discussion was meant to draw into sharp focus the uniqueness of my exploration of psychological religious life. The phenomenology used in this book accepts the argument that the various types of inner religious experiences and perceptions reflect human immanence. Inner religion occurs within the world of the human subject. I tried not to go beyond the immanent, by applying the phenomenological methodology only to psychological contents, and not to transcendental religious beliefs and mandates, unlike van der Leeuw and contemporary phenomenologists who 15 Buber, Between Man and Man, 4. 16 See Avi Sagi, “The Relationship between ‘I-Thou’ and ‘I-Eternal Thou’ in the Philosophy of Martin Buber” [Heb], Daat 7 (1981): 139–54.

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

explore religious contents, as will be seen in the following examples. In contrast with van der Leeuw, using the “epoche” principle does not suffice for me, and I refrain to the greatest extent possible from discussing materials that accept as axiomatic an external transcendental existence not dependent on man. Our discussion is of materials taken from the realm of religious life that occur, consciously and demonstratively, in the human psyche. I would like to exemplify the distinction between the methodology I used in this book and that adopted by contemporary French phenomenologists. Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate contains a discussion by Jean-Louis Chretien on the phenomenology of prayer.17 Chretien does not distinguish between different types of prayer, focusing rather on what he sees as the fundamental element common to all prayers: standing before the transcendental Thou. This is not the transcendental Thou to which one arrives from Buber’s immanent mortal Thou, but the verbal Thou of the book of Psalms. Within his discussion of verbal prayer, Chretien mentions interiorizing conceptions. Religious phenomenologists of this sort refrain from separating the inner from the outer, while contending with Kant’s trenchant remarks on verbal prayer as a person talking to himself and with his demonstration of the difference between such prayer and inner thoughts.18 I adopted a different approach, as can be seen, for instance, in my discussion of prayer focused on inner intentionality. The context of our discussion is not prayer as a fundamental ritual act of facing the transcendental, but the distinction between outer and inner modes of prayer, and I argue that inner intentionality is of crucial importance for our purposes. There is the individual whose prayer is directed to the transcendental Thou who stands opposite him, for the fulfilling of his desires, in which case Kant’s rationalist critique can hardly be ignored; while others perceive prayer as an act of self-negation or negation of the consciousness, for which Kant can offer no profundities. The Bratslav hitbodedut [seclusion] discussed above, too, differs from regular prayer, because of its assumption that it is an action of the imagination.19 For R. Nahman of Bratslav, the inner state of the one who engages in seclusion, even when he desires to speak with God but 17 Janicaud et al. “Theological Turn,” 147–75. 18 See Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings, trans. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 186–88. 19 Mark, Mysticism and Madness, 168.

519

520

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

cannot, and also the acts of charity that he performs, are themselves the bridge between himself and the divine. Chretien’s denial of any distinction between outer and inner perceptions, as is evident in his surveying them in the same breath, shows that, in practice, he continues van der Leeuw’s religious phenomenology. He does not contain his discussion within the limits imposed by immanence. My goal in the current work was to concentrate on the inner perceptions of religious life without being committed to the conception of the religious traditions that tend not to isolate the immanent aspect, unlike the religious agenda of the French writers who identify with the notions of the religious establishment, which does not distinguish between outer and inner approaches.

III. Some Aspects of the Meaning of Religious Immanence What is the philosophical significance of the immanent elements of religion, and particularly, those of Judaism discussed in this work? Does the selection of the characteristic features of inner religion from among all the components of the transcendental monotheistic religions, and their presentation within a discussion that also includes Eastern immanent religions, allow us to claim the existence of an immanent element in the monotheistic religions that is independent of their transcendentalism? Or perhaps, this testimony in itself nevertheless hints of the independent existence in man of the transcendental to which he directs his religious activity? Before answering this question, I will briefly describe various viewpoints on immanence in modern Western thought.

1. The Secular View of Immanence In the past two centuries, immanence has been seen as the outstanding characteristic of secular Western thought. It has been suggested that Spinoza’s immanentism was the harbinger of the process of secularization in European thought,20 while others place its beginnings in Cartesian philosophy.21 Vogelin regarded immanentism as the most outstanding feature of Western secularization, and connected it with what he perceived 20 See, for example, Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 172–204; and vol. 2, 167–86. 21 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

as modern Gnosticism.22 He found that the early Gnostic religions resemble modern Western culture, in mainly two areas: the Gnostic separation of the material world from the spiritual, that is epitomized in the idea of the pneuma, the spiritual nucleus within man; and the principle of gnosis, expressed in the belief that theosophic knowledge can redeem those possessing it. Kant’s critique of metaphysics obviously also undermined the purpose of examining the theosophic contents of the early gnosis, but, according to Vogelin, in modern culture this notion turned into a belief in the power of a spiritual knowledge that acts on its own. He maintains that this idea enabled the formulation of abstract ideologies that ascribed redemptive power to the belief in them, from Hegel’s developmental theories to Marxism and Hitler’s Nazism. For Vogelin, the heart of this conception lies in the second component of Gnostic thought—the immanence of the spirit active within man. He has modern immanentism completely barring any possible transcendence; thus, any focus on the inner self, similar to the attention that the Gnostics paid to the pneuma, makes transcendence superfluous and leaves only the immanent. Vogelin’s ideas are based on modern research on Gnosticism. In 1952, the researcher of Gnosticism Hans Jonas published an article on “Gnosticism and Modern Nihilism,” which he included in the English edition of his book on Gnostic religion that appeared in 1963.23 At the beginning of his article, he noted that Nietzsche’s profound sense of the death of the transcendental God was a basic experience that he shared with the ancient gnosis. Jonas discussed the question of the relationship between the ancient Gnostic spirit and Heidegger’s existentialism. A central argument in his article is that Gnostic immanence is expressed in man’s unnerving feeling of having been thrown into the world. Jonas claims that this is similar to modern man’s disposition, which is also reflected in Heidegger’s thinking, to take refuge within his inner world, while disregarding Nature, on the one hand, and denying any possibility of a transcendental source of this world, on the other. In contrast with this nihilistic element in Heidegger’s teachings, spiritual immanence does not necessarily lead to alienation from the outer 22 Eric Vogelin, Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions, the New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, vol. 5, ed. Manfred Henningsen (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 175–95, 243–313. 23 Jonas, Gnostic Religion.

521

522

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

world or to a lack of commitment to social life. A number of scholars have argued that secular man is generally inclined to intensive activism in the world. Attentiveness to an inner life that is directed towards improving and/or imparting meaning to one’s actions in the outer world is characteristic of most psychoanalytic theories and to New Agers. Do the immanent elements of the transcendental monotheistic religions attest to the existence, even if esoteric, of an alternative religiosity with Gnostic traits that, by its very immanent nature, must deny transcendence? Do the immanent components of the monotheistic religions necessarily have the potential to encourage Gnostic inner absorption, which foregoes activity in the world and on its behalf? I will present a number of answers based on viewpoints that enable these questions to be answered negatively.

2. Immanence from Religious Perspectives Historically, the various aspects of inner religion examined in this book cannot be separated from the transcendental element of those religions. The sources discussed here belong to religious worlds that are not part of the post-Kantian world. For them, inner religious life does not call into question transcendence, the certainty of which is no less than that of inner life itself. In fact, our inquiry shows that—even in the context of a transcendent religious consciousness, such as the Jewish—one finds a rich inner life that did not lead to a rift between the immanent and the transcendent. A similar picture emerges from the Plotinus’ and Augustine’s struggle against the Gnostics; for them, inner religious life does not contradict the transcendental, nor does it inevitably lead to the Gnostic worldview. Comparisons of Western interiorization processes with those typical of the Eastern religions, most evident in the Chinese Tao and in Buddhism, also strengthen our understanding that interiorization processes are not dependent on any specific religious worldview. Just as the evident interiorization of Buddhism, which rests on the desire to be released from suffering, do not require the existence of God, the various interiorizations of the sundry monotheisms do not waive Him. Chuang Tzu’s parable of the empty boat and the full boat related at the end of the preceding chapter approaches inner insights of Hasidism, without sharing the same religious fundamental beliefs. For those who experienced them, the aspects of inner religious life in Judaism discussed here were a sign of the existence of the divinity, beyond

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

the human psyche and beyond man’s consciousness and will. The Kantian banning of metaphysics was unknown to them and they therefore saw no barrier between the divine revealed in the psyche and that beyond it. Although Kantian thought ruled out the rational knowledge of the transcendent and contact with it, in the past two centuries some religious thinkers searched for ways to the transcendent within the immanent. The first of these was the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. His thought (which was briefly discussed above, in chapter three) enables similar data to be revealed within the religious traditions themselves. An outstanding example of this direction in the Hasidic literature is the story of the heart and the spring by R. Nahman of Bratslav, that is included in his tale of “The Seven Beggars.” A different orientation, which focuses on the meaning of the self-negation known mainly from the “mystical” literature, emerges from the book Gravity and Grace by Simone Weill: “Experience of the transcendent: this seems contradictory, and yet the transcendent can be known only through contact since our faculties are unable to invent it.” She accordingly continues: “We can only know one thing about God—that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.”24 According to Weill, a person’s self-contemplation allows him to nonetheless know something about God as the absolute Other, “what we are not.” For her, the highest religious level that a person can reach is a longing for the maximal silencing of the self: We liberate energy in ourselves, but it constantly reattaches itself. How are we to liberate it entirely? We have to desire that it should be done in us—to desire it truly—simply to desire it, not to try to accomplish it. For every attempt in that direction is vain and has to be dearly paid for. In such a work all that I call ‘I’ has to be passive. Attention alone—that attention which is so full that the ‘I’ disappears—is required of me. I have to deprive all that I call ‘I’ of the light of my attention and turn it on to that which cannot be conceived.25

Prayer for Weill is not a heap of words that reflects a desire to influence God, but “the attention turned with love towards God (or in a lesser degree, towards anything which is truly beautiful) makes certain things 24 Weil, Gravity and Grace, 110. 25 Ibid., 107.

523

524

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

impossible for us. Such is the non-acting action of prayer in the soul.”26 The experience of self-negation and attention makes it possible for the individual to encounter what lies beyond himself. Weill’s formulations, that clarify the nature of “mystical” practices, support the basic thesis of this book, in the course of which these practices were described within the broader context of the interiorization of religious life. The highlighting of the presumed “mystical” aspect in the general discussion of religious life by certain researchers of religion, especially in the field of Jewish studies, in itself creates “mystification,” to the extent of avoidance of a substantial discussion of this aspect’s meaning within the totality of religious life. Based on these statements by Weill, Avi Sagi argues that the restriction of the immanent element is the proper religious way for the individual seeking to be exposed to the transcendent: In the course of constituting the attitude to God, which emphasizes the precedence of the noetic over the noematic,27 the immanent over the transcendent, a conscious reversal occurs and the believer expresses the standing of the transcendent in the immanent through the restriction of the immanent element. This restriction can be expressed in various ways, ranging from a transition from activity to passivity up to casting doubt or absolutely negating the subject. Passivity places the individual in a posture of attention and openness, which is indeed the one that fits the attitude to the transcendent. Attention and openness do not negate immanence. Quite the contrary: this is the active passivity of individuals opening themselves up to the transcendent. In more radical cases, however, believers negate their actual conscious stance and express the transcendent in their world through self-negation. This negation too is an immanent action of the believer, but its purpose is precisely the elimination of immanence. Whereas openness and attention do not deny immanence, self-negation denies it absolutely.28

26 Ibid., 107–8. 27 Husserl distinguishes between two poles of thought. At the noematic pole is the object as it is perceived by the consciousness, such as a tree being a certainty, a possibility, existing in the past, and the like. In our case, the noematic pole is the objective content of belief, the transcendental dimension of the act of faith. At the noetic pole are the modes of subjective intentionality, for example, the memories connected with the tree, the images that it arouses. In our case, the noetic pole is the subjective act of faith that expresses the believer’s immanent existence. See Husserl, Ideas, 211–35. 28 Sagi, “Faith as Temptation,” 94.

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

Sagi maintains that religious objections and compunctions regarding the occupation with inner religious life have their source in the belief that entices its believers to completely efface themselves and deny the possibility of the revelation of the transcendent within the immanent. This absolute negation, in practice, refutes belief itself, since it undercuts its basis. Likewise, denying the very possibility that limiting the immanent will bring a person closer to the transcendent denies the essential condition for faith and negates the transcendental aspect of religious life, which reduces inner religious life to the individual’s immanent discourse with himself. Abraham’s declaration (Gen. 18:27) that “I who am but dust and ashes” reflects the only possible situation: the self restricts, but does not completely deny, itself. The religious person who disregards inner religious life because of its immanence or because it is merely human is actually disallowing the possibility of any connection with the transcendent, for any contact with the transcendent can emerge only from within inner life. By the same token, there is no religious significance to the occupation with inner religious life while being totally absorbed solely in the immanent, if this life does not yearn for what is beyond man. At times it seems that many “New Agers” throughout the world, as among Jews in America and Israel, become absorbed in various aspects of inner religious life from within such a stance. On the one hand, these new God seekers often seem to be absorbed, more than anything, with themselves. But on the other hand, it is undeniable that when such activity is accompanied by the desire to breach the subjective by means of different practices, in the final analysis some New Agers, as well, intend to connect with what lies beyond the satisfaction of their personal welfare. Any religious activity, especially the ritual, can be a vehicle for satisfying man’s subjective needs, as Kant already argued. The current quest for inner religious life, too, usually seeks to answer personal needs; which is evident also in the affinity between various treatment methods and the religious contents characteristic of this trend. Nonetheless, along with the mass and utilitarian aspects of this trendy movement, it also exhibits a search for ways to exceed the self and immanent subjectivity. Admittedly, the increasing interest in inner religious life is part of the Western culture of consumption, but it is also motivated by a quest for ways to escape subjective immersion within the self and the fulfillment of its desires. This turn to specifically religious traditions cannot be explained solely in terms of consumption; additionally,

525

526

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

modern people who aspire to go beyond their subjective world assume the usefulness of religious traditions. In this work I have consciously attempted to detach esoteric theosophic knowledge, like that characteristic of Gnostic religions and their parallels (such as Kabbalistic theosophy), from various aspects of inner religious life.29 The use by researchers of religion of the term “mysticism” for both varied types of esoteric knowledge of a theosophic nature, and nonverbal experiences that express the human aspiration to overcome human subjectivity from within, is erroneous. Originating in conscious or unwitting Gnostic influences, this mistake wreaks great cultural damage. The studies by Gershom Scholem reflect such an approach. Gnostic religions typically connect knowledge with pneumatic inner activity, but this is a specific phenomenon, and there is no justification for copying it to other systems. Even in the study of religious systems such as Kabbalah, that patently contain a degree of Gnostic or semi-Gnostic thought forms, as Scholem argues, we can distinguish between their theosophic and experiential components, as Moshe Idel showed when he differentiated between theosophic and prophetic-ecstatic Kabbalah. A clear division between theosophic knowledge termed “mystical,” since it cannot be learned and proven with the rational tools of modern science, on the one hand, and, on the other, religious life that focus on what happens in man’s psyche on the basis of our inner, emotional, and intellectual experiences is essential. Such a classification is necessary for a rational treatment of religious contents for anyone interested, not only in their historical significance, but also in their meaning in current thought. In recent years, due in great degree to the rise of the “New Age” and its inherent enhanced interest in mystical experience, the debate concerning the argument from perception has been renewed in the field of the philosophy of religion. A series of philosophers of religion raise rational arguments in support of the claim that the testimonies of individuals who have undergone mystical experiences means that their experiences have indeed given them knowledge of God; and the existence of God is presumably proven by

29 The connection between these two aspects is typically drawn by researchers of mysticism, and especially Jewish mysticism. It is also prevalent among the New Age movement.

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

means of such experiences.30 Richard Swinburne, one of the central spokesman of this trend, writes: It is a principle of rationality that (in the absence of special considerations) if it seems (epistemically) to a subject that x is present, then probably x is present; what one seems to perceive is probably so. How things seem to be is good grounds for a belief about how things are. From this it would follow that, in the absence of special considerations, all religious experiences ought to be taken by their subjects as genuine, and hence as substantial grounds for belief in the existence of their apparent object—God or Mary, or Ultimate Reality, or Poseidon. This principle, which I shall call the Principle of Credulity, and the conclusion drawn from it seem to me correct.31

Wittgenstein’s linguistic distinctions between “seeing” and “seeing as something” (were discussed above, the introduction to part two),32 teach of the basic misunderstanding by the proponents of the argument from perception of the difference between perceptions of concrete objects such as color and form and those of what Wittgenstein called “aspects,” such as love, courage, or divinities.33 This lack of distinction, together with many other flaws that were indicated by the opponents of the argument, completely undermine it.34 30 See works by the main proponents of the Argument from Perception: William P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Jerome I. Gellman, Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); idem, Mystical Experience of God: A Philosophical Inquiry (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001); idem, “On a Sociological Challenge to the Veridicality of Religious Experience,” Religious Studies 34 (1998): 235–51; Carolyn Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), William J. Wainwright, Mysticism: A Study of Its Nature, Cognitive Value, and Moral Implications (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981); Keith Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004); and idem, Is There a God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 31 Swinburne, Existence of God, 303. See also Richard Swinburne’s reference for a more thorough account of the Principle of Credulity: Swinburne, Epistemic Justification (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 141–50. 32 See 166 nn. 19–20. 33 See the discussion by Verbin on the Argument from Perception in light of Wittgenstein’s understandings: Verbin, “Seeing-As.” 34 For additional discussions that include objections to the Argument from Perception, see Evan Fales, “Do Mystics See God?,” in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, ed. Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. Van Arragon (Malden: Blackwell, 2004), PAGES; idem, “Scientific Explanations of Mystical Experiences,” Religious

527

528

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

3. Religion and the Mystical Experience from the Perspective of Depth Psychology Carl Gustav Jung argued: The gods at first lived in superhuman power and beauty on the top of snow-clad mountains or in the darkness of caves, woods and seas. Later on they grew together into one god, and then that god became man. But in our day, even the God-man seems to have descended from his throne and to be dissolving himself into the common man. That is probably why his seat is empty. Instead, the common man suffers from a hybris [hubris] of consciousness that borders on the pathological.35

He continues by stating: “God is actually the strongest and most effective ‘position’ the psyche can reach.”36 According to Jung, the universality of psychological symbols, which testifies to their objective nature, can enable the psychoanalyst to ascertain the nature of the patient’s gods, revealing this by interpreting the symbolism in his dreams. Thus, discussing the symbolism of the number four or squareness, Jung argued: Since a God identical with the individual man is an exceedingly complex assumption bordering on heresy, the “God within” also presents a dogmatic difficulty. But the quaternity as produced by the modern psyche points directly not only to the God within, but to the identity of God and man.37

Erich Neumann, following his teacher Jung, used the distinction between the self and the ego to reveal the inner nature of what are called “mystical experiences.” The self is the part in man that is essentially connected to the archetypical situation of initial perfection, the primal state in which the ego did not exist independently. The ego, in contrast to the self, is linked to the consciousness, to the instrument that distinguishes and experiences details. Studies 32 (1996): 143–63, 297–313. Richard Gale, “Why Alston’s Mystical Doxastic Practice Is Subjective,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994): 869–75; idem, On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); William Rowe, “Religious Experience and the Principle of Credulity,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (1982): 85–92 35 Jung, Psychology and Religion, 84. 36 Ibid., 86. 37 Ibid., 105.

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

By detaching the ego from the center of consciousness, every experience of the numinous leads to an approximation of the original situation, and hence to a more or less restricted form of the experience of the self. This fact is the basis of primitive religions. The fact that man can experience the numinous and, on a higher plane, the numen, a god or the god in anything and everything, is mirrored in the animistic, demonistic, and polytheistic forms of religion. When we refer to this phenomenon as an experience, though a restricted experience, of the self, we mean that although the ego here experiences the nonego in a restricted form, it is nevertheless affected by a numinous experience involving the totality of the psyche. . . . [E]xperience of the numinous is always experience of the self and of the “voice” which brings revelation.38

In my estimation, this passage by Neumann, presumably based solely on Jung’s concept of the self, contains a hidden echo of Martin Buber’s conception of the mystical experience. It appears that Neumann incorporated Buber in his psychology. Buber argued in 1909 that “what is experienced in ecstasy (if one may really speak of a ‘what’) is the unity of the I. But in order to be experienced as unity the I must have become a unity.”39 That is, the unio mystica experiences depicted in mystical writings are not to be regarded as human subjectivity breaking through to what is outside it by means of union with a divine entity. In this vein, such an experience is to be regarded as an exceptional subjective experience that occurs when a person, within the boundaries of his ego, attains the full inner unification of his entire entity.

4. Secular Religiosity: Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental In the early 1920s Buber formulated his dialogic teaching, which assumes the possible existence, within life, of encounter between the I and the “Eternal Thou.” In I and Thou, as well, Buber argues that this encounter is not identical with the mystical experience. He further claimed regarding the unio mystica experience: That is something that takes place not between man and God, but in man. Power is concentrated, everything that tries to divert it is drawn into the

38 Neumann, “Mystical Man,” 385–86. 39 Buber, Ecstatic Confessions, 4–5.

529

530

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

orbit of its mastery, the being is alone in itself and rejoices, as Paracelsus says, in its exaltation. This is the decisive moment for a man. Without it he is unfit for the work of the spirit; with it, he decides, in his innermost being, if this means a breathing-space, or the sufficient end of his way. Concentrated in unity, he can go out to the meeting, to which he has only now drawn quite close, with the mystery, with salvation. But he can also enjoy to the full this blessed concentration of his being, and without entering on the supreme duty fall back into dissipation of being.40

Buber asserts that such experiences are the product of the introspective contemplation experienced as the unification that occurs within a person’s inner self. This introspection might be good preparation for the possibility of a religious-encounter experience but there is no certainty that it will actually result in such an encounter. The possibility of a breakthrough from within an inner experience is dependent on the individual’s stance regarding what occurs within him. He can be content with himself, that is, with the inner experience itself, or, following it, to desire to leave himself for an actual encounter with the “Eternal Thou” beyond himself. Wittgenstein asserted that “you can’t hear God speak to someone else, you can hear him only if you are being addressed.”41 Forty years after I and Thou was published Buber added an afterward, with which he concluded a passage close in spirit to this statement by Wittgenstein: Often enough we think there is nothing to hear, but long before we have ourselves put wax in our ears. The existence of mutuality between God and man cannot be proved, just as God’s existence cannot be proved. Yet he who dares to speak of it, bears witness, and calls to witness him to whom he speaks—whether that witness is now or in the future.42

According to Buber and Wittgenstein, the encounter with the divine occurs in the inner arena, and therefore cannot be heard at the same time by anyone else. It cannot be concluded from this that the eternity of the divine is an invention of the subject, since it exists in it independently, even if only the subject can be cognizant of its existence. 40 Buber, I and Thou, 85–86. 41 Wittgenstein, Zettel, 123, para. 717. See above, 166, n. 21. 42 Buber, I and Thou, 126.

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

Unlike the view held by both the proponents of the argument from perception and Jung, who concludes from the religious interiorization processes that the real meaning of God is the self of the one believing in him, there is another possible meaning of the data presented in the phenomenology of inner religion. This meaning is drawn from a perspective that is aware of the existence of mental projection on the outer religious reality, but refrains from psychological reductionism. This view is based on the stance of thinkers such as Wittgenstein and Buber, for whom the existence of the religious experience is conditional on a personal volitional element, while also focusing on the nonsubjective significance of inner religion. In his article “What Is Common to All,” Buber discusses several of Heraclitus’ famous sayings that profoundly influenced Western thought.43 Buber asserts that when the Greek philosopher advised, “Do not listen to me but to the logos,” he meant that even if it is evident that every soul has a logos within it, “the logos does not attain to its fullness in us but rather between us; for it means the eternal chance for speech to become true between men. Therefore, it is common to them.”44 This argument can also be applied to our discussion of the meaning of the data brought in this work. The above chapters attest that similar processes of religious interiorization occurred in different places and at different times. These processes generally entail the intensification of rational doubts concerning the certainty of traditional knowledge of God or the gods and the ways to communicate with them. Movement from the outer rite to the inner intent-related meaning is universal. Nor is the imparting of psychological meaning to outer myths unique to any specific religion. It should, however, be understood that subjective human experiences in the realm of religious life express the desire to go beyond the human self to the religious transcendent dimension. The subjective testimonies to inner contact with the divine vitality are common to people in ancient Greece, India, and among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Despite the singularity of the various religions and the numerous differences between them, phenomenological comparisons indicate the existence of a common denominator the meaning of which should be noted.

43 Martin Buber, “What Is Common to All,” in Buber, The Knowledge of Man, trans. Maurice Friedman and Ronald Gregor Smith, ed. Maurice Friedman (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1988). 44 Ibid., 94.

531

532

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

In the post-Kantian world, the standing of the depictions of God’s revelation of Himself in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, or the Quran, as testimony to the historical revelation of the transcendent within immanent life—has been weakened to the point of dismissal. The fact, however, that these descriptions by different people in different places and times demonstrate a spiritual thirst to exceed their inner world testifies to the human desire for an entity that lies beyond human subjectivity, beyond the self. The metaphysical impulse, as Lange calls it, is an immanent given within man. Clearly, the immanent longing for the transcendent that bursts forth from the plethora of sources reflective of inner religious life, is usually indicative of the waning of the claimed existence of direct and external revelation of the transcendent.45 Since the beginning of the Enlightenment, any claim of the outer revelation of the transcendent is suspect as a mental disease, as Kant declared. Nonetheless, the argument from the immanent collected from diverse religions speaks of a shared element pointing to the existence of an aspiration crossing all human boundaries to what is beyond man himself. The loss of religious innocence, that had assumed as axiomatic the existence of direct contact with the transcendent, did not cancel the immanent longing for the transcendent, but rather transferred the focus of this desire to inner religious life, where it was given expression. This loss of innocence allows two opposing forms of response: (1) a sense of crisis, that is expressed in the self shutting itself in, caring for its own needs, with in extreme cases this seclusion leading to a loss of interest in anything beyond it; (2) exchanging religious outwardness with varying modes of religious inwardness, the importance of which lies in its enabling a deeper openness of the self, that seeks to go beyond itself in its contacts with the world. Toward the end of his life, Michel Foucault observed that the meaning in the ancient world of the mandate of Greek philosophy, “Know yourself,” was that man must take responsibility for himself.46 Charles Taylor clarified the meaning of this self-knowledge in his essay on the nature of freedom of will and man.47

45 The immanent longing for a testimony of the transcendent is obviously a cardinal aspect of Descartes’s meditations, in which the self detects its own transcendence after suspending the exterior world. I would like to thank Jeremy Fogel for this comment. 46 Foucault, Technologies, 19–34. 47 Charles Taylor, “What Is Human Agency?,” in Taylor, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 15–44.

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

Taylor’s important contribution to our discussion of this question consists of the distinction he draws between two types of evaluation that lead to the preference of one desire over another. A weak evaluation is based on utilitarian considerations, while the considerations taken into account by a strong one relate to value. The point of introducing the distinction between strong and weak evaluation is to contrast the different kinds of self that each involves. . . . The strong evaluator envisages his alternatives through a richer language. The desirable is not only defined for him by what he desires, or what he desires plus a calculation of consequences; it is also defined by a qualitative characterization of desires as higher and lower.48

Taylor connects this distinction with an awareness of the depth dimension in man and a person’s realization of his responsibility to himself: “We think of the agent not only as partly responsible for what he does, for the degree to which he acts in line with his evaluations, but also as responsible in some sense for these evaluations.”49 Kant’s portrayal of human autonomy was based on rationality. Taylor, in contrast, confirms man’s autonomy by analyzing freedom of choice as conditional upon man’s ability to distinguish between desires of different orders and decide between them by evaluations of value. This approach openly challenges the currently fashionable use by the social sciences and the humanities of naturalist methodologies that originate in the natural sciences to explain human behavior.50 Taylor enables us to explain the variegated religious efforts that I have described as choice meant to import deeper meaning to human life. Obviously, these choices are dependent on the different cultural options to which each individual is exposed, but the decisions between different desires reflect the force of individual autonomy. Consequently, the study of inner religion contributes greatly to revealing the depth of human autonomy, and in questioning one-dimensional theories that explain intellectual life as resulting solely from cultural and social conditioning.51

48 Ibid., 23. 49 Ibid., 28. 50 See Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), esp. 15–57. 51 I wish to thank Menachem Fisch for pointing me to Taylor’s article.

533

534

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

In the premodern world, inner religious life was not seen as contradicting the existence of an outer or transcendent divinity. Individuals such as Augustine or the Baal Shem Tov, whose religious life centered around their inner spiritual world, did not feel that their religious worldview was an invention of their subjectivity. Contemporary man, in contrast, would have difficulty in simultaneously subscribing to outer and inner religious notions, but he can engage in conversation with the inner religious contents that emerge from the writings of Augustine and the disciples of the Baal Shem Tov. He can identify with personal chapters of Psalms that reflect familiar states of mind. Augustine’s Confessions are not alien to him, and even the Upanishad’s depiction of each breath as the inner sacrifice of the ātman are not a closed book to him. Even if modern man’s doubt and suspicion prevent him from thinking that the transcendent can be perceived by his senses, he can participate in the human longing for it that spans many cultures and generations. The heart of the universalist argument, however, that is based on observation of inner religiosity as a shared basis for humans from the ends of the earth, lies in the very meaning of the testimony of these findings. The metaphysical yearning for a transcendent entity is undoubtedly motivated also by human horror when faced by human insignificance and the finality of human life, and this dismay itself attests to the power and grandness of the human spirit. In his article “Matter, Mind, and Creation,” Hans Jonas stated that the very subjectivity or inwardness in the world of organisms, that reaches its peak in humans, is a phenomenon that cannot be fully explained physically: The ascent, then, to the most complex and subtle life-forms (levels of organization) can be explained in this manner if, as Descartes asserted, those realities were only mechanical automata. But they are more than that. They contain something else. . . . For there exists the dimension of the subjective— inwardness—which no material evidence by itself allows us to surmise, of whose actual presence no physical model offers the slightest hint. . . . Nor would the fullest objective description of the brain, down to its minutest structures and most delicate ways of functioning, provide any clue of the existence of consciousness, if we did not know about it through our inner experience—precisely through consciousness itself. . . . [S]ubjectivity’s manifestation of such qualities as interest, purpose, goal, striving, longing (in short, “will” and “value”) raises anew the whole question of teleology, and, along with it, the question of the causality of the world in general: issues

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

that the physical data alone appeared to decide in favor of random causes. . . . The rise of the organic realm as a whole from the specifically chemical and morphological arrangements of matter is explainable through the external properties of matter itself. . . .What cannot be explained in this way, however, is the inner horizon. . . .Nor can it be appended to this data retrospectively— as a supplement, so to speak—because it is of an entirely different dimension. It cannot be appended, for example, as the electromagnetic aspect of matter is added to mass, or as the “weak” and “strong” nuclear forces are added to gravity and radiation. It is absolutely impossible to form a sum total from magnitudes of space on the one side and qualities of feeling on the other. Despite demonstrable relations between them, no common denominator permits “extension” and “consciousness” to be united in a homogeneous field theory.52

Jonas argues that all subjective inner phenomena are to be viewed as part of the cosmogonic testimony. The matter that developed from the “Big Bang” bears the possibility of some inwardness. “This means that right from the beginning matter is subjectivity in its latent form, even if aeons, plus exceptional luck, are required for the actualizing of this potential.”53 As part of this understanding, Jonas also relates to the immanent desire for the transcendent as one testimony to the potential of inwardness inherent in the material from which organic life was created, including the life of the human race. Despite the seemingly vast distance between Jonas’s post-Kantian thought and the conception of the Zohar in its exposition of (Exod. 25:2) “you shall accept gifts from every person whose heart so moves him,”54 they share a profound ideational resemblance. In the Zohar’s understanding, the existence of good will in humans’ inner self that is evident in the ability to overcome the self attests to the presence of God in that individual: “When we see that it is a person’s desire to follow and strive after the Holy One, blessed be He, in his heart, his soul, and his will, then we certainly know that the Divine Presence rests upon him.” Not only does the Zohar assume that good will in a person attests to the divine within him, it further asserts that “the awakening below causes the awakening above,” which is the basis

52 Jonas, “Matter, Mind, and Creation,” pp. 169–70. 53 Ibid., 173. 54 Zohar 2:128a-b. See above, chapter four, 298–9 n. 92.

535

536

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

of the Zoharic theurgic conception.55 In the spirit of Jonas’s more philosophical formulations, this fundamental idea in the Zohar assumes that immanence arouses transcendence. Jonas further explains in his essay the argument of transcendence that is revealed by the immanent: From the fact of our thinking about what is true or what commands beyond time there follows a corresponding dimension beyond time in our essence. Logically we are not able to make this conclusion our own, but this much remains to be considered. When the timeless truth of this theorem dawned on Pythagoras, moving him profoundly, when the prophets of Israel first perceived the unconditional character of the ethical demand as the word of God, and when at similar moments in other cultures the same thing occurred, there opened up an horizon of transcendence in immanence: an horizon which, going beyond what has directly been said within it, has something to say about the character of the being in which the opening occurs—and this being is as much that of perceiving as it is that of what is perceived.56 55 See the discussion on the conceptual interiorization at the basis of the Zoharic theurgy, and the notion of a connection between the awakening below and the awakening above, chapter four, 314–18. 56 Hans Jonas, “Matter, Mind, and Creation: Cosmological Evidence and Cosmogonic Speculation,” in Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz, ed. Lawrence Vogel, trans. Paul Schuchman and Lawrence Vogel (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 178. It has been argued that Jonas, who devoted most of his philosophical energy to providing a basis for the imperative of responsibility in order to prevent the world’s destruction by modern technology, did not completely free himself of the Gnostic thought that he researched and critiqued. According to these critics, although Jonas accused his teacher Heidegger of focusing upon the ego that is alienated from the world and tainting his philosophy with nihilism and moral indifference, similar to the ancient gnosis, Jonas himself was not free of the modern Gnostic thought to which Heidegger subscribed, but merely corrected its flaws. Yotam Hotam argues that the article “Matter, Mind, and Creation” echoes the absolute transcendence of the Gnostic god that denies Providence and only allows belief in the existence of Eros as the source of the spirit (see Hotam, Modern Gnosis and Zionism: The Crisis of Culture, Life Philosophy and Jewish National Thought, trans. Avner Greenberg [London: Routledge, 2013], 53–54). It is highly doubtful if this argument is based the Jewish Orthodox fear of setting a limit to transcendence. In fact, we may assume that it comes from the opposing direction: the fear of nihilists who favor absolute immanence—that necessarily leads to ethical nihilism. The nihilists are afraid that even a whiff of the transcendent motif may trickle into the immanent worldview. Any mention of a possible addition to their immanent materialism is immediately perceived as “Gnostic heresy” against pure nihilism. Just as Vogelin condemned any immanentism and equated it with Gnosticism, these critics think that every indication of the possible transcendence denies the sanctity of absolute immanence. Not every acknowledgement of a duality between material and

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

Jonas says that Kant did not intend to claim our inability to perceive something does not negate the possibility of its existence, as some of those following in his footsteps argued.57 Although these thoughts (that I cited in his name) knowingly exceed the Kantian ban of metaphysics, Jonas’s ­philosophy can be seen as an additional, cautious, and wise application of the second way suggested by Lange for contending with the immanent metaphysical inclination within man. Jonas was enchanted by the diary of Etty Hillesum,58 a Jewish student in Holland during the Nazi occupation who chose not to hide with her Dutch friends, and presented herself, of her own free will, as a nurse in the Westerbork camp where Dutch Jews were concentrated, including her parents and her brother. In 1943 she was sent from there to Auschwitz, where she died in the gas chambers. Life under the horrors of Nazi rule led Etty to develop a singular inner religiosity. She prayed in her diary that she would not lose the divine within her: I shall try to help You, God, to stop my strength ebbing away, though I cannot vouch for it in advance. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that You cannot help us, that we must help You to help ourselves.59

Concern for the divine in man, who faces many forces that act to weaken and destroy it, obligate the believer to mobilize psychological powers on its behalf. This conception disappoints anyone accustomed to the myth of “the great, the mighty, and the awesome God” (see below). The myth is reversed in the prayers of Etty Hillesum, who was about to be deported to Auschwitz. God is the one in a state of powerlessness when confronted with human evil and the struggle on His behalf is imposed on spirit necessarily leads to gnosis, which assumes an unbridgeable gap between the two. The wealth of data presented in this book shows that even in the ancient world, and on the threshold of the modern age, the monotheistic religions (that presumably profess absolute transcendence) contained various conceptions of religious immanence that are not to be identified with gnosis. Jonas needed the concept of “Cosmogenic Eros” in order to formulate his thought, without exceeding the basic assumptions of modern science regarding the formation of the universe and the development of life on Earth. 57 Hans Jonas, “The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice,” in Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz, ed. Lawrence Vogel, trans. Paul Schuchman and Lawrence Vogel (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 131–32. 58 Jonas, “Matter, Mind, and Creation,” 191–92; see also idem, “Concept of God,” 208 n. 8. 59 Etty Hillesum, Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941–1943, ed. Klaas A. D. Smelik, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 488.

537

538

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

man himself. Many ask: is the powerless God still God? Did patent religious interiorization, as in Hillesum’s prayers, become absolute immanence, man’s worshiping himself? The inner God of the man who stands in battle with the arbitrary, chaotic forces active in the world is still God, even if His greatness is not evident in His external power. As David Hartman explained,60 the rabbis courageously contended with this issue in a midrash in Tractate Yoma on the Men of the Great Assembly: Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: “Why were they called men of the Great Assembly? Because they restored the crown of the divine attributes to its ancient completeness. Moses had come and said: ‘the great, the mighty, and the awesome God’ [Deut. 10:17]. Then Jeremiah came and said, ‘Aliens are frolicking in His temple, where then are His awesome [deeds]?’ Hence he omitted the ‘awesome’ [in Jer. 32:18]. Daniel came and said, ‘Aliens are enslaving His sons, where are His mighty deeds?’ Hence he omitted the word ‘mighty’ [in Dan. 9:4]. But the [men of the Great Assembly] came and said: ‘On the contrary, therein lie His mighty deeds that he suppresses His wrath, that He extends long-suffering to the wicked. Therein lie His awesome powers, for but for fear of Him, how could [our] one nation persist among the nations?’ How could rabbis [i.e., Jeremiah and Daniel] abolish something established by Moses? Rabbi Eleazar said: “Since they knew that the Holy One, blessed be He, insists on truth, they would not ascribe false things to Him.”61

The rabbis were loyal to the principle of truth, and therefore they could not say of God that He is great, mighty, and awesome, they rather interpreted these descriptions in a manner that they could accept. The post-Kantian man cannot directly see God’s greatness and might in the world. In rational terms, he explains the world to himself as being created from within the inner regularity in which the forces of entropy and anti-entropy are active. Moreover, after the horrors of the twentieth century, he is more aware than ever of the terrors of man’s cruelty and selfishness that are liable to threaten the very existence of the world. If, however, one sees the greatness of spirit that, despite everything, manifests itself in human life, this can teach of the presence of greatness in the world. Following Jonas, it can be argued that the longing for the transcendent, the desire to exceed subjectivity, that 60 David Hartman, A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism (New York: Free Press, 1985), 215–17. 61 BT Yoma 69b; trans.: Hartman, Living Covenant, 216.

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

is documented in this book is one of the summits of human spirituality. This spirituality, in all its components, is the human immanent finding that attests that, despite randomness and the chaotic, there is also another direction in the world, one that elevates the man who develops from within the subjectivity and immanence from which consciousness emerges. More explicit formulations would enter the realm of theology, which clearly exceeds the bounds of reason; less that this is philosophy driven by the dictates of the chaos and nihilism in the world. Sensitivity, thought, considerations of values, and inner choice are part of the anthropological findings teaching of the existence of a nonmaterial element inherent within the material. We can say, together with Jonas, that religious inwardness is a part of the totality of human inwardness that indicates that oneself is not sufficient for a person. What is the component in a person for which one’s self is not enough? The human ego is the product of fashioning by the human consciousness. In response to postmodernism, at least two weighty books have been published in the past three decades that chart the construction of the self in Western thought.62 The tortuous fashioning of the concept of the self in European thought is in itself acknowledgement of the fact that human consciousness fashions the inner reality in which man lives. It is equally evident that the human consciousness also fashions the imagery of what is to be found beyond the ego, or the attempts to dissolve the ego, that are most characteristic of Buddhist thought. Acknowledging that different self-perceptions are a product of the fashioning of the human consciousness does not necessarily result in the negation of such perceptions. By the same token, it can be shown that the religious epistemological interiorization depicted in this work, that is, the understanding that a person is where he thinks, does not result in the negation of this interiorization’s contents. To the contrary, it is evident that the Baal Shem Tov, who built his religious-spiritual world on this awareness, did not think that the very awareness of thought determining the spiritual reality makes this reality illusory. The religious epistemological interiorization that was formulated in the anecdote cited in the name of R. Menahem Mendel of Kotsk—who answered the question of where does God dwell by stating, where He is allowed to enter63—demonstrates that the Hasidic masters, from the Baal Shem Tov to R. Menahem Mendel, did not lose the 62 Taylor, Sources of the Self; Seigal, Idea of the Self. 63 Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, vol. 2: The Later Masters, 277 (based on Siaḥ Sarfei Qodesh, parts 1 and 5).

539

540

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

certainty of their religious belief when they understood that their inner connection to the object of their belief is dependent upon their immanent will and thought, nor is this faith an external datum that obligates them by force of transcendent authority. Postmodern thought presumably was not satisfied with undermining transcendence, and also called into question the objective existence of the ego in a person’s world, by revealing the artificial social structures that fashion it. Just, however, as certain conceptions impart consciousness-establishing status to sociological data, other notions have the consciousness itself establish reality. As I already argued in the introduction,64 each of these contradictory approaches is based on factual data (that is, both are grounded in the reality of life), but the desire to have one of these approaches rule life itself is not a scientific question, but one of value. The question is not which description is more correct, but which worldview is more highly valued by the scholar. The postmodern sociological conception that views the ego as a result of social structurings can easily lead to the dismembering of the subject into a collection of dynamic components that are only minimally mutually dependent. The psychological and anthropological philosophical conceptions that emphasize the importance of the ego speak of the centrality of the individual’s autonomy in the fashioning of his world and decisions. These views stress that the strengthening and firm grounding of the inner center will prevent the possible decomposition of the chariot of the subject into different egos that pull in opposing directions. The aim of revealing and locating the inner self is a certain evolution of the desire to ascend, and unquestionably expresses unwillingness to accept the status quo. The ego, that is built by the consciousness and seeks to ensure itself against inner dismantling, can take refuge within itself as a turtle retreating within its shell; but, in the same degree, the building of the ego can serve as preparation for the breakthrough beyond the ego, to the self, in the language of Jung and Neumann. Psychology commonly assumes the subjectivity of the inner religious contents, just as Kantian ethics assumes that morality cannot be based on an external source, but only on human reason. Hermann Cohen, the leading proponent of the neo-Kantian school in the last third of the nineteenth century, took note in his last book, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism, of what this ethics lacked. The boundaries of this ethics are revealed only when man faces 64 See above, 7–8.

The Immanent Testimony to the Transcendental  •  AFTERWORD

society, when he faces the abstract concept “humanity,” that denotes all the individuals who compose the society. When the man is declared a criminal, in accordance with the facts, and he is not able to help himself in the narrower correlation between man and man, in this deepest distress arises the problem of his I, and the broader correlation between man and God offers at this point the only possibility of help.65

Similarly, the simplistic perception of religion as merely subjective precludes, from the outset, realizing the spiritual potential it contains. Aaron David Gordon, an existential nature philosopher and the most significant thinker of early labor Zionism, offered a profound analysis of this point: Religion is entirely subjective, but this subjectivity is unique, and therefore its true form has not been exhaustively examined. . . . Man, especially when he is released from the bonds of men, from the binds of men, and from the vanities of men [a wordplay in Hebrew], when he sees himself as unique within the world’s creation, and feels the need to unite with the world’s creation, or when he participates with it in creativity and feels the need to participate with it in creativity, man perceives this infinite creation, or is perceived by this creation as something definitely unified with himself, perceives himself vivified by the same life-spirit with it, lives with all that is living and within all that is living, exists with all that exists and within all that exists. All the parts of this existence, all the visions of nature and life, all that exists and lives, including himself, are merely details in a single absolute generality, in a single sublime correspondence, which he lives in its totality. For if this were not so, whence, for instance, in man the sentiment of participation in what was, is, and will be in all this infinite creation? . . . Whence the concern for what will be after his death? . . . Whence the sentiment of responsibility, for his feeling himself responsible for all? It is not difficult to say: imaginings, but any imagining of sentiment, in any place where sentiment is not deficient, has roots in actual feeling or in actual desire—and it is this root that we seek here.66

Just as the objectivization of the religious experience is pointless because it tries to verify religion and its concepts by power of reason, so 65 Cohen, Religion of Reason, 167–68. 66 Gordon, Man and Nature, 98–9.

541

542

Part Three: Thinking about the Inner

too, the absolute subjectivization of this experience is reductionist. An examination of the contents of inner religion reveals man’s aim to exceed himself and his subjective world in order to experience his participation in the world. Gordon places these experiences at the basis of the deeper perceptions of life, those that we experience, for example, in our responsibility for the future of those close to us, and in the responsibility for the future of the cosmos of life as a whole. The conceptions of commitment, respect, and esteem for the other are dependent also on the ego’s ability to restrict itself to gain a sense of true integration in the world and existence. To sum up our inquiry, we can say, aided by Gordon, that the focus of inner religious life is the experience in which the human psyche feels and thinks while directly attaining life, such that “the world existence attains, feels, and thinks within it.”67

67 Ibid., 98.

Bibliography

Jewish Primary Sources: Rabbinic and Middle-Ages Literature, Kabbalah, and Hasidism68 Arugat ha-Bosem, by Abraham ben Azriel. Edited by Ephraim Elimelech Urbach. Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1939–1963. Arukh ha-Shalem (Arukh Completum), by Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome. Edited by Alexander Kohut. Vienna, 1926. Avodat ha-Kodesh, by Meir Ibn Gabbai. Jerusalem, 1954 (photocopy of Warsaw, 1902). Bereshit Rabbah. Edited by Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck. Photocopy edition. Jerusalem, 1996. Avot de-Rabbi Nathan. Edited by Solomon Schechter. Vienna, 1887. Ba‘al Shem Tov al ha-Torah, by Israel Baal Shem Tov. Edited by Szymon Menahem Mendel Wodnik. Jerusalem, n.d. Be’er Moshe, by Moses Eliakim Beriah ben Israel. Tel Aviv, 1944. Beit ha-Beḥirah on the Tractates of Berakhot, Betzah, Mikvaot, by Menahem ben Solomon Meiri. Jerusalem, 1961. Ben Porat Yosef, by Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye. N.p., n.d (photocopy of Berditchev: Margaliot and Yadkis, n.d). Ben Porat Yosef, by Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye. Brooklyn: 1995 (following Koretz, 1781). Berit Menuḥah, by Abraham ben Isaac of Granada. Jerusalem: Vardi, 1959. Bet ha-Midrasch, by Adolph Jellinek. Jerusalem: Bamberger & Wahrmann, 1938. Book of Beliefs and Opinions, by Saadia Gaon. Translated by Samuel Rosenblatt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948.

68 In contrast to the conventions used elsewhere in this Bibliography and in footnotes, this first group of sources is listed here in alphabetical order not according to the names of their authors, which are not always certain or uniformly transmitted, but according to their titles, as they are best known in Jewish traditional learning and among the scholars of Jewish studies.

544

Bibliography

Chapters of the Fathers, with a commentary by Rabbi Pinhas Kehati. Translated by Abraham J. Ehrlich and Avner Tomaschoff. Jerusalem: Department for Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora of the World Zionist Organization, 1984. The Code of Maimonides, by Moses ben Maimon. Book 10: The Book of Cleanness. Translated by Herbert Danby. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954. Commentary on the Torah: Ramban (Nahmanides), by Moses ben Nahman. Translated by Charles B. Chavel. New York: Shilo, 1971. The Complete Book of Ben-Sira. Edited by Moshe H. Segal. Jerusalem: Bialik Intitute, 1972. English edition: Sirach, in A New English Translation of the Septuagint, edited by Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright, 715–62. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Dead Sea Scrolls Translated. Translated by Willfred G. E. Watson. Edited by Florentino Garcia Martinez. London: Brill, 1994. Degel Maḥaneh Efrayim, by Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow. Jerusalem: Books export enterprises, 1963. Derashot, by Nissim ben Reuben Gerondi. Edited by Leon A. Feldman. Jerusalem: Shalem, 1973. Derekh Hashem, Moses Hayyim Luzzatto. Jerusalem, 1998. English edition: Derech haShem: The Way of God, by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto. Translated by Aryeh Kaplan. Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1988. Derishot be-Inyanei ha-Mal’akhim, by Moses Cordovero. In Reuben Margaliot, Angels of the Most High Mentioned in the Babylonian and Palestinain Talmuds. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1988. Divrei Binah u-Mussar: Mussar Talks Recorded by the Students of the Beit Yosef Yeshivah, by David Bleicher. Tel Aviv, 1970. Divrei Menaḥem, by Menahem Mendel of Rymanow. New York: Moishe Torim, 1985. Etz Ḥayyim, by Hayyim Vital. In Collected Writings of R. Isaac Luria, vols. 1–2. Jerusalem, 1988. The Fathers according to Rabbi Nathan (Abot de Rabbi Nathan) Version B. Translated and commentary by Anthony J. Saldarini. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Ginzei Ḥokhmat ha-Kabbalah (Auswahl kabbalistischer Mystik), by Adolph Jellinek. Leipzig, 1853 (reprinted Jerusalem: Makor, 1969). The Guide of the Perplexed, by Moses ben Maimon. Translated by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Hebrew Poems from Spain and Provence, vol. 1. Edited by Hayyim Schirmann. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1954. Ḥayei Moharan, by Nathan (Sternhartz) of Nemirov. Jerusalem, 1985. Ḥayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba, by Abraham Abulafia. Edited by Amnon Gross. Jerusalem, 1999. Ḥiddushei Aggadot, by Judah Loew ben Bezalel (Maharal), vol. 2. Jerusalem, 1980. Ḥiddushei ha-Ramban, by Moses ben Naḥman. Edition Ḥevrat Or Olam, vol. 2: Orders of Nezikin, Hullin, Niddah. Jerusalem, 1962.

Bibliography

Ḥovot ha-Levavot, by Bahya ben Joseph Ibn Paquda. Translated by Judah ibn Tibbon. Jerusalem, 1978. English edition: The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart. Translated by Menahem Mansoor. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, by Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra. Vol. 1: Genesis. Translated by H. N. Strickman and A. M. Silver. New York: Menorah, 1988. Vol. 2: Exodus. Translated by H. N. Strickman and A. M. Silver. New York: Menorah, 1996. Vol. 3: Leviticus. Translated by H. N. Strickman and A. M. Silver. New York: Menorah, 2004. Iggeret ha-Kodesh, by Moses ben Naḥman. In Writings of Our Master Moses ben Naḥman, edited by Hayyim Dov Chavel, vol. 2, 313–37. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1963– 1964. English eidtion: The Holy Letter: A Study in Jewish Sexual Morality. Translated by Seymour J. Cohen. Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1993. Imrei Pinḥas ha-Shalem, by Phinehas of Koretz. Ramat Gan, 1988. Imrei Shefer, by Abraham Abulafia. Edited by Amnon Gross. Jerusalem, 2000. Israel Salanter: Selected Writings. Edited by Mordechai Pachter. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1972. Kedushat Levi ha-Shalem, by Levi Isaac of Berdichev. Jerusalem, 1978. Keter Shem Tov: Collected Words of Israel Baam Shem Tov. Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2004. Ketonet Pasim, by Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye. Edited by Gedalyah Nigal. Jerusalem: Peri Haaretz Institute, 1975. Kol Mevaser, by Simha Bunim of Pzhysha. Edited by Yehuda Menachem Baum. Raananah, 1988 (following Breslau, 1859). Kol Simḥah, by Simha Bunim of Pzhysha. Edited by Yehuda Menachem Baum. Raananah, 1988. Kuntres ha-Avodah, by Shalom Dov Baer (Schneerson) of Lubavich. Brooklyn, 1946. The Kuzari: An Argument for the Faith of Israel, by Judah Halevi. Translated by Hartwig Hirschfeld. New York: Schocken, 1964. Likkutei Amarim. Tanya, by Schneur Zalman ben Baruch of Lyady. Kfar Habad, 1974. English edition: Sefer Likutei Amarim, Part One, Entitled Sefer shel Benonim. Translated by Jacob Immanuel Schochet. London: Kehot, 1981. Likkutei Halakhot, by Nathan (Sternhartz) of Nemirov. Jerusalem, 1985. Likkutei Moharan, by Nahman of Bratzlav. Jerusalem, 1968 (following Ostrava, 1808). English edition includes several volumes, all from Tanina [= section 1]; Batra [= section 2] has not been translated into English. Likutey Moharan, vol. 1. Translated by Simcha Bergman. Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 1986. Likutey Moharan, vol. 5. Translated by Moshe Mykoff. Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 1997. Likutey Moharan, vol. 6. Translated by Moshe Mykoff. Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 1999. Likutey Moharan, vol. 7. Translated by Moshe Mykoff. Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 2003. Likutey Moharan, vol. 8. Translated by Moshe Mykoff, Symchah Bergman, Chaim Kramer. Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 2005.

545

546

Bibliography

Likkutei Shikhehah u-Fe‘ah, by Abraham ben Judah Elmalik. Jerusalem, 1978 (photocopy of Ferrara, 1556). Likkutei Tefilot, by Nathan (Sternhartz) of Nemirov. Jerusalem, 1957 (following Bratzlav, 1822). Likkutei Torah, by Schneur Zalman ben Baruch of Lyady. Vilna: Romm, 1904. Likkutei Torah ve-Ta‘amei ha-Mitzvot, by Hayyim Vital. In Collected Writings of R. Isaac Luria, vol. 11. Jerusalem, 1988. Madregat ha-Adam: From the Teachings of the Saba of Nowardok, by Joseph Jusel Horowitz. Jerusalem, 1976. Maggid Devarav le-Yaakov, by Dov Baer of Mezeritch. Edited by Rivka Shatz-Uffenheimer. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990. Maggid Mesharim, by Joseph Karo. Jerusalem, 1960 (following Amsterdam, 1708). Ma’or va-Shemesh, by Kalonymus Kalman Epstein. New York, 1958. Meirat Einayim, by Isaac ben Samuel of Acre. Edited by Hayyim Aryeh Ehrlinger. Jerusalem, 1993. Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ismael. Edited by H. S. Horovitz and I. A. Rabin. Frankfurt, 1931. English edition: Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael. Translated by Jacob Z. Lauterbach. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976. Mekhilta d’Rabbi Sim‘on b. Jochai. Edited by J. N. Epstein and E. Z. Melamed. Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1955. English edition: Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. Translated by W. David Nelson. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2006. Me’or Einayim, by Menahem Mendel of Chernobyl. Jerusalem: Yeshivat “Meor Enaim,” 1975. English edition: Upright Practices, The Light of the Eyes. Translated by Arthur Green. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. Midrasch Tehillim (Schocher Tov). Edited by Salomon Buber. Vilna: Romm, 1891. Midrash Bereshit Rabba: MS. Vat. Ebr. 30. Edited by M. Sokoloff. Jerusalem, 1971. Midrash Mishle. Edited by Burton L. Visotzky. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1990. English edition: The Midrash on Proverbs. Translated by Burton L. Visotzky. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Midrash Rabbah (Vilna) al Ḥamishei Ḥumshei Torah ve-Ḥamesh Megillot. Vilna, 1903. Midrash Rabbah al ha-Torah (Mirkin). With commentary by Moshe Aryeh Mirkin. Tel Aviv, 1977. Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah. Edited by Mordecai Margulies. Jerusalem, 1953. Milei de-Shemaya by R. Eleazar Azikri. Edited by M. Pachter. Tel Aviv: Mifalim Universitayim, 1991. The Mishnah. Translated by Herbert Danby. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933– Mishneh Torah: The Book of Knowledge, by Moses ben Maimon. Translated by Moses Hyamson. Jerusalem: Boys Town, 1962 Noam Elimelekh, by Elimelech of Lyzhansk. Rishon Lezion: Agudat Hasidei Kalib, 1973. Or Torah, by Dov Baer of Mezeritch. Jerusalem, 1968. Or Yakar, by Moses Cordovero. Jerusalem, 1962–1981.

Bibliography

Otzar Eden Ganuz, by Abraham Abulafia. Edited by Amnon Gross. Jerusalem, 1980. Otzar ha-Geonim. Vol. 4: Tractate Jom-Tow, Chagiga and Maschin. Edited by B. M. Lewin. Jerusalem: Vagshal, 1971 (following Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press Association, 1931). Pardes Rimmonim, by Moses Cordovero. Jerusalem, 1962 (following Mukachevo, 1906?). English edition: Pardes Rimmonim. Translated by Elyakim Getz. Providence: Providence University, 2007. Peri Etz Ḥayyim, by Hayyim Vital. Edited by Abraham Brandwein. In Collected Writings of R. Isaac Luria, vols. 13–14. Jerusalem, 1988. Peri ha-Aretz, by Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk. Jerusalem, 1970 (following Zhitomir, 1867). Peri ha-Aretz, by Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, Jerusalem: Peri ha-Aretz Institute, 2014. Perush ha-Aggadot le-Rabbi Ezra: Likkutei Shikhehah ve-Pe’ah. Ferrara, 1556. Perush ha-Aggadot, by R. Azriel. Edited by Isaiah Tishbi. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1982. Perush Shem ha-Meforash, by Asher ben David. In The Kabbalah of R. Asher ben David, edited by Rachel Elior, 13–27. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1980. Pesikta de-Rab Kahana. Translated by William G. Braude and Israel J. Kapstein. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1975. Pesikta Rabbati. Edited by Meir Friedmann (Ish-Shalom). Vienna, 1880. Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer. Translated by Gerald Friedlander. New York: Hermon, 1965. The Jerusalem Talmud. First Order: Zeraim. Tractate Berakhot. Edited, translated, and commentary by Heinrich W. Guggenheimer. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000. Rabbenu Bahya al ha-Torah, by Bahya ben Asher ben Hlava of Saragossa. Edited by Hayyim Dov Chavel. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1971. Re’shit Ḥokhmah, by Elijah ben Moses De-Vidas. Edited by Hayyim Yosef Waldman. Jerusalem: Or Hamusar, 1984. English edition: The Beginning of Wisdom: Unabridged Translation of the Gate of Love. Translated by Simcha H. Benyosef. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 2002. Sefat Emet: Novellae on All the Sabbaths in the Year and the Festivals, by Judah Aryeh Leib Alter. Jerusalem, 1952. English edition: The Language of Truth: The Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet. Translated by Arthur Green. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998. Sefer ha-Aliyah, by Judah ben Moses Albotini. Edited by Yosef E. E. Parush. Jerusalem: Shaarei Tzvi Institute, 1989. English edition: Sulam Aliyah: Ladder of Ascent. Translated by Yodfat Glazer and Adam Shohom. Providence: Providence University, 2007. Sefer ha-Bahir. Edited by Reuven Margolius. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1994. English edition: The Bahir: An Ancient Kabbalistic Text Attributed to Rabbi Nehunah ben HaKana. Translated by Aryeh Kaplan. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1979. Sefer Ḥaredim, by Eleazar ben Moses Azikri. Venice, 1601. Sefer ha-Ḥeshek, by Abraham Abulafia. Jerusalem, 1999. Sefer ha-Ḥezyonot, by Hayyim Vital. Edited by Morris M. Faierstein. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2006.

547

548

Bibliography

Sefer ha-Ikkarim, by Joseph Albo. Edited and translated by Isaac Husik. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1929. Sefer Katan, by Baal Shem Tov. Zhitomer, 1805. Sefer ha-Kelalim, by Moses Hayyim Luzzatto. Edited by Hayyim Friedlander. Bnei Brak, 1975. Sefer ha-Ma‘alot, by Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera. Edited by Lajos Venetianer. Berlin, 1894. Sefer ha-Maspik Le-Ovdey Hashem, by Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon. Edited by Nissim Dana. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1989. English edition The High Ways to Perfection of Abraham Maimonides, vol. 2. Translated by Samuel Rosenblatt. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1938. Sefer ha-Mishkal, by Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon. In J. H. A. Wijnhoven, “Sefer ha-Mishkal: Text and Study.” PhD dissertati, Brandeis University, 1964. Sefer ha-Nefesh ha-Ḥakhamah, by Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon. Jerusalem, 1969 (photocopy of Basle, 1608). Sefer Shevet Musar, by Elijah ben Abraham Solomon Ha-Kohen. Jerusalem, 1975. Sefer ha-Temunah (attributed to Nehunya ben ha-Kanah). Jerusalem, 1998 (following Lemberg, 1892). Sefer ha-Yashar. Edited by Joseph Dan. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1986. Sefer Yetzirah: With the Commentary Or Yakar, the Commentaries of the Early Ones, R. Isaac the Blind, Nahmanides, and Rabbi Isaac of Acre. Jerusalem, 1989. Selected Poems of Moses Ibn Ezra, by Moses Ibn Ezra. Translated by Solomon Solis-Cohen. Edited and annotated by Heinrich Brody. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1934. Service of the Synagogue. Vol. 3: Day of Atonement, Part II. London: Routledge, 1946. The Seven Beggars and Other Kabbalistic Tales of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, by Nahman of Bratzlav. Translated by Aryeh Kaplan. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2005. Sefer ha-Hezyonot, by Hayyim Vital. Jerusalem, 2004. Sha‘ar ha-Hakdamot, by Hayyim Vital. Jerusalem: Machon ben Zvi, 1988. Sha‘ar ha-Kavanot, by Hayyim Vital. Jerusalem, 1988. Sha‘ar Ruaḥ ha-Kodesh, by Hayyim Vital. In Collected Writings of R. Isaac Luria, vol. 10. Jerusalem, 1988. Sha‘arei Kedushah ha-Shalem, by Hayyim Vital. Edited by Amnon Gross. Tel Aviv: Gross, 2005. Sha‘arei Orah, by Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla. Edited by Yosef ben Shlomo. Jerusalem, 1971. Shekel ha-Kodesh, by Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon. Edited by Charles Mopsik. Los Angeles: Cherub, 1996. Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit, by Isaiah Horowitz. N.p., 1963 (following Amsterdam, 1698). Shir ha-Yiḥud: The Hymn of Divine Unity with the Kabbalistic Commentary of R. Yom Tov Lipmann Muelhausen Thiengen 1560. Jerusalem: Jewish National and University Library Press, 1981.

Bibliography

Shiur Komah, by Moses Cordovero. Jerusalem, n.d. (photocopy of Dov Zeev Kremenchug’s edition, Warsaw, 1883). Shivḥei ha-Baal Shem Tov: A Facsimile of a Unique Manuscript, Variant Versions and Appendices. Edited by Joshua Mondschein. Jerusalem, 1982. Shivḥei ha-Besht. Edited by Avraham Rubinstein. Jerusalem, 1992. English edition: In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov. Shivhei ha-Besht: The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism. Translated and edited by Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970. Sifre on Leviticus. Edited by Louis Finkelstein. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1983–1992. Siphre d’be Rab [referred to in the footnotes as Sifre on Numbers]. Edited by H. S. Horovitz. Leipzig, 1917. Sifre on Deuteronomy. Edited by Louis Finkelstein. Berlin, 1939. English edition: Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy. Translated by Reuven Hammer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Sitrei Torah, by Abraham Abulafia. Edited by Amnon Gross. Jerusalem, 2002. Midrash Tanḥuma with Etz Yosef and Anaf Yosef Commentary [referred to in the footnotes as Tanḥuma]. Lublin, 1902. Midrash Tanḥuma: With the Da‘at Soferim Commentary [referred to in the footnotes as Tanḥuma, ed. Rabinowitz]. Edited by Chaim Dov Rabinowitz. Jerusalem: Kokhav, 1994–1997. Teshuvot ha-Rashba, by Solomon ben Abraham Adret. Bnei Brak, 1965. Testament of Levi. In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, edited by James H. Charlesworth, 788–95. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983. Tikkunei Zohar with the Or Yakar Commentary, Bava Kamma, vol. 1. Jerusalem, 1972. Toledot Ya‘akov Yosef, by Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye. Jerusalem: Agudat Beit Wilyafili, 1973. Torat ha-Adam, by Moses ben Nahman. In Writings of Our Master Moses ben Nahman, edited by Hayyim Dov Chavel, vol. 2, 9–311. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1963–1964. Torat Moshe, by Moses Alshekh. Warsaw, 1861. The Tosefta. Vol. 2: The Order of Mo‘ed. Edited by Saul Lieberman. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962. Tosefta ki-Fshutah, part 5: Order Mo‘ed. Edited by Saul Lieberman. Newark: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992. Tosefta. Edited by M. S. Zuckermandel. Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1963. Arbaah Turim, by Jacob ben Asher [referred to in the footnotes as Tur]. Jerusalem, 1975. Tzava’at Harivash. Translation to English: The Testament of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov. Translated and annotated by Jacob Immanuel Schochet. Brooklyn: Kehot, 1998. Yalkut Shimoni: Collection of Rabbinic Midrashim on the Torah, Prophets, and Writings by Our Master Simeon ha-Darshan, according to MS. Oxford. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1973. Zkan Beto al Pirkei Avot, by Eliezer Zvi (Safrin) of Komarno. Jerusalem, 1973.

549

550

Bibliography

Zofnat Paaneah, by Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye. Edited by Gedalyah Nigal. Jerusalem: Institute for the Research of Hasidic Literature, 1989. Zohar. Edited by Reuben Margaliot. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1970. English edition: The Zohar, vol. 2. Translated and commentary by Daniel C. Matt. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Zohar Ḥadash. Edited by Reuben Margaliot. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1994. Zifra: Commentar zu Leviticus [referred to in the footnotes as Sifra, ed. Weiss]. Edited by J. H. Weiss. Vienna, 1862.

Other Primary Sources Al-Farabi, Abu Nasr. Al-Farabi on the Perfect State: Abu Nasr al-Farabi’s Mabadi’ Ara’ Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila. Introduction, translation and commentary by Richard Walzer. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985. Al-Ghazzali, Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad. Book of Knowledge. Translated by Nabih Amin Faris. Lahore: Ashraf, 1962. ———. Ma’aznei Zedek. Hebrew translation of Qistas al-mustaqim by Abraham ibn Tibbon. Jerusalem, 1975. Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ali. “The Autobiography of the Theosophist of Tirmidh: The Beginning of the Affair of Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (Bad’ sha’n Abi ‘Abd Allah Muhammad al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi).” In The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism: Two Works by al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi. Annotated translation with an introduction by Bernd Radke and John O’Kane, 15–36. Richmond: Curzon, 1996. ———. Nawadir al-usul fi ma’rifat ahadith al-Rasul. Beirut, 1876. Al-Hallaj. Kitab al Tawasin. In Gilami Kamran, Ana al-haqq Reconsidered with a Translation of Kitab Altawasin by Husain b. Mansur Hallaj. Lahore: Naqsh-e-Awwal Kitab Ghar, 1977 (first edition 1398). Al-Makki, Abu Talib. Out al-qulub. Cairo, 1961. Al-Muhāsibi, Harith ibn Asad, Kitab al-Ri’āya Lihukūk Allāh. Edited by Margaret Smith. London: Luzac & co., 1940. Al-Qushayri and Abu’ ‘l-Qasim. Al-Qushayri’s Qushayri\’s Epistle on Sufism (Al-Risala al-qushayriyya fi‘`ilm al- tasawwuf). Translated by Alexander D. Knysh. Reading: Garnet, 2007. Anselm. Proslogion. www.stanselminstitute.org/files/AnselmProslogion.pdf. Accessed November 26, 2018. Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by H. Rackham. In vol. 73 of Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1945. ———. On the Soul; Parva Naturalia; On Breath. Translated by W. S. Hett. In vol. 288 of Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1975.

Bibliography

Augustine. The City of God against the Pagans. Translated by David S. Wiesen. In vols. 411– 417 of Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1968. ———. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. ———. On the Trinity, books 8–16. Translated by Stephen McKenna and edited by Gareth B. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Aurobindo, The Life Divine. Calcutta: Patro-Arya, 1943. Ben-Artzi, Shmuel. Novardok [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Miskal, 2007. Bhagavad Gita. Translation and commentary by Richard Gotshalk. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985. Brentano, Franz. The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong. Translated by Roderick M. Chisholm and Elizabeth H. Schneewind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. ———. Psychology from an Empirical Viewpoint. Translated by Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terell, and Linda L. McAlister. London: Routledge, 1995. Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Translated by R. G. Smith. New York: Scribner’s, 2000. Cekkiler. Periya Puranam [Tamil]. N.p., 1970. Chuang Tzu. Chuang Tzu: Taoist Philosopher and Chinese Mystic. Translated by Herbert A. Giles. London: Unwin, 1980 (previous editions 1889, 1926). ———. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. Cicero. De Natura Deorum. Translated by H. Rackham. In vol. 268 of Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1972. Cohen, Hermann. Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism. Translated by Simon Kaplan. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Translated David McDuff. London: Viking, 1991. Eckhart, Johannes (Meister Eckhart). Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke. Stuttgart, 1936. Epictetus. The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, books 1–2. Translated by W. A. Oldfather. In vol. 131 of Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1979. ———. The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, books 3–4. Fragments. The Encheiridion. Translated by W. A. Oldfather. In vol. 218 of Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1979. Euripides. Bacchae. Edited by Eric Robertson Dodds. Oxford: Clarendon, 1960. Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity. Translated by George Eliot. New York: Harper & Row, 1957. Gordon, Aaron David. Man and Nature [Heb]. Edited by Yuval Jobani and Ron Margolin. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2020 Hartman, David. A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism. New York: Free Press, 1985. Hartmann, Eduard von. Philosophy of the Unconscious: Speculative Results according to the Inductive Method of Physical Science. Translated by William Chatterton Coupland. London: Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1893.

551

552

Bibliography

Herrigel, Eugen. Zen in the Art of Archery. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. New York: Pantheon, 1959. Hillesum, Etty. Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941–1943. Edited by Klaas A. D. Smelik, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002. Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by A. T. Murray, revised by George E. Dimock. In vol. 104 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by Dorion Cairns. Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960. ———. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, book 1: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Translated by F. Kersten. Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982. Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell. New York: Harper and Row, 1956. Jami al-Badai. Edited by Muhi al-Din Sabri Kurdi. Cairo, 1917. John of the Cross (St. John of the Cross). Ascent of Mount Carmel, in The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, vol. 1, 1–314. Translated by E. Allison Peers. London; Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1953. ———. Dark Night of the Soul, in The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, vol. 1, 315–457. Translated by E. Allison Peers. London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1953. Kant, Immanuel. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings. Translated by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript in Philosophical Fragments. Translated and edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. ———. Fear and Trembling. Edited by C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh. Translated by Sylvia Walsh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. Fear and Trembling: Frygt og Baeven Translated by Eyal Levin, edited by Jacob Golomb, [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997. ———. The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard. Translated by Alexander Dru. New York: Harper, 1959. ———. The Sickness Unto Death. Translated and edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Translated by Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1985. ———. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Maimon, Salomon. Autobiography. Translated by J. Clark Murray. London: East and West Library, 1954.

Bibliography

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. The Communings with Himself of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Translated by C. R. Haines. In vol. 58 of Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1979. Mendelssohn, Moses. Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism. Translated by Allan Arkush, introduction and commentary by Alexander Altmann. Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1983. Najm al-Din Kubra. Fawa’ih ad-djamal wa-fawatih al-djalal. Weisbaden, 1957. New Testament. Revised Standard Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1952. Philo. De Abrahamo (On Abraham). Translated by Francis Henry Colson. In vol. 289 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935. ———. De Fuga et Inventione (On Flight and Finding). Translated by Francis Henry Colson and G. H. Whitaker. In vol. 275 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949. ———. Legum Allegoria (Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis II., III.). Translated by Francis Henry Colson and G. H. Whitaker. In vol. 226 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929. ———. De Opificio Mundi (On the Account of the World’s Creation Given by Moses). Translated by Francis Henry Colson and G. H. Whitaker. In vol. 226 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929. ———. Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit (Every Good Man Is Free). Translated by Francis Henry Colson. In vol. 363 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941. ———. De Somniis (On Dreams, That They Are God-Sent). Translated by Francis Henry Colson and G. H. Whitaker. In vol. 275 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949. ———. De Vita Contemplativa (On the Contemplative Life, or Suppliants). Translated by Francis Henry Colson. In vol. 363 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941. ———. De Vita Mosis (Moses). Translated by Francis Henry Colson. In vol. 289 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935. Plato. Alcibiades. Translated by W. R. M. Lamb. In vol. 201 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. ———. Euthyphro, Apology, Phaedo, Phaedrus. Translated by Harold North Fowler. In vol. 36 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. ———. Laws. Translated by R. G. Bury. Vols. 187 and 192 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952. ———. The Republic. Translated by Paul Shorey. Vols. 237 and 276 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942. ———. Symposium, Gorgias. Translated by W. R. M. Lamb. In vol. 166 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

553

554

Bibliography

———. Timaeus. Translated by R. G. Bury. In vol. 234 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942. Plotinus. Plotinus with an English Translation. Translated by A. H. Armstrong. Vols. 440–445 and 468 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978–88. Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Mathnawi of Jalalu’ddin Rumi. Edited, translated, and commentary by Reynold A. Nicholson. London: Luzac, 1968–1972 (reprinted edition 1990). Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism and Humanism. Translated by Philip Mairet. New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1948. ———. The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness. Translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. Searle, John R. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Seneca. Epistulae Morales. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. Vols. 75–77 of Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1972. ———. Moral Essays. De Beneficiis.Translated by John W. Basore. In vol. 310 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935. Spinoza, Baruch. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Translated by Samuel Shirley. Leiden: Brill, 1991. Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Edited by Trudy Dixon. New York: Weatherhill, 1991. Tauler, Johannes. Predigten. Edited by Georg Hofmann. Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1979. Upaniṣads. Translated by Patrick Olivelle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Vanmikanathan, G. The Sixty-Three Nayanars. Accessed January 26, 2014. http://www. skandagurunatha.org/deities/siva/nayanars. Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace. Translated by Arthur Wills. New York: Putnam’s, 1952. Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald Sherburne. New York: Free Press, 1985. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Edited by Cyril Barret. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. ———. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988. ———. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright and translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. ———. Zettel. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright and translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.

Secondary Sources Abu Talib al-Makki, Qut al-qulub. Cairo, 1961. Abelson, Joshua. The Immanence of God in Rabbinical Literature. New York: Hermon, 1969.

Bibliography

Abramson, Shraga. “Iggeret ha-Kodesh Attributed to Nahmanides” [Heb]. Sinai 46 (1982): 232–53. ———. “Introduction.” In Rabbi Joshua ibn Shu‘eib: Sefer Derashot al Ha-Torah [Heb], edited by Shraga Abramson, PAGES. Jerusalem: Makor, 1969. Afterman, Adam. Devequt: Mystical Intimacy in Medieval Jewish Thought [Heb]. Los Angeles: Cherub, 2011. ———. “Ma‘aseh Merkava in Rabbinic Literature: Prayer and Envisioning the Chariot” [Heb]. Kabbalah 13 (2005): 249–69. Alston, William P. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Altmann, Alexander. “The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism.” In Biblical and Other Studies, edited by Alexander Altmann, 196–232. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963. Also published in Altmann, Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism, 1–40. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. ———. “The Ladder of Ascension.” In Biblical and Other Studies, edited by Alexander Altmann, 41–72. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963. Altmann, Alexander, and Samuel Miklos Stern. Isaac Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century. London: Oxford University Press, 1958. Ankori, Micha. The Heart and the Spring: A Comparative Study in Hassidis and Depth Psychology [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Ramot, 1991. ———. “This Infinite Forest”: A Comparative Study in Analytical Psychology and Jewish Mysticism [Heb]. Ramat Hasharon: Gabal, 1989. Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret. “Intention.” In The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe. Vol. 2: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, 75–82. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981. ———. Intention. Oxford: Blackwell, 1976. Aran, Lydia. Buddhism: Introduction to the Religion and Philosophy of Buddhism [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1993. Arbel, Ilanah. Foucault and Humanism [Heb]. Or Yehudah: Dvir, 2006. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Armstrong, Arthur Hilary. “The Apprehension of the Divinity in the Self and Cosmos in Plotinus.” In The Significance of Neoplatonism, edited by R. Baine Harris, 187–98. Norfolk: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 1976. ———. The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940. ———. “Dualism: Platonic, Gnostic, and Christian.” In Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, edited by Richard T. Wallis, 33–54. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. ———. “Plotinus.” In The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, edited by Arthur H. Armstrong, 195–268. London: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Arnal, William E. “Definition.” In Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willie Braun and Russel T. McCutcheon, 21–35. London: Cassell, 2000.

555

556

Bibliography

Arzi, Abraham. “Dreams in the Talmud.” In Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2nd ed. Vol. 6. Col. 9. Jerusalem: Keter, 2007. Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993. Asperen, Hanneke von. “‘As if They Had Physically Visited the Holy Places.’ Two SixteenthCentury Manuscripts Guide a Mental Journey through Jerusalem (Radbound University Library, Mss. 205 and 233).” In The Imagined and Real Jerusalem in Art and Architecture, edited by Jeroen Goudeau, Mariette Verhoeven, and Wouter Weijers, 190–214. Leiden: Brill open e-book collection, 2014. Assman, Jan. Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Aune, Bruce. “Intention.” In Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards, vol. 4, 198– 200. New York: Macmillan, 1972. Aylat-Yaguri, Tamar. Human Dialogue with the Absolute: Kierkegaard’s Ladder to the Climax of Spiritual Essence [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008. Baer, Yitzhak. “Introduction.” In A. M. Habermann, The Persecutions of Germany and France: Memoirs by Those from the Generations of the Crusades and a Selection of Their Poems [Heb], 7–16. Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1945. ———. Israel among the Nations: An Essay on the History of the Period of the Second Temple and the Mishna and on the Foundations of the Halacha and Jewish Religion [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1955. ———. “On the Problem of Eschatological Doctrine during the Period of the Second Temple: Dialectics and Mysticism in the Founding of the Halacha.” Zion 23–24 (1958– 1959): 3–34, 141–65. Also published in Baer, Studies in the History of the Jewish People [Heb], vol. 1, 78–134. Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1985. ———. “The Religious-Social Tendency of ‘Sepher Hassidim.’” Zion 3 (1938): 1–50. Also published in Baer, Studies in the History of the Jewish People [Heb], vol. 2, 175–224. Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1985. Bahat, Shoshanah, and Mordechay Mishor. Dictionary of Contemporary Hebrew [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Itav; Or Yehudah: Maariv, 1995. Baker, G. P., and P. M. S. Hacker. “Wittgenstein.” In Modern Trends in Philosophy [Heb]. Edited by Asa Kasher and Shalom Lappin, 205–30. Tel Aviv: Yahdav, 1982. Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Translated by Christine van Boheemen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Baneth, David H. “The Common Teleological Source of Bahye Ibn Paqoda and Ghazzali.” In Magnes Anniversary Book [Heb], edited by F. I Baer et al., 23–30. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1938. Bannerth, Ernst. “Dhikr et Khalwa d’apres Ibn ‘At’ Allah.” Melanges 126 (1974): 65–90. Bar-Ilan, Meir. “The Names of Angels.” In These Are the Names: Studies in Jewish Onomastics, edited by Aaron Demsky, Joseph A. Reif, and Joseph Tabory, vol. 1, Hebrew section, 33–48. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1997.

Bibliography

Bar-Lev, Ronny. “Nahmanite Ethics and the Spirit of Tzaddiqism: The Lust for Money and Its Rectification in the Doctrine of R. Nahman of Bratzlav.” In On the Economy and on the Sustenance: Judaism, Society and Economics [Heb], edited by Itamar Brenner and Aharon Ariel Lavi, 59–96. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2008. Bar-Levav, Avriel. “The Concept of Death in Sefer ha-Ḥayyim (The Book of Life) by Rabbi Shimon Frankfurt” [Heb]. PhD dissertation, Hebrew University, 1997. ———. “Story, Ritual and Metaphor: Contemplating the Day of Death as a Spiritual Exercise and the Internal War in Jewish Ethical Literature.” In Peace and War in Jewish Culture [Heb], edited by Avriel Bar-Levav, 145–63. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2006. Bar-On, Abraham Zevie. Ontological Analysis: The Classical Model. Translated by Leon J. Schramm. Lanham: University Press of America, 1996. Bell, Catherine. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Benayahu, Meir. “The ‘Maggid’ of R. Moses Hayyim Luzatto” [Heb]. Sefunot 5 (1961): 297-336. ———. “The Vow of R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto to Abstain from Writing Works ‘Dictated by a Maggid’” [Heb]. Zion 42 (1976–1977): 24–48. Ben Shlomo, Yosef. The Mystical Theology of Moses Cordovero [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1986. Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer. Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew (Thesaurus Totius Hebraitatis et Veteris Recentioris) [Heb]. Berger, Peter L. The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1979. ———. Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963. Bergmann, Samuel Hugo. Contemporary Thinkers [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984. ———. Dialogical Philosophy: From Kierkegaard to Buber. Translated by Arnold A. Gerstein. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991. ———. History of Philosophy from Nicolaus Cusanus to the Age of Enlightenment [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1974. ———. Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991. Bernstein, Richard J. Praxis and Action: Philosophies of Human Activity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971. Biderman, Shlomo. Crossing Horizons: World, Self, and Language in Indian and Western Thought. Translated by Ornan Rotem. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Bilu, Yoram. “The Dibbuk in Judaism: Mental Disorder as Cultural Resource” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 2, no. 4 (1982–1983): 529–63. Blidstein, Gerald J. Prayer in Maimonidean Halakha [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1994. Blumenthal, David R. Philosophic Mysticism: Studies in Rational Religion. Ramat Gan: BarIlan University Press, 2006. Bokser, Ben Zion, and Baruch M. Bokser. “Introduction.” In The Talmud: Selected Writings, edited by B. Z. and B. M. Bokser, 7–55. New York: Paulist Press, 1989.

557

558

Bibliography

Bowers, Margaretta, and Samuel Glasner. “Auto-Hypnotic Aspects of the Jewish Cabbalistic Concept of Kavanah.” Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 6 (1958): 3–23. Boyarin, Daniel. Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. ———. Intertextuality and the Reading of the Midrash. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Brakke, David, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzman (eds.). Religion and the Self in Antiquity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Braun, Willie. “Religion.” In Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willie Braun and Russel T. McCutcheon, 3–21. London: Cassell, 2000. Brehier, Emile. “Mysticisme et doctrine chez Plotin.” Sophia 16 (1948): 122–85. ———. The Philosophy of Plotinus. Translated by Joseph Thomas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Brereton, Joel. “That Tvam Asi in Context.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesselschaft 136 (1986): 98–109. Brezis, David. Kierkegaard et les figures de la Paternite. Paris: Cerf, 1999. Buber, Martin. Between Man and Man. Translated by Ronald Gregor-Smith. London: Routledge, 1993. ———. “Cain.” In Buber, Darko shel Mikra [Heb], 60–64. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1964. ———. Ecstatic Confessions. Edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr and translated by Esther Cameron. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. ———. “God and the Soul.” In Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, 183-99. Edited and translated by Maurice Friedman. New York: Horizon, 1960. ———. Good and Evil: Two Interpretations. Translation by Ronald Gregor Smith. New York: Scribner’s, 1953. ———. “Jewish Mysticism.” In Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, 3–17. Translated by Maurice Friedman. New York: Avon, 1970. ———. “Jewish Religiosity.” In Buber, On Judaism, 79–94. Edited by Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Schocken, 1967. ———. “Myth in Judaism.” In Buber, On Judaism, 95–107. Edited by Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Schocken, 1995. ———. Reden über das Judentum. Frankfurt am Main: Rutten & Loening, 1923. ———. “Religion and Modern Thinking.” In Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy, 63–92. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1988. ———. Tales of the Hasidim. Translated by Olga Marx. New York: Schocken, 1962. ———. The Tales of Rabbi Nachman. Translated by Maurice Friedman. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1988. ———. Torah of the Prophets [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Bialik Institute, 1942. ———. Two Types of Faith. Translated by Norman P. Goldhawk. London: Routledge and Paul, 1951.

Bibliography

———. The Way of Man according to Hasidic Teaching. Translated by Bernard H. Mehlman and Gabriel E. Padower. Woodstock: Jewish Lights, 2012. ———. “What Is Common to All.” In Buber, The Knowledge of Man, 79–99. Translated by Maurice Friedman and Ronald Gregor Smith and edited by Maurice Friedman. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1988. Buber Agassi, Judith. Martin Buber on Psychology and Psychotherapy. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999. Burkert, Walter. Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. ———. Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Burkitt, Francis Crawford. Church and Gnosis: A Study of Christian Thought and Speculation in the Second Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Campbell, Keith. Body and Mind. London: Macmillan, 1971. Campen, Cretien von. The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. Carnap, Rudolf. “The Rejection of Metaphysics.” In Carnap, Philosophy and Logical Syntax, 9–38. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1935. Cary, Philip. Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945. ———. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Vol. 2: Mythical Thought. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955. Cassuto, Umberto (Moshe David). A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. In From Adam to Noah: A Commentary on Genesis I–VI 8, vol. 1, translated by Israel Abrahams. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961–1964; From Noah to Abraham: Genesis VI 9–XI 32, vol. 2. Cazeneuve, J. “Le principe de repetition dans le rite.” Cahiers internationaux de sociologie 23 (1957): 42–62. Chadwick, Owen. Western Asceticism. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1958. Chajes, Jeffrey Howard. Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. ———. “In a Different Voice: The Non-Kabbalistic Women’s Mysticism of Early Modern Jewish Culture” [Heb]. Zion 67 (2002): 139–62. ———. “Spirit Possession and the Construction of Early Modern Jewish Religion.” PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1969. Childs, Brevard S. Memory and Tradition in Israel. London: SCM Press, 1962. Cohen-Stuart, G. H. The Struggle in Man between Good and Evil: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Rabbinic Concept of Yeser Hara. Kampen: Kok, 1984.

559

560

Bibliography

Copenhaver, Brian P. “Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and Their Predecessors.” Annals of Science 37 (1980): 489–548. Cross, Frank Moore, Cana’anite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973. Culianu, Ioan Petru. Out of This World: Otherworldly Journeys from Gilgamesh to Albert Einstein. Boston: Shambala, 1991. ———. Psychanodia: A Survey of the Evidence Concerning the Ascension of the Soul and Its Relevance. Leiden: Brill, 1983. Dan, Joseph. Ethical and Homiletical Literature: The Middle Ages and Early Modern Period [Heb]. Jerusalem: Keter, 1975. ———. On Sanctity: Religion, Ethics and Mysticism in Judaism and Other Religions [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997. Darnoi, Dennis N. Kenedy. The Unconscious and Eduard von Hartmann: A Historico-Critical Monograph. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967. Davies, Oliver. God Within: The Mystical Tradition of Northern Europe. New York: Paulist Press, 1988. Davis, Carolyn Franks. The Evidential Force of Religious Experience. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989. Derrida, Jacques. “‘Eating Well,’ or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida.” In Who Comes after the Subject?, edited by Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy, 96–119. New York: Routledge, 1991. Diamond, Eliezer. Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Dieterich, Albrecht. Eine Mithrasliturgie. Darmstadt, 1966 (following 1903 edition). Dinur, Ben Zion. The Changing of the Generations: Researches and Studies in the History of Israel from Early Modern Times [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1972. Dodds, Eric Robertson. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951. ———. “Numenius and Ammonius.” In Dodds, Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique/. Vol. 5: Les sources de Plotin, 1–33. Vandoeuvres: Fondation Hardt, 1960. ———. Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine. New York: Norton, 1970. Droscher, Vitus. The Magic of the Senses: New Discoveries in Animal Perceptions. Translated by Ursula Lehrburger and Oliver Coburn. London: W. H. Allen, 1969. Dubuisson, Daniel. The Western Construction of Religion: Myth, Knowledge, and Ideology. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2003. Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Age of Reason Begins. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961. Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Experience. London: Allen and Unwin, 1976.

Bibliography

Edmunds, Simeon. Hypnosis and Psychic Phenomena. North Hollywood, CA: Wilshire, 1972. Efros, Israel. Philosophical Terms in the Moreh Nebukim. Philadelphia: Columbia University Press, 1924. Ehrlich, Ernst Ludwig. Der Traum im Alten Testament. Berlin: Topelmann, 1953. Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard. The Human Will in Judaism: The Mishna’s Philosophy of Intention. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986. Elat, Moshe. Samuel and the Foundation of Kingship in Ancient Israel [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1998. Elbaum, Jacob. Repentance and Self-Flagellation in the Writings of the Sages of Germany and Poland 1348–1648 [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993. Eliade, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. ———. Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth. Translated by William R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row, 1958. ———. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Translated by William R. Trask. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1987. ———. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated by William R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972. ———. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom. Translated by William R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. ———. Zalmoxis: The Vanishing God: Comparative Studies in the Religion and Folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe. Translated by William R. Trask. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. Elior, Rachel. The Mystical Origins of Hasidism. Translated by Shalom Carmi. Oxford: Littman, 2006. ———. “Mysticism, Magic, and Angelology—The Perception of Angels in Hekhalot Literature.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 1 (1993–1994): 3–53. ———. “R. Joseph Karo and R. Israel Ba‘al Shem Tov—Mystical Metamorphosis, Kabbalistic Inspiration and Spiritual Internalization” [Heb]. Tarbiz 65 (1996): 671–709. ———. “Reality in the Test of Fiction: Dreams in Mystical Thought—the Freedom of Disassociation and Combination” [Heb]. In The Spectrum of Opinions and Worldviews on Dreams in Jewish Culture, edited by Dror Kerem, 63–79. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1995. Ellenberger, Henri F. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books, 1970. Elon, Menachem. Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles. Translated by Bernard Auerbach and Melvin J. Sykes. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994. Elqayam, Abraham. “The Mystery of Faith in the Writings of Nathan of Gaza” [Heb]. PhD dissertation, Hebrew University, 1993.

561

562

Bibliography

Emilsson, Eyjolfur Kjalar. Plotinus on Sense-Perception: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Enelow, Heyman Gerson. “Kawwana: The Struggle for Inwardness in Judaism.” In Studies in Jewish Literature Issued in Honor of Professor Kaufmann Kohler, edited by D. Philipson, D. Neumark, and J. Morgenstern, 82–107. Berlin: Reimer, 1913. Etkes, Immanuel. The Besht: Magician, Mystic and Leader. Translated by Saadya Sternberg. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2005. ———. Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Mussar Movement: Seeking the Truth of Torah. Translated by Jonathan Chipman. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993. Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. Theories of Primitive Religion. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Even-Israel (Steinsaltz), Adin. A Commentary on the Tanya [Heb], vol. 4. Jerusalem: Milta, 1989. Fales, Evan. “Do Mystics See God?” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. Van Arragon, PAGES. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. ———. “Scientific Explanations of Mystical Experiences.” Religious Studies 32 (1996): 143– 63, 297–313. Federbusch, Simon. Jewish Ethics and Law [Heb]. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1947. Fenton, Paul. “The Arabic and Hebrew Version of the Theology of Aristotle.” In PseudoAristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts, edited by J. Kraye, W. F. Ryan, and C. B. Schmitt, 241–64. London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1986. Fenton, Paul B. (Yosef Yinon). “‘The Head between the Knees’” [Heb]. Daat 32–33 (1994): 19–29. ———. “Introduction” [Heb]. In David b. Joshua b. Abraham Maimonides, Doctor ad Solitudinem et Ductor ad Simplicitatem (Moreh ha-Perishut u-Madrikh ha-Peshitut le-R. David ben Yehoshua ha-Nagid), 13–55. Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1987. Fidler, Ruth. “Dreams Speak Falsely”? Dream Theophanies in the Bible: Their Place in Ancient Israelite Faith and Tradition [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005. ———. “The Shiloh Theophany (I Samuel 3)—A Case Study of the Liminal Report” [Heb]. In Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies, division A: The Bible and Its World, edited by Ron Margolin, 99–107. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1999. Finkelstein, Israel and Neil Asher Silberman. David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition. New York: Free Press, 2006. Fitzgerald, Timothy. The Ideology of Religious Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Flood, Gavin D. The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Flusser, David. Jewish Sources in Early Christianity [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1979. ———. Judaism and the Origins of Christianity. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. Forman, Robert K. C. The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Bibliography

———. “What Does Mysticism Have to Teach Us about Consciousness?” Journal of Consciousness Studies 5, no. 2 (1998): 185–201. Fornet-Betancourt, Raul et al. “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom: An Interview with Michel Foucault on January 20, 1984.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 12 (1987): 112–31. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1972. ———. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Edited by Luther Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick Hutton. London: Tavistock, 1998. Fraade, Steven D. “Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism.” In Jewish Spirituality, edited by Arthur Green. Vol. 1: From the Bible through the Middle Ages, 253–88. New York: Crossroad, 1996. Frankfurt, Harry G. “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” Journal of Philosophy 67, no. 1 (1973): 5–20. ———. The Reasons of Love. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Frankfort, Henri, et al. Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954. Frazer, James G. The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion. London: Macmillan, 1890. Frenkel, Yonah. The Aggadic Narrative: Harmony of Form and Content [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Hakkibutz Hameuhad, 2001. ———. “The Halakhah in Aggadic Narratives” [Heb]. Meḥqerei Talmud 1 (1992): 205–15. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Translated by James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1961. ———. The Future of an Illusion. In Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 21, 1–56. Edited by James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1961. ———. Moses and Monotheism. Translated by Katherine Jones. New York: Vintage, 1967. ———. “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices.” In Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 9, 115–27. Edited by James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1959. ———. “Totem and Taboo.” In Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 13, 132–55. Edited by James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1955. Fuhrmann, Ernst. Himmel, Welt und Holl. Berlin, 1925. Gale, Richard. On the Nature and Existence of God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ———. “Why Alston’s Mystical Doxastic Practice Is Subjective.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994): 869–75. Garb, Yehonatan. “The Secrets of Belief in the Zohar” [Heb]. In On Faith: Studies in the Concept of Faith and Its History in the Jewish Tradition, edited by Moshe Halbertal, David Kurzweil, and Avi Sagi, 294–311. Jerusalem: Keter, 2005.

563

564

Bibliography

Gellman, Jerome I. Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. ———. “The Figure of Abraham in Hasidic Literature.” Harvard Theological Review 91 (1998): 279–300. ———. Mystical Experience of God: A Philosophical Inquiry. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. ———. “On a Sociological Challenge to the Veridicality of Religious Experience.” Religious Studies 34 (1998): 235–51. Gennep, Arnold van. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monike B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Cafee. Chicago: Routledge & Paul, 1960. Gerson, Lloyd P. Plotinus. London: Routledge, 1994. Gilat, Yitzhak D. “Intent and Act in Tannaitic Teaching” [Heb]. Bar-Ilan: Annual of Bar-Ilan University. Studies in Judaica and the Humanities 4–5 (1967; decennial volume 1955– 1965): 104–16. ———. Studies in the Development of the Halakhah [Heb]. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1992. Ginzberg, Louis. On Jewish Law and Lore. New York: Atheneum, 1977. Ginzburg, Carlo. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Penguin, 1992. Giora, Zvi. The Dream and Human Nature [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Papyrus, 1982. Gnuse, Robert Karl. The Dream Theophany of Samuel: Its Structure in Relation to Ancient Near Eastern Dreams and Its Theological Significance. Lanham: University Press of America, 1984. Goitein, S. D. “Documents on Abraham Maimonides and His Pietist Circle” [Heb]. Tarbiz 33 (1963): 181–97. Goldenberg, Robert. “Commandment and Consciousness in Talmudic Thought.” Harvard Theological Review 68, no. 3–4 (1975): 261–71. Goldish, Matt (ed.). Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003. Goldman, Eliezer. “Authority and Autonomy” [Heb]. In Between Authority and Autonomy in Jewish Tradition, edited by Avi Sagi and Zeev Safrai, 32–52. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1997. Goldreich, Amos. Automatic Writing in Zoharic Literature and Modernism [Heb]. Los Angeles: Cherub, 2010. ———. “Possible Arabic Sources of the Distinction between ‘Duties of the Heart’ and ‘Duties of the Limbs’” [Heb]. Te’uda 6 (1988): 179–208. Goldstein, Naftali. “Worship in the Temple in Jerusalem: Rabbinic Interpretation and Influence” [Heb]. PhD dissertation, Hebrew University, 1977. Goldziher, Ignaz. Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law. Translated by Andras and Ruth Hamori. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Goodman, Felicitas D. Where the Spirits Ride the Winds: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Bibliography

Goody, Jack. “Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem.” British Journal of Sociology 12 (1961): 143–64. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature.” Harvard Theology Review 87 (1994): 171–96. Gottlieb, Ephraim. “The Meaning of Prayer in the Kabbala” [Heb]. In Gottlieb, Studies in the Kabbala Literature, 38–55. Tel Aviv: Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1976. ———. Studies in the Kabbala Literature [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1976. Graham, Patricia Jane. Tea of the Sages: The Art of Sencha. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998. Green, Arthur. Devotion and Commandment: The Faith of Abraham in the Hasidic Imagination. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1989. ———. Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979. Greenberg, Moshe. On the Bible and Judaism [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1985. Gries, Zeev. Conduct Literature (Regimen Vitae): Its History and Place in the Life of Beshtian Hasidism [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1990. ———. “From Myth to Ethos: On the History of Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk” [Heb]. In Nation and History: Studies in the History of the Jewish People, edited by Shmuel Ettinger, vol. 2, 117–46. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1984. Griffith, Paul. “Concentration or Insight: The Problematic of Therevada Buddhist MeditationTheory.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 49, no. 4 (1981): 605–24. Gruenwald, Ithamar. Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism. Leiden: Brill, 1980. ———. “The Inevitable Presence of Myth” [Heb]. In Eshel Beer-Sheva. Vol. 4: Myth in Judaism, edited by Havivah Pedayah, 1–14. Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1996. ———. “Myth in the Reality of Epistemology: History and Research” [Heb]. Jewish Studies 38 (1998): 187–210. ———. Rituals and Ritual Theory in Ancient Israel. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Hadot, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Translated by Michael Chase and edited by Arnold I. Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Halamish, Moshe. “The Confrontation with the Duty of Kawwana” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): 217–57. ———. “One Commandment” [Heb]. In From Enslavement to Redemption: From Passover to Shavuot, edited by Yossi Barukhi, Hayyim Halperin, and Yair Milo, 222–35. Merkaz Shapira: Or Etzion Torah Institute, 1996. Halbertal, Moshe. Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical Implications. Translated by Jackie Feldman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

565

566

Bibliography

———. Interpretive Revolutions in the Making: Values as Interpretive Considerations in Midrashei Halakhah [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997. ———. “On the Faithful and Faith” [Heb]. In On Faith: Studies in the Concept of Faith and Its History in the Jewish Tradition, edited by Moshe Halbertal, David Kurzweil, and Avi Sagi, 11–38. Jerusalem: Keter, 2005. Halbertal, Moshe, and Avishai Margalit. Idolatry. Translated by Naomi Goldblum. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Halevi, Elimelech Epstein. The World of the Aggadah [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1972. Halivni, David. “On the Supposed Anti-Asceticism or Anti-Naziritism of Simon the Just.” Jewish Quarterly Review N. S. 58 (1968): 243–52. ———. Sources and Traditions: A Source Critical Commentary of the Talmud, Tractates Erubin and Pesaḥim [Heb]. Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1982. Hallo, William W. “Letters, Prayers, and Letter-Prayers.” In Proceedings of the Seventh World Congress of Jewish Studies. Vol. 2: Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, edited by David Krone, English section, 17–27. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1981. Halperin, David J. The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1980. ———. “Origen, Ezekiel’s Merkabah, and the Ascension of Moses.” Church History 50 (1981): 261–75. Hampshire, Stuart. Thought and Action. London: Chatto and Windus, 1959. Harnack, Adolf. Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God. Translated by John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma. Durham: Labyrinth Press, 1990 (first edition 1924). Harrison, Jane E. Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens. London: Macmillan, 1890. ———. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. New York: Meridian, 1955. ———. Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. Cambridge: University Press, 1912. Harvey, Warren Zev. “How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed, I, 1” [Heb]. Daat 21 (1988): 5–23. ———. “Judah Halevi’s Synesthetic Theory of Prophecy and a Note on the Zohar” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): 141–55. Hayes, Christine. What’s Divine about Divine Law? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Heiler, Friedrich. Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion. Translated and edited by Samuel McComb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1958. Heinemann, Isaak. The Reasons for the Commandments in Jewish Thought: From the Bible to the Renaissance. Translated by Leonard Levin. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2008. Heinemann, Joseph. Prayer in the Talmud: Forms and Patterns. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1977. Hellner-Eshed, Melila. A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar. Translated by Nathan Wolski. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Bibliography

Heschel, Abraham J. “Did Maimonides Believe that He Had Attained the Rank of Prophet?” In Heschel, Prophetic Inspiration after the Prophets: Maimonides and Other Medieval Authorities, 69–126. Edited by Morris M. Faierstein. Hoboken: Ktav, 1996. ———. Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations. Edited and translated by Gordon Tucker with Leonard Levin. New York: Continuum, 2005. ———. “The Mystical Element in Judaism.” In The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion, edited by Louis Finkelstein, vol. 2, 932–53. New York: Harper, 1960. ———. A Passion for Truth. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973. ———. The Prophets. New York: Harper, 1969–1975. Higger, Michael. “Intention in Talmudic Law.” In Studies in Jewish Jurisprudence, edited by Edward M. Gerschfield, vol. 1, 293–342. New York: Hermon, 1971. Hollenback, Jess Byron. Mysticism: Experience, Response, and Empowerment. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Horovitz, Joseph. “Muhammeds Himmelfahrt.” Der Islam 11 (1919): 159–83. Hotam, Yotam. Modern Gnosis and Zionism: The Crisis of Culture, Life Philosophy and Jewish National Thought. Translated by Avner Greenberg. London: Routledge, 2013. Hubert, Henri, and Marcel Mauss. Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function. Translated by W. D. Halls. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964. Hurwitz, Siegmund. Archetypische Motive in der Chassidischen Mystik. Zurich: Rascher, 1952. Huss, Boaz. “Martin Buber’s Introduction to the Stories of Rabbi Nachman and the Genealogy of Jewish Mysticism” [Heb]. In By the Well: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and Halakhic Thought Presented to Gerald J. Blidstein, edited by Uri Ehrlich, Howard Kreisel, and Daniel J. Lasker, 97–121. Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2008. ———. “The Theologies of Kabbalah Research.” Modern Judaism 34, no. 1 (2014): 3–26. Huxley, Julian. “The Courtship Habits of the Great Crested Grebe.” Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 35 (1914): 491–562. Idel, Moshe. “Abraham Abulafia’s Work and Doctrine” [Heb]. PhD dissertation, Hebrew University, 1976. ———. Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders. Budapest: Central European Academic Press, 2005. ———. “The Battle of the Urges: Psychomacia in the Prophetic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafiah” [Heb]. In Peace and War in Jewish Culture, edited by Avriel Bar-Levav, 99–143. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2006. ———. “Enoch Is Metatron.” Immanuel 24–25 (1990): 220–40. ———. “Enoch—The Mystical Cobbler” [Heb]. Kabbalah 5 (2000): 265–86. ———. “Female Beauty: A Chapter in the History of Jewish Mysticism” [Heb]. In Within Hasidic Circles: Studies in Hasidism in Memory of Mordecai Wilensky, edited by Immanuel Etkes et al., 317–34. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1999. ———. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid. Albany: SUNY Press, 1990.

567

568

Bibliography

———. Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. ———. “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Ecstatic Kabbalah.” In Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 69–103. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988. Also published as Idel, “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Ecstatic Kabbalah” [Heb]. In Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 84–111. Jerusalem: Academon, 1990. ———. “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Jewish Philosophy” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1988): 39–60. ———. “Inquiries into the Doctrine of Sefer Ha-Meshiv” [Heb]. Sefunot 17 (1983): 185–266. ———. “The Jubilee in Jewish Mysticism.” In Millenarismi nella cultura contemporanea, edited by Rambaldi, Enrico I, 209–32. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000. ———. Kabbalah and Eros. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. ———. Kabbalah: New Perspectives. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. ———. Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia. Translated by Menahem Kallus. Albany, SUNY Press, 1989. ———. Messianic Mystics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. ———. “Metatron: Notes on the Development of the Myth in Judaism” [Heb]. In Eshel Beer-Sheva. Vol. 4: Myth in Judaism, edited by Havivah Pedayah, 29–44. Beersheva: BenGurion University of the Negev Press, 1996. ———. The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia. Translated by Jonathan Chipman. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988. ———. Nocturnal Kabbalists [Heb]. Translated by Nir Ratskovski. Jerusalem: Carmel, 2006. ———. “On the Language of Ecstatic Experience in Jewish Mysticism.” In Religionen— Religiose Erfahrung; Religions—The Religious Experience, edited by Tilo Schabert and Matthias Riedl, 43–84. Wurzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2008. ———. “The Parable of the Son of the King and the Imaginary Walls in Early Hasidism” [Heb]. In Judaism: Topics, Fragments, Faces, Identities: Jubilee Volume in Honor of Rivka Horwitz, edited by Haviva Pedaya and Ephraim Meir, 87–116. Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2007. ———. “Prayer, Ecstasy, and ‘Alien Thoughts’ in the Religious Experience of the Besht” [Heb]. In Let the Old Make Way for the New: Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Eastern European Jewry Presented to Immanuel Etkes, edited by David Assaf and Ada Rapoport-Albert. Vol. 1: Hasidism and the Musar Movement, 57–120. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2009. ———. “Preface.” In Idel, Jewish Mystical Autobiographies: The Book of Visions and Megillat Setarim, xv–xx. Translated and introduced by Morris M. Faierstein. New York: Paulist Press, 1969. ———. “The Sefirot above the Sefirot” [Heb]. Tarbiz 51 (1981–1982): 60–111. ———. Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988. ———. “Types of Redemptive Activity in the Middle Ages” [Heb]. In Messianism and Eschatology: A Collection of Essays, edited by Zvi Baras, 253–79. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1983.

Bibliography

———. “Universalization and Integration: Two Conceptions of Mystical Union in Jewish Mysticism.” In Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, edited by Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn, 27–57. New York: Continuum, 1996. ———. “The World of Angels in Human Form” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3, no. 1–2 (1983–1984): 1–66. Idel, Moshe, and Bernard McGinn (eds.). Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. New York: Continuum, 1996. Inge, William Ralph. Christian Mysticism: Delivered in Eight Lectures before the University of Oxford. London: Methuen, 1899. Ish-Shalom, Benjamin. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1990. Jacobson, Yoram. “Truth and Faith in Gur Hasidic Thought” [Heb]. In Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby, edited by Joseph Dan and Joseph Hacker, 593–616. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986. Jaeger, Werner. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. 2. Translated by Gilbert Hihght. New York: Oxford University Press, 1943. James, William. Pragmatism, and Four Essays from the Meaning of Truth. New Delhi: Eurasia, 1975. ———. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1928. Janicaud, Dominique, et al. Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000. Jonas, Hans. “The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice.” In Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz, edited by Lawrence Vogel, 131–43. Translated by Paul Schuchman and Lawrence Vogel. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996. ———. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963. ———. “Matter, Mind, and Creation: Cosmological Evidence and Cosmogonic Speculation.” In Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz, edited by Lawrence Vogel, 165–97. Translated by Paul Schuchman and Lawrence Vogel. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996. ———. “Myth and Mysticism: A Study of Interiorization in Religious Thought.” The Journal of Religion 49 (1969): 315–29. Also published in Jonas, Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man, 291–304. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974. ———. Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Jung, Carl G. “General Aspects of Dream Psychology.” In The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. Also published in Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, edited by Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler, and R. F. C. Hull, vol. 8, 237–57.

569

570

Bibliography

———. On the Psychology of the Unconscious. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. New York: Pantheon, 1953. Also published in Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, edited by Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler, and R. F. C. Hull, vol. 7, 3–117. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966– ———. Psychology and Religion. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969. Also published in Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, edited by Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler, and R. F. C. Hull, vol. 11, 3–105. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966– ———. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969. Also published in Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, edited by Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler, and R. F. C. Hull, vol. 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966– Kadushin, Max. Worship and Ethics: A Study in Rabbinic Judaism. New York: Bloch, 1963. Kaminka, Armand (Aaron). Studies in the Bible, the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, vol. 2: Studies in the Talmud [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1951. Katz, Dov. The Musar Movement: Its History, Leading Personalities, and Doctrines. Translated by Leonard Oschry. Tel Aviv: Orly Press, 1975. Tenu‘at ha-Musar: Its History, Leading Personalities, and Doctrines [Heb], vol. 4. Tel Aviv: Abraham Zioni Press, 1967. Katz, Joseph. Plotinus’ Search for the Good. New York: King’s Crown Press, 1950. Katz, Steven T. (ed.). Mysticism and Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. ———. Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. ———. Mysticism and Religious Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. ———. Mysticism and Sacred Scripture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Katz, Yael. “The Mythic Meaning of Blood in the Biblical Cult” [Heb]. PhD dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 2008. Kaufmann, Walter. “Existentialism (and Phenomenology)” [Heb]. In Modern Trends in Philosophy, edited by Asa Kasher and Shalom Lappin, 251–77. Tel Aviv: Yahdav, 1982. Kauffmann, Tsippi. In All Your Ways Know Him: The Concept of God and Avodah be-Gashmiyut in the Early Stages of Hasidism [Heb]. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2009. Kaufmann, Yehezkel. History of the Religion of Israel [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1960. Klein-Braslavy, Sara. Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Adam Stories in Genesis [Heb]. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1986. ———. Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Story of Creation [Heb]. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1987. Knohl, Israel. “‘A Parasha Concerned with Accepting the Kingdom of Heaven’” [Heb]. Tarbiz 53 (1983): 11–31. ———. The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School. Translated by Jackie Feldman and Peretz Rodman. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995.

Bibliography

Kosman, Admiel. “Obedience to the Law Versus Spontaneous Charismatic Action: Halakhah, Magic and Dialogue” [Heb]. Bar-Ilan Law Studies 18, no. 1–2 (2002): 219–47. Kreisel, Howard. Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001. Kugel, James L. “Topics in the History of the Spirituality of the Psalms.” In Jewish Spirituality, vol. 1: From the Bible through the Middle Ages, edited by Arthur Green, 113–44. New York: Crossroad, 1996. Landman, Leo. “The Guilt-Offering of the Defiled Nazirite.” Jewish Quarterly Review N. S. 60 (1970): 345–52. Lange, Frederick Albert. The History of Materialism: And Criticism of Its Present Importance. Translated by Ernest Chester Thomas. New York: Humanities Press, 1950. Laski, Marghanita. Ecstasy: A Study of Some Secular and Religious Experiences. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. Lavie, Peretz. Lectures on Sleep and Dreaming [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1981. Leclerq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture. New York: Fordham University Press, 1961. Leeuw, Gerardus van der. Religion in Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology. Translated by J. E. Turner. London: Allen and Unwin, 1938. Leibowitz, Yeshayahu. Body and Mind: The Psycho-Physical Problem [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1983. Levi Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Translated by Claire Jacobson and Brook Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Basic Books, 1963. Levin, Israel. Abraham Ibn Ezra: His Life and Poetry [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1976. Levin, Yehudah Leib. Beit Kotsk—Ha-Saraf: Biography of the Great Admor of Kotsk [Heb]. Bnei Brak: Harim Levin Publishers, 1972. Levinson, Joshua. The Twice-Told Tale: A Poetics of the Exegetical Narrative in Rabbinic Midrash [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005. Levy-Bruhl, Lucien. The Notebooks on Primitive Mentality. Translated by Peter Riviere. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975. ———. Primitive Mentality. Translated by L. A. Clare. New York: AMS Press, 1978. Lewin, Isaac. “The Meaning of the Dream in Modern Psychology and in Judaism” [Heb]. In The Spectrum of Opinions and Worldviews on Dreams in Jewish Culture, edited by Dror Kerem, 17–34. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1995. ———. The Psychology of Dream [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Dekel, 1980. Lewis, Clarence Irving. Mind and the World-Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge. New York: Scribner’s, 1929. Lewis, I. M. Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession. London: Routledge, 2003. Licht, Jacob. “Lev, Levav [Heart]” [Heb]. In Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. 4, cols. 412–15. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1962.

571

572

Bibliography

———. “Tzom [Fast]” [Heb]. In Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. 6, cols. 692–95. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1971. Liebes, Esther. “Love and Creation: The Thought of Baruch of Kosov” [Heb]. PhD dissertation, Hebrew University, 1997. ———. “The Messianic Idea in Hasidism” [Heb]. In The Latest Phase: Essays on Hasidism by Gershom Scholem, edited by David Assaf and Esther Liebes, 306–12. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2009. Liebes, Yehuda. “De Natura Dei: On the Jewish Myth and Its Development” [Heb]. In Massu’ot: Studies in Kabbalistic Literature and Jewish Philosophy in Memory of Prof. Ephraim Gottlieb, edited by Michal Oron and Amos Goldreich, 243–97. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1994. ———. “The Externalization of the Esoteric: From the Talmud to the Heikhalot Literature” [Heb]. In Liebes, God’s Story: Collected Essays on the Jewish Myth, 163–75. Jerusalem: Carmel, 2009. ———. “The Love of God and His Jealousy” [Heb]. Dimui 7 (1994): 30–36. ———. “The Messiah in the Zohar” [Heb]. In The Messianic Idea in Jewish Thought: A Study Conference in Honour of the Eightieth Birthday of Gershom Scholem. Held December 4–5, 1977, edited by Shmuel Reem, 87–236. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1982. ———. The Sin of Elisha [Heb]. Jerusalem: Akademon, 1990. ———. “‘Two Young Roes of a Doe’: The Secret Sermon of Isaac Luria before His Death” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 10 (1992): 113–69. ———. “Zohar and Eros” [Heb]. Alpayim 9 (1994): 67–119. Lobel, Diana. A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue: Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Loewenthal, Naftali. Communicating the Infinite: The Emergence of the Habad School. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Lorberbaum, Menachem. “A Theory of Action in Halakhah: Intention in the Commandments” [Heb]. Master’s thesis, Hebrew University, 1998. Lorberbaum, Yair. Image of God: Halakhah and Aggadah [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Schocken, 2004. Abridged English edition: In God’s Image: Myth, Theology, and Law in Classical Judaism. Translated by Michael Prawer. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. ———. “Imago Dei” [Heb]. PhD dissertation, Hebrew University, 1997. ———. “Maimonides on Imago Dei: Philosophy and Law—The Felony of Murder, the Criminal Procedure and Capital Punishment” [Heb]. Tarbiz 68 (1999): 533–66. Lorenz, Konrad. “Evolution of Ritualization in the Biological and Cultural Aspects.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London series B 251 (1966): 273–84. ———. On Aggression. Translated by Marjorie Latzke. London: Methuen, 1967. Lowy, S. “The Motivation of Fasting in Talmudic Literature.” Journal of Jewish Studies 9 (1958): 19–38.

Bibliography

Mach, Michael. Entwicklungsstadien des jüdischen Engelglaubens in vorrabbinischer Zeit. Tubingen: Mohr, 1992. Malcolm, Norman. “Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.” The Philosophical Review 63, no. 4 (October 1954): 530–59. Maloney, George A. Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorskij. The Hague: Mouton, 1973. Mansfield, Nick. Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Marcus, Ahron (Verus). Der Chassidismus: Eine Kulturgeschichtliche Studie. Pleschen: Jeschurun, 1901. ———. Hartmann’s Inductive Philosophie im Chassidismus. Lemberg: Wolf, 1889. Margaliot, Reuben. Angels of the Most High [Heb]. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1988. Margolin, Ron. “Abraham the Seer—Martin Buber’s Interpretation of Abraham and the Hasidic Origins of His Interpretations” [Heb]. In The Faith of Abraham, edited by Moshe Halamish, Hannah Kasher, and Yochanan Silman, 295–309. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2002. ———. “On the Essence of Faith in Hasidism: An Historical-Theoretical Perspective.” In Faith: Jewish Perspectives, ed. Avi Sagi and Dov Schwartz, 302–366, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013. ———. “From the Study of Gnosis to the Concept of God after Auschwitz: The Biography and Philosophy of Hans Jonas” [Heb]. Introduction to Jonas, Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz, 7–43. Translated by Danit Dotan. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2004. ———. Human Temple: Religious Interiorization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005. English edition: Human Temple: Religious Interiorization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. ———. “Physiognomy and Chiromancy: From Prediction and Diagnosis to Healing and Human Correction (Zohar 2, 70a-78a; Tiqqunei Zohar, Tiqqun 70)” [Heb]. Te‘uda 21–22 (2007): 199–49. ———. “The Various Faces of the Jewish Myth: From the Bible to Its Conceptual Interiorization in Hasidism” [Heb]. Te‘uda 26 (2014): 137–219. Mark, Zvi. Mysticism and Madness: The Religious Thought of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2009. Markus, R. A. “Marius Victorinus and Augustine.” In The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, edited by Arthur Hilary Armstrong, 329–424. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Marmorstein, A. The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God. London: Oxford University Press, 1927. Martin, Michael. Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990. Massignon, Louis. The Passion of al-Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Translated by Herbert Mason. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

573

574

Bibliography

Mauss, Marcel. “A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person, the Notion of Self.” In The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, edited by Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes, 1–25. Translated by W. D. Halls. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. McCutcheon, Russel T. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. McGinn, Bernard. The Foundations of Mysticism, part 1: The Historical Roots of Western Mysticism. New York: Crossroad, 1995. McIntyre, Ronald, and David Woodruff. Husserl and Intentionality: A Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982. ———. “Theory of Intentionality.” In Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook, edited by J. N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna, 147–79. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1989. Meiland, Jack W. The Nature of Intention. London: Methuen, 1970. Merlan, Philip. Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness: Problems of the Soul in the Neoaristotelian and Neoplatonic Traditions. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963. Meroz, Ronit. “Joseph Angelet and His Zoharic Writings” [Heb]. Te‘uda 21–22 (2007): 303–404. ———. “Selections from Ephraim Penzieri: Luria’s Sermon in Jerusalem and the Kawanah in Taking Food” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 10 (1992): 211–57. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Ninth Edition. Springfield: Merriam-Webster, 1991. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. Springfield: Merriam-Webster, 1999. Monroe, Robert A. Journeys Out of the Body. Garden City: Doubleday, 1971. Moore, George Foot. Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Mopsik, Charles. Les grands textes de la Cabale: Le rites qui font Dieu. Paris: Verdier, 1993. Muffs, Yochanan. Love & Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992. Muldoon, Sylvan, and Carrington Hereward. The Projection of the Astral Body. New York: Weiser, 1974. Muller, F. Max. Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1905. Naeh, Shlomo. “‘Creates the Fruit of the Lips’: A Phenomenological Study of Prayer according to Mishnah Berakhot 4:3, 5:5” [Heb]. Tarbiz 63, no. 2 (1994): 185–218. ———. “The Structure and the Division of Torat Kohanim (A): Scrolls” [Heb]. Tarbiz 66, no. 4 (1997): 483–515; ———. “The Structure and the Division of Torat Kohanim (B): Parashot, Perakim, Halakhot” [Heb]. Tarbiz 69 (1999–2000): 59–104. Needles, William. “Stigmata Occurring in the Course of Psychoanalysis.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1943): 23–39.

Bibliography

Neumann, Erich. Das Bild des Menschen in Krise und Erneuerung. Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1960. ———. Depth Psychology and a New Ethic. Translated by Eugene Rolfe. New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1969. ———. “Mystical Man.” In The Mystic Vision: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, edited by Joseph Campbell, 375–415. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970. Neusner, Jacob. Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah. Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1968. Nigal, Gedalyah. “Dybbuk” Tales [Heb]. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1994. Nwyia, Paul. Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah (m. 709/1309) et la Naissance de la confrerie sadilite. Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1972. Orenstein, Robert E. The Psychology of Consciousness. San Francisco: Freeman, 1972. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational. Translated by John W. Harvey. London: Oxford University Press, 1970. ———. Mysticism East and West. Translated by Bertha L. Bracey and Richenda C. Payne. New York: Macmillan, 1932. Pachter, Mordechai. “The Book ‘Re’shit Ḥokhmah’ by R. Eliyahu De-Vidas and Its Epitomes” [Heb]. Kirjath Sepher 47 (1971–1972): 686–709. ———. “Joseph Karo’s Maggid Mesharim as a Book of Ethics” [Heb]. Daat 21 (1988): 57–83. ———. “Katnut and Gadlut in Lurianic Kabbalah” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 10 (1992): 171–210. ———. “The Theory of Devekut in the Writings of the Sages of Safed in the Sixteenth Century” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3 (1982): 57–83. ———. “Traces of the Influence of R. Elijah de Vidas’s Re’shit Ḥokhmah upon the Writings of R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye” [Heb]. In Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby, edited by Joseph Dan and Joseph Hacker, 569–91. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986. Pavlik, Jan. “Brentano’s Theory of Intentionality.” Brentano Studien 3 (1991): 63–70. Pedaya, Haviva. “‘Possessed by Speech’: Towards an Understanding of the Prophetic-Ecstatic Pattern among Early Kabbalists” [Heb]. Tarbiz 65, no. 4 (1996): 565–636. ———. “Seeing, Falling, Song and Longing—Seeing God and the Spiritual Element in Early Jewish Mysticism” [Heb]. Asufot 9 (1995): 237–77. ———. “Two Types of Ecstatic Experience in Hasidism” [Heb]. Daat 55 (2005): 73–108. ———. Vision and Speech: Models of Revelatory Experience in Jewish Mysticism [Heb]. Los Angeles: Cherub, 2002. Pepin, Jean. Mythe et Allegorie: Les origines grecques et les contestations judeo-chretiennes. Aubier: Montaigne, 1958. Piekarz, Mendel. Beginning of Hasidism: Ideological Trends in Derush and Musar Literature [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1998.

575

576

Bibliography

———. The Hasidic Leadership: Authority and Faith in Tzadiqim [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1999. ———. “‘The Inner Point’ of the Admorim of Gur and Alexander as a Reflection of Their Ability to Adjust to Changing Times” [Heb]. In Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby, edited by Joseph Dan and Joseph Hacker, 617–60. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986. Pines, Shlomo. A History of Jewish Philosophy: Notes from the Lectures of S. Pines [Heb], vol. 1. Jerusalem: Mifal Hashikhpul, 1976. ———. “On the Term Ruḥaniyyot and Its Origin and on Judah Halevi’s Doctrine” [Heb]. Tarbiz 57 (1988): 511–40. ———. Studies in the History of Jewish Philosophy [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1997. Porter, F. C. “The Yecer Hara: A Study in the Jewish Doctrine of Sin.” In Biblical and Semitic Studies: Critical and Historical Essays by the Members of the Semitic and Biblical Faculty of Yale University, 93–156. New York: Scribner’s, 1901. Radhakrishnan, Savepalli. Eastern Religions and Western Thought. London: Oxford University Press, 1940. Rapoport-Albert, Ada. “‘Katnut,’ ‘Peshitut,’ and ‘Eini Yodea’ of R. Nahman of Bratzlav” [Heb]. In Studies in Jewish Religious and Intellectual History Presented to Alexander Altmann on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Siegfried Stein and Raphael Loewe, Hebrew section, 7–33. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979. Rappaport, Roy A. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Reik, Theodor. Ritual: Four Psychoanalytic Studies. Translated by Douglas Bryan. New York: Grove, 1962. Rhine, Joseph Banks. The Reach of the Mind. New York: Sloan, 1947. Rhine, Joseph Banks, and Joseph Gaither Pratt, Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind. Springfield: Thomas, 1957. Robinson, H. Wheeler. “Hebrew Psychology.” In The People and the Book, edited by A. S. Peake, 353–75. Oxford: Clarendon, 1925. Rosenberg, Shalom. “The Arba‘ah Turim of Rabbi Abraham bar Judah, Disciple of Don Hasdai Crescas” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3, no. 4 (1983–1984): 525–621. ———. “The Myth of Myths” [Heb]. Jewish Studies 38 (1998): 145–79. Rosenblatt, Samuel. The High Ways to Perfection of Abraham Maimonides, vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 1927. ———. The High Ways to Perfection of Abraham Maimonides, vol. 2. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1938. Rosen-Zvi, Ishai. “Rereading the Yetzer in Amoraic Literature” [Heb]. Tarbiz 77 (2007– 2008): 71–107. ———. “The School of R. Ishmael and the Origins of the Concept of Yetzer Hara” [Heb]. Tarbiz 76 (2006–2007): 41–79.

Bibliography

———. “Yetzer Hara, Sexuality, and Yiḥud Prohibitions” [Heb]. Theory and Criticism 14 (1999): 55–84. ———. Demonic Desires. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Rosenzweig, Franz. “Atheistic Theology.” In Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings. Translated and edited by Paul W. Franks and Michael L. Morgan, 10–24. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000. ———. Briefe. Berlin: Schocken, 1935. ———. “Mit einer Anmerkung über Anthropomorphismus.” In Rosenzweig, Kleinere Schriften, 525–33. Berlin: Schocken, 1937. Rotenberg, Mordechai. Dialogue with Deviance: The Hasidic Ethic and the Theory of Social Contradiction. Philadelphia: Ishi, 1983. Enlarged Hebrew edition: Dialogue with Deviance: The Hasidic Ethic and the Theory of Social Contradiction. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1990. ———. PaRDeS Hanefesh: The Psycho-Therapeutic Bridge between the Rational and the Mystical [Heb]. Jerusalem: Akademon, 1996. ———. The Yetzer: A Kabbalistic Psychology of Eroticism and Human Sex. Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1997. Rotenstreich, Nathan. “Introductory Chapters” [Heb] to Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, translated by Nathan Rotenstreich, ix–xxvii. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1985. Roth, Leon (Hayyim Yehudah). Religion and Human Values [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1973. Rowe, William. “Religious Experience and the Principle of Credulity.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (1982): 85–92. Sack, Bracha. Kabbalah of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero [Heb]. Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University Press, 1995. Sagi, Avi. “Faith as Temptation.” In Faith: Jewish Perspectives, edited by Avi Sagi and Dov Schwartz, 12–122. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013. ———. Judaism: Between Religion and Morality [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2000. ———. Kierkegaard: Religion and Existence—The Voyage of the Self. Translated by Batya Stein. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. ———. “The Relationship between ‘I-Thou’ and ‘I-Eternal Thou’ in the Philosophy of Martin Buber” [Heb]. Daat 7 (1981): 139–54. Sagi, Avi, and Daniel Statman. “Divine Command Morality and Jewish Tradition.” Journal of Religious Ethics 23, no. 1 (1995): 39–67. ———. Religion and Morality. Translated by Batya Stein. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995. Sarna, Nahum M. Exodus. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991. Schaechter, Yosef. Gate to a Philosophical Creed: Essays [Heb]. Jerusalem: Neuman, 1972. ———. “The Kohen: His Nature and Character according to Ernst Fuhrmann” [Heb]. In Cy Schaechter, Contemporary Judaism and Education, 214–52. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1966. ———. Reflections on Dilemmas of Our Time: Essays [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1970. Schafer, Peter. Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur [Heb]. Tubingen: Mohr, Siebeck, 1981.

577

578

Bibliography

Scharfstein, Ben-Ami. Ineffability: The Failure of Words in Philosophy and Religion. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993. Schatz Uffenheimer, Rivka. Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietist Elements in Eighteenth-Century Hasidic Thought. Translated by Jonathan Chipman. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993. Schechter, Solomon. Aspects of Rabbinic Theology. Woodstock: Jewish Lights, 1993 (first edition 1909). ———. “The Chassidim.” In Schechter, Studies in Judaism, vol. 1, 1–45. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1896. Scheindlin, Raymond P. The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991. Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975. Schleicher, Marianne. Intertextuality in the Tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav: A Close Reading of Sippurey Ma’asiyot. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Schofer, Jonathan Wyn. The Making of a Sage: A Study of Rabbinic Ethics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. Scholem, Gershom G. (Gerhard). Beginnings of the Kabbalah (1150–1250) [Heb]. Jerusalem: Schocken, 1948. ———. “Der Begriff der Kawwana in der alten Kabbala.” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 78 (1934): 492–518. ——— (as Gershom Scholem). “The Concept of Kavvanah in the Early Kabbalah.” In Studies in Jewish Thought: An Anthology of German Jewish Scholarship, edited by Alfred Jospe, 162–80. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981. ———. “‘Devekut’ or ‘Intimate Contact with God’ in Early Hasidism” [Heb]. In Scholem. Explications and Implications, 325–50. Tel Aviv: Am-Oved, 1975. ———. “The ‘Divine Mentor’ of Rabbi Yosef Taitazak and the Revelations Attributed to Him” [Heb]. Sefunot 11 (1971–1978): 69–112. ———. Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1965. ———. “Is Nahmanides the Author of Iggeret Ha-Kodesh?” [Heb]. Kirjath Sepher 21 (1944– 1945): 179–86. ———. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken, 1961. ———. “Martin Buber’s Interpretation of Hasidism.” In Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays in Jewish Spirituality, 228–50. New York: Schocken, 1995. ———. “The Neutralization of Messianism in Early Hasidism.” In Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays in Jewish Spirituality, 178–202. New York: Schocken, 1995. ———. On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Schocken, 1969.

Bibliography

———. On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, 56–87. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel, edited by Jonathan Chipman. New York: Schocken, 1991. ———. Origins of the Kabbalah. Translated by Allan Arkush, edited by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987. ———. Sabbatai Sevi; The Mystical Messiah. Translated by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. ———. “Sitra Ahra: Good and Evil in the Kabbalah.” In Sholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, 56–87. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel, edited by Jonathan Chipman. New York: Schocken, 1991. ———. “The Subconscious and the Concept of Kadmut ha-Sekhel in Hasidic Literature” [Heb]. In Sholem, Explications and Implications, 351–60. Tel Aviv: Am-Oved, 1975. Also published in The Latest Phase: Essays on Hasidism by Gershom Scholem, 268–76. Edited by David Assaf and Esther Liebes. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2008. Schoman, Marjorie. “A Psychophysiological Model of Meditation and Altered States of Consciousness: A Critical Review.” In The Psychobiology of Consciousness, edited by Julian M. Davidson and Richard J. Davidson, 333–78. New York: Plenum, 1980. Schonfeld, Eli. The Wonder of Subjectivity: A Reading of Levinas’s Philosophy [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2007. Schwarcz, Moshe. Language, Myth, Art [Heb]. Jerusalem: Schocken, 1967. Segal, Robert A. Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ——— (ed.). The Myth and Ritual Theory: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. Seigel, Jerrold. The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Sen, Soshitsu. Tea Life, Tea Mind. New York: Uraseknke Foundation [by] Weatherhill, 1979. Sendor, Mark Brian. “The Emergence of Provencal Kabbalah: Rabbi Isaac the Blind’s Commentary on Sefer Yezirah.” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1994. Sen’o, Tanaka. The Tea Ceremony. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1998. Shanon, Benny. The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Shatz, Rivka. “The Commentary of R. Israel Baal Shem Tov to Psalm CVII: The Myth and Ritual of ‘The Descent to She’ol’” [Heb]. Tarbiz 42 (1972–1973): 154–84. Shinan, Avigdor. “The Dream in Midrash and the Midrash of the Dream” [Heb]. In The Spectrum of Opinions and Worldviews on Dreams in Jewish Culture, edited by Dror Kerem, 43–61. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1995. Shoham, S. Giora. The Bridge to Nothingness: Gnosis, Kabala, Existentialism, and the Transcendental Predicament of Man. Rutherford: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994. Shokek, Shimon. “The Relationship between Sefer Ha-Yashar and the Gerona Circle” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 6, no. 3–4 (1987): 366–73.

579

580

Bibliography

Shulman, David, and Guy Stroumsa (eds.). Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Sigad, Ran. Studies in Existentialism [Heb]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1975. Silberg, Moshe. Principia Talmudica [Heb]. Jerusalem: Law Faculty, Hebrew University, 1984. Silman, Yohanan. “Halakhic Determinations of a Nominalistic and Realistic Nature: Legal and Philosophical Considerations” [Heb]. Dine Israel 12 (1984–1985): 85–93. Simmel, Georg. Essays on Religion. Edited and translated by Horst Jurgen Helle in collaboration with Ludwig Nieder. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. ———. Sociology of Religion. Translated by Curt Rosenthal. New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. Simon, Uriel. “I Sam. III: A Youth’s Call to Prophecy” [Heb]. In Proceedings of the Seventh World Congress of Jewish Studies. Vol. 2: Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, edited by Dsvid Krone, 85–93. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1981. Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion from Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Smith, William Robertson. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, First Series: The Fundamental Institutions. Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1889. Soloveitchik, Haym. “Three Themes in Sefer Hasidim.” AJS Review 1 (1976): 311–58. Spero, M. H. “The Talmudic Perception of Narcissus: The Subversion of Mirroring by Symbolizing Death.” Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 17 (1944): 137–69. Spiegel, Nathan. Introduction to Plotinus’s Enneades [Heb]. Translated by Nathan Spiegel. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1978. ———. Marcus Aurelius, Emperor and Philosopher [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1980. Spiegel, Shalom. “In Monte Dominus Videbitur: The Martyrs of Blois and the Early Accusations of Ritual Murder” [Heb]. In Mordecai M. Kaplan Jubilee Volume, edited by Moishe Davis, Hebrew section, 267–87. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1953. ———. The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice. Translated by Judah Goldin. New York: Pantheon, 1967. ———. “The Legend of Isaac’s Slaying and Resurrection” [Heb]. In The Abraham Weiss Jubilee Volume, edited by Samuel Belkin, Hebrew section, 553–66. New York: Abraham Weiss Jubilee Committee, 1964. Staal, Frits. Exploring Mysticism: A Methodological Essay. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. Stace, W. T. Mysticism and Philosophy. London: Macmillan, 1961. Stein, M. “Mother Earth in Old Hebrew Literature” [Heb]. Tarbiz 9 (1938): 257–77. Stein, Yehoyakim. The Unconscious in Science and in Psychoanalysis [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005. Steiner, Rudolf. How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation. Translated by Christopher Bamford. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1994.

Bibliography

Stock, Brian. After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Stoeffler, F. Ernest. German Pietism during the Eighteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Strange, Steven K. “The Stoics on the Voluntariness of the Passions.” In Stoicism: Traditions and Transformations, edited by Steven K. Strange and Zack Zupco, 32–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Sviri, Sara. “Spiritual Trends in Pre-Kabbalistic Judeo-Spanish Literature: The Case of Bahya Ibn Paquda and Judah Halevi.” Donaire 6 (1996): 78–84. ———. Sufis: An Anthology [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Mapa, 2008. Swinburne, Richard. Epistemic Justification. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. ———. The Existence of God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. ———. Is There a God? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Talmudic Encyclopedia [Heb], vol. 12. Edited by Shlomo Josef Zevin. Jerusalem: Talmudic Encyclopedia Institute, 1967. Taylor, Charles. Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. ———. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1989. ———. “What Is Human Agency?” In Taylor, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers I, 15–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Tchernowitz, Chaim (Rav Za’ir). Toledoth ha-Halakhah: History of Jewish Law: The Transmission and Development of the Oral Law [Heb], vol. 2. New York: Jubilee Committee, 1945. Tishby, Isaiah. “The Messianic Idea and Messianic Trends in the Growth of Hasidism” [Heb]. Zion 32 (1975): 1–45. Also published in Tishby, Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches: Researches and Sources, 475–519. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993. ———. The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts. Translated by David Goldstein. Oxford: Littman Library, 1989. Trungpa, C. The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation. Boston: Shambhala, 1988. Tschannen, Olivier. “The Secularization Paradigm: A Systematization.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36 (1997): 109–22. Turner, Victor Witter. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine, 1969. Twersky, Isadore. Rabad of Posquieres: A Twelfth Century Talmudist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Uffenheimer, Benjamin. “Myth and Reality in Ancient Israel.” In The Origins and Diversity of Axial Ages Civilizations, edited by S. N. Eisenstadt, 135–68. Albany: SUNY Press, 1986. ———. “Prolegomena to the Problem of Prophecy and Ecstasy” [Heb]. Bar-Ilan: Annual of Bar-Ilan University. Studies in Judaica and the Humanities 22–23 (1987): 45–62. Ullman-Margalit, Edna. “Introduction” [Heb] to Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by Edna Ullman-Margalit, 7–29. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995.

581

582

Bibliography

Underhill, Evelyn. Concerning the Inner Life. Oxford: Oneworld, 1999. ———. Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. New York: Dutton, 1911. Urbach, Ephraim Elimelech. “Ascesis and Suffering in Talmudic and Midrashic Sources” [Heb]. In Yitzhak F. Baer Jubilee Volume, edited by S. W. Baron et al., 48–68. Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1960. Also published in Urbach, The World of the Sages, 437– 58. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. ———. “Halakhah and Prophecy” [Heb]. Tarbiz 18 (1947): 1–27. Also published in Urbach, The World of the Sages, 21–49. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. ———. The Halakhah: Its Sources and Development. Translated by Raphael Posner. Jerusalem, Massada, 1986. ———. “Joab’s End in the Midrash: Political History in the Eyes of the Rabbis” [Heb]. In Urbach, The World of the Sages, 392–402. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. ———. “‘Kol ha-Meqayyem Nefesh Ahat. . . .’ Development of the Version, Vicissitudes of Censorship, and Business Manipulations of Printers” [Heb]. Tarbiz 40 (1971): 268–84. Also published in Urbach, The World of the Sages, 561–77. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. ———. The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs. Translated by Israel Abrahams. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975. ———. “Studies in Rabbinic Views Concerning Divine Providence” [Heb]. In Yehezkel Kaufmann Jubilee Volume: Studies in Bible and Jewish Religion, edited by Menahem Haran, Hebrew section, 122–148. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1960. Also published in Urbach, The World of the Sages, 459–85. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. ———. “The Traditions of Merkabah Mysticism in the Tannaitic Period” [Heb]. In Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom G. Scholem, edited by E. E. Urbach, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, and Ch. Wirszubski, Hebrew section, 1–28. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967. Also published in Urbach, The World of the Sages, 486–513. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. ———. “When Did Prophecy Cease” [Heb]. Tarbiz 17 (1945): 1–11. Also published in Urbach, The World of the Sages, 9–20. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. ———. The World of the Sages [Heb]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. Vajda, Georges. “Passages antichretiens dans Kaf Ha-Qetoret.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 117 (1980): 45–58. Varley, Paul, and Kumakura Isao (eds.). Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. Verbin, Nehama K. “Seeing-As and the Justification of Religious Belief: Reasons and Miracles.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 18 (2001): 501–22. Verman, Mark. The Books of Contemplation: Medieval Jewish Mystical Sources. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. Versnel, Henk S. Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual. Leiden: Brill, 1993.

Bibliography

Vervenne, Marc. “The Blood Is the Life and the Life Is the Blood: Blood as Symbol of Life and Death in Biblical Tradition (Gen. 9,4).” In Ritual and Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, edited by J. Quagebeur, 452–67. Leuven: Peeters, 1993. Vogelin, Eric. Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions, the New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, vol. 5. Edited by Manfred Henningsen. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000. Wainwright, William J. Mysticism: A Study of Its Nature, Cognitive Value, and Moral Implications. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981. Wallis, Richard T. Neoplatonism. London: Duckworth, 1972. ———. “NOUS as Experience.” In The Significance of Neoplatonism, edited by R. Baine Harris, 121–53. Norfolk: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 1976. Walther, Gerda. “On the Psychology of Telepathy.” American Society for Psychical Research 25 (1931): 438–46. ———. “Some Experiences Concerning the Human Aura.” American Society for Psychical Research 26 (1932): 339–46. Weiss, Joseph. “The Early Growth of the Hasidic Way” [Heb]. In Studies in Hasidism, edited by Avraham Rubinstein, 122–81. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1977. ———. Studies in Braslav Hasidism [Heb]. Edited by Mendel Piekarz. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1974. Werblowsky, R. J. Zwi. “Faith, Hope and Trust: A Study in the Concept of Bittahon.” Papers of the Institute of Jewish Studies 1 (1964): 95–139. ———. “Is There a Phenomenology of Religion?” [Heb]. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): 285–92. ———. Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1977. ———. “On the Mystical Rejection of Mystical Illuminations: A Note on St. John of the Cross.” Religious Studies 1 (1966): 177–84. ———. “Some Psychological Aspects of Kabbalah.” Harvest 3 (1956): 1–20. Reprinted in God, the Self and Nothingness: Reflections Eastern and Western, edited by Robert E. Carter, 91–95, 122–24. New York: International Religious Foundation, 1990. Wieder, Naphtali. Islamic Influences on the Jewish Worship [Heb]. Oxford: East and West Library, 1947. Wimbush, Vincent L., and Richard Valentasis. Asceticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Winston, David. “Philo and the Contemplative Life.” In Jewish Spirituality, vol. 1: From the Bible through the Middle Ages, edited by Arthur Green, 198–231. New York: Crossroad, 1996. Wolfson, Elliot R. Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistik Musings on Time. Berkely: University of California Press, 1994. ———. A Dream Interpreted Within Dream. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. ———. “Merkavah Traditions in Philosophical Garb: Judah Halevi Reconsidered.” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 57 (1991): 179–242.

583

584

Bibliography

———. Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Tevision of Menachem Mendel Schneerson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. ———. Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. ———. “Walking as a Sacred Duty: Theological Transformation of Social Reality in Early Hasidism.” In Hasidism Reappraised, edited by Ada Rapoport-Albert, 170–207. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1996. ———. “Weeping, Death and Spiritual Ascent in Sixteenth Century Jewish Mysticism,” in Death, Ecstasy and Other Worldy Journeys, eds. J.J. Collins and M. Fishbane, 207–244. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. Wolfson, Harry Austryn. “The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew Philosophic Texts.” Harvard Theological Review 28 (1935): 69–133. ———. “Maimonides on the Internal Senses.” Jewish Quarterly Review N. S. 25 (1935): 441–67. ———. Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947. Wright, Georg Henrick von. Explanation and Understanding. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971. Yandell, Keith. The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Young, Shinzen (Steven). “Buddhist Meditation.” Appendix to The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction, edited by Richard H. Robinson and Willard L. Johnson, 226–35. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1982. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Zaehner, Robert Charles. Zen, Drugs and Mysticism. New York: Pantheon, 1972. Zeitlin, Aaron. The Other Reality: Parapsychology and Parapsychic Phenomena [Heb]. Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1973. Zeitlin, Hillel. R. Nahman of Bratzlav: His Life and Teachings [Heb]. Warsaw, 1910. Zeitlin, Solomon. “Derelicto in Tannaitic Jurisprudence.” In Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, edited by Saul Liberman, Hebrew section, 365–80. New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945. ———. Studies in the Early History of Judaism, vol. 4: History of Early Talmudic Law. New York: Ktav, 1978.

Index of Subjects abstinence, 127, 314, 346, 404 action and thought, 85, 87, 431 Active Intellect, 42, 174, 184, 247, 306–307, 326, 481, 483, 485, 493–494, 501 alchemy, 226, 276, 418 allegorical interpretation of classical myths, 271–276 angels, 38, 107, 132, 137, 140, 169–170, 183–184, 189–191, 194, 197–200, 202, 241, 248, 286, 308, 381–384, 412, 431, 475, 4 78–479, 506 anger, 62, 68, 106, 304, 344, 362, 374–375, 403 anima and animus, 220 anthropomorphism, 19, 33, 52, 288, 323, 475, 487, 490 anthroposophia, 234–235 antinomianism, 32, 370, 372 apatheia, 427 argument from perception, 526–527, 531 ascent to heaven 237, 238, 240 ascent of the soul, 162, 203–204, 220, 229, 235, 264 asceticism, 12, 39, 73–74, 126–130, 325, 345–347, 351, 355, 373, 380, 387–388, 417–418 opinion of the rabbis, 126–129 Ashkenazi Pietists 492–493 ataraxia, 410, 426 atheism, 19, 23, 32–33, 51, 53 a¯tman, 51, 267–271, 303, 534 atonement through death, 128 atonement through fasting, 126–129 atonement through suffering, 128 automatic speech, 165, 199–202, 500 automatic writing, 165, 202 autosuggestion, 223, 234, 240, 499 avodah be-gashmiyut, 102, 137, 431 awakening below and awakening above, 140, 319, 535–536 ayahuasca, 175–176 Binding of Isaac, 82, 105, 321, 353, 411 body-soul dichotomy, 11, 225, 273, 306, 453

Buddhism, 8, 11, 48, 50–51, 53, 69, 169, 211–212, 214–216, 221, 225, 522, 539 ceremonies, 59–67 initiation, 61, 77 Japanese tea tradition, 69 meaning of, 60, 62–64, 67 rite of passage, 61, 77 choice, 344, 348, 380, 384, 384, 408, 413, 470, 533, 539 Christianity, 9, 31, 52–54, 65, 72–74, 97, 108, 131, 173, 226–228, 264, 347, 350–352, 353–354, 356, 358, 409, 415, 418, 426, 449, 470, 475, 511, 531 Christian mysticism, 11, 51, 74, 155, 212, 230, 265, 274, 382 clairvoyance, 165, 197–198, 242 collectivity and individuality, 77 commandments and the correction of limbs, 119 and their cancellation, 148–156 as a means for connection with God, 137 as a means for elevation, 102 as a means of connection between the supernal and lower worlds, 117–118 as a means of the divine presence in man, 131 intent in performance of, 98, 100–102, 119, 137, 156, 502 interiorization of commandments before the Torah was given, 142–145 preparation for the fulfillment of, 137 ta‘amei ha-mitzvot (meaning of the commandments), 32, 74, 78, 103 Torah study as a substitute for the observance of, 148 communitas, 77 concentration on breathing, 72–73 confession, 23, 227, 317, 356 conversion, 407 contemplation, 41, 51, 53, 70–71, 92, 96, 104–105, 113, 120, 161, 195, 211–260, 279, 318–321, 327, 336, 349, 352, 357,

586

Index of Subjects

387, 394–395, 423, 428, 450, 455, 457, 480, 483, 496, 523, 530 creation of man, 271, 287–288, 299 cultural assimilation, 461 death by a kiss, 490 demythologization, 382 depth psychology, 528–529 despair from not knowing, 466–467 determinism and indeterminism, 7, 54, 368 devekut, 30, 44, 104, 115, 149, 245, 250, 330, 362, 426, 435, 442, 471, 495–496, 504 dhikr, 76, 170, 224, 230 Dionysian rite, 160, 164, 167–168 dispute between Scholem and Buber, 102, 445 Docetism, 475–476 Dreams, 194, 528 hypnagogic dreams, 163, 180, 175 Hasidic, 206–210 of Jacob, 63, 181, 186–190, 281–286 resolution, 186 revelation, 173, 175, 179–181, 184–188, 190, 207 she’eilat halom, 163 symbolic, 179, 185–188, 207, 209–210 “drunkenness in which there is no shame,” 222–224 dualism, 134, 152, 225–226, 306, 332, 369, 371–372, 377, 385 duties of the limbs, 96–97, 101 ecstasy, 23, 29, 42, 48, 92–94, 115, 120, 159–164, 167–168, 175–178, 180, 183–184, 195–196, 199–201, 203, 220, 222–223, 226, 229, 231–236, 238–242, 246–247, 250, 264–265, 309, 332, 357, 359, 381, 408, 461, 526, 529 elevation of alien thoughts, 260 elevation of the holy sparks, 132, 134, 136, 387 in prayer, 386 while eating, 135 elevation of the instinctual contents, 399 Epicureans, 410 ethics, 105–107, 233, 277–279, 318, 343, 347, 355–356, 358, 378, 383, 391, 398–400, 404–405, 418, 420, 427, 536 excitement, 77, 160, 162, 224, 439 existentialism, 8–9, 13, 95, 102, 111, 211, 330, 347–350, 352–362, 387, 409–411, 413–419, 423–446, 457–458, 490, 521 and mystical experience, 227, 357–359 experience as inner unification, 529 contentual, 170–171, 206, 243 expression of subjectivity, 20 mystical moment (waqt), 452

mystical, 11–12, 17, 29–30, 159–171, 196, 203, 217, 221, 226–228, 231, 242, 264–265, 273, 352, 357–359, 408, 461, 473, 526, 528–529 noncontentual, 163, 203, 205, 212, 243, 252 or paranormal phenomenon, 163, 165–166, 175, 178, 197, 199, 202–203, 226, 242, 460 or parapsychological phenomenon, 162, 226, 241 spiritual experience unique to the Zohar, 195 spiritual, 165, 195, 486 universal religious, 212 externalization, extroversion and introversion in the study of mysticism, 17–18, 168, 216, 221, 238–239 faith as inner trust in God, 81–82, 350–352, 409–410, 417–419, 468, 492 faith, 32, 64, 66, 81–82, 104, 169, 248, 254, 265, 283, 331, 341, 350–351, 354–356, 360, 404, 409–411, 413–419, 438, 441, 443–445, 458–459, 468, 500, 512, 524–525, 540 fear of God, 81–82, 280, 441 Garden of Eden, 250 gnosis, 11, 42, 197, 225, 233, 238, 242, 263–264, 270, 360, 521–522, 526, 536–537 God death of God, 8–9, 515 divine presence in man, 139–140, 288–289, 293, 409, 535 great father, 20 interdependence, 291, 312 love of God, 80, 168, 258, 335, 353, 379, 413, 419, 491, 496 morality, 414–417 mutual gazing, 452, 470, 474, 476–477, 479–483 relationship between man and God, 20, 79, 130, 307, 447, 449 great mother, 20 guilt, 67, 281, 317, 356, 365, 399 halal ha-panui (the void), 391 Hasidism, 23, 27, 31, 40, 45–48, 83, 99–105, 118–123, 128, 134–137, 139, 141–142, 148–156, 159, 168, 171, 197, 203, 205–210, 213, 245, 250, 252–260, 283, 298, 309, 326, 328–335, 337–340, 371, 378, 383–392, 394, 396–399, 418, 426, 429–446, 481, 502–513, 522–523, 539 and worldliness, 119

Index of Subjects

avodah be-gashmiyut, 102, 137, 431, 439 inclinations doctrine, 369–370, 372, 378–379, 398 katnut and gadlut (smallness and greatness), 323–324, 329–331, 435–436, 439, 441–442 struggle against alien thoughts, 118–123, 385 tzaddiq, 48, 119–120, 136, 141–142, 209, 333, 335, 337, 398, 436, 439, 441, 511–512 heating of the heart, 246–247 Heikhalot literature, 27, 29, 47, 198–199, 203, 233–237, 239–240, 473–475, 487 heshbon nefesh (spiritual accounting), 45, 429–430 Hinduism, 13, 49–50, 212, 221, 448–449 Vedic religion, 51, 72, 447 hokhmah, 255, 260, 307, 334–335, 337, 432 holy place, 73, 189, 438 humanism, 55 hypnosis, 224, 234, 240–241, 460–461 ibbur (impregnation of a spirit), 199, 202, 323 idolatry, 84, 141–142, 238, 375–376, 417 imagination (see also imaginative faculty), 166, 226, 241, 250, 321, 380, 392, 450, 461, 474–481, 483–488, 496, 499, 519 influencing reality, 499 imaginative faculty (see also imagination), 184, 380–382, 461, 476, 483–485, 487, 493, 499 imitation Dei, 140, 470–471, 482–483 immanence, 34, 51–53, 192, 220, 271, 282–283, 292, 352, 359–361, 436, 449, 458, 468, 505, 513–525, 529, 532, 535–540 immanentism, 13, 18, 520–521, 536 impurity and purity, 95, 106, 108, 114, 131–132, 134, 251, 272, 317, 393, 463–467, 478–479, 492, 497–498 individualism, 8, 53–54, 77, 443 “inner eye”, 301, 481, 483–487 inner feelings, 237 inner intellective perception, 473 “inner man”, 7, 272, 407 inner religious life, 2, 10–14, 17–18, 20–21, 23–24, 27, 30–31, 34, 47, 50–51, 53, 55, 126, 160, 212, 260, 265, 270, 326, 341, 346, 504, 511–514, 517, 522, 525–526, 532, 534, 542 inner truth, 441–443 innerness

and outwardness: negation of the distinction, 230 and outwardness: the blurring of the boundaries, 177, 474 deepest stratum of divinity, 40 divinity that is present in man, 139–140, 288–289, 293, 409, 535 esoteric, 41 penimiut, 35, 37–38, 40–46, 235 preference of the inner, 341, 343, 349–350, 356, 364, 427, 446, 456 study of the divine, 40 instatic states, 168 intentionality, 5, 22, 59, 67, 71, 77–78, 91, 94, 111, 203, 251, 321, 460, 463–467, 498, 514, 524 inner, 61, 72, 79, 87, 111, 115, 160, 199, 509, 519 interiorization active epistemological, 486–487 conceptual, 267–340, 347, 368, 408, 536 epistemological, 95, 113, 115, 117, 145, 245, 260, 283, 326–327, 440, 446–510, 539 existential, 353, 357, 359, 420 of fasting, 72, 126–129 messianic, 332 of language, 495 of law, 267, 277–281 of myth, 264, 267, 276 of prayer, 113, 115 of Providence, 510 of reward and punishment, 362–368 passive epistemological, 481 religious, 15–17, 29–31, 33–34, 50, 53–55, 116, 531, 538 ritual, 59–156, 293, 447, 449 Islam (see also Sufism), 39, 50, 52–54, 74–76, 78, 173, 227, 229, 347, 449 I-Thou, 11, 66, 68, 77, 402, 445, 518 Judean Desert sect, 74, 107–109, 285, 416 Kabbalah Abulafian (ecstatic prophetic), 29, 42, 199–201, 236, 245–248, 250, 309–310, 332–333, 381, 383, 526 and Zohar, 27, 30, 41, 117, 140, 190, 383, 419, 422 Cordovero’s, 41–43, 247, 250, 310–313, 383 Lurianic, 27, 41–44, 99, 118, 134–135, 323–324, 329, 336, 387, 391, 423 of Castille (ha-ahim ha-kohanim), 40, 383 of Gerona, 40, 248–249, 301

587

588

Index of Subjects

of Provence, 40 of Safed, 41, 199–202, 310, 383, 496–500 prayer in, 115–118 study of, 40, 52 theosophic, 29, 42, 306–307, 309, 333, 335, 421, 502 kadmut ha-sekhel, 338 katnut and gadlut, 323–324, 329–331, 435–436, 439, 441 kavanah (intent), 36–37, 86, 88, 90–92, 95, 99, 101, 113–114, 116, 251, 257, 405, 419 in divine Names, 118, 307, 500 in eating, 129, 132, 135, 137 in prayer, 91, 95, 99, 105, 117–122, 231–232, 248–252, 422, 435, 487 in the commandments, 98, 100–102, 119, 137, 156, 502 in the letters of prayer, 206, 254–256 in the meaning of words, 96 in thoughts, 99, 321–322, 491 intentionality toward God, 111, 321, 487, 501, 514 of Akedah, 109–111 separation from materiality, 102 tzaddik’s, 119–120 Kiddush Hashem, 131 knowledge, 512 Land of Israel, 8, 146, 155, 332, 417 letter combination, 201, 246, 493 lev (heart) and penimiut, 37–38, 45 and the spring, 327, 436–439, 441, 523 as divinity, 298–301, 313–314, 326 avodah be-lev, 39 ein ha-lev, 38 knowledge and thought, 35–36 lifnim mi-shurat ha-din (going beyond the demands of strict law), 37, 277–279 love love and fear (awe), 118, 258–259, 331–332, 367 love between friends (see also proverb “as face answers to face in water”), 319–320, 423 love of God, 13, 80, 168, 258, 335, 353, 379, 413, 419, 426, 491, 483, 496 Ma‘aseh Merkabah, 193–194 maggidism, 199–202 magic, 77, 190, 198–199, 203–204, 247, 301, 477–478, 505–507 makom (the Omnipresent), 90, 98, 128, 188– 189, 281–286, 291–292, 353, 373, 377

man as microcosm, 140, 286, 295, 299–302, 306, 308–311, 333 man as temple, 141 meditation, 22, 36, 76, 93, 96, 115, 120, 167, 169, 200, 214–216, 218, 221, 225, 228, 230, 237–238, 242, 249, 300, 385, 482, 495, 500–502, 532 messiah, 150, 203–205, 324, 383, 387, 409, 416–417 inner messianism, 331–332 metaphysics, 23, 53–55, 70, 161, 214, 221, 231, 264, 459–460, 462, 490, 512–515, 521, 523, 532, 534, 537 microcosm and macrocosm, 140, 286, 294–295, 299–302, 306–314, 333 monism, 306, 369, 371, 377, 385 Mussar movement, 385, 392–398, 418 Mussar: medieval mussar literature (see also Mussar movement), 95–99, 378, 385, 391–398, 404–405, 418 mysteries, 164 mysticism Christian, 51, 74, 155, 212, 230, 265, 274, 382 dialogical, 358, 423, 426, 429, 445 ecstatic, 48, 203, 232–233, 240 extroverted and introverted, 17–18, 216, 221, 238 Jewish, 12, 27–28, 30–31, 168, 177, 235, 526 of knowledge, 18, 216, 221 of the unifying vision, 216, 220 Sufi, 11, 39, 230, 491 Unio Mystica, 211, 218, 221, 230, 264, 426, 447, 529 myth, 10, 14–15, 18, 29–30, 51, 59–63, 68, 72, 77, 106, 112, 130, 198–199, 213–214, 239, 243, 263–265, 267, 270–271, 273, 275–276, 281, 283, 287, 295, 297, 382–383, 426, 431, 496, 515, 531, 537 and mysticism, 263–265 narcissism, 374 nefesh (soul), 202, 287, 290, 302, 314, 325, 333–334, 337, 423–424 human soul: its divine nature, 272, 274 nefesh, ruah, and neshamah, 46, 127, 296–299, 313, 386 nekudah penimit (inner point), 43, 46, 328–329 New Age, 522, 525–526 nihilism, 7, 416–417, 426, 521, 536, 539 nullification, 346, 349 outer religious life, 12, 17

Index of Subjects

paradox, 16, 104, 140, 341, 409, 414, 416, 438, 461, 506 penimiut and hitzoniut, 42–44 personal responsibility, 378, 408, 422–423, 430, 474, 490, 532–533, 541 phenomenology, 1, 3, 21–24, 31, 50–51, 61, 167–168, 176, 239, 303, 460, 509, 513–520 comparative, 34, 47–48, 50, 55, 531 power of mind, 331 power of speech, 238, 257–258, 493 prayer alien thoughts during, 105, 120–121, 260 and enthusiasm, 253 and intent (kavanah), 91, 95, 99, 105, 117–122, 231–232, 248–252, 422, 435, 487 and sacrifice, 108–113 Baal Shem Tov’s, 204–206, 252 change of the consciousness during, 224 ecstatic, 94, 120, 231–232 for a sublime need, 252 in Hasidism (see also Hasidism: struggle against alien thoughts), 105, 118–123 in the Kabbalah, 115–118 mystical, 230 passive, 93–95 public and individual, 3, 66–67, 205 regular and personal, 66, 113, 366, 404, 519 prophecy, 93, 105, 107, 112, 124–125, 171, 173–185, 192, 199–201, 242–243, 246, 250–251, 427, 462, 474, 477, 479, 481, 483, 485, 493 prophesying, 165, 169, 178, 183, 232, 246–247, 252 inner, 493 proverb “As face answers to face in water”, 319–320, 423 proverb about the king and his son, 506–508 proverb about the sun, 275–276 proverb of the barriers, 505–506 providence, 78, 82, 114, 364–365, 368, 408, 418, 451–452, 481–483, 488–491, 497, 501–503, 510, 536 as inner intellective matter, 489 psychoanalysis, 4–5, 9, 19–20, 23, 179, 201–202, 208, 309, 338–339, 345–346, 398–400, 522, 528 psychological interpretation of the narratives in the Torah, 321–324

psychologization, 5, 9, 19, 23, 239–240, 264, 308, 310, 332, 483 of the sefirot, 306–314, 332 purposiveness, 185–187 rational and mythical thoughts, 239 rationalism, 17, 32, 235–236, 239, 345–346, 471, 480, 490, 515, 519 rationalization, 77, 112, 171, 489 ratzon (will), 36, 109–111, 117 reading of the Shema, 88–91, 94, 139, 412–413, 472 religion and religiosity, 10 and sociology, 1–2, 8, 10, 50 as a universal phenomenon, 49–50 inner and outer, 11, 26, 34 studies of comparative religion, 48, 50–51, 55 universal religiosity, 358 religious externalization, 18, 29–30, 47, 91 religious feeling, 161, 361 remembrance, 76, 79, 134, 153, 328, 491 remembering the day of death, 395, 405–406 repentance, 15–16, 76, 81, 123–126, 129, 208, 298, 314, 317, 395, 406–407 revelation (see also revelatory dreams), 8, 32–33, 66, 82, 163, 165, 168–171, 173–198, 205, 207, 242, 265, 284–285, 300–301, 407, 469–470, 473, 486, 493, 514, 525, 529, 532 Elijah revealing himself, 191 while studying Torah, 192 reward and punishment, 15–16, 81, 123–124, 362–366, 368, 412, 468, 497 ritual and compulsion, 67–68 biological explanation, 63 discomfort from, 67–69 myth-ritual theory, 59–63 ruah ha-kodesh (spirit of the holy), 200, 244, 308, 433, 492–494 “running and returning”, 253 Sabbateanism, 127, 416–417 Sabbatical year, 88, 324–326 Sabians, 78 sacred eating (sanctity of eating), 129–137 sacrifices and prayer, 108–113 and the Judean desert sect, 107–109 and the prophets, 105–107 intent of the heart and, 88, 91 relation between the sacrificer and, 3, 72, 84, 110–111, 448

589

590

Index of Subjects

substitution for, 72, 83, 105–108, 113, 124, 128–129, 147–148 seclusion (hitbodedut), 44–45, 108, 250–251, 322, 325, 348, 427–429, 439, 519, 532 secularization paradigm, 9, 50 Sefer ha-Iyyun circle, 40, 43 self-consciousness, 14, 31, 164, 232 self-knowledge, 22, 295, 342, 357, 453, 532 self-sacrifice, 127, 151, 153–156 shamanism, 48, 175–176, 235, 238 Shekhinah, 100–101, 104, 118, 195, 205, 234, 248, 258, 292–293, 298, 313–314, 319, 322, 324, 409, 432, 469, 471 “speaking from his throat”, 339 exile and redemption, 315, 386 sight, 39, 174, 184, 197, 216, 220, 277, 280, 290, 401, 472–477, 481, 484–485, 493 of God, 182, 476 sin, 15–16, 53, 73, 81, 84, 87, 91, 106, 128, 134–135, 138, 199, 291, 314, 323, 357, 365, 369, 378–379, 382, 400, 406–407, 412, 423, 451 skepticism, 1, 187, 237, 342, 354, 435, 454–455, 512, 517–518 spirit possession, 159, 174 spiritual activism in the Middle Ages, 488 spiritual sacrifice, 74 spiritual Temple, 74, 108 stoicism, 343, 349, 355, 410 structuralism, 6, 60 subjectivism, 359, 456–457 subjectivity and objectivity, 5, 49, 53–54, 230, 453, 456–460 subjectivity, 1–5, 8–10, 12, 14–16, 18–20, 22–24, 27, 54, 66, 106, 180, 232, 241– 242, 263–265, 273, 278, 342, 346–347, 352–353, 359–360, 391, 403, 406, 436, 443, 454–457, 468, 470, 475–476, 480, 485, 488, 496, 499, 517–518, 524–526, 529, 531–532, 534–535, 538–542 Sufism (see also dhikr), 11, 75–76, 96–97, 113, 168, 170, 175, 212, 224, 229–230, 235, 240, 243, 246–247, 351–352, 450–452, 489 Sufi ideas in Jewish sources, 39, 96–97, 347, 379–380, 382, 417–418, 481–483, 491–492 symbols, 6, 10, 43, 62–65, 73, 77, 79, 101, 108, 112, 125, 167, 171, 176, 179, 185–188, 207–210, 264, 286, 322–323, 335, 390, 417, 431 synesthesia, 487 ta‘amei ha-mitzvot (meaning of the commandments), 32, 74, 78, 103

Taoism, 214, 509 telekinesis, 226 theonomy, 278 Therapeutae, 223–224 “There is no place void of Him,” 283 theurgy, 29, 42, 99, 115–117, 140, 197, 248–249, 258, 314–318, 419, 421–422, 469, 487, 536 thought “where a person thinks, there he is”, 503, 506 and its connection to God, 503–504, 506 that fashions reality, 500–502 Torah study as revelation, 192–197 ecstatic, 195–196 totemism, 19, 346 trance, 163, 165, 167, 169, 174–176, 203, 223–224, 234, 238, 241, 461 transcendence, 28, 33–34, 51–54, 174, 218, 220, 231, 282–283, 291–292, 359–360, 449, 468, 514, 516–518, 521–525, 531–532, 534–538, 540 longing for the transcendent, 532, 538 transcendentalism, 449–460, 520 transmigration (gilgul), 134 true reality, 250, 294, 450, 481, 490, 503 tzaddiq (in Hasidism), 48, 119 tzimtzum, 43 voluntarism, 53–54 West and the East, 11, 48, 51–54, 215, 221, 225, 449, 478–479, 522 yetzer, 368–372, 378–379 “yeast in the dough”, 376 conquest of, 311, 343–348, 376, 378, 384–385, 397, 399–400, 403–404 elevation, 378 externalization, 371–373 harnessing, 387, 391, 394, 398–399 identification with a demon, 371–372, 382–383 identification with heresy and secularization, 394 identification with imaginative faculty, 380 identification with materiality, 389, 391 identification with sexuality, 371–372, 379, 381, 390–391, 398 repression, 5, 67, 185, 345, 374, 376–378, 391, 394, 399 yoga, 72, 226, 246, 276 Yordei ha-Merkabah, 229, 233–243, 473, 475, 487 Zen Buddhism, 11, 69, 169, 214–215 Soto, 215

Index of Names Abba bar Yudan, 281–282, 286 Abba Saul, 470–471 Abbaye, 82, 466–467 Abelson, Joshua, 32, 292, 468 Abraham (Bible), 78, 82–83, 142–156, 181, 184, 194, 311, 353–354, 364, 367, 377–378, 380, 384, 387, 402–403, 409, 434, 443, 486, 525 Abraham bar Hiyya, 245 Abraham bar Judah, 489 Abraham ben David of Posquieres, 41, 333–334 Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi, 191 Abraham ha-Malakh, 207 Abraham of Kalisk, 426 Abu Falastin, 224 Abulafia, Abraham, 29, 200, 236, 238, 246–247, 250, 306–310, 321–322, 326, 331–333, 380–383, 385–386, 488, 492–496 Adler, Alfred, 17 Afterman, Adam, 30, 44, 237 Akiva (Rabbi), 85, 92–95, 113, 130, 231–233, 283–285, 288–290, 315–316, 370, 377, 408–409, 411–413, 471, 474–475 al-Bastami, Yazid, 229–230 Albo, Joseph, 420 Albotini, Moses, 247 al-Daqqaq, Abu ‘Ali, 451–452 Alexandri, 376 al-Farabi, Abu Nasr, 174–175, 184, 229, 245, 485 al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid, 39, 75, 175 al-Hallaj, Husayn Mansur, 229 al-Jauziyya, Ibn Qayyim, 230 al-Muhasibi, 39, 75, 96 al-Qushayri, Abu al-Qasim, 450–452, 481 Alshekh, Moses, 141 Alter, Isaac Meir of Gur, 329, 441 Alter, Judah Aryeh Leib, 46 al-Tirmidhi, Abu ʻAbd Allah Muhammad ibn Ali, 170–171 Altmann, Alexander, 229, 294–295, 299 Ami, 281–282

Andersen, Hans Christian, 9 Ankori, Micha, 309 Anscombe, G.E.M., 70–71 Anselm of Canterbury, 454 Antigonus of Sokho, 363 Aristotle, 52, 67–68, 229, 244, 343–345, 454 Armstrong, Arthur Hilary, 217–218 Asher ben David, 305–306 Athanasius, 289 Augustine, 23, 53, 197, 227, 341–343, 360, 455–456, 458, 522, 534 Aurelius, Marcus, 285, 348–349, 358–359, 410 Avicenna, 74–75 Avin, 375 Azikri, Eleazar, 130, 286, 313–314, 427–429, 501 Azriel of Gerona, 248–250, 298–299, 492–493 Baer, Yitzhak, 32, 126–129, 189, 282, 405 Bahya ben Asher, 145 Bal, Mieke, 287 Balaam, 181–182, 197–198, 241 Bandinus, Marcus, 175 Bar-Levav, Avriel, 405–406 Baruch of Medzibezh, 206 Ben Azzai, 192–193, 363–364, 474 Ben Zoma, 403, 474 Ben-Artzi, Shmuel, 396–397 Berger, Peter, 15, 17 Bergmann, Samuel Hugo, 358, 454, 456 Berkeley, George, 514 Besht (Yisroel ben Eliezer), 27, 31, 45, 48, 100, 121, 133, 135, 203–210, 213, 253–255, 260, 326–327, 330–336, 378, 385–388, 395, 418, 430–431, 434, 438, 440, 446, 503–505, 507–508, 511, 534, 539 Biderman, Shlomo, 51–53, 447–449 Bleicher, David, 398 Blidstein, Gerald, 91 Bokser, Baruch, 407 Bokser, Ben Zion, 407 Bowers, Margaretta, 240 Boyarin, Daniel, 370–371 Brehier, Emile, 217, 272 Brentano, Franz, 5, 22

592

Index of Names

Brereton, Joel, 269–271 Buber, Martin, 10–11, 20, 23, 27, 29, 31–33, 66, 68, 82, 217, 230, 341, 351, 429–430, 445, 517–518, 529–531 Burkert, Walter, 61–65 Burkitt, Francis, 270 Calvin, John, 356 Cassirer, Ernst, 77, 106, 213 Chretien, Jean-Louis, 519–520 Chuang Tzu, 509–510, 522 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 290–291 Cohen, Hermann, 106, 111, 124–125, 280, 399, 540 Cordovero, Moshe, 41–43, 98, 131–132, 134–135, 202, 247, 250–252, 285–286, 310–313, 320, 333, 383, 424, 497, 502 Culianu, Ioan Petru, 162–163 Dan, Joseph, 404, 421 Daniel, 185, 188, 241, 477, 538 de Leon, Moses, 41, 296, 304–305 de Lubac, Henri, 265 de Saussure, Ferdinand, 6 de Vidas, Elijah, 98, 134, 136, 318–319, 321, 385, 423, 425, 429, 497–500 Derrida, Jacques, 7 Descartes, René, 21–22, 342, 454–457, 534 Dinur, Ben Zion, 332 Dodds, Eric Robertson, 160, 167, 177, 221–222 Dogen Zenji, 215 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 356 Dov Baer of Mezeritch, 203, 253, 336, 339, 504 Durkheim, Emile, 1–2, 6–7, 68, 77 Eckhart, Meister, 51, 167, 220–221, 274 Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard, 86, 463, 467 Elat, Moshe, 183 Eleazar ben Arakh, 193–194 Eleazar ben Dordai, 407 Eleazar ben Simeon, 47, 365, 415 Eleazar ha-Kappar, 128 Eleazar of Worms, 475 Eleazar, 90, 128–130, 189, 293, 420, 538 Eliade, Mircea, 48, 72, 126, 162, 175, 226, 276, 309 Eliezer ben Jakov, 85 Eliezer son of R. Zaddok, 363 Eliezer, 92, 404, 469 Elimelech of Lyzhansk, 118, 120, 141–142 Elior, Rachel, 198, 502 Elisha ben Abuyah, 364–365, 474 Elisha, 197 Elqayam, Abraham, 417 Enelow, Heyman, 36, 116

Enoch-Metatron, 199, 202, 431 Epictetus, 349, 410 Evans-Pritchard, Edward, 1–2, 68, 77 Ezekiel, 124–125, 239, 473 Federbusch, Simon, 415 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 18–19 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 456 Fidler, Ruth, 181–182 Finkelstein, Israel, 112 Fisch, Menachem, 533 Flood, Gavin, 347 Flusser, David, 32, 73–74, 108, 362, 408, 415–416 Forman, Robert, 171, 273 Foucault, Michel, 5–7, 532 Frazer, James, 60 Freud, Sigmund, 4–5, 7, 9, 17, 19–20, 34, 60, 63–68, 179, 185–186, 343, 345–346, 348, 371–372, 398–400 Galante, Moses, 134 Gamaliel, 283, 292–293 Gellman, Jerome, 149 Gennep, Arnold van, 60 Gerondi, Nissim ben Reuben, 405 Gershon of Kitov, 205 Gikatilla, Joseph, 41 Giora, Zvi, 179 Glasner, Samuel, 240 Goldreich, Amos, 39, 96 Goldstein, Naftali, 84–85 Goldziher, Ignaz, 75–76, 450 Golomb, Jacob, 358 Goody, Jack, 61 Gordon, Aaron David, 8, 541–542 Gottlieb, Ephraim, 115, 118, 421, 427 Green, Arthur, 149, 436 Greenberg, Moshe, 105, 361 Gries, Zeev, 320, 426 Griffith, Paul, 214 Gruenwald, Ithamar, 65, 82 Hai Gaon, 38, 234–236, 238–242, 473–481, 483, 487 Halamish, Moshe, 99, 116 Halbertal, Moshe, 15, 351 Halperin, David, 232–233 Hama bar Hanina, 420 Hananel, 236, 242, 474, 476–477 Hanina ben Dosa, 93, 232–233, 240 Hanina, 24, 442 Hanokh Henikh of Aleksander, 441 Harnack, Adolf, 11 Harrison, Jane Ellen, 60 Hartman, David, xi, 538 Harvey, Warren Zev, 295, 301

Index of Names

Hayyim of Volozhyn, 318 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 341, 343, 355, 456, 458, 521 Heidegger, Martin, 11–12, 360, 516, 536 Heiler, Friedrich, 11, 13, 67, 176–177, 181 Hellner-Eshed, Melila, 195–196 Henry, Michel, 516 Heraclitus, 531 Herrigel, Eugen, 214–215 Heschel, Abraham J., 90, 92–95, 167–168, 176–178, 181, 283–284, 289, 471 Hillel, 87, 90, 130–131, 280, 288–290, 406–410, 415, 417, 433–434 Hillesum, Etty, 537–538 Hisda, 187 Hiyya, 291 Hollenback, Jess Byron, 162–163, 183, 226, 240–242, 461 Homer, 221, 275 Horowitz, Isaiah, 131–133, 135, 146–148, 406 Horowitz, Joseph Joel, 385, 392–396 Hotam, Yotam, 536 Hubert, Henri, 60 Hume, David, 514 Huna, 90, 110, 281 Hurwitz, Siegmund, 308, 338 Husserl, Edmund, 5, 21–23, 71, 456, 459–460, 514–516, 524 Huxley, Aldous, 212 Huxley, Julian, 62 ibn Abi Zimra, David, 247 ibn Ezra, Avraham, 42, 47, 143–145, 297, 300, 421, 483 ibn Ezra, Moses, 38 ibn Falaquera, Shem Tov, 245 ibn Gabbai, Meir, 116 ibn Paquda, Bahya, 39, 45, 96–97, 251, 320, 378–380, 404, 417–419, 426, 451, 481–483, 489 ibn Shuaib, Joshua, 100 Idel, Moshe, x, 12, 42, 49, 52, 134, 159, 162, 177, 190–192, 199–201, 203–204, 234–236, 238, 246–247, 250, 260, 307, 321, 324, 326, 331–332, 335, 380–383, 426–427, 463, 469, 494, 505, 526 Inge, William Ralph, 28 Isaac (Rabbi), 130, 281–282 Isaac of Acre, 247, 324–326, 495, 500 Isaac the Blind, 40, 301–302, 385, 426–427 Isaac of Radzivilow, 203 Isaiah, 16, 81, 105, 112, 125 Ishmael, 92, 233, 282–284, 291, 370, 372, 377, 471, 475

Jacob (Bible), 63, 180–181, 185, 187–190, 228–229, 281–286, 322–323, 402–403, 431 Jacob (Rabbi), 364–365 Jacob ben Sheshet, 40 Jacob Isaac of Przysucha, 441 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, 102, 137, 204, 255, 318, 330–331, 333–335, 388–390, 431–433, 435, 439, 503–508 James, William, 9–10, 13, 17, 160–161, 168, 212, 264 Jaspers, Karl, 355 Jedidiah ben Abraham Badrasi, 245 Jellinek, Adolph, 235, 299, 473, 481 Jeremiah, 105, 125, 178, 416, 436, 538 Jesus, 73, 108, 173, 176, 289, 350–351, 408, 413, 416, 471, 475 Johanan ben Nuri, 374–378 Johanan ben Zakkai, 193–194, 196, 240, 464 Johanan, 129–130, 279 John of the Cross, 168–169, 171, 196 Jonas, Hans, 12, 53–54, 263–265, 270, 360, 521, 534–539 Jonathan, 187–188 Joseph Don Don, 133 Joshua ben Levi, 95, 404, 538 Joshua, 151, 193–194, 422 Judah bar Ilai, 387 Judah Halevi, 96, 243–244, 251, 285, 300–301, 475, 483–488 Judah, 82, 84, 94, 236, 280, 366, 376, 400–401, 471–472 Jung, Carl Gustav, 9–11, 17, 19–20, 168, 179, 185–188, 308–309, 338, 528–529, 531, 540 Kaminka, Armand (Aaron), 291, 363, 410 Kant, Immanuel, 4, 161, 211, 277–278, 356, 359, 456–458, 512–515, 518–519, 521– 523, 525, 532–533, 535, 537–538, 540 Karo, Joseph, 201, 500–503 Katz, Steven, 212–214, 264–265 Katz, Yael, 287 Kaufmann, Ehezkel, 52, 288, 431 Kaufmann, Tsippi, 135 Kaufmann, Walter, 355 Kierkegaard, Søren, 9, 211, 341, 352–355, 357–360, 443, 456–459, 523 Knohl, Israel, 90, 107 Kosman, Admiel, 401–403 Kubra, Najm al-Din, 452 Lakish, Resh, 128–129, 382 Lange, Frederick Albert, 515, 532, 537 Laski, Marghanita, 162, 246,

593

594

Index of Names

Leclerq, Jean, 228 Leeuw, Gerardus van der, x, 2–3, 23, 61, 515–516, 518–520 Levi Isaac of Berdichev, 136, 152–155 Levinas, Emmanuel, 516–518 Levinson, Joshua, 403 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 6, 60 Lewin, Isaac, 165, 185, 188 Lewis, Clarence Irving, 231, 460 Lewis, Ioan, 162–163, 224 Liebes, Yehuda, 29, 47, 83, 473 Lobel, Diana, 451–452, 481–483, 489–490 Lonergan, Bernard, 265 Lorberbaum, Yair, 37, 92, 94–95, 130–131, 288–289, 408, 476 Lorenz, Konrad, 62–63, 65, 68 Luria, Isaac, 27, 41–44, 99, 116, 118, 131–135, 209, 323–324, 329, 336, 383, 387, 391, 423 Luther, Martin, 355–356 Luzzatto, Moshe Hayyim, 44, 202, 368 Maharal ( Judah Loew ben Bezalel), 468 Maimon, Solomon, 161 Maimonides, Abraham, 39, 113–115, 243, 251 Maimonides, Moses (Rambam), 15, 26, 39–40, 52, 78, 95, 97–98, 113, 184, 243, 250–251, 294–295, 309, 382, 386, 407, 418, 427, 450, 454, 488–492, 499, 501–502 Marcus, Aaron, 337–338 Margalit, Avishai, 15 Margolius, Reuven, 301, 335 Marion, Jean-Luc, 516 Marx, Karl, 19, 521 Mauss, Marcel, 60 McGinn, Bernard, 28, 42, 167–168 Meir, 130, 288, 290, 364, 469 Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, 441–442, 512, 539 Menahem Mendel of Rymanov, 120 Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, 45, 149–150, 389 Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, 100–102, 259, 331, 335, 433–434 Mendelssohn, Moses, 25 Meroz, Ronit, 133 Monroe, Robert, 163 Moore, George, 292 Mordecai Joseph of Izbica, 441 Moses (Bible), 89, 138, 143, 145–146, 150–151, 182–184, 283, 323–325, 377, 414, 436, 467–470, 479, 485–486, 490–491, 538 Moses ben Nahman, 110, 295, 499

Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow, 46, 209, 434–435, 503–504, 508, Muffs, Yochanan, 15–17, 33–34, 79–81, 85, 265, 406 Muhammad, 174, 229 Naeh, Shlomo, 89, 93–95, 231–233 Nahman of Bratslav, 121, 203, 208, 253, 326, 398, 435, 441–442, 519, 523 Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome, 37, 235, 242, 474 Nathan of Gaza, 127, 417 Nehuna ben ha-Kana, 301 Neumann, Erich, 29, 309, 528–529, 540 Neusner, Jacob, 463 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 7–9, 53, 353, 515, 521 Nigal, Gedalyah, 334 Numenius of Apamea, 221–222 Nwyia, Paul, 168 Olivelle, Patrick, 269, Origen, 264, 473 Otto, Rudolf, 9, 11, 18, 51, 167–168, 216–221, 359 Pachter, Mordechai, 313–314, 323, 427, 501 Pappus ben Judah, 411 Pascal, Blaise, 358 Paul (Apostle), 73, 79, 108, 173, 176, 273, 285, 350, 358, 415–417 Pedaya, Havivah, 115, 168, 223, 234, 237–238, 249 Philo of Alexandria, 79, 221–224, 282, 284–285, 410, 462, 474 Phinehas (Rabbi), 123 Phinehas bar Hama, 198 Phinehas of Koretz, 142, 339, 504, 509 Piekarz, Mendel, 118–119 Pines, Shlomo, 74, 454 Plotinus, 164, 177, 217–222, 224–225, 234, 236, 239, 243, 247, 271–275, 338, 342, 453–456, 522 Ponty, Maurice Merleau, 516 Rabba, 401 Radhakrishnan, Savepalli, 271 Ramakrishna, Paramahamsa, 12–13, 50, 418 Rashba, 280, 488 Rashi, 81–82, 109–110, 121, 128–129, 144, 155, 187, 189, 292, 364, 375, 433, 471, 490 Rav, 84, 142–143, 299, 366–367, 376 Raymond, Scheindlin, 38 Ricoeur, Paul, 516 Robertson Price, James, 265 Rosen-Zvi, Ishai, 92, 370–372, 378 Rosenzweig, Franz, 32–33 Rotenberg, Mordechai, 309, 371 Roth, Leon (Hayyim Yehudah), 470–471

Index of Names

Rumi, Jalal al-Din, 230 Sabbatai Zevi, 30, 416–417 Sack, Bracha, 43, 320 Safra (Rabbi), 366 Sagi, Avi, x, 357, 360, 409, 457, 517, 524–525 Salanter, Israel, 378, 385, 392–393 Samuel (Bible), 180–181, 183–184, 401 Samuel (Rabbi), 110, 128–129, 178, 198 Samuel bar Nahmani, 93, 187 Samuel Gaon, 475 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 353, 355, 456, 516 Saul (Bible), 178, 183 Schaechter, Yosef, 89 Schechter, Solomon, 32, 299, 366, 414, 505 Schelling, Friedrich, 9, 456 Schimmel, Annemarie, 76, 230 Schlegel, Friedrich, 9 Schleicher, Marianne, 438 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 9, 161 Schneersohn, Shalom Dov Baer, 258 Schneur Zalman of Lyady, 256–259, 337–339, 429–430 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 221, 456 Schwartz, Michael, 491 Seigel, Jerrold, 4, 343 Seneca, 64–65, 283, 290, 363, 410 Shankara, 51, 167, 220–221 Shanon, Benny, 176 Shatz-Uffenheimer, Rivka, 149, 387, 418, 430 Sheshet, 127 Shibli, Abu Bakr, 230 Sholem, Gershom, 317 Sigad, Ran, 352–353 Silberg, Moshe, 278 Simeon the Righteous, 372–374 Simhah Bunim of Przysucha, 441–443, 446, 512 Simlai, 138, 361, 414–415, 417 Simmel, Georg, 10–11 Simon (Rabbi), 293, 476, Simon, Uriel, 180 Smith, Jonathan, 47 Smith, William Robertson, 59–60, 64 Socrates, 275, 279, 344, 412 Spenser, John, 26 Spinoza, Baruch, 25–26, 454, 509, 516, 520 Staal, Frits, 212–213 Stace, William, 17–18, 168, 221, 238 Stein, Yehoyakim, 345 Steiner, Rudolf, 235 Steinsaltz, Adin, 258 Sternhartz, Nathan, 208

Stock, Brian, 342–343 Suzuki, Shunryu, 215 Sviri, Sara, 75, 96–97 Swinburne, Richard, 527 Tanhum bar Iskolstika, 376 Tanhuma, 401–402 Tauler, Johannes, 74, 228, 274 Taylor, Charles, 4–5, 15, 455, 532–533 Thomas à Kempis, 470 Tishby, Isaiah, 91–92, 95–96, 113, 332 Turner, Victor, 77 Twersky, Isadore, 41 Uffenheimer, Benjamin, 80, 176–177 Underhill, Evelyn, 13, 28, 165, 167, 212, 228, 264 Urbach, Ephraim Elimelech, 36, 87–91, 126–129, 277, 282–284, 292, 316, 363, 366, 370, 406, 408, 410, 412, 414, 469 Verbin, Nehama, 351, 527 Vilna Gaon (Elijah ben Solomon Zalman), 385, 395–396 Vital, Hayyim, 41–44, 152–153, 200–202, 209, 296, 323, 384 Vogelin, Eric, 520–521, 536 von Hartmann, Eduard, 337–338 von Rosenroth, Knorr, 43 Wallis, Richard, 221, 270 Weil, Simone, 212, 523–524 Weiss, Joseph, 385, 436, 438, 505 Werblowsky, R.J. Zwi, 28–29, 43, 48, 201–202, 409–410, 417–419 Wheeler Robinson, Henry, 178 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 69–71, 166, 459–460, 527, 530–531 Wolfson, Elliot R., 38, 43, 185, 190, 199, 234, 260, 390, 474–476, 483, 486 Wolfson, Harry Austryn, 477 Yedaya ben Abrham of Badrasi, 245n104 Yehuda, 123, 312 Yehudah son of Beteira, Yehudah, A.S., 39 Yinon, Dror, 509 Yisrael ben Shabbetai (the Maggid of Kozinetz), 203 Yose bar Halafta, 281–286 Yose ben Hanina, 467 Yose ha-Galili, 299 Yose ha-Kohen, 193–194 Young, Shinzen (Steven), 169, 215 Yudah b. R. Simon, 100, 407 Yudan, 293, 476 Zeitlin, Hillel, 438

595

Index of Sources Bible Genesis 1:2, 313 1:20, 313 1:24, 287 1:26, 140, 287–288, 308 1:27, 286, 288, 294, 296, 301, 304 1:28, 288 1:29, 288 1:30, 287 2:5, 287 2:6, 319 2:7, 256, 287, 383, 508 2:15, 287 3:17, 133 3:19, 287 4:7, 382, 400 6:1–4, 275 6:5, 368 6:16, 254 8:21, 368, 382 9:6, 287, 301 11:1–9, 275 12:1, 143, 155 14:18, 153 15:9–18, 182 18:27, 525 20:3–7, 181 22:1, 83 22:12, 83, 364, 367 25:23, 184 25:26, 431 26:5, 142–145, 149 26:15–19, 445 26:20–22, 444 28:10–12, 181 28:11, 188, 281, 284 28:12, 189, 248, 286 28:13, 189, 286 28:18, 63 31:10–13, 181 31:24, 181

37:5–6, 185 39:9–13, 185 39:16–19, 185 41:1–7, 185 45:27–28, 322 46:1–5, 181 Exodus 1:5, 390 3:2, 184 3:12, 421 10:21, 487 11:5, 389 12:14, 79, 328 13:9, 78, 79 13:16, 79 15:8, 35 17:6, 283 17:11, 89 19:19, 467 20: 15, 487 20:24, 284 21:1, 37 21:13, 80 23:7, 442 24:10–11, 284 25:2, 45, 298, 535 25:8, 141, 313 28:3, 462 30:32, 296, 304 31:3, 462 31:6, 462 31:13, 79 31:17, 79 33:20, 285 33:21, 281, 285, 326 35:31, 462 36:2, 462 Leviticus 1:9, 85, 112 5:1–19, 80 7:18, 85 9:6, 377 10:18, 35

Index of Sources

11:38, 464 11:44, 497 16:29, 126 16:31, 126 19, 107 19:2, 280, 313, 470 19:4, 84, 141–142 19:5, 109–110 19:6–8, 110 19:17, 300 21:18, 138 23:42–43, 78 26:3, 420 26:11, 313 Numbers 10:35, 100 10:36, 100 11:17, 462 11:24–29 11:25–29 12:6, 182, 184 12:7–8, 248 15:22–31, 80 15:37–41, 79 21:8, 89 22:2, 173 22:9–20, 181 22:31, 198, 241 24:2–4, 198 24:15–16, 198 27:18, 462 28:2, 85 35:11–28, 80 Deuteronomy 2:34, 413 3:26, 323 4:4, 133, 425 4:6, 191 4:11, 193 6:5, 35, 79, 300, 376, 412 6:8, 79 6:9, 79 8:3, 132 10:12, 79 10:16, 377, 416 10:17, 538 10:20, 501 11:1, 79 11:13, 80, 85, 90, 138 11:14, 80 11:16, 79 11:18, 79 11:22, 79

12:23, 287 13:2–6, 183 13:4, 79 19:9, 79 21:10, 386 28:47, 86 29:8, 420 30:2, 16, 81 30:3, 17, 81 30:6, 79, 416 30:16, 79 30:20, 79, 411 32:6, 428 34:6, 253 Joshua 7:9, 422 Judges 7:13–14, 185 1 Samuel 2:9, 427 2:27, 315 2:30, 140 3:19–21, 183 9:12–24, 131 10:5–6, 178 16:7, 178, 277, 299, 400 16:12, 401 18:1, 318 19:19–24, 184 20:41, 318 2 Samuel 1:26, 319 7:4, 182 7:22–29, 361 7:23, 315 1 Kings 3:5–14, 181 3:9, 299 6:19, 35 6:21, 35 6:27, 35 8:11, 293 8:27, 283 8:27–32, 112 8:27–40, 111 17:9, 173 22:5–28, 184 2 Kings 3:15, 388 5:25–27, 197 Isaiah 11:9, 150 16:5, 139

597

598

Index of Sources

23:18, 139 29:8, 185 29:13, 35, 64, 81–82, 121, 405 40:25, 470 40:26, 433 49:3, 422 56:7, 112 58:3–8, 125 58:8, 121, 491 Jeremiah 3:6, 173 4:4, 416 7:4, 313 11:4, 422 11:20, 35, 178 12:2, 97–98, 405 17:6, 497 17:7, 419 17:8, 497 20:9, 178 20:12, 178 23:23–32, 181 23:24, 469 23:26–27, 183 Ezekiel 1:26, 296, 476 10:4, 293 18:4, 124 18:31, 125 24:17, 139 40:15, 35 40:19, 35 Hosea 2:23, 132 11:9, 130 Joel 3:1, 183 3:5, 114 Amos 5:21–25, 105 8:5, 79 Jonah 1:2, 173 3:5, 126 Micah 6:8, 280 Habakkuk 2:4, 350–351, 414 3:8, 281 Zechariah 10:2, 181, 183, 187 Psalms 7:11, 277

10:17, 92–93 11:2, 277 14:2, 481 16:8, 93, 490 17:14, 412 19:8, 102 23:6, 361 25:8, 124 27:4, 362 27:8, 362 29:4, 467–468 32:6–7, 428 32:11, 277 36:11, 277 37:3, 350 42:3, 362 44:22, 86 50:4, 291 50:10–11, 109 50:12, 290 50:13, 109 51:13, 463 51:17, 94 51:19, 105, 124, 314 63:2–3, 189 64:11, 277 65:2, 128 68:20, 131 68:21, 428 69:19, 386 69:20, 386 73:26, 298, 326 78:8, 36 78:32–33, 82 78:36–37, 81 81:10, 375 84:3, 114, 362 90:1, 281 92:2–3, 361 92:5–6, 361 92:23, 361 94:15, 277 97:11, 122, 277 102:27, 290 103:1, 305 103:2, 361 103:8, 402 104:5, 325 104:33, 361 104:35, 124 109:22, 45, 150, 377, 380, 389 112:7, 410 113:5, 408

Index of Sources

113:5–6, 245 119:105, 389 125:4, 277 148:7, 194 148:9, 194 Proverbs 3:18, 428 4:15, 382 4:23, 313 5:5, 333 6:23, 101, 104, 137 9:1, 100 9:4, 102 9:5, 152 9:10, 432 11:17, 128, 289 13:21, 124 13:25, 132 15:15, 298–299 16:3, 350 16:7, 444 16:28, 254 20:27, 137 21:3, 105 21:27, 105 27:19, 319 28:13, 126 31:23, 496 Job 1:1, 364 2:4, 128 4:12–21 10:11, 296, 303–304 19:26, 308, 310, 333 21:24, 122 23:11, 335 23:13, 297 33:14, 183 33:15, 183, 188 33:16, 183 Canticles 1:2, 491 1:10, 193 2:14, 487 7:11 Ruth 3:7, 298 3:13, 371 Lamentations 3:41, 126 Ecclesiastes 1:16, 299 3:11, 300

4:2, 325 4:17–5:6, 181 5:6, 183 7:29, 152 9:10, 431–432 9:18, 365 10:20, 191 11:7, 487 Daniel 2:4, 185 2:29, 187 2:30, 188 4:7–10, 185 6:4, 492 8:16, 476 9:4, 538 10:7, 241, 477 10:8–12:4, 182 Nehemiah 9:6, 152 9:8, 364, 377 1 Chronicles 28:9, 427

Apocrypha

Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs Asher 1:3–5, 369 Levi 3:6, 107 II Apocalypse of Baruch 1:36–43, 53, 56–74, 185 4, Ezra 9–11, 185 Ben Sira 15:14–17, 20, 369 27:30–28:5, 362 34:1–8, 181, 186 34:30–31, 125 35:1–5, 106 40:7–9, 181

Dead Sea Scrolls

Community Rule, 107 Damascus Document, 107

New Testament

Matthew 6:24–34, 350 Luke 12:22–30, 350 Acts of the Apostles

599

600

Index of Sources

9:3–9, 173–174 Romans 1:16–17, 415 2:28–29, 416 3:9–19, 416 3:28, 416 3:31, 416 7:22–24, 73 11:36, 285 2 Corinthians 12:2–4, 237 Philippians 4:4, 357 Hebrews 9:8–12, 73 1 Peter 2:5, 74

Mishnah

Berakhot 2:1, 88 2:2, 138 4:3, 93 4:5–6, 94 5:1, 88, 90, 92–93 5:5, 93 9:5, 35, 377 Shevi’it 3:6, 88 Eruvin 4:4, 36, 88 Pesahim 10:3, 94 Yoma 8:9, 37, 126 Rosh Hashanah 3:7, 88–89, 94 3:8, 94, 232 Megillah 2:2, 88 4:3, 471 4:6, 471 Kiddushin 1:10, 147, 364 4:14, 142, 146 Bava Kamma 1:4, 87 2:6, 87 Bava Metzia 3:12, 36, 87 Sanhedrin 4:5, 289, 299 6:5, 288

7:11, 505 Avot 1:3, 363 1:14, 407, 433 2:4, 363 2:10, 404 2:11, 404 2:12, 36 3:1, 304 3:2, 409 4:1, 403 4:2, 363 4:21, 404 6:10, 330 Zevachim 1:1, 36, 84 4:6, 84 Kelim 25:9, 465 Makhshirin 1:1, 36, 464 3:8, 465 6:1, 36, 465 Avot de-Rabbi Nathan Version, A 31, 140, 299 Version, B 27, 408 30, 131, 288–289

Tosefta

Berakhot 2:7, 94 3:3, 93 3:4, 92–93 3:5, 231 3:7, 94 3:16, 94 Ma’aser Sheni 5:9, 186 Shabbat 13 (14) Rosh Hashanah 2:7, 94 3:6, 88 3:7, 36 Ta’anit 1:8, 126 Yevamot 8:7, 288 Nazir 4:6, 373 Bava Kamma

Index of Sources

9:31, 375 Menahot 5:5, 36 5:6, 84

Halakhic Midrash

Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 141, 283, 289–290, 315, 370, 410–411, 415, 469–470 Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, 37, 370 Sifra, 88, 377, 420, 465, 470 Sifre on Leviticus, 85 Sifre on Numbers, 109, 371 Sifre on Deuteronomy, 85, 90, 113, 128, 364, 408, 469

Talmud

Jerusalem Berakhot 4:1, 90 4:2, 376 4:7, 113 5:6, 93 9:5, 374 9:6, 364 9:7, 412 Kil’ayim 1:9, 88 Ma’aser, Sheni 4:9, 186 Nedarim 9:1, 375 Sotah 5:7, 412 5:9, 377 Nazir 1:6, 373 Makkot 2:7, 124 Babylonian Berakhot 5b, 91 6a, 409 10a, 290, 305 10b, 252 13a, 36, 89, 94, 98 13b, 36, 89 15a, 90, 94, 113, 256 16a, 94 16b, 366, 376, 404 17a, 91, 127, 366, 376, 404 23a, 390 24b, 90 26b, 113 28b, 92

30b, 90, 98–99 31a, 89–90, 92, 94, 231 32a, 361 55a–57b, 186 55b, 187 60a, 410 61b, 376, 412–413 Shabbat 22a, 88 29a, 88 30b, 89 31a, 415 33b, 418 46a, 88 52b, 465 55a, 442 55b, 465 105b, 375 115b, 100 116a, 100 118a–b, 129 152a, 427 Eruvin 19a, 128 65a, 93 95b, 89 96a, 89 Pesahim 21a, 88 50b, 84 114b, 89 117a, 89 Rosh Hashanah 27b, 36 28a, 89 28b, 89 29a, 89 Yoma 28a, 149 28b, 143, 146, 149, 151 69b, 442, 538 76a, 94 Sukkah 14a, 465 52a, 376, 387 53a, 408, 433 Betzah 16a, 131 23b, 88 Ta’anit 2a, 90 5a, 130 11a–b, 128–129 Megillah

601

602

Index of Sources

3a, 253 20a, 90 24b, 236, 472 Hagigah 5b, 187 14b, 38, 194, 235–236, 474 Yevamot 63b, 288 Ketubot 28a, 402 75a, 101 97a, 278 Nedarim 9b, 373 22b, 151 62a, 364 Sotah 5b, 124 14a, 471 17a, 409 22b, 84, 364 31a, 364 47a, 84 Gittin 52a, 186 55a, 406 Kiddushin 7a, 101 30b, 400 31a, 145 39b, 364 40a–b, 365 59b, 464 70a, 320 Bava Kamma 26b, 87 38a, 24 80a, 280 87a, 24 99b, 278 Bava Metzia 21b–22a, 466 24b, 278 30b, 278 49a, 82 58–59, 280 83b, 47 Bava Batra 16a, 382 25a, 282 Sanhedrin 30a, 186 38a–b, 33

39a, 292 43b, 124 46b, 288 64a, 442 67b, 505 75a, 376 95b, 189 98a, 415 99b, 420 105b, 13, 84, 366 106b, 36, 400 107a, 400 Makkot 23b, 138, 146, 414 24a, 414 Avodah Zarah 3a, 24 17a, 240, 407 20b, 497 28b, 473 Horayot 10b, 84, 366 13b, 186 Zevahim 29a, 85 Menahot 41b, 88 97a, 129 110a, 109–110 Hullin 31b, 98 142a, 364 Arakhin 16b, 84 Tamid 32a, 325, 434 Niddah 30b, 240, 61b, 150

Aggadic Midrash

Genesis Rabbah 4:4, 469 6:7, 198 17:5, 187 21:5, 507 27:1, 476 33:3, 402 44:17, 187 47:6, 146, 313 55:1, 411 55:2, 411 56:4, 411

Index of Sources

56:8, 411 61:1, 143 63:7, 184 68:9, 258, 281, 284, 286, 327 68:10, 188 68:12, 186 69:1, 189 69:3, 146 82:6, 146 95:3, 143 Exodus Rabbah 5:9, 467 28:6, 467 29:1, 467 34:1, 467 Leviticus Rabbah 1:3, 235 1:5, 408 4:5, 291 4:8, 290 7:2, 124 16:4, 193 16:9, 93 23:11, 371 23:12, 469 24:4, 470 27:10, 85 34:3, 288–289 35:7, 420 Numbers Rabbah 9:1, 469 12:4, 283 19:1, 420 19:2, 420 19:4, 150 19:5, 420 19:8, 420 Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:37, 290, 302 Canticles Rabbah 1:11, 193 3:8, 293 Lamentations Rabbah 1:17, 186 1:33, 318, 469 Ecclesiastes Rabbah 1:4, 140 Tanhuma, 140, 147, 290, 299 Pesikta de-Rab Kahana 4:7, 464 25:1, 469 Pesikta Rabbati, 113 Midrash Tehillim

19:1, 140 90:10, 284 103:4, 290 Midrash Mishle Chapter 27, 318–319 Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer Chapter 35, 284 Haggadat Shema Yisrael, 473 Yalkut Shimoni Tehillim 676, 140 Aggadat Olam Katan, 140, 299–300

Geonic Literature

Otzar ha-Geonim Volume 4: Chagiga, 38, 235–236, 240–241, 474–475, 478

Commentaries on the Bible Abraham Ibn Ezra Genesis 2:3, 42 6:9, 144 23:21 26:5, 143 Exodus 20:1, 145 23:28, 297 29:46, 421 32:18, 38 Leviticus 19:19, 143 Numbers 20:8, 42 Psalms 139:14, 300 Abraham Maimonides Psalms 84, 251 Origen of Caesarea Ezekiel 1:1, 473 Alshekh, Moses Exodus 25:8, 141 Keli, Yakar Leviticus 19:4, 84 Rabbenu Bahya Genesis 26:5, 145 Nahmanides Genesis 26:5, 145 Exodus 29:46, 421 Leviticus 19:2, 280 19:5, 110 Deuteronomy 6:18, 277 14:1, 326 30:6, 325 Rashi Genesis 33:10, 109 Leviticus 19:5, 109

603

604

Index of Sources

19:19, 144 Deuteronomy 6:18, 277 Isaiah 29:13, 81 Psalms 16:8, 490

Commentaries on the Talmud

Beit ha-Behirah Berakhot 34b, 91 Rabbenu Hananel Berakhot 7a, 474 Hagigah 14b, 236 Yevamot 49b, 474, 476 Nahmanides Hiddushei ha-Ramban, Bava Batra, 493 Rashi Betzah 17b, 464 Ta’anit 11b Sotah 22b Kiddushin 59b Menahot 110a Tosafot Avodah Zarah 28b, 473

Jewish Philosophy and Mussar Literature

Nissim ben Reuben Derashot, 405 Maimonides Introduction to Perek Helek, 95 Hovot ha-Levavot Introduction, 404 Sha‘ar ha-Bitahon Introduction, 418–419 Sha‘ar Yihud ha-Ma‘aseh Chapter 4, 379–380 Chapter 5, 378, 426 Sha‘ar Heshbon ha-Nefesh Chapter 3, 96, 482 Chapter 4, 320 Sha‘ar Ahavat Hashem Chapter 1, 419 Hiddushei Aggadot by Rabbi Loew ben Bezalel Volume 2, Sotah, 468 The Kuzari 1:1, 485 3:5, 251, 484–487 3:11, 486 4:3, 37, 301, 484–485 5:12, 484 5:20, 486 The Guide of the Perplexed 1:1, 294 1:47, 40 1:50, 15, 98

2:6, 40 2:36, 184, 481 3:22, 382 3:29, 78 3:32, 26, 250 3:37, 78 3:45, 78 3:32, 250 3:51, 250–251, 368, 450, 488–492, 499, 501 3:52, 489 Book of Beliefs and Opinions, 420 Sefer ha-Maspik, 39, 114, 251 Sefer ha-Ma‘alot, 245 Sefer ha-Ikarim, 3:27, 420 Torat ha-Adam Sha‘ar ha-Gemul, 295

Halakhah

Mishneh, Torah De‘ot 2:6, 82 Teshuvah 2:1–3, 407 Tur Orah Hayyim Tefilah, 92 Teshuvot ha-Rashba, 5:229, 280

Kabbalah

Iggeret Ve-Zot le-Yehuda, 306 Iggeret Sod ha-Geulah, 191 Iggeret ha-Kodesh, 499 Otzar Eden Ganuz, 308, 494 Or ha-Sekhel, 307 Or Yakar, 43, 311, 320 Imrei Shefer, 383 Derishot be-Inyanei ha-Mal’akhim, 202, 378 Derekh Hashem, 368 Zohar 1:20b, 296 1:22a, 254 1:22b, 296 1:24a, 104 1:88a, 140, 312 1:94b, 195 1:103a, 496 1:140a, 297 1:154b, 497 1:155a, 99 1:155b, 498 1:183a, 190 2:24a, 313 2:32b, 422 2:40b, 315 2:41a, 315 2:75b, 296, 304

Index of Sources

2:76a, 296, 304 2:82b, 102–103 2:128a, 298, 389, 535 2:128b, 298, 389, 535 2:169a, 438 2:169b, 438 2:190b, 318 2:196a, 428 2:213b, 117 2:219b, 316 2:220a, 316, 423 2:220b, 423 3:16b, 254 3:62a, 195 3:68a, 259 3:99b, 422 3:106a, 375 3:106b, 375 3:113a, 422 3:159a, 254 3:228b, 103 3:230a, 254 3:235b, 432 Hayyei ha-Olam, ha-Ba, 246, 381 Likkutei Torah, 44, 100, 132, 323, 337 Likkutei Shikhehah u-Fe’ah, 249 Likkutei Torah ve-Ta‘amei ha-Mitzvot, 44 Meirat Einayim, 324–326 Maggid Mesharim, 201, 500–503 Milei de-Shemaya, 130, 286, 313, 427–429, 501 Mafteah ha-Hokhmot, 322 Sefer ha-Bahir, 12, 301, 335 Sefer ha-Hezyonot, 190, 209 Sefer Hayyei ha-Nefesh, 321 Sefer Hayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba, 246 Sefer Haredim, 286, 313, 378, 427 Sefer ha-Heshek, 308 Sefer ha-Yashar, 405–406 Sefer ha-Kelalim, 44, 312, Sefer ha-Melamed, 246, Sefer Mafteah ha-Hokhmot, 322, Sefer ha-Meshiv, 190–192, 201 Sefer ha-Mishkal, 304–305 Sefer ha-Nefesh ha-Hakhamah, 41, 304–305 Sefer Sitrei Torah, 99, 296, 381, 493, 496–497 Shekel ha-Kodesh, 296 Sefer ha-Temunah, 247–248, 308, 324, 334–335 Avodat ha-Kodesh, 116 Etz Hayyim, 41–43 Perush ha-Aggadot by R. Ezra, 249, 306 Perush ha-Aggadot by R. Azriel, 249, 298, 492–493

Early commentary on the secrets of the Guide of the Perplexed by Abulafia, 383 Commentary on Sefer Yetzira by Abraham ben David, 334 Perush Shem ha-Meforash by Abraham ben David, 306 Commentary on Sefer Yetzira by Isaac the Blind, 40, 301 Pardes, Rimmonim Sha‘ar 4: Sha‘ar Atzmut ve-Kelim, 305, 310 Sha‘ar 6: Sha‘ar Seder Amidatan, 42, 286 Sha‘ar 8: Sha‘ar Mahut ve-Hanhagah, 312 Sha‘ar 31: Sha‘ar ha-Neshamah, 41, 251, 311–312, 502 Peri Etz Hayyim, 330 Reshit Hokhmah Sha‘ar ha-Yirah, 367, 498 15:53, 499 Sha‘ar ha-Ahavah, 1:1–26, 367 1:25–27, 319 1:28–30, 425 4:31, 495 Sha‘ar ha-Qedushah, 4:21, 498 5:21–27, 497 5:26, 497–498 5:27, 498 6:1, 99 6:12, 498 16:49–84, 499 Sefer Shevet Musar, 132 Shi‘ur Komah, 42, 286 Shenei Luhot ha-Berit Section 1, Be-Eser, Ma’amarot, 378 Sha‘ar, ha-Otiyot, 132 Section 2, Pesahim, 406, Section 3, “Written, Torah”, 146–148 Sha‘ar ha-Kavanah la-Mekubbalim ha-Rishonim, 249 Sha‘ar Ruah ha-Kodesh, 200 Sha‘arei Orah, 41, 367, 432 Sha‘arei Kedushah ha-Shalem, 43, 383 Tikkunei ha-Zohar Introduction, 310 Tikkun 56, 297 Tikkun 69, 423 Tikkun 70, 137–138, 140

Hasidic Literature

Or Torah, 253–255 Imrei Pinhas, 142, 507 Be’er Moshe, 253 Ben Porat Yosef, 204, 505–507 Ba‘al Shem Tov al ha-Torah, 135, 206, 432 Divrei Menahem, 120

605

606

Index of Sources

Degel Mahaneh Efrayim, 46, 118, 209, 259, 435, 503, 505, 508 Zkan Beto al Pirkei Avot, 134 Hayei Moharan, 208 Ketonet Pasim, 330, 439 Keter Shem Tov, 135, 386 Likkutei Moharan 1:4, 254, 438 1:5, 122 1:6, 438 1:37, 122 1:49, 438 1:54, 329 1:65, 256 1:67, 122 2:22, 436 2:25, 440 2:46, 441, 505 2:56, 327 Likkutei Torah by Schneur Zalman ben Baruch of Lyady, 323, 337 Likkutei Tefilot, 123 Likkutei Amarim, Tanya, 257–259, 338 Ma’or va-Shemesh, 118 Me’or Einayim, 101, 260, 331, 335, 434 Maggid Devarav le-Yaakov, 253, 255, 336–337, 339, 504 Noam Elimelekh, 118–120, 142 Tales of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, 27, 31, 327 Sefer Katan, 387 Peri ha-Aretz, 45, 103, 150, 390 Tsava’at Harivash, 254 Zofnat Paaneah, 334, 431, 439 Qedushat Levi, 152, 155 Kol Mevaser, 442 Kol Simhah, 444 Kuntres ha-Avodah, 258 Shivhei ha-Besht Mondschein, 203 Rubunstein, 204–207, 388 Siah Sarfei Qodesh, 539 Sefat Emet, 46, 328–329, 331 Toledot Yaʻakov, Yosef, 137, 333, 388, 390, 431–432, 439, 503, 508

Mussar Literature

Divrei Binah u-Mussar, 397–398 Madregat ha-Adam, 393–394, 396

Other Sources

Upanishads Brhadaranyaka Upani�sad, 73, 267–268 Chandogya Upani�sad, 269–270 Homer Odyssey, 275 Plato Alcibiades, 216, 290 Euthyphro, 216, 279 Phaedo, 412, 216 Phaedrus, 4, 272–273 Laws, 403, 415 The Republic, 272 Symposium, 275–276, 403, 426 Gorgias, 403 Timaeus, 140, 271, 273 Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics, 67–68, 343 On the Soul, 453 Philo De Vita Contemplativa, 222 De Somniis, 284 Epictetus Discourses, 68, 349 Seneca Epistulae Morales, 290, 363, 415 Marcus, Aurelius The Communings, 348, 359, 403 Plotinus Enneads, 164, 168, 217–221, 223, 229, 234, 271–275, 338, 453 Augustine City of God, 197, 455 Confessions, 227, 342, 360, 534 John of the Cross Ascent of Mount Carmel, 168–169, 196 Kierkegaard Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 353–360, 457–458 Fear and Trembling, 341, 353–355, 358, 409 Journals, 357, 458–459