Time and Eternity in Jewish Mysticism: That Which Is Before and That Which Is After 9004290303, 9789004290303

Citation preview

Time and Eternity in Jewish Mysticism

Studies in Jewish History and Culture Edited by Giuseppe Veltri

Editorial Board Gad Freudenthal Alessandro Guetta Hanna Liss Ronit Meroz Reimund Leicht Judith Olszowy-Schlanger David Ruderman Diana Matut

volume 48

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sjhc

Time and Eternity in Jewish Mysticism That Which is Before and That Which is After

Edited by

Brian Ogren

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Time and eternity in Jewish mysticism : that which is before and that which is after / edited by Brian Ogren.   pages cm. — (Studies in Jewish history and culture, ISSN 1568-5004 ; volume 48)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-29030-3 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-29031-0 (e-book) 1. Time—Religious aspects—Judaism. 2. Future life. 3. Eternity. 4. Mysticism—Judaism. 5. Cabala. I. Ogren, Brian, editor.  BM729.T55T56 2015  296.7’12—dc23 2014045863

ISSN 1568-5004 ISBN 978-90-04-29030-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-29031-0 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Acknowledgements  vii List of Contributors  viii 1 Introduction: That Which is Before [And That Which is After]  1 Brian Ogren

Part 1 Setting the Theoretical Stage 2 Retroactive Not Yet: Linear Circularity and Kabbalistic Temporality  15 Elliot R. Wolfson

Part 2 Philosophical Deijinitions of Mystical Time 3 Neoplatonic Time in Isaac Israeli: On the Beginning of the End of Love [As the Beginning of the Beginning of Love]   53 Sarah Pessin 4 Solomon Maimon’s Philosophical Exegesis of Mystical Representations of Time and Temporal Consciousness  66 Dustin N. Atlas

Part 3 On Time and Pre-existence 5 Chaotic Beginnings: Yohanan Alemanno on the Time of Creation  83 Brian Ogren 6 The Case of Jewish Arianism: The Pre-existence of the Zaddik in Early Hasidism  97 Shaul Magid

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Contents

Part 4 Historical Time   7

The Ritualization of Messianic Time in Early Jewish Mysticism: The Apocalypse of Abraham as a Test Case  113 Andrei A. Orlov

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The Notion of Time as History in Kabbalistic Treatises from Renaissance Italy  125 Fabrizio Lelli

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The Mitnagdim and the Rabbinic Era as the Age of Reason  136 Eliyahu Stern

Part 5 Experiential Soul Time   10

Soul Time in Modern Kabbalah  151 Jonathan Garb

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Time, Eternity and Mystical Experience in Kabbalah  162 Adam Afterman

Part 6 Conclusion Beyond Time   12

“Higher than Time”: Observations on Some Concepts of Time in Kabbalah and Hasidism  179 Moshe Idel Bibliography  211 Index  223

Acknowledgements This present volume had its origins in papers presented at the annual Rockwell Symposium of the Department of Religion at Rice University, which convened on November 4–5, 2013. I would like to thank the Rockwell Fund for its generous support, as well as the Humanities Research Center at Rice, which kindly contributed and allowed for the involvement of an international array of scholars at the symposium. I thank the members of my department at Rice for all of their help and encouragement. I am truly privileged to call the Department of Religion at Rice my home. Special thanks are due to Jeffrey Kripal, to April DeConick, and to Sylvia Louie. Without their help and assurance, neither the symposium nor this volume would have ever come to fruition. I thank my wife Sharon, who not only continually inspires me to excel, but who also meticulously organized the meals and many of the logistics of the symposium out of which this volume sprang. I thank my daughter Danielle for constantly reminding me that between the times of editing and writing about time, it is also important to take the time to play, and to laugh. I thank Giuseppe Veltri who showed enthusiasm concerning the publication of this volume with Brill and who took the time to meet with me in New York to give me sound editing advice, and I thank the anonymous reviewers who provided important constructive feedback. Finally, I thank the contributors to this volume for their time, for their patience, for their cooperation, and for their fine contributions. A work is only as good as its parts, and in this case, I am grateful for the collaborative efforts of the remarkable scholars whose work constitutes the present volume. Brian Ogren Houston, Texas October 10, 2014

List of Contributors Adam Afterman is a Senior Lecturer in Kabbalah and Medieval Jewish Thought in the Department of Hebrew Culture Studies at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Afterman serves as a fellow at the Shalom Hartman institute in Jerusalem and at the Pope John Paul ii Center for Interreligious Dialogue in Rome. His recent book on Mystical Intimacy in Medieval Jewish Thought was published in 2011 with Cherub Press. Dustin N. Atlas is a recent graduate of the Ph.D. program in Religion at Rice University. He is currently a Golda Meir Post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His work concerns Germanic Jewish thought, in particular: metaphysics and aesthetics. Jonathan Garb is the Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah in the department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his doctorate in 2000, and in 2010, he was awarded the Hebrew University President’s Prize for Outstanding Researcher. His latest books are: “The Chosen will Become Herds”: Studies in Twentieth Century Kabbalah (Yale University Press, 2009); Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah (The University of Chicago Press, 2011), Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm: Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (Tel Aviv University Press, 2014). Moshe Idel is the Max Cooper Professor Emeritus from the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jerusalem, is the current President of the World Union of Jewish Studies, and has been a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences since 2006. Among his awards are the Bialik Prize for Jewish Studies (1993), the Gershom Scholem Prize (1995), the Israel Prize for Jewish Thought (1999), the Emmet Prize (2002), and the Rothschild Prize (2012). Among his many publications are Saturn’s Jews (Continuum, 2011), Kabbalah in Italy: 1280–1510 (Yale University Press, 2011), Old Worlds, New Mirrors, On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), Kabbalah: New Perspectives (Yale University Press,

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1988), Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (Yale University Press 2002), and Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (Continuum, 2007), Kabbalah and Eros (Yale University Press 2005), The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia (suny Press, 1987), Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (suny Press, 1988), and most recently Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth (Peter Lang, 2014), Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (suny Press, 1995), Messianic Mystics (Yale University Press, 2000), Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (suny Press, 1989) Fabrizio Lelli is Associate Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at the University of Salento in Lecce, Italy. His research activity focuses mainly on the philosophical and mystical literature of late Medieval and Early Modern Italian Jewish authors and on the intellectual relations between Jewish and Christian scholars in the Italian Renaissance. He has extensively published on the cultural relations between Southern Italian Jewish communities and the Balkans. He is currently collecting written and oral testimonies of Jewish refugees in dp camps operated by the United Nations in post-wwii Southern Italy. Shaul Magid is the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Professor of Jewish Studies at Indiana University/Bloomington. His most recent book is American Post-Judaism: identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Indiana University Press, 2013). His forthcoming book Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism, will be published with Stanford University Press. Brian Ogren is the Anna Smith Fine Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies in the Department of Religion at Rice University. He specializes in early modern Jewish thought, with a research emphasis on philosophy and kabbalah during the Italian Renaissance. His first book, entitled Renaissance and Rebirth: Reincarnation in Early Modern Italian Kabbalah appeared in 2009 (Brill), and he is currently working on a new book concerning mystical and philosophical treatments of creation.

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Andrei A. Orlov is Professor of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity at Marquette University in Milwaukee, wi. His particular areas of interest are early Jewish angelology and demonology, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha preserved in Slavonic, and early Jewish and Christian apocalypticism and mysticism. His recent publications include The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (Mohr-Siebeck, 2005), From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism (Brill, 2007), Divine Manifestations in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha (Gorgias, 2009), Selected Studies in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha (Brill, 2009), Concealed Writings: Jewish Mysticism in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha (Gesharim, 2011) Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology (suny, 2011) and Heavenly Priesthood in the Apocalypse of Abraham (Cambridge up, 2013). Sarah Pessin is Associate Professor of Philosophy, the Emil and Eva Hecht Chair in Judaic Studies, and the Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. Sarah works on topics in Jewish, Islamic, Greek, and Christian philosophy, Neoplatonisms, medieval philosophy, post-Holocaust theology and ethics, and comparative philosophies of religion. Her most recent book is entitled Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Medieval Jewish Neoplatonism (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Eliyahu Stern is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University. His first book, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism, was published by Yale University Press in 2013. He is currently at work on a new book project focusing on nineteenth-century eastern European Jewish Thought. Elliot R. Wolfson is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his many award winning publications are: Though a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (1994), which won both the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Category of Historical Studies, and the National Jewish Book Award for Excellence in Scholarship; Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Hermeneutics, Myth, and Symbolism (1995); Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (1995); Abraham Abulafia—Kabbalist

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and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy (2000); Language, Eros, and Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and the Poetic Imagination (2005), which won the National Jewish Book Award for Excellence in Scholarship; Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (2006); Venturing Beyond—Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (2006); Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (2009); A Dream Interpreted within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (2011), which won the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Category of Constructive and Reflective Studies. His most recent book is Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (2014).

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: That Which is Before [And That Which is After] Brian Ogren

Time and eternity have long stood as fundamental elements of Jewish mystical discourse. This seems only natural, given the preoccupation with questions as to how the ijinite can come to understand the inijinite, or how corporeal duration can possibly relate to incorporeal perpetuity. For these reasons, time, as related to space, is one of the fundamental pillars of Jewish mystical thought. Time stands alongside erotic ecstasy, notions of cosmogony, and experiential vision as a sanctioned pillar of traditional Jewish esoteric mysticism, and it may be of an even deeper esoteric level than the other pillars. Nevertheless, it is not as well studied by scholars of Jewish mysticism. This volume seeks to even the balance by offering a multitude of important voices in contemporary scholarship, including leading historians and phenomenologists of Jewish mysticism and kabbalah, philosophers, and comparativists, who all lend a voice here to a better understanding of the role that time has played in the Jewish mystical project. But before we enter into the heart of time, it is important to take time to provide a small map of traditional Jewish esoteric mysticism itself, in order to understand where the concept of time falls within the overall continuum. In a famous passage that has long served as an emblem for forms of esoteric mysticism in rabbinic Judaism and its heirs, a tractate of the Mishnah known as Hagigah states: One cannot expound upon the concept of forbidden sexual relations before three people, or upon the work of creation before two, or upon the chariot before one alone, unless he is wise and understands by way of his own knowledge.1 Scholars have noted that this Mishnah, perhaps more than any other source, accorded rabbinic authority to the notion that secret elements exist within

1  Mishnah Hagigah 2:1.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004290310_002

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the very heart of the Jewish tradition.2 Such a notion served as a veritable Pandora’s Box, with far-ranging implications for the overall development of Jewish thought. Within the realm of kabbalah, for example, this tripartite passage came to represent ideas of divine Eros, cosmogony, and the experiential realm of visions and ascent, respectively, while philosophers sometimes related the emblems to gendered hylomorphism, physics, and metaphysics, respectively. According to esoteric thinkers of various stripes, if these secret elements legitimately exist but are restricted, either by authority or by their ontically secretive nature,3 then they must by nature be special. In such a case, they are worthy of exploration by those who are worthy. In this manner, explicitly stated limitations bred full branches of esoteric expositions, which formed the foundations of much kabbalistic and philosophical thought. Yet the passage from tractate Hagigah does not stop with the three secret elements outlined above, and there is an element that may be even more secretly guarded than all three. This element is the spatio-temporal dimension of existence, which is related to the glory of God. Indeed, the above passage from tractate Hagigah continues: Anyone who looks upon four things would be better off if he had not come into the world: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, and that which is after. And anyone who does not consider the glory of his maker would be better off if he had not come into the world.4 With this passage, dimensionality and the glory of God are added to the picture of Jewish esotericism. Here I will not consider the glory of God, not out of 2  See, for example, Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and its Philosophical Implications, translated by Jackie Feldman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 8. 3  For the idea of esotericism as authoritative restriction, see: Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Meridian, 1978), 4. Scholem draws a distinction between mysticism and esotericism, claiming that mysticism cannot be communicated directly, while esotericism can, but is deliberately restricted. Elliot Wolfson questions Scholem’s distinction in many of his works. See, for example, Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Abulaijia-Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy and Theurgy (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2000), 11–15. Wolfson claims that for kabbalah, at least, there is an elitist posture that informs esotericism, but there is also much more to esotericism. In his characteristically chiastic manner, he writes: “The concealment of the secret is dialectically related to its disclosure. Simply put, the utterance of the mystery is possible because of the inherent impossibility of its being uttered.” In the case of time, there does indeed seem to be something ontically beyond human comprehension. 4  Mishnah Hagigah 2:1.

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blatant heresy, but because it is not the focus of this present volume.5 Sufijice it to note that the glory of God seems to be related to dimensionality here, as the admonition in both cases is identical. But with the glory of God, the restrictive nature is completely reversed; anyone who does not consider the glory of his maker is unworthy of existence, meaning that everyone should consider the glory. In terms of dimensionality, however, it is here given an even more severely esoteric status than the three layers of forbidden sexual relations, the work of creation, and the chariot; while those can only be expounded in an increasingly restrictive manner before three, two, and one who is wise, respectively, the four things mentioned here in relation to dimensionality cannot truly be understood by anyone. In fact, anyone who even tries to contemplate them would be better off had he not come into the world. Initially, all of the “four things” mentioned in this passage seem to have been taken together as representing space. Thus, “that which is before” and “that which is after” [mah l’fanim u-mah l’aḥor] was alternately understood as “that which is in front” and “that which is behind.” Notwithstanding, the Amoraim invariably transferred the idea of these two coordinates from the spatial dimension to the temporal.6 As a result, not only space, but time as well came under the canopy of esotericism. Along with forbidden sexual relations, the work of creation and the account of the chariot, both space and time came to be of great interest due to their restrictive nature. Jewish esotericists took the admonition of Hagigah as a challenge. If the understanding of space-time is so restrictive that not even one who is wise can contemplate it, then it must hold one of the most profound secrets of all of existence. Otherwise, the rabbis would not have mentioned it at all, and if one could somehow breach the divide and understand the nature of space and time, then perhaps one could understand the nature of God and the cosmos. For esoteric mystics, ruminations on the space-time continuum did not signify that one was not worthy to come into the world; rather, they acted as a means by which one could attempt to transcend it. It is for this reason that the early fourteenth century Kabbalist Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi wrote in the introduction to his commentary on Sefer Yetzirah that there are three means of understanding the secrets of existence: 5  For more on the notion of the Glory as a separate esoteric element, see: Elliot Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 125–187. 6  See Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, edited by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and translated from the German by Allan Arkush (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 33, n. 55. Cf. Isaac Abravanel, Shamayim Hadashim (Rödelheim, 1828), 87.

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by means of ‘Olam, i.e., the world, or spatial existence, by means of Shanah, i.e., the year, or temporal existence, and by means of Nefesh, i.e., the soul, or personal, experiential existence. “And their symbol,” writes Ashkenazi, is the verse “And Mount Sinai was entirely smoke, ‘ashan (Exodus 19:18), [which is an acronym for] ‘Olam, Shanah, and Nefesh.”7 For Ashkenazi, true understanding on the most fundamental level, as symbolized by the great theophany at Sinai, happens on the level of space, of time, and of the self. Here Ashkenazi turns the injunction from Hagigah on its head. Space and time are not apart from the self, and their contemplation does not negate the meaning of one’s existence; instead, they are integral parts of the self that, taken altogether with the self, are on the same level as the highest possible form of divine revelation. The word ‘Olam can also be understood as “eternal,” for example, in the biblical verse that mentions “the name of the Lord, the Eternal God (El ‘Olam).”8 This understanding adds a whole new dimension to Ashkenazi’s idea of theophany in relation to time and self. It is no longer the physical world in conjunction with time and self that stands at the heart of reality, it is time and self in relation to the hidden Eternal.9 This perhaps correlates with the Plotinian distinction between a transcendent part of the soul that partakes in timeless being and an immanent part attached to matter that partakes in temporal becoming.10 Within this type of schema, space-time in embodiment and eternity in a God that is hidden beyond space-time intersect in the soul. ‘Olam, Shanah, and Nefesh are thus all-encompassing of their entirety of meanings, which give rise to true revelation. This sense of ‘Olam as “Eternity,” coupled with a loose translation of Shanah as “Epoch” and the standard Nefesh as “Soul,” acted as the foundation for the title of a two day symposium that met on the campus of Rice University in Houston, Texas on November 4–5, 2013: “Eternity, Epoch, and Soul: Jewish Mystical Notions of Time.” During that symposium, an international array of consummate participants presented original research on notions of time and eternity in Jewish mysticism and related currents. Papers presented, which have been expanded and revised in light of lively conversation and debate over

7  8  9 

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Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi (mistakenly published under the name of Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquieres), “Introduction,” Sefer Yetzirah (Mantua, 1562), 2b. Genesis 21:33. Here the participle “hidden,” ‘ulam, has the same root letters as “world” or “eternal,” ‘Olam. This adds an even more complex layer to this reading of the esotericism at play in relation to space-time coordinates. See: Plotinus, Ennead iv.3.1, and the erudite discussion by Paul C. Plass, “Timeless Time in Neoplatonism,” The Modern Schoolman, lv (November 1977): 1–19.

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the two day period in November, served as the basis for this present volume. Here the goal is to make some of the timeless ideas brought forth during that two day period more temporally enduring. In the spirit of those mystics being studied, many of whom sought to transcend time by viewing it from different angles, this volume will not be laid out chronologically, but rather conceptually. The reasons for this are twofold. First, processes of development are often nonlinear, with multiple strands of influence weaving complex tapestries, and with comparable key concepts emerging in vastly different periods. For example, as will be seen, a similar sense of sacred time and eternity can be detected in the thirteenth century thought of Abraham Abulaijia and in the twentieth century thought of Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook. Second, as will be seen within this volume, history is only one form among many of dealing with time, and even then, it is not always chronologically or temporally conditioned. Thus, in order to better understand how mystics throughout time have dealt with time, it is better to avoid a purely chronological outlay and to present the matter conceptually. This non-linear, conceptual tone of the volume is expertly set with a keynote article by Elliot Wolfson, entitled “Retroactive Not Yet: Linear Circularity and Kabbalistic Temporality.” Within this article, Wolfson offers a philosophically intricate reading of time, as informed by Heideggerian thought and as extracted in part from the kabbalistic tradition. In this regard, Wolfson seeks to make constructive use of kabbalistic sources, calling for a reconceptualization of chronos as “present becoming a repetition of a past that induces the expectation of a future,”11 rather than a linear model of aligned now-points stretching from the past and extending into the future. In regard to kabbalistic imagery, this relates to the Lurianic idea of the reshimu, translated in one variation as “trace.” Wolfson writes: “From the notion of the trace, we may adduce the elementary constituency of time as the retroactive not yet, the achronic fecundity of the future that is the origin continually emptying itself in the coming to be of the beginning that passes away incessantly.” Herein lies the heart of his thesis, and returning to Heidegger, he posits: “The ijirst beginning is, as Heidegger mused, an original repetition.”12 In Wolfson’s paradox of “linear circularity” as informed by kabbalistic thought, what comes to be is an everpresent trace of what has always been.

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Page 30, below. For more on this speciijic topic, see his prologue “Timeswerve/Hermeneutic Reversibility” in Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), xv–xxxi. Page 49, below.

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From Wolfson’s deft philosophical analysis as informed by kabbalistic thought, this volume turns to mystically philosophical deijinitions of time and includes an article by Sarah Pessin entitled: “Neoplatonic Time in Isaac Israeli: On the Beginning of the End of Love [as the Beginning of the Beginning of Love],” and one by Dustin Atlas entitled: “Solomon Maimon’s Philosophical Exegesis of Mystical Representations of Time and Temporal Consciousness.” Pessin’s article focuses on the tenth century Neoplatonic philosopher Isaac Israeli who, Pessin convincingly argues, gives an emanationist deijinition of time. “Israeli’s deijinition of time as ‘extension separated by the movement of the Sphere’,” writes Pessin, is “a reflection on the precise boundary moment between spirit and body—as a reflection on the moment of Soul’s unfolding/ spreading out . . .”13 Time is thus the boundary between the spiritual and the corporeal as Soul emanates downward. In this emanative spreading, separation occurs and Soul yields Nature. It is through this process that time is born. In a poetic rendering of Israeli’s emanationist version of the idea of the Timaeus that time is the moving image of eternity, Pessin writes: “[T]ime marks the beginning of the end of reason, the beginning of the end of perfection, and the beginning of the end of the victory of sameness over difference.”14 She goes on to explain that in light of the Neoplatonic Theology of Desire, time can also be understood, in this regard, as the beginning of the end of love. This has to do with a move from fullness to fracture, but also with the move from being to becoming that characterizes time. Dustin Atlas’s paper explores the thought of the eighteenth century German Jewish philosopher Solomon Maimon. Atlas begins by discussing Maimon’s hermeneutic of “prescinding,” by which one abstracts a concept by divesting symbols and representations of their imaginal elements. For Maimon, Atlas writes, “Abstract processes underlie the sensuous representations and manifestations of terms . . . The foundations of reason . . . are not acquired by discovering new things, but rather by uncovering origins.”15 This uncovering is fundamental to understanding time. Abstract concepts lying underneath representations are composed of differentials, and “time is not a representation but the most important schema for organizing differences.”16 Ultimately, time is the relationship between such differences, organizing them into a whole. Atlas shows that for Maimon, the conscious self begins in the middle of time, and thus true prescinding means the negation of the conscious self’s limited 13  14  15  16 

Page 60, below. Ibid. Page 68, below. Page 75, below.

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representations. “To grasp pure difference requires nothing less than a retreat from time,”17 Atlas writes, an idea that Maimon may have imbibed from contemporary Hassidism, but which he believes himself to have better expressed in his own non-representative and non-experiential method. The volume moves from philosophical deijinitions of existential time to notions of pre-existence in relation to temporality, with a section that includes my article on “Chaotic Beginnings,” and Shaul Magid’s article on “The Pre-existence of the Zaddik in Early Hasidism.” Within my article, I focus on the ijifteenth century Italian Jewish thinker Yohanan Alemanno and his understanding of tohu and bohu as that which begins time, but which is, at the same time, beyond time. “Alemanno,” I write in my article, “offered new philosophical-kabbalistic conceptions of the beginning of time and of that which atemporally came before, thereby entering into that branch of esoterica known as Ma’aseh Bereshit, and thereby challenging the admonition of the rabbis not to gaze at that which came before.”18 He does this by kabbalistically engaging talmudic tradition and the symbolism of Sefer ha-Bahir, but also by employing variant forms of hylomorphic thought from Neoaristotelianism and Neoplatonic theories of desire. In so doing, I argue that he offers a novel reading of the ijirst chapter of Genesis as a proto-creation that atemporally precedes time but that acts as a necessary atemporal beginning of the temporal beginning of time. Alemanno attempts to understand creation in time by understanding what pre-existed creation before the spatio-temporal point of tohu. This marks a pre-Lurianic idea of proto-creation that I argue reflects early modern thinking about time and creation. Shaul Magid’s reading of pre-existence goes beyond cosmology and enters into the realm of the Hasidic zaddik. Indeed, he writes that “while the medieval kabbalistic dalliance with pre-existence is largely contained in its cosmology and cosmogony, Hasidism draws this down into the corporeal in the person of the zaddik which . . . brings kabbalistic metaphysics into closer proximity to Christianity’s theories about the Christ-event.”19 In this last regard, Magid offers an Arian reading of Hasidic texts penned by Elimelekh of Lyzinsk and Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezritch, concerning the zaddik. In other words, just as the Arian Christian doctrine argued that Christ was “made” before creation but not coeternal with God, so too can these Hasidic texts be seen as afijirming the pre-existence of the zaddik without postulating coeternality. According to Magid, this has wide-ranging implications. First, in reading Dov Baer on the 17  18  19 

Page 79, below. Page 84, below. Page 101, below.

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liturgical poem Adon ‘Olam, he asserts that “if the zaddik precedes creation, his divine status maintains the power to alter creation.”20 Second, the temporal priority to creation but entrance into creation of the zaddik can be viewed as a form of incarnational thinking. This brings the cosmic level into the personal, in a manner reminiscent of early Christological readings of the Son. From pre-existence this volume turns to existence, with a section including articles by Andrei Orlov, Fabrizio Lelli and Eliyahu Stern that consider time and the construction of history in Jewish mystical thought. Orlov considers the mystical experience of historical time through ritual, with an article entitled “The Ritualization of Messianic Time in Early Jewish Mysticism.” This article revolves around the ijirst century Apocalypse of Abraham in light of the apocalyptic Yom Kippur ceremony within the Temple. Along with Scholem, Orlov argues that the Apocalypse of Abraham can be seen as an early manual of mystical initiation. Yet taking Scholem’s idea even further, Orlov notes that “this initiation takes the form of cultic instruction by means of which the seer becomes not merely a mystical adept, but a high priestly ijigure.” As such, Orlov goes on to write, it should be “seen as a textbook of sacerdotal initiation, through which the practitioner is able to learn, and then to re-enact, the actions of the high priest in crucial liturgical ceremonies.”21 It is with this reenactment of history that time becomes signiijicant. By projecting back into the past cultic practices of the Temple, the forward moving eschatological time of the future becomes ritualized. In his article entitled “The Notion of Time as History in Kabbalistic Treatises from Renaissance Italy,” Fabrizio Lelli notes the distinction in Italian Renaissance kabbalistic thought between temporal change and atemporal eternity, as based in Maimonidean and Averroistic thought. “[T]here is a difference between a time that can be deijined,” he writes, “and a time that is an abstract ‘continuum,’ or a ‘duration’ in thought . . . which is independent of the created world.”22 This latter is characterized by the philosophical term hemshekh hametzi’ut, which made its way into Italian kabbalistic thought and relates to the flow of the emanation of the divine into the world. Lelli makes the compelling case that for these Italian kabbalists, this flow is continuous and timeless, but that its reception is conditioned by human time. Thus, the history of Israel as a history of “varying degrees of understanding and fulijillment”23 takes on a

20  21  22  23 

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Introduction

9

heightened signiijicance for the project of understanding the temporal revelation of the fundamentally atemporal. Eliyahu Stern’s project, entitled “The Mitnagdim and the Rabbinic Era as the Age of Reason,” turns to the nineteenth century mitnagdic students of the Gaon of Vilna and their canonization of rabbinic literature through a speciijic construction of the history of reason. Stern notes that the Mitnagdim accentuated a principle known as “the decline of the ages,” according to which humanity regresses as time passes. In so doing, Stern argues, they were attempting to create an historical framework of time that would canonize rabbinic literature and limit religious innovations. The rabbis had special access to truth because they had a different sense of reason, and thus many of the Mitnagdim, including Hayyim of Volozhin, distinguished sharply between a “Rabbinic Era” and everything that came after. Stern writes: “The line between these two periods of time was based on the inability of all those who came after this point in time to use reason to interpret the oral and written law for non-instrumental means.”24 History as thus formulated by decline grants the rabbis special authority as based on a type of reason that is now esoteric and entirely inaccessible, and their rulings thus must be followed categorically. The next section turns from history to the experiential realm of eternal presence and has articles by Jonathan Garb and Adam Afterman. Borrowing a locution utilized by Garb, this section deals with “soul time.” Indeed, in his article “Soul Time in Modern Kabbalah,” Garb discusses two psychical aspects of eternal presence in modern kabbalah, namely, that of individual redemption and that of national redemption. Garb posits a connection between soul and time, both on the individual and on the national levels. In terms of the former, he invokes several Hasidic masters who displayed a sense of an eternal present for the pious individual, a “state of consciousness in which temporality discards its imitated nature, thus becoming a form of atemporal temporality.”25 In terms of the latter, he shows “that the national form of messianism espoused by the school of Rabbi Kook actually aspires to the eternal present of the national soul, rather than seeking a mere historical resolution of the Jewish fate.”26 With that, Garb proposes a move in our understanding of Rabbi Kook’s project, from sacred space to sacred time. As with individual redemption, it is a sense of eternity experienced in the here and now, an experiential sense that Garb rounds out and clariijies by turning to the psychological experience of time in the dream state. 24  25  26 

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Ogren

In his article entitled “Time, Eternity and Mystical Experience in Kabbalah,” Adam Afterman focuses on the individual experience and perception of time in the state of unio mystica. Afterman remarks that for some Jewish mystics, “the mystical dynamic is that of a movement of escape from the burden of the perception of time towards eternity; yet, for others, time, and speciijically ‘sacred time,’ lies at the focal point of the mystical encounter with the divine.”27 It is these two distinct perceptions that he masterfully examines as marking a substantial difference in the experiential accounts of Abraham Abulaijia and the theosophical kabbalah represented by the Zohar, respectively. For Abulaijia and his ilk, intellectual union with the active intellect, which is perceived to be eternal, means a union with eternity and thus a move beyond time. This is a private mystical state that, similar to Garb’s analysis of the “eternal present,” is possible for Abulaijia in the here and now. Afterman remarks that this process understands time and eternity as a dichotomy, “resulting in a contemplative path (sometimes mystical) that negates time and desires eternity.”28 The theosophical kabbalah of the Zohar, by contrast, posits a “fundamental identiijication of God with sacred time, especially Shabbat,”29 which gives rise to the idea that a union with God can be achieved through a union with time and in time, and not through an attempt to transcend it. The volume ends with a concluding piece by Moshe Idel, treating that which is “Higher than Time.” He begins by noting various time concepts in Judaism, including those in this volume: the philosophical; the split between time and eternity that allows for pre-existence; history in terms of both “mesochronic” and “microchronic time;” and eternal presence in a “shared time” with other Jews and with God. To these he adds hypostatic time, which is treated in several of the articles throughout. This mention of various time concepts acts as a backdrop for the remainder of the article, in which Idel concerns himself with the ecstatic-kabbalistic and Hasidic idea of individually overcoming time altogether by grasping that which is “higher than time.” This is an intellectualistic supra-temporal experience that involves “an individual that transcends his human condition;”30 but in ecstatic kabbalah, it leads to theosis by universalization, in which both personal ritual and national history become obsolete. In Hasidism, by contrast, there is an attempt to mitigate the anomian aspect of the plane that is higher than time through the idea that union with the eternal

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Introduction

11

only happens by means of temporal commandments, and that deeds need to be done in their ijixed times in order to lead thoughts beyond time. Within his concluding article, Idel notes that “observations about the variety of time concepts in Judaism are relevant not only for a proper understanding of Judaism, but also for a more adequate phenomenology of religion in general.”31 The diverse voices within this volume have come together for that common purpose. At the very least, the variety of observations contained herein should shed new light on the rich and timeless Jewish mystical tradition of that which came before and of that which came after.

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PART 1 Setting the Theoretical Stage

⸪

CHAPTER 2

Retroactive Not Yet: Linear Circularity and Kabbalistic Temporality Elliot R. Wolfson

Abstract The essay examines the relationship of time and image through an analysis of select kabbalistic texts. The method employed in this analysis is to be differentiated from the more historiographical orientation that puts its focus on the relationship of medieval kabbalists to the philosophical literature of their day. As important as this line of research is, my concern here is with the more constructive use we can make of kabbalistic sources to elicit the notion of time predicated on the belief that every moment is radically new only to the extent that it is utterly ancient. Time extends as a line that revolves as a circle. The ability of the imagination to surmount spatial and temporal boundaries is related to the fact that when we imagine something of the present we not only summon an image of what is indirectly given through sense perception but an image that is lodged between retention and expectation, the no-more of the past and the not-yet of the future. The intentionality of the imagination is to be distinguished from that of perception insofar as the givenness of the perceived object has the character of actuality, whereas the reproductive givenness of the imagined object is characterized as ijictive, and in this sense, it can only be given as nongiven and is thus more proximate to the retentional consciousness of memory in which the absent is continuously made present by the present being perpetually absent. Time, on this measure, is the distension or duration of the movement of the soul from one state to another. Temporal facticity, therefore, is inherently noetic in nature; there is no objectivity to time outside the mind.

A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. I accept Reality and dare not question it, Materialism ijirst and last imbuing. walt whitman, Song of Myself © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004290310_003

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Gershom Scholem famously described kabbalah as a “time-bound thought.”1 In support of his contention, Scholem referred to a passage in the treatise Rav Pe‘alim composed in the thirteenth century by Isaac Ibn Laṭif: “Whatever is found in the heart of the sage without duration [shehut] and without time [zeman] is called wisdom, and every image of a true matter that does not exist in itself without time [we-khol ṣiyyur davar amitti she-eino maṣuy be-aṣmo be-lo zeman] is not wisdom at all. The one who relies upon it is not a sage but a Kabbalist.”2 1  Gershom Scholem, “Franz Rosenzweig and His Book The Star of Redemption,” in The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1988), 35. See Sara O. Heller-Wilensky, “The Relations Between Mysticism and Philosophy in the Teachings of Rabbi Isaac Ibn Latif,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 6, 3–4 (1987): 368–369 (Hebrew); Moshe Idel, Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 288 n. 24. 2  Isaac Ibn Laṭif, Rav Pe‘alim, edited by Samuel Schoenblum (Lemberg: Anna Wajdowicz, 1885), sec. 39, 14a; Hannah Kasher, “Isaac Ibn Laṭif’s Book ‘Rav Pe‘alim’,” ma thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 1974, 27. Heller-Wilensky, “The Relations between Mysticism and Philosophy,” 370, suggests that the temporal nature of kabbalistic thought relates to the fact that this wisdom is transmitted orally from the master to the disciple, a dialogical process that unfurls in time. Ibn Laṭif’s theory of temporality has been discussed by several other scholars: Deborah Schechterman, “Studies in the Short Version of Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim of Isaac Ibn Laṭif,” M.A. thesis, University of Haifa, 1980, 107–113 (Hebrew); Yossi Esudri, “Studies on the Philosophy of R. Isaac Ibn Latif: Proijile, Knowledge and Prophecy, and a Critical Edition of Zurat ‘Olam, Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University, 2008, 208–214 (Hebrew); and compare my own reflections in Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York: Zone Books, 2011), 360–362 n. 37. See the more recent exploration of this theme by my student Guadalupe González Diéguez, “Isaac ibn Laṭif (1210–1280) Between Philosophy and Kabbalah: Timeless and Timebound Wisdom,” Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 2014, 239–325. The chapter begins with the aforementioned passage from Rav Pe‘alim. Additionally, she cites this text on 221, in support of her claim that Ibn Laṭif integrates the messianic age “in a temporal scheme of cosmic cycles which he derives from esoteric exegesis of the Bible” (220). This theme is discussed in greater detail, op. cit., 262–318. I have offered a different explanation of this passage. The temporal implications of Ibn Laṭif’s theory of cosmic cycles have also been explored by Sara O. Heller Wilensky, “Messianism, Eschatology, and Utopia in the Philosophic-Mystical Current of Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century,” in Messianism and Eschatology: A Collection of Essays, edited by Zvi Baras (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Centre, 1983), 221–237 (Hebrew); Ḥaviva Pedaya, Naḥmanides: Cyclical Times and Holy Text (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 2003), 22–23, 216–217 (Hebrew). Both Wilensky and Pedaya suggest that, with regard to this matter, Ibn Laṭif may have been influenced by Ismā‘īlī theology. For fuller treatment of this topic, see Sara O. Heller Wilensky, “The ‘First Created Being’ in Early Kabbalah and Its Philosophical Sources,”

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Let me preface the ensuing analysis with a brief methodological clariijication. As I am wont to do in my scholarship, in this study, too, I will use the text of Ibn Laṭif as a springboard to reflect on the larger philosophical issue concerning the relationship of time and image. This is not to say that I think kabbalistic texts present the reader with a coherent epistemology or a systematic ontology. I am, nevertheless, committed to the supposition that one may engage these sources philosophically and thereby elicit from them insights that will contribute to the ongoing interrogation of speculative questions that have perplexed thinkers through the centuries. This method is to be differentiated from the more historiographical orientation that puts its focus on the relationship of medieval kabbalists to the philosophical literature of their day.3 As important as this line of research is, my concern here is not with the chronological alignment of the ducks, as it were, but with the more constructive use we can make of kabbalistic sources.

1

Alef and the Immeasurability of Eternal Time

What, then, may we glean from the pairing of the role of the image (ṣiyyur) and temporality (zeman) in the aforecited remark from Rav Pe‘alim? Ibn Laṭif’s deliberately laconic aphorism is far from clear. Minimally, we can deduce that, corresponding to a distinction he makes in Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim between the “masters of rational analysis” (ba‘alei shiqqul ha-da‘at)4 and the prophets in Studies in Jewish Thought, edited by Sara O. Heller Wilensky and Moshe Idel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1989), 272–276 (Hebrew); English translation in Jewish Intellectual History in the Middle Ages [Binah: Studies in Jewish History, Thought, and Culture, vol. 3], edited by Joseph Dan (Westport: Praeger, 1994), 72–74. 3  The attempt to clarify this question has roused the interest of various scholars through the generations. It has been a pivotal part of my own work. See, for example, Elliot R. Wolfson, “Hebraic and Hellenistic Conceptions of Wisdom in Sefer ha-Bahir,” Poetics Today 19 (1998): 147–176, esp. 148–156; and compare the insightful discussion of the “philosophical ethos” cultivated by the early Provençal and Spanish kabbalists in Jonathan Dauber, Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 4  The expression shiqqul ha-da‘at, which literally means the “weighing of knowledge,” is a rabbinic idiom (see, for example, Palestinian Talmud, Ketuvot 9:2, 33a; Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 6a, 33a), which was appropriated in medieval Hebrew parlance to refer to the ratiocination characteristic of the philosophers. It is used frequently by Abraham Ibn Ezra. See Irene Lancaster, Deconstructing the Bible: Abraham ibn Ezra’s Introduction to the Torah (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 83; Tzvi Langermann, “Abraham Ibn Ezra,” The Stanford

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(nevi’im), who are described as “those who receive from the true sages” (mequbbalim me-ḥakhmei ha-emet),5 he distinguishes sharply between philosopher (ḥakham) and Kabbalist (mequbbal).6 However, in contrast to the earlier work, wherein the spiritual vision (mar’eh ruḥanit) is characterized as seeing the “secret of the supernal beings [sod ha-elyonim] in one timeless moment [berega eḥad be-lo zeman],”7 in the latter work, it is the wisdom (ḥokhmah) of the philosopher that is represented as a form of atemporal cognition,8 whereas the object of the Kabbalist—presumably a secret (sod) that can be neither comprehended by discursive reason nor explicated fully in writing9—is the image of the true matter (ṣiyyur davar amitti) that is dependent on time. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/ibn-ezra/. It is reasonable to assume that Ibn Ezra was the source for Ibn Laṭif’s own utilization of the expression ba‘alei shiqqul ha-da‘at as a synonym for the philosophers (see, for example, Isaac Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 22b). Regarding the link between Ibn Ezra and Ibn Laṭif, see Sara O. Heller-Wilensky, “On the Question of the Authorship of Sefer Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim Attributed to Abraham Ibn Ezra,” Tarbiz 32 (1963): 277–295 (Hebrew). 5  Isaac Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 12a. See ibid., fol. 21b, where a distinction is made between the “level of speculation” (ma‘alat ha-iyyun) and the “level of the true tradition” (ma‘alat ha-qabbalah ha-amittit). Compare Isaac Ibn Laṭif, Ṣurat Olam, edited by Zalman Stern (Vienna: Adalbert della Torre, 1860), ch. 27, 41 (Zurat ‘Olam, edited by Esudri, 72), where the “masters of rational analysis” (ba‘alei shiqqul ha-da‘at) are contrasted with “the prophets, who speak through the holy spirit” (ha-nevi’im ha-medabberim be-ruaḥ ha-qodesh). I have accepted the emendation of the printed text ha-nivra’im, “the created beings,” to hanevi’im, “the prophets,” ijirst suggested by Hannah Kasher, “On the Meaning of the Terms ‘Kabbalah’ and ‘Kabbalist’ in the Writings of Laṭif,” Da‘at 42 (1999): 8 (Hebrew). 6  For a different explanation of the term “Kabbalist” in this context, see Kasher, “On the Meaning,” 8–9. On the contrast between prophet and philosopher in Ibn Laṭif, see Wolfson, A Dream, 118–119. 7  Isaac Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 12a. 8  Kasher, “Isaac Ibn Laṭif’s Book ‘Rav Pe‘alim’,” 27 n. 1, cites a parallel to this passage in Isaac Ibn Laṭif, Perush Megillat Qohelet (Jerusalem: Makor, 1969), 48. She also traces this idea of atemporal wisdom to Ibn Sina and notes that it is mentioned by Judah Halevi (Kuzari, 5:12) and accepted by Maimonides (Guide of the Perplexed, 2:38). 9  See, for instance, Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 5b; idem, Ginzei haMelekh, edited by Adolf Jellinek, in Kokhvei Yiṣḥaq (1866): ch. 27, 10. Ibn Laṭif’s hermeneutic of esotericism, influenced by the rhetoric of Maimonides, is stated succinctly in Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 6b: “The essence of my intention is a hidden explication [be’ur mekhusseh], to conceal that which is alluded to in the allusion [ha-nismhal ba-mashal], the object in the subject [ha-nasuy ba-nose].” The exact language is repeated in Isaac Ibn Laṭif, Ginzei ha-Melekh, edited by Adolf Jellinek, in Kokhvei Yiṣḥaq (1862): 7. On the use of the parable (mashal) to elucidate hidden matters, see Ibn Laṭif, Ṣurat Olam, ch. 26, p. 39 (Zurat ‘Olam, edited by Esudri, 69). See also Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 11a: “My intention in the matter of

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19

the secrets and the mysteries will be to transmit of them chapter headings through profound allusions like one who reveals a handbreadth and conceals two handbreadths. What is disclosed will be for one who understands from his own mind, but if one does not understand, one will not succeed because it is sealed.” In the continuation, Ibn Laṭif states that the comprehension (havanah) of the “wondrous and hidden matters” requires a “pure and impeccable contemplation” (iyyun zakh we-naqi). This locution is used on a number of occasions by Ibn Laṭif; see, for instance, op. cit., fol. 20a. The secrets, which are related to the “words of the prophets and those who speak through the holy spirit,” exceed demonstrative reason, but they cannot be apprehended except by one who has mastered the various philosophical disciplines. As he puts it, op. cit., fol. 33a, “Every prophet is a philosophical sage but no philosopher is a prophet until all these honorable gradations are united with him.” The prophetic soul (nefesh ha-nevu’it) is superior to the philosophical soul (nefesh ha-ijilosoijit), which is a form for the rational faculty (ṣurah la-medabberet). On ijive “supernal mysteries of the Torah”—the unity of the divine comprehended through the name of ten letters (the Tetragrammaton written out in full), the connection of the eternal and the creation of the world, the form of prophecy and revelatory visions, the form of the earth and the seas, and the ostensible conflict between the literal meaning of Scripture and truths ascertained on the basis of demonstrative reason—that cannot be ascertained by the philosophers or masters of speculation, see Ibn Laṭif, Rav Pe‘alim, secs. 80–86, 25b–27a (Kasher, “Isaac Ibn Laṭif’s Book ‘Rav Pe‘alim’,” sec. 81–87, pp. 55–61); Esudri, “Studies,” 227–232; Wolfson, A Dream, 361 n. 37. On the superiority of the prophet over the philosopher in Ibn Laṭif’s teaching, see Sara O. Heller-Wilensky, “The Dialectical Influence of Maimonides on Isaac Ibn Latif and Early Spanish Kabbalah,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 7 (1988): 298–299 (Hebrew); English version: “The Guide and the Gate: The Dialectical Influence of Maimonides on Isaac Ibn Latif and Early Spanish Kabbalah,” in A Straight Path—Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture: Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman, edited by Ruth Link Salinger (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 273–274. On the use of the rabbinic criterion for the disclosure of secrets, understanding on one’s own, mevin mi-da‘ato (Mishnah, Ḥagigah 2:1), see Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 42b. In that context—and many more examples could have been adduced—it does not appear that the expression “hidden secret” (sod nistar) refers to anything but an accepted philosophical conception; that is, to be more speciijic, the phrase “a still, subtle voice,” qol demamah daqqah (1 Kings 19:12) denotes the divine word that is without any vocal articulation (davar beli qol). On fol. 44b, Ibn Laṭif uses the locution “simple spiritual word” (dibbur ha-ruḥani ha-pashuṭ), and on fol. 55a, he writes that “the ijirst will [ḥefeṣ ha-riʾshon] precedes the simple word [dibbur ha-pashuṭ], which is described as a ‘subtle voice’ [demamah daqqah], a primordiality of a unique existence that is boundless [qadimat meṣi’ut meyuḥedet beli nigbelet]. . . . And to this Elijah, blessed be he, intimates in his saying ‘a still, subtle voice’ [qol demamah daqqah], that is, the voice that issues from the subtlety [demamah], which is described as the spiritual word [dibbur ha-ruḥani].” Ibn Laṭif hints at the secret of the word (dibbur) and the voice (qol) from between the two cherubim in Ṣurat Olam, ch. 7, p. 13 (Zurat ‘Olam, edited by Esudri, 21). For a more comprehensive discussion of the hermeneutical strategies of Ibn Laṭif, see González Diéguez, “Isaac ibn Laṭif,” 97–148. Finally, let me note that Ibn Laṭif also accepted the negative theology endorsed by Maimonides and thus he emphasized that there is no way to comprehend the

20

Wolfson

It lies beyond the scope of this study to examine the complex blend of philosophical and kabbalistic elements in Ibn Laṭif’s thought,10 a subject that has been addressed by a number of scholars,11 but there is one point that is worth pondering as it has important ramiijications for understanding the nature of time. I have in mind the discussion in Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim of the doctrine of the temporal creation of the world (ḥiddush ha-olam) from absolute nothing (aijisah muḥleṭet),12 versus belief in the eternity of the world (qadmut haolam), whether understood in the Platonic version (the world was shaped from

10 

11 

12 

“ultimate truth” of the “substance of God” (mahut ha-el), also identiijied as the “ijirst cause” (ha-sibbah ha-ri’shonah), the “cause of all causes” (sibbat kol ha-sibbot), the “incomprehensible primordial existence” (meṣi’ut qadmon beli mussag), and the “one true unity” (eḥad aḥdut amittit). By the logic of the via negativa, to say that God is eternal means that he is not created; to say that God is one means that he is not composite; and so on. See Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fols. 17b–18a, 45b; Ginzei ha-Melekh, ch. 3, p. 10. Interestingly, in the introduction to his Minḥat Yehudah, a commentary on Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut (Mantua, 1558), 3b, Judah Ḥayyat instructed the reader to study the works of Ibn Laṭif with caution, since with respect to the wisdom of kabbalah, “one of his feet was inside and one of his feet was outside.” See Moshe Idel, “On Kabbalah in R. Judah Moscato’s Qol Yehudah,” in Rabbi Judah Moscato and the Jewish Intellectual World of Mantua in the 16th–17th Centuries, edited by Giuseppe Veltri and Gianfranco Miletto (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 62–63. Sara O. Heller-Wilensky, “Isaac Ibn Latif’s ‘The Gate of Heaven’: A Mystical Guide of the Perplexed,” in Perspectives in Jewish Learning, vol. 2, edited by Moses A. Shulvass (Chicago: Spertus College of Judaica, 1966), 17–25; idem, “Isaac Ibn Latif—Philosopher or Kabbalist?” in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, edited by Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1967), 185–223; idem, “The Relations between Mysticism and Philosophy;” idem, “The Dialectical Influence,” 289–306 (“The Guide and the Gate,” 266–278); idem, “The ‘First Created Being’ in Early Kabbalah,” 261–276 (English translation, 65–77); Shoey Raz, “Isaac Ibn Laṭif and the Guide of the Perplexed,” M.A. thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 2004 (Hebrew); idem, “Metaphysics and the Account of the Chariot: Maimonides and Iṣḥaq Ibn Laṭif,” in Maimonides and Mysticism: Presented to Moshe Hallamish On the Occasion of his Retirement, edited by Avraham Elqayam and Dov Schwartz (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2009), 133–164 (Hebrew); idem, “Latif, Isaac b. Abraham Ibn,” Encyclopedia Judaica, second edition (2008), 12:506–507, available at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11920.html. Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 6b. See ibid., fol. 19a, where the author uses the expression aijisah gemurah muḥleṭet. As González Diéguez, “Isaac ibn Laṭif,” 246 n. 18, points out, Ibn Laṭif’s presentation of the traditional dogma of ex nihilo ( yesh me-ayin) corresponds to the idea of creation from absolute nonexistence (lā min shay) as opposed to creation from no-thing (min lā shay), since the latter could be interpreted as creation out of something that is no-thing, the existence of primordial matter, which is inchoate and indeterminate.

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pre-existent matter) or in the Aristotelian version (the world as it is always existed).13 His explicit declarations notwithstanding, the view on creation that he espouses does not accord perfectly with what became, in medieval rabbinic culture, the traditional reading of the scriptural narrative. Precisely the point of disparity provides a window through which we can better fathom his perspective on time and the imagination. Ostensibly following Maimonides,14 Ibn Laṭif maintains that everything celestial and terrestrial was created concurrently by means of one word (dibbur), which he identiijies further as the “simple will” (ḥefeṣ pashuṭ).15 The cosmological notion is cast mythopoeically in the rabbinic idiom, “everything was created in one moment immediately when it arose in thought,”16 or in the mystically-oriented formulation, all entities were created by means of the Tetragrammaton.17 In support of the latter idea, Ibn Laṭif invokes the dictum from Pirqei Rabbi Eliezer, “Before the world was created, the holy One, blessed 13 

14 

15 

16  17 

Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fols. 18a–20a. See Wilensky, “Isaac Ibn Latif,” 191–192. For an extended discussion on the topic of time and creation, see González Diéguez, “Isaac ibn Laṭif,” 242–252. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, translated with an introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines, with an introductory essay by Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 2:17, p. 296; 2:30, p. 350. Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 21b. See ibid., fol. 45b. The role of the will in Ibn Laṭif’s thought can be traced to what is most likely an Ismā‘īlī interpolation of the word (kalima) in the Plotinian scheme of emanated hypostases between the One and the Nous. See Shlomo Pines, “La longue recension de la Théologie d’Aristote dans ses rapports avec la doctrine ismaélienne,” Revue des É tudes Islamiques 22 (1954): 7–20; idem, “The Book Arugat ha-Bosem: Fragments from the Book Fons Vitae,” Tarbiz 27 (1958): 218– 233 (Hebrew); Samuel M. Stern, “Ibn Ḥasday’s Neoplatonist: A Neoplatonic Treatise and Its Influence on Isaac Israeli and the Longer Version of the Theology of Aristotle,” Oriens 13–14 (1960–1961): 58–120; F. W. Zimmerman, “The Origins of the So-Called Theology of Aristotle,” in Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts, edited by Jill Kraye, W. F. Ryan, and C.B. Schmitt (London: Warburg Institute, 1986), 110–240, esp. 196–208; Heller-Wilensky, “The ‘First Created Being’ in Early Kabbalah,” 262–266 (English translation, 66–69). Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 20b. Ibid., fol. 55b. In that context, Ibn Laṭif paraphrases the dictum in Sefer Yeṣirah 2:6 that God “makes all creation and all the things one name, and a sign for the matter is the twenty-two objects in one body.” For textual variants of this passage and analysis, see A. Peter Hayman, Sefer Yeṣirah: Edition, Translation and Text-Critical Commentary (Tūbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), § 22, 109. The passage is paraphrased in the same language by Ibn Laṭif, Ṣurat Olam, ch. 21, p. 31 (Zurat ‘Olam, edited by Esudri, 55). The name through which all things are created is identiijied as both the will (ḥefeṣ) and as the ijirst word (dibbur ha-ri’shon), which comprises the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

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be he, and his name alone existed,”18 to convey the coevality of the ijirst cause and the will.19 This secret seems to be implied in the aphorism in Rav Pe‘alim wherein Ibn Laṭif writes about the mystery of the connection between the creation of the world and its primordiality (qadmuto), a secret predicated on the seemingly impossible confluence of two opposites in one subject and in one moment (qibbuṣ shenei hafakhim be-nose eḥad u-ve-rega eḥad).20 Defying the law of noncontradiction, we are compelled to say that the world is both created and eternal, insofar as all that was generated temporally was contained timelessly in the inijinite will. The paradox can be explained as well in light of the doctrine of the cosmic cycles (shemiṭṭot), according to which the present world is a renewal of the world that preceded it and was then destroyed, and so on ad inijinitum.21 From that vantagepoint, there cannot be an absolutely novel act of creation as is implied by the doctrine of ex nihilo—even the presumed ijirst act of creation, technically speaking, is not out of nothing, since what is brought forth existed already in the divine volition. Extrapolating more generally about the nature of time, we can say that every moment is radically new only to the extent that it is utterly ancient. Time, on this score, extends as a line that revolves as a circle. In any given point of the temporal rotation within the cycle, creation mimics this linear circularity. Hence, what comes to be is what has always been, the same difference that perpetually recurs as differently the same. In the twelfth chapter of Ṣurat Olam, Ibn Laṭif elicits this mystery from the two sacred names, Ehyeh and YHWH, which are compared, inter alia, to form and matter, to the point (nequddah) and the encircling line (ḥuṭ ha-sovev), to the letters alef and waw. Moreover, the pairing of these names is alluded to in the verses “What was is what will be” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) and “Remote and inscrutable is what has happened; who can discover it?” (ibid., 7:24). The cadence of time is discerned 18  19 

20 

21 

Pirqei Rabbi Eliezer (Warsaw, 1852), ch. 3, 5b. Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 20b. See also Ibn Laṭif, Ṣurat Olam, ch. 6, pp. 10–11 (Zurat ‘Olam, edited by Esudri, 14–16). In that context, the name alludes to the “primordial supernal intellect” (ha-sekhel ha-elyon ha-qadmoni), which is depicted as well as the form (ṣurah) in relation to the “resplendent light” (or bahir), the “simple splendor” (zohar pashuṭ), or the “spiritual light” (ha-or ha-ruḥani), which is the “simple matter” (ḥomer pashuṭ). Ibn Laṭif suggests that the name may also allude to the divine will (ḥefeṣ el), which is positioned as an intermediary between the ijirst being (yeshut ha-ri’shonah) and the dyad of matter and form. Ibn Laṭif, Rav Pe‘alim, sec. 82, 26a (Kasher, “Isaac Ibn Laṭif’s Book ‘Rav Pe‘alim’,” sec. 83, p. 57). On the convergence of the necessary, impossible, and possible in one subject and in one time, see Ibn Laṭif, Rav Pe‘alim, sec. 29, 10b (Kasher, “Isaac Ibn Laṭif’s Book ‘Rav Pe‘alim’,” sec. 29, p. 21). Kasher, “Isaac Ibn Laṭif’s Book ‘Rav Pe‘alim’,” 58.

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as the encircling line of the future that continuously unpacks all that was contained in the impenetrable point of the past.22 This, I submit, is the deeper signiijicance of Ibn Laṭif’s acceptance of the Maimonidean claim that all things were created in one act by the divine will. When read through this lens, the ijirst verse of the Torah—“In the beginning God created heaven and earth,” bere’shit bara elohim et ha-shamayim we-et ha-areṣ (Genesis 1:1)—alludes to the tripartite structure of the universe: the intelligible or angelic world (elohim), the celestial world (shamayim), and the terrestrial world (areṣ).23 The subsequent events, delineated in the account of the six days, do not bespeak distinct acts of production, but rather the differentiation of all that was contained in an undifferentiated way in the root of all being, the secret of alef that is before beit, the inijinite will that is the origin that preijigures— conceptually and not temporally—the beginning and thus bears the form of the world in its entirety.24 This is the import of the claim that all things were created in the immediacy of one moment [rega eḥad], the blink of the eye, the omnitemporal interval that can occupy no space, the nonlocal locality of the instant that bridges the chasm separating time and eternity. The logical principle at work here seems to be that the timelessness of God’s essence precludes attributing any succession to divine action, and hence, with respect to creation, there can only be a single and instantaneous act—an act without duration—that issues from the ijirst cause.25 Just as divine 22  23  24 

25 

Ibn Laṭif, Ṣurat Olam, ch. 7, p. 12 (Zurat ‘Olam, edited by Esudri, 18–19). Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fols. 45a–b. Ibn Laṭif, Ṣurat Olam, ch. 6, p. 11 and ch. 25, p. 38 (Zurat ‘Olam, edited by Esudri, 17 and 67). In the second of these passages, Ibn Laṭif distinguishes between the alef and the ijirst created being (nivra ha-ri’shon), which is the archon (sar) of the alef. Zimmerman, “The Origins,” 204. In kabbalistic literature, the principle is articulated clearly by Yiṣḥaq Isaac Ḥaver, Pitḥei She‘arim (Tel-Aviv, 1964), Netiv Olam ha-Tiqqun, ch. 10, 69a: “If all the lights were illumined in one moment, then time would be abrogated and there would be the aspect of eternality [niṣḥiyyut] in relation to which past, future, and present are not appropriate.” Based on this principle, and the corollary assumption that each moment of time must be distinctive, Ḥaver concludes that the process of tiqqun in this world occurs successively (be-hadragah) rather than simultaneously (be-vat aḥat), although he entertains the possibility that in the world to come time will be nulliijied and hence all the lights will shine in tandem. The question of the attribution of timelessness, eternity, sempiternity, or omnitemporality to God is a complex matter that has been discussed by various philosophers. See, for instance, William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001); the essays by Paul Helm, Alan G. Padgett, William Lane Craig, and Nicholas Wolterstorff included in God & Time: Four Views, edited by Gregory E. Ganssle (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001); and the collection of studies in God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature, edited by Gregory E. Ganssle and David M. Woodruff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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omniscience implies that God knows every particular being in an eternal moment, so God creates the totality of the cosmic order in a momentary but never-ending flash. Seemingly deviating from Maimonides, Ibn Laṭif infers from this notion of simultaneity that divine creativity is expressive of perpetual volition26—a stance that approximates the theory of occasionalism— insofar as the “ijirst mover produces constantly without cessation [oseh tamid beli hefseq], for if the mover stops moving even for one small second, the reality of the natural world—in its generalities and in its particularities—would be obliterated.”27 The time of creation, accordingly, is an eternal now, the nunc stans, which is both the fullness of time and outside the flow of time. Read as philosophical allegory, the story of creation instructs us that time in its most rudimentary comportment is to be calibrated from the vantagepoint of the Tetragrammaton,28 which comprises the compresence of the three temporal modes in the ever-changing but immutable flux of the present that is always the same because always different. In the thirty-third chapter of Ginzei ha-Melekh, Ibn Laṭif links this secret to the “inner and hidden intent” of Ehyeh, the name that denotes (1) the primordiality (qadmut) and unity (aḥdut) of the ijirst existent (maṣuy ri’shon); (2) the existence (meṣi’ut) of the ijirst created being (nivra ha-ri’shon), which contains all created beings in its existence for a thousand generations, a cipher that stands for a cosmic cycle or aeon; and (3) the thirty-two paths of wisdom that illumine the heart from the thirty-two divine intelligible forms (ṣurot sikhliyyot

26 

27 

28 

I am not certain that the emphasis on the will as the agent of creation in Ibn Laṭif signiijies a renunciation of emanationism for the sake of afijirming a voluntarism that is in more accord with the traditional creationism. I think the argument offered about Solomon Ibn Gabirol by Sarah Pessin, Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 53–65, can also be applied to Ibn Laṭif; that is, the latter’s conception of the will as the principle agent of the divine efflux enhances the emanationist scheme, since all things that come to be through the will are expressive of the divine essence. Creation is a narrative recounting of the originary act of genesis. The question that still needs to be investigated is if the philological distinction made by Pessin between will and desire—the latter is the word she uses to render the Arabic al-irāda, which corresponds to the Hebrew raṣon and the Latin voluntas—can also be transferred to Ibn Laṭif’s ḥefeṣ. Ibn Laṭif, Ginzei ha-Melekh, ch. 3, pp. 10–11. For a similar articulation, see Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 55b. In the passage from Ginzei ha-Melekh, Ibn Laṭif draws an analogy between the traditional view that the Creator is the ijirst mover through the agency of the simple will and the Aristotelian view that the means for the divine causality are the separate intellects. Ibn Laṭif, Ṣurat Olam, ch. 16, p. 25 (Zurat ‘Olam, edited by Esudri, 44).

Linear Circularity and Kabbalistic Temporality

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elohiyyot), encoded both in the thirty-two occurrences of the word elohim in the ijirst chapter of Genesis and in the word kavod, “glory,” whose numerical value is thirty-two (kaf = 20 + bet = 2 + waw = 6 + dalet = 4).29 That all things originate from and are contained within these thirty-two forms is a mystery that no one can comprehend, u-me-hem u-va-hem nimṣa ha-kol we-ein mevin. The secret of Ehyeh, moreover, alerts us to the inaccessibility of the substance (mahut) of God, on the one hand, and to the attachment of the influx of the divine potency and providence in the world, on the other hand—in more conventional terms, this name signiijies both transcendence and immanence. Ehyeh is ascribed, most properly, to the ijirst existent or to the ijirst cause, since it denotes the “eternal and everlasting existence that has no end, limit, or termination” (qiyyum la‘ad u-le-neṣaḥ neṣaḥim ad le-ein qeṣ we-takhlit we-sof ),30 and hence it embodies the essential feature of time realized in the futurity of the past taking shape in the eternality of the present. The enlightened (maskilim) contemplate this name and, as a consequence, conjure a mental image of time that mirrors the convergence of past, present, and future that is symptomatic of the demiurgic potency.31 I note, in passing, that in several of his treatises, spanning the trajectory of his literary career, Ibn Laṭif afijirmed the view that time exists only within the

29  30 

31 

Compare Ibn Laṭif, Ṣurat Olam, ch. 21, p. 30 (Zurat ‘Olam, edited by Esudri, 52–53). Isaac Ibn Laṭif, Ginzei ha-Melekh, edited by Adolf Jellinek, in Kokhvei Yiṣḥaq (1867): ch. 33, p. 7. On the name Ehyeh and its relationship to the Tetragrammaton, see Laṭif, Ṣurat Olam, ch. 7, p. 12 (Zurat ‘Olam, edited by Esudri, 18–19). On the possible repercussions of the kabbalistic insight about time associated with the name Ehyeh, see Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Emergence of Ethical Man, edited by Michael S. Berger (New York: Toras HoRav Foundation, 2005), 171–172: “The name Ehyeh (‘I will be’) which God reveals to Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3:14) conveys an identical idea: I am and remain present; not merely sometime and somewhere but in every now and in every here (Buber, Moses, 52). Why? Because I am entangled in the historical occurrence; I co-participate in the historical drama on account of my covenant with their fathers, whom Israel embodies now. The Ehyeh of God is eo ipso the assurance for the Ehyeh of the charismatic personality. . . . Covenant existence is historical existence in its full uniqueness; existence in a present in which future and past converge. . . . The uniqueness of such a historical existence consists in projecting a present onto a mystical future, and vice-versa in tying it in with a dim past.” For discussion of the passage from Buber to which Soloveitchik alludes, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 27–28, 296 n. 102. I am currently preparing an essay that analyzes the kabbalistic influence—especially as mediated through Ḥabad—on Soloveitchik’s approach to the simultaneity of time as the coalescence of past, present, and future.

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intellect.32 This conception is referred to by Hannah Kasher as “subjectivist”33 and she suggested as a possible source the statement of Abraham Bar Ḥiyya in Hegyon ha-Nefesh ha-Aṣuvah that “time is not a substantial entity” (ein ha-zeman davar she-yesh bo mamash).34 I would take issue with this characterization, for the locating of time within the mind, an idea that is well attested in the Neoplatonic tradition, is not meant to suggest that time is merely subjective, but rather that temporal facticity is inherently noetic in nature and hence there is no objectivity outside the mind. Time, on this measure, is the distension or duration of the movement of the soul from one state to another.35 The reference to Bar Ḥiyya as a likely source for Ibn Laṭif enhances the labelling of this idea as Neoplatonic rather than subjectivist.36 Here it is germane to recall another comment in the forty-ijirst chapter of the same treatise. Ibn Laṭif distinguishes three forms of comprehension (hassagah): speculative (iyyunit), prophetic (nevu’it), and esoteric (ne‘lemet). The ijirst category entails demonstrative proofs of the existence of the ijirst cause derived from knowledge of created existents. The second category involves apprehension of the ijirst cause acting through the simple will (ḥefeṣ pashuṭ) or the spiritual word (dibbur ruḥani). This path is inaccessible to the philosophers (ba‘alei ha-meḥqar ha-iyyuni), since it is enabled exclusively by the luminal overflow that emanates upon the prophets through gnosis of God’s names. The third category is limited to the knowledge of Ehyeh, the most concealed name (shem ha-ne‘lam be-takhlit ha-ha‘alamah), which is depicted ijiguratively as the face that will be revealed in the future in accord with the prophetic pledge, “In that day the Lord will be one and his name will be one” (Zechariah 14:9). Signiijicantly, a hint to the eschatological promise is discernible in the concluding words of the creation narrative, “which God created to be done,” asher bara elohim la‘asot (Genesis 2:3). The “inner intent” (kawwanah penimit) of these words “alludes to the emergence of the comprehension of the hidden secret from potentiality to actuality.”37 The termination of the creation myth is not simply a comment about the past; it portends the event that will transpire at

32  33  34  35  36  37 

Ibn Laṭif, Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, ms Vatican 335, fol. 21a; Perush Megillat Qohelet, 19; Rav Pe‘alim, sec. 18, 8a (Kasher, “Isaac Ibn Laṭif’s Book ‘Rav Pe‘alim’,” sec. 18, p. 14). Kasher, “Isaac Ibn Laṭif’s Book ‘Rav Pe‘alim’,” 15. Abraham Bar Ḥiyya, Hegyon ha-Nefesh ha-Aṣuvah, edited, with introduction and notes by Geoffrey Wigoder (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1971), 41. Elliot R. Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 8–9, 13–16. González Diéguez, “Isaac ibn Laṭif,” 241–242. Ibn Laṭif, Ginzei ha-Melekh, ch. 41, p. 16.

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the end of time. The sealing of creation is thus indicative of the hermeneutical bending of the temporal arc, the crisscrossing of past and future in the present that perpetually renews itself as the reiteration of what has always been what is yet to be.

2

Imagining Time and the Givenness of the Nongiven

It goes without saying that it is not an easy matter to generalize about a phenomenon as multifaceted as the imagination. But one of its salient characteristics, attested in a variety of disciplinary approaches, including philosophy, psychology, and neurobiology, is the ability to traverse spatial and temporal distances. This is an ability that is facilitated by the transporting quality of reminiscence, which has been long associated with the imaginative faculty. As Eva Brann expressed it, “To the imagination diverse regions of present space represent different slices of time, insofar as they are invested by different memories. . . . The imagination overcomes the physical necessities of space and time equally.”38 Probing the matter further, we surmise that the ability of imagination to surmount spatial and temporal boundaries is related to the fact that when we imagine something of the present, we not only summon an image of what is indirectly given through sense perception, but an image that is lodged between retention and expectation, the no-more of the past and the not-yet of the future. As it happens, in another treatise, Ṣeror ha-Mor, Ibn Latif offers a description of time related to this very conception: “The temporal present of necessity exists but it is impossible to understand it. Rather it is in the image of the intermediary between past and future; the intermediate image, which is between two nothingnesses, is very difijicult for the intellect . . . to imagine . . . for there is no intermediary outside the intellect, even for something that exists in actuality, and how much more so for the absolute privation.”39

38  39 

Eva T. H. Brann, The World of the Imagination: Sum and Substance (Lanham: Rowman & Littleijield Publishers, Inc., 1991), 615–616. Isaac Ibn Laṭif, Ṣeror ha-Mor, edited by Adolph Jellinek, Kerem Ḥemed 9 (1856): 155. I have also consulted ms Paris 982, fol. 80b. For a parallel description of time, see Ibn Laṭif, Perush Megillat Qohelet, 19–20. In that context, Ibn Laṭif cites the comment of Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, 1:73, pp. 196–197, that “the cleverest philosophers were confused by the question of time and that some of them did not understand its notion—so that Galen could say that it is a divine thing, the true reality of which cannot be perceived—this applies all the more to those who pay no attention to the nature of anything.”

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Ibn Latif is here drawing on an idea that is traceable to Plato: the image is a combination of being and nonbeing; the object we imagine is mentally present but somatically absent, and thus it is, at once, real and unreal.40 Rendered in the technical language of Husserlian phenomenology, the presentiijication of the image, whether in the act of recollecting the past or in anticipating the future, is to be contrasted with the appresentationally given object that is characteristic of the appearance of the present in the impressional consciousness of perception. The intentionality of the imagination is to be distinguished from that of perception insofar as the givenness of the perceived object has the character of actuality, whereas the reproductive givenness of the imagined object is characterized as ijictive, and in this sense, it can only be given as nongiven and is thus more proximate to the retentional consciousness of memory, in which the absent is continuously made present by the present being perpetually absent.41 The insight concerning the formal afijinity between time and imagination is expressed poetically and lucidly by Brann: “An image, as a likeness, is composed of Nonbeing and Being at once, meaning that it is not the original, which in a way it also is; an image is the presence of an absence. In time, as the pure structure of Becoming, that ‘at once’ comes apart as absence turns into presence and presence into absence, as the future that is not yet ceaselessly propels the present that is now into a past that is not anymore; time is thus a present winged by two absences.”42 Alternatively, we can speak of the image as a coincidentia oppositorum of the hidden and the manifest; it both is and is not what it represents.43 The flux of

40 

41  42  43 

Plato, Sophist 240b–c, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, with introduction and prefatory notes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 983. See analysis in Brann, The World of the Imagination, 389–396. Dorion Cairns, The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl, edited by Lester Embree (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 72–74. Eva Brann, What, Then, is Time? (Lanham: Rowman & Littleijield, 1999), xii (emphasis in original). In a related, albeit somewhat different terminological index, Henry Corbin educed from the Ṣūiji understanding of the Active Imagination (ḥaḍrat al-khayāl), especially in the mystical theosophy of Ibn ‘Arabī, the depiction of the image as the intermediate plane, which is marked by the coincidence of opposites of the inijinite and the ijinite, the intelligible and the sensible. See Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Ṣūijism of Ibn ‘Arabī, translated by Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 218–219, 272–273, and the discussion in Elliot R. Wolfson, “Imago Templi and the Meeting of the Two Seas: Liturgical Time-Space and the Feminine Imaginary in Zoharic Kabbalah,” res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 51 (2007): 123–124.

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time, similarly, exhibits the heterogeneity of the homogeneous. To paraphrase Hegel, the constituent element of becoming is the movement that consists of the reciprocal passing of being into nothing and nothing into being.44 What is available at any moment is the presence of the actual present, the now that appears to us, but this present lacks any presence apart from the presence of the recollected past and/or the presence of the anticipated future, that is, a presence that cannot be accorded the reality of being present outside the absence conjured by the afijirmation of negation that is central to the imaginative faculty. It follows that the duration of time is not primarily the property of thinghood or the measure of actual bodies in motion, as Aristotle famously argued, but rather the measure of alteration determined by the extension or stretching (distentio) of the mind backward and forward. This is a crucial aspect of Plotinus’s reflections on time that had a major impact on Augustine’s Confessions and later on Husserl’s lectures on the phenomenology of internal time consciousness.45 To the extent that becoming marks the being of time, we can conjecture that the facticity of the latter is such that nonbeing and being coalesce, not as the dialectical resolution of antinomies but as the paradoxical juxtaposition of contraries that belong together in virtue of their intractable disjuncture. As Merleau-Ponty put it, “Past and future exist all too well in the world, they exist in the present, and what being itself lacks in order to be temporal is the nonbeing of the elsewhere, of the bygone, and of tomorrow. . . . Past and future voluntarily withdraw from being and pass over to the side of subjectivity, to seek there not some real support, but rather a possibility of non-being that harmonizes with their nature.”46 The common sense conception of time as a string of now-points is meaningful only insofar as it presupposes the synchronization of being and nonbeing in a ijield of presence that is circumscribed by the absence of the double horizon of past and future. Time and imagination both assume that being is implicated with nonbeing in becoming. Again, to quote Brann: “Imagination and time are related to the brink of identity through memory, which is the presence of what has gone absent through passage. . . . Therefore, if we want to understand something of imagination, memory, and time, we 44 

45  46 

Georg W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of The Philosophical Sciences (1830), translated by William Wallace, with foreword by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), § 88, pp. 130–131, and see analysis in Brann, What, Then, is Time? 23. Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau, 8–30. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Donald A. Landes (London: Routledge, 2012), 434–435.

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must mount an inquiry into what it means to say that something is not what it claims to be or is not there or is nonexistent or is affected by Nonbeing.”47 In the remainder of this essay, I will attempt to think about time kabbalistically from the vantagepoint of an apophasis that emerges from pondering the existence of nonexistence, the event of presence that is always in excess of being present.

3

Return of the Altogether Otherwise

The imaginary fusion of presence and absence, visible and invisible, imparts to us the key to understanding the paradox of linear circularity, the locution that I have deployed to name a conception of temporality that calls into question the linear model of aligning events chronometrically in a noetic sequence of nowpoints stretched invariably between the retention of the before that is no more and the protention of the after that is not yet. The notion of the timeswerve that I have championed calls for the reversal of the standard order, and hence, instead of speaking of every actually present becoming a repetition of a past that induces the expectation of a future, we should readily speak of every actually present becoming an expectation of a past that induces the repetition of a future.48 In the contours of imagination, we afijirm the coming to be of what is always yet to come. This inversion is at the heart of the hermeneutical process that has informed the variegated nature of textual reasoning at play in rabbinic and kabbalistic sources, and, I would add, in scholarly analyses of these sources as well. Indeed, with respect to the intricate relationship between temporality, imagination, and hermeneutics, I contend that there is no substantial difference between scholar and adept. To avoid potential misunderstanding, let me elaborate on this last point. I am ever mindful of Nietzsche’s observation, “He who wants to mediate between two resolute thinkers shows that he is mediocre: he has no eye for what is unique; seeing things as similar and making things the same is the sign of weak eyes.”49 In this spirit, I have sought to extract and to assess—at times

47  48 

49 

Eva Brann, The Ways of Naysaying: No, Not, Nothing, and Nonbeing (Lanham: Rowman & Littleijield, 2001), xii. For the fullest discussion, see the prologue “Timeswerve/Hermeneutic Reversibility” in Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), xv–xxxi. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, edited by Bernard Williams, translated by Joseijine Nauckhoff, poems translated by Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), sec. 228, p. 145.

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quite critically—kabbalistic doctrines from immersion in textual details rather than by providing systematic and/or totalizing generalizations based on the purported existence of metaphysical absolutes or ontological essences. Neither in theory nor in practice do I advocate for a simplistic leveling out of difference implied by the charge of essentialism that has been leveled against me. Appeal to the Derridean différance has been mobilized in the effort to criticize the alleged essentialist nature of my work, but a proper understanding of the paradox of iteration and innovation implied in this concept—and particularly as it relates to the notion of singularity—would expose the inadequacy of these attacks.50 Consider as exemplary the following comment of Derrida about his own writing praxis: “Every time I write something, I have the impression of making a beginning—but in fact that which is the same in texture is ceaselessly exposed to a singularity which is that of the other . . . Everything appears anew: which means newness and repetition together. . . . In the actual writing, of course, I’m well aware of the fact that at bottom it all unfolds according to the same law that commands these always different things.”51 The comment leaves little room for ambiguity: everything must appear as new but newness is unintelligible without the presumption of repetition. The perspective of Derrida, to which I subscribe, is in basic accord with the observation of Deleuze that the principle of repetition “is no longer that of the Same, but involves the Other—involves difference, from one wave and one gesture to another, and carries that difference through the repetitive space

50 

51 

Moshe Idel, Kabbalah and Eros (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 100–101, and my rejoinder in “Structure, Innovation, and Diremptive Temporality: The Use of Models to Study Continuity and Discontinuity in Kabbalistic Tradition,” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 6 (2007): 143–167, esp. 149–154. See also Moshe Idel, “Ascensions, Gender and Pillars in Safedian Kabbalah,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 25 (2011): 55–108, esp. 104–105 and 107–108. Idel’s comment that my stance is “still an open question” is surely true but ultimately trivial to the extent that it applies to every scholar, including Idel, and even his assertion that what I have written is an open question is itself an open question. If Idel were genuinely committed to différance, one wonders what would motivate him to invest so much time and energy to pass judgment repeatedly on the views that I have adopted. The obsessive need to criticize my scholarship coupled with the fervent tone of condemnation hardly suggests a portrait of someone genuinely devoted to the aporetic indeterminacy fostered by deconstruction or postmodernism. In the absence of an interpreter, texts are mute; a text speaks only through the voice of a reader, and, on this principle, the texts cited by Idel could be interpreted differently, just as he claims about my own interpretation of texts. Jacques Derrida and Maurizio Ferraris, A Taste for the Secret, edited by Giacomo Donis and David Webb, translated by Giacomo Donis (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 47.

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thereby constituted.”52 Deleuze distinguishes the repetition of the same, which presumes the identity of the concept or representation, and the repetition of difference, which presumes the alterity of the idea or the heterogeneity of the a-presentation. The former involves equality, commensurability, and symmetry; the latter, inequality, incommensurability, and dissymmetry.53 Even in the latter case, however, heterogeneity entails that we ijind the singularity within that which repeats, the return of the same in which the same is nothing but the recurrence of difference,54 the ungiven that is the prerequisite of all that is given, the principle of nonphenomenality that accounts for the phenomenality of every phenomenon.55 The masking of the dissimilar in the pretense of the similar constitutes the elemental paradox of temporal becoming: “Repetition is truly that which disguises itself in constituting itself, that which constitutes itself only by disguising itself.”56 Hence, the “repetition of dissymmetry is hidden within symmetrical ensembles or effects; a repetition of distinctive points underneath that of ordinary points; and everywhere the Other in the repetition of the Same. This is the secret, the most profound repetition: it alone provides the principle of the other one, the reason for the blockage of concepts.”57 The following Deleuzian depiction of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence could well serve as a succinct summary of what I will here present as the kabbalistic conception of time: Eternal return cannot mean the return of the Identical because it presupposes a world . . . in which all previous identities have been abolished and dissolved. Returning is being, but only the being of becoming. The eternal return does not bring back “the same,” but returning constitutes the only Same of that which becomes. Returning is the becoming identical of becoming itself. Returning is thus the only identity . . . the identity of difference . . . Repetition in the eternal return, therefore, consists in conceiving the same on the basis of the different.58

52 

53  54  55  56  57  58 

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 23. I have taken the liberty to repeat my analysis in Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift, 12. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 23–24. Ibid., 90–91, 242–243. Miguel de Beistegui, Immanence: Deleuze and Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 52–53. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 17. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 41.

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There is no self-same and stable being that persists in the becoming; the being of that which becomes is nothing other than the process of return. The only thing that does not change is the inevitability of change necessitated by the continuous passage of time. It follows, moreover, that in each moment there is a merging of the three temporalities: The present must coexist with itself as past and yet to come. . . . We misinterpret the expression “eternal return” if we understand it as “return of the same.” It is not being that returns but rather the returning itself that constitutes being insofar as it is afijirmed of becoming and of that which passes. It is not some one thing which returns but rather returning itself is the one thing which is afijirmed of diversity or multiplicity. . . . Returning is thus the only identity, but identity as a secondary power; the identity of difference, the identical which belongs to the different, or turns around the different. . . . Repetition in the eternal return, therefore, consists in conceiving the same on the basis of the different.59 A similar approach to time can be elicited from the “future thinking” (künftige Denken) and the grounding of the place of the moment (Augenblicksstätte) that Heidegger enunciated after the so-called Kehre in the 1930s. For example, in the Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), composed between 1936–38 but not published until 1989, Heidegger writes explicitly that with respect to the question of being (Seinsfrage) and the wish to traverse its course in the hope of retrieving the lineage of antiquity, the matter of repetition (Wiederholung) means “to let the same, the uniqueness of being, become a plight again and thereby out of a more original truth. ‘Again’ means here precisely ‘altogether otherwise’ [‘Wieder’ besagt hier gerade: ganz anders].”60 Prima facie, one would not expect the concept of “the same” (das Selbe) to be glossed as the “uniqueness of being” (Einzigkeit des Seyns), since sameness, by deijinition, is diametrically opposed to uniqueness. However, in Heideggerian terms, there is no opposition, for to be attuned to the same, which is contrasted with the

59  60 

Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, translated by Hugh Tomlinson (London: Athlone Press, 1983), 48. Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), § 33, p. 58 (emphasis in original); Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) [ga 65] (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), 73. I am here expanding on the discussion of this aphorism in Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift, 243–244.

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identical (das Gleiche),61 one must retrieve the opening that is repeatedly different,62 the event (Ereignis) of the other beginning (der andere Anfang) that is disclosive of the originary truth (ursprünglicheren Wahrheit), anterior to and concealed within the ijirst beginning (der erste Anfang), the dawning of Greek thought that initiated the history of Western metaphysics.63 Insofar as “every beginning is unsurpassable, it must constantly be repeated and must be placed through confrontation into the uniqueness of its incipience [die Einzigkeit seiner Anfänglichkeit] and thus of its ineluctable reaching ahead.”64 Bracketing the implicit political and ideological importance of Heidegger’s emphasis on the confrontation (Auseinandersetzung) between the two beginnings, what is vital to this analysis is his avowal of the paradox that only what occurs once is repeatable, Nur das Einmalige ist wieder-holbar, whence it follows that repetition “does not mean the stupid superijiciality and impossibility of the mere occurrence of the same for a second and third time. Indeed the beginning can never be apprehended as the same, since it reaches ahead and thus encroaches differently each time on that which it itself initiates.”65 The temporal line is here inverted, for the beginning, which is typically located in the past, is comported as that which reaches ahead, the futural initiation of what returns always as something different, the inaugural event that is neither timeless nor timebound. This event is characterized, more speciijically, as the “self-eliciting and selfmediating center in which all essential occurrence of the truth of beyng must be thought back in advance [voraus zurückgedacht]. This thinking back in 61 

62 

63 

64  65 

Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, translated and with an introduction by Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 45; German text: 111. On the distinction between selfsameness (Selbigkeit) and identicalness (Gleichheit), see Martin Heidegger, Country Path Conversations, translated by Bret W. Davis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 25; Feldweg-Gespräche [ga 77] (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995), 39. Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, new translation by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 41; Einführung in die Metaphysik [ga 40] (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983) 42. See Elliot R. Wolfson, “Revealing and Re/veiling Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson’s Messianic Secret,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 26 (2012): 33–34, and the sources that treat the paradox of the repetition of the origin in Heidegger cited op. cit., 34 n. 35. See also Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift, 442–443 n. 116. Heidegger, Contributions, § 92, pp. 146–147; Beiträge, 186–187. See Joseph P. Fell, “Heidegger’s Notion of Two Beginnings,” Review of Metaphysics 25 (1971): 213–237; Joan Stambaugh, The Finitude of Being (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 112–114. Heidegger, Contributions, § 20, p. 44; Beiträge, 55. Heidegger, Contributions, § 20, p. 45 (emphasis in original); Beiträge, 55.

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advance [voraus dahin Zurück-denken] to that center is the inventive thinking of beyng [Er-denken des Seyns].”66 The path of thought, also labeled as the “inceptual thinking” (anfängliche Denken) that engenders the “fathoming of the ground” (Ergründung des Grundes),67 is a thinking back that is, at the same time, a thinking ahead to the giving (es gibt) that tacitly offers itself—Heidegger explicitly draws a connection between the Greek words for substance (ousia) and presence (parousia), an interpretive move that has obvious theological overtones,68 which are expressed most poignantly by the ijigurative use of the image of the advent of the last god (der letzte Gott)69 that belongs to the “future ones” (die Zukünftigen)70—in “historical recollection” (geschichtlicher Erinnerung) as the “primordial temporality” (Temporalität). The nature of that temporality is portrayed paradoxically as “the occurrence of the having-been/preserving [Gewesend-bewahrenden] and futural/anticipating transporting [Künftigend-vorausnehmenden Entrückung], i.e., the occurrence of the opening and grounding of the ‘there’ and thus of the essence of truth.”71 Heidegger insists that this temporality should not be understood as a form of “lived time” (à la Dilthey or Bergson) that is thought to be superior to the concept of “calculable time.” The time implied in the transporting of the inventive thinking is a continuation of the view of time proffered in Sein und 66  67  68 

69 

70  71 

Heidegger, Contributions, § 34, pp. 58–59; Beiträge, 73. Heidegger, Contributions, § 22, p. 46; Beiträge, 56. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift, 101–102, 232–233, and consider the other pertinent studies cited on 364 n. 89 and 437–438 nn. 34–35, to which I would add the following: Joachim L. Oberst, Heidegger on Language and Death: The Intrinsic Connection in Human Existence (London: Continuum, 2009), 17–47, esp. 28–36; Aubrey L. Glazer, A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking: Critical Theory After Adorno as Applied to Jewish Thought (London: Continuum, 2011), 34–35; Judith Wolfe, Heidegger’s Eschatology: Theological Horizons in Martin Heidegger’s Early Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 61–65. Heidegger, Contributions, § 23, p. 46 (Beiträge, 57): “The greatest event, however, is always the beginning, even if it is the beginning of the last god.” See also Contributions, § 32, p. 56 (Beiträge, 70): “The approach and absconding, the advent or retreat, or the simple remaining absent of the gods; for us in the sovereignty, i.e., the beginning and dominion over this occurrence, the initial and ijinal sovereignty which will show itself as the last god. In the intimations of the last god, being itself, the event as such, ijirst becomes visible, and this shining requires both the grounding of the essence of truth as clearing-concealing and its ijinal sheltering in the changed forms of beings” (emphasis in original). And compare Contributions, §§ 253–256, pp. 321–330; Beiträge, 405–417. The adjective “last” does not signify cessation but the beginning that is always on the way to begin, “the beginning which reaches out the furthest and catches up to itself with the greatest difijiculty” (Contributions, § 253, p. 321; Beiträge, 405). Heidegger, Contributions, § 252, pp. 316–318; Beiträge, 399–401. Heidegger, Contributions, § 34, p. 59; Beiträge, 74.

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Zeit as a “directive toward, and a resonating with, that which takes place in the uniqueness of the ap-propriation [Einzigkeit der Er-eignung] as the truth of the essential occurrence of beyng.”72 The principle of inceptual thinking is such that “all essence is essential occurrence” (alles Wesen ist Wesung), but every essential occurrence “is determined out of what is essential in the sense of the original-unique [Ursprünglich-Einzigen].”73 The uniqueness of the event, in turn, is ascertained only through a “more original repetition [ursprünglichere Wiederholung] of the ijirst beginning,” for the beginning (Anfang) “is the concealed, the origin [Ursprung] that has not yet been misused and driven on, the one which reaches furthest ahead in constantly withdrawing and thus preserves within itself the highest sovereignty.”74 The mystery of time is thus suggestive of the truth of the original repetition—apperceived at all times through the semblance of untruth75—the axial truth that is grounded in the discernment that the impermanence of becoming alone is the permanence of being, that what is given in the beginning from the origin is steadfastly the same because interminably different. From this perspective, the “original seeking”—the seeking for origin—is a “grasping of what has already been found, namely, the grasping of what is selfconcealing [Sichverbergenden] as such.”76 The temporalization apposite to this appropriative event of an origin that remains concealed in the veil of the beginning77—marked by the anomaly of the “again” that is “altogether otherwise”—is a “remembering expectation” (erinnernde Erharren), the abandonment (Verlassenheit) to the moment wherein “remembering a hidden belonging to beyng” is “expecting a call of beyng,” the “dispensation of the (hesitant) self-withholding,” which “a-byssally grounds the domain of decision” and “also makes possible a bestowal as an essential possibility, grants bestowal a space.”78 The mandate of the inceptual thinking is “to think the 72  73  74  75 

76  77 

78 

Heidegger, Contributions, § 34, p. 59; Beiträge, 74. Heidegger, Contributions, § 29, p. 53; Beiträge, 66. Heidegger, Contributions, § 23, p. 46; Beiträge, 57. On this Heideggerian theme, see Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift, 48–52, and reference to other scholars cited on 314–315 n. 106, to which many more studies could have been added. Heidegger, Contributions, § 38, p. 64 (emphasis in original); Beiträge, 80. Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? Translation by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray, with an introduction by J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 152; Was heisst Denken? [ga 8] (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002), 156. Heidegger, Contributions, § 242, p. 303; Beiträge, 384. On “the remembering expectation of the event” (die erinnernde Erwartung des Ereignisses), see also Heidegger, Contributions, § 31, p. 55; Beiträge, 69.

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essence of time so originarily (in the temporal ‘ecstases’) that time becomes graspable as possible truth for beyng as such. Yet this thinking of time already brings it, through relatedness to the ‘there’ of Da-sein, into essential relation with the spatiality of Da-sein and thereby with space. . . . Compared to their usual representations, however, time and space are in this case more originary and are entirely time-space [Zeit-Raum], which is not an interconnection but something more originary in the belonging together [Zusammengehörigkeit] of time and space. This something points to the essence of truth as the clearing-concealing [lichtende Verbergung].”79 The clearing-concealing of the abyssal ground (Ab-grund)—“the originary essential occurrence of the ground” (die ursprüngliche Wesung des Grundes)— is identiijied as “the essence of truth” (das Wesen der Wahrheit) that is grasped as the time-space, “the originary unity of space and time” (die ursprüngliche Einheit von Raum und Zeit), the “unifying unity [einigende Einheit] which ijirst allows them to diverge into their separateness.”80 The abyss thus gives in such a way that the intensiveness of time is exteriorized as the extensionality of space. Although adamant that space and time are not of the same essence, Heidegger avers that there is an essential juxtaposition such that the presence (Anwesenheit) of the present (Gegenwart) provides the space wherein beings are put into presence. “Time as transporting and opening up [entrückendeeröffnende] is in itself equally a granting of place [einräumend]; it creates ‘space.’ Space and time are not of the same essence, but each belongs intrinsically to the other. . . . The unity of temporalizing [Zeitigung] and the granting of place [Einräumung], and indeed in the mode of presencing [Anwesung], constitutes the essence of beingness: the overcrossing [Überkreuzung].”81 The inimitable destiny of humanity as the custodian of the appropriating event— the spatialization of time in the temporalization of space—is attested in the fact that Dasein alone is assigned the role of serving as the “site of the moment [Augenblicksstätte] for the grounding of the truth of beyng. The site of the moment arises out of the solitude of the great stillness in which the appropriation becomes truth.”82

79  80  81  82 

Heidegger, Contributions, § 95, p. 148; Beiträge, 189. Heidegger, Contributions, § 242, p. 299 (emphasis in original); Beiträge, 379. Heidegger, Contributions, § 98, pp. 150–151; Beiträge, 192. Heidegger, Contributions, § 200, p. 255; Beiträge, 323. Heidegger’s views of time have commanded an enormous amount of scholarly interest. For one representative study that treats his notion of Augenblick as the moment of vision and the redemption of being, see Koral Ward, Augenblick: The Concept of the “Decisive Moment” in 19th- and 20th-Century Western Philosophy (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 97–124.

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Ṣimṣum and the Replication of Difference

Heidegger’s terminology bears a remarkable afijinity to the kabbalistic conception of ṣimṣum, the primordial act of withdrawal of the light of inijinity.83 I will forego the discussion of possible sources that might explain this afijinity other than to mention that the most probable channel is Schelling.84 As far as the resemblance to kabbalistic theosophy, what is exceptionally noteworthy is Heidegger’s depiction of the ground as “that which veils itself [Sichverhüllende] and also takes up [Aufnehmen], because it bears and does so as the protruding of what is to be grounded. Ground: self-concealing in a protruding that bears [das Sichverbergen im tragenden Durchragen].”85 Astonishingly, the path of Heidegger’s thinking leads to the very paradox that may be elicited from kabbalistic sources in their effort to explain the inexplicable mystery of ṣimṣum, the withdrawal of Ein Sof from itself in order to create a plenitudinous vacuum within the vacuous plenum, to make space for the other in the all-encompassing oneness of the inijinite. In an astounding similarity, Heidegger writes about the abyssal ground as “a self-concealing in the mode of the withholding of the ground” (ein Sichverbergen in der Weise der Versagung des Grundes); that is, through the act of withdrawal the concealment is concealed and the ground is emptied of the fullness of its emptiness. To cite Heidegger’s own kabbalistically-inflected language: “The lack of the ground is the lack of the ground [Der Ab-grund ist Ab-grund]. In withholding itself, the ground preeminently brings into the open, namely into the ijirst opening of that emptiness which is thereby a determinate one. . . . The abyssal ground is the hesitant self-withholding of 83 

84 

85 

On the comparison of Heidegger’s conception of nothingness and the domain of being’s withdrawal to the kabbalistic speculation on the inijinite and the idea of ṣimṣum, see Marlène Zarader, The Unthought Debt: Heidegger and the Hebraic Heritage, translated by Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 130–138. See also Elliot R. Wolfson, “Nihilating Nonground and the Temporal Sway of Becoming,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 17 (2012): 31–45, esp. 40–41; idem, Giving Beyond the Gift, 346 n. 333. For an early comment on the use of Heidegger to illumine kabbalistic sources philosophically, see Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 420–421 n. 241. On Schelling and the kabbalah, see Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 100–104, and reference to other scholars cited on 392–393 n. 2, especially the study by Christoph Schulte, “Ẓimẓum in the Works of Schelling,” Iyyun 41 (1992): 21–40, German version “Ẓimẓum bei Schelling,” in Kabbala und Romantik, edited by Eveline Goodman-Thau, Gert Mattenklott, and Christoph Schulte (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1994), 97–118. See also Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 475 n. 49; idem, Alef, Mem, Tau, 34–42, 119, 121–122, 193–194 n. 225, 194–195 n. 233. Heidegger, Contributions, § 242, p. 300; Beiträge, 379.

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the ground [Ab-grund ist die zögernde Versagung des Grundes]. In this withholding, the originary emptiness [ursprüngliche Leere] opens up and the originary clearing [ursprüngliche Lichtung] occurs, but this clearing is such that, at the same time, hesitation is manifest in it.”86 Utilizing the Heideggerian trope of ontological difference, we can describe Ein Sof—the inijinite essence whose essence, paradoxically, is to lack any essence—as the withdrawal of being that occasions the manifestation of the myriad of beings that come to light in the concatenation of the multiple worlds. Needless to say, many scholars have written about the theme of ṣimṣum, but little attention has been paid to its temporal implications. If translated into this register, we can say that ṣimṣum instantiates the secret of time as the retroactive not yet, the coming to be of what has already been, not as duplication of sameness but as replication of difference, the original repetition, one might say, the reappearance of nonappearance. I will illumine this point by citing a passage from Sod ha-Yiḥud, which is part of the treatise Sod ha-Merkavah, also referred to as Perush ha-Merkavah, composed, in all probability, by the eighteenth-century Kabbalist and man of letters, Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, known honoriijically by the acronym Ramḥal.87 Ein Sof was already perfect as he88 is now and as he will be forever without any modiijication, but initially the perfection was not revealed in actuality and afterwards it was revealed in actuality. Because he wished to realize this disclosure, three matters came to be: beginning [ro’sh], end [sof ], and middle [emṣa]. That is, “the beginning”—the perfection initially was 86  87 

88 

Heidegger, Contributions, § 242, p. 300 (emphasis in original); Beiträge, 379–380. Here I am following the conclusion reached by Jonathan Garb, “The Authentic Kabbalistic Writings of R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 25 (2011): 183 (Hebrew). In his painstaking analysis, Garb divides the corpus of material attributed to or associated with Luzzatto into four groups: texts that were authentically written by Ramḥal; texts that were probably written by Ramḥal; texts attributed spuriously to Ramḥal; texts written by members of Ramḥal’s circle. Sod ha-Merkavah is placed in the second category. The third person masculine pronoun can be rendered in English by the third person impersonal pronoun “it.” While there is justiijication for translating the references to Ein Sof in this neutral manner, the volitional characteristics attributed by Ramḥal to Ein Sof seem to me to justify using a more personal pronoun. In this respect, Ramḥal’s thinking is consistent with other kabbalists for whom the Ein Sof, contrary to what one might expect, is depicted in personal and gendered terms, more often than not, as masculine without a full-blown feminine counterpart. The feminine quality of inijinity is commonly referred to as the aspect of Malkhut that is within Ein Sof.

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in potentiality; “the end”—the perfection afterwards was revealed in actuality; and “the middle”—before it was revealed. Thus, whether in the beginning or in the end, there is no reality of evil, for everything is good, but in the middle, there is that which appears to be evil, even though in truth it is good, and this is what is called the “name” and the “epithet.”89 All that is contained atemporally in the inijinite will of Ein Sof, the “root of all roots” (shoresh kol ha-shorashim),90 is brought forth in the temporal division of beginning, middle, and end. The eternality (niṣḥiyyut) of this will, also identiijied as the incomprehensible capacity for perfect goodness (koaḥ ha-haṭavah ha-sheleimah), is revealed through an unremitting sequence of novel creations in time until the “secret of the supernal unity” (sod ha-yiḥud ha-elyon) is achieved at the end when evil is transformed into good and everything is restored to Ein Sof as it was in the beginning.91 The semblance of duality— signiijied by the distinction between the name (shem) and the epithet (kinnuy), YHWH and Elohim, which respectively symbolize masculine mercy and feminine judgment92—pertains only to the middle. The rectiijication (tiqqun) constitutes the perfection of creation (sheleimut ha-beri’ah) and the true manifestation of the supernal oneness, themes that are well known from Luzzatto’s teaching.93 To cite again from Sod ha-Yiḥud: 89 

90  91  92 

93 

Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Ginzei Ramḥal, edited by Ḥayyim Friedlander, second edition (Benei Beraq, 1984), 264. For a more recent edition with extensive annotation, see Sod ha-Yiḥud, edited by Mordecai Chriqui (Jerusalem: Makhon Ramḥal, 2013), 55–58. Chriqui (47) surmises that Ramḥal’s Sod ha-Yiḥud is based on his exegesis of a passage from Zohar 1:65a, which appears in the second part of Adir ba-Marom, his commentary on Idra Rabba. See Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Adir ba-Marom, pt. 2, edited by Joseph Spinner (Jerusalem, 1988), 61–92. Luzzatto, Ginzei Ramḥal, 265. Ibid., 265, 267. Usually the epithet (kinnuy) refers to Adonai, the appellation by which YHWH, the ineffable name (shem), is pronounced, but for Luzzatto the epithet is Elohim. See Luzzatto, Adir ba-Marom, pt. 2, 39: “Let me now explain the matter of the name [shem] and the epithet [kinnuy] that I mentioned. The [word] kinnuy is equal to Elohim, and this is [the import of the expression] YHWH Elohim.” Based on a passage from Tiqqunei Zohar, which is printed in Zohar 1:22b, Luzzatto observes that the numerical value of the term kinnuy is the same as the name Elohim, i.e., both equal 86. The juxtaposition of the name and the epithet, YHWH and Elohim, marks the conjunction of the masculine and the feminine. See, for instance, Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Da‘at Tevunot, edited by Joseph Spinner (Jerusalem: Hamesorah, 2012), sec. 158, pp. 246–247; Qelaḥ Pitḥei Ḥokhmah, edited by Ḥayyim Friedlander (Benei Beraq, 1992), ch. 49, p. 179. I accept the conclusion of Garb, “Authentic Kabbalistic Writings,” 188–199, that Qelaḥ Pitḥei Ḥokhmah was probably not written by Luzzatto, but many of the ideas expressed in it are consistent with his views.

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Accordingly, there are two types of conjunctions [ziwwugim]: the conjunctions of the middle and the conjunctions of the beginning and the end. That is, the unity needs to be disclosed, and it is disclosed incrementally by means of the conjunctions, for the left is subjugated by the right and the good dominates, and the evil is restored to the good. When it is completely revealed in the middle itself, the beginning and the end are perforce united, for then everything is one—beginning, end, and middle, everything is good without any evil at all. As long as there is a middle . . . there is a distinction between beginning and end, for the beginning is in potentiality and not [in actuality] and in the end it is in actuality. When the middle reverts to being good, the beginning and end are inexorably joined together, and this is the secret [of the verse] “I am ijirst and I am last” (Isaiah 44:6). . . . The principle of the rectiijication [kelal ha-tiqqun] is that the lower beings are conjoined to the supernal beings to the point that everything is conjoined to the Ein Sof, blessed be he, and then everything is called one. This is the completion of the middle and the union of the beginning and the end, and this is the essence of the true worship. . . . Initially, the supernal union of perfection is united with the beginning, the perfection is aroused below, and everything is perfected in perfect unity. The beginning joins the end in accord with the aspect that is rectiijied in the middle through this conjunction. For you have already heard that the unity is revealed intermittently in the rectiijication of the middle, and through this aspect the beginning and the end are joined, and everything is perfected in one secret in perfection.94 Prima facie, it might seem that there is an inescapable circularity to Luzzatto’s thinking, since the end is envisioned as a return to the beginning in which there is no duality, no distinction between the name and its epithet, between love and judgment, between masculine and feminine. A more attentive reading, however, reveals that the differentiated unity at the end is not merely a replica of the nondifferentiated unity at the beginning. To be sure, at the end there is a retrieval of the unity of the beginning, but, paraphrasing the words of Heidegger, what is achieved again is altogether otherwise; that is, the return of all things to the one is not the reverberation of the same but the reclamation of divergence. In Adir ba-Marom, Luzzatto refers to this process tellingly as the orientation of the inijinite will toward the power of particularity (koaḥ ha-peraṭi).95 The oneness of the universal is calibrated from the perspective of the absolute inimitability of the particular. 94  95 

Luzzatto, Ginzei Ramḥal, 264, 268. Luzzatto, Adir ba-Marom, pt. 2, 76.

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Time is the measure of this incommensurability, the beckoning of the eternal will that materializes in the temporal enfolding of the middle. In another passage from Adir ba-Marom, Luzzatto elaborates on the identiijication of the “secret of time” (sod ha-zeman) as the “rectiijication of the middle” (tiqqun ha-emṣa): This is the secret of time concerning which [it is written] “For every time [zeman] and moment [et], and for every desire [ḥefeṣ] under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). This secret is the forty-ijive [letter name] and the ijifty-two [letter name], and they are verily the rectiijication of the middle. . . . . This secret is: forty-ijive [‫ ]מ"ה‬and ijifty-two [‫ ]ב"ן‬equal zeman [‫]זמ"ן‬, for all of time is only in them, and the divisions of time are the divisions of the forty-ijive [letter name] and the ijifty-two [letter name] joined together as one with the other. Therefore, the unity ascends until the secret of the beginning and the end.96 It lies beyond my immediate concerns to explicate all of the minutiae of this passage, but let me underline the principal point. Time is understood as the uniijication of the masculine and the feminine,97 signiijied respectively by the two permutations of the Tetragrammaton, the one that numerically equals forty-ijive and the other that equals ijifty-two.98 The theoretical assumption is buttressed by the fact that the Hebrew word for time, zeman, has the numerical value of ninety-seven, which is the sum of forty-ijive plus ijifty-two, a numerology that is well attested in post-Lurianic kabbalistic literature.99 96  97  98  99 

Ibid., 91. On time and the conjunction of male and female potencies, see Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau, 79, 91, 98. Ibid., 89–90. Natan Shapira, Maḥberet ha-Qodesh (Jerusalem, 2005), Sha‘ar ha-Sukkot, 318. See also Moses Zacuto, Em la-Binah, included in Remez ha-Romez (Jerusalem, 2008), s.v. zeman, 33: “It is already known that time is consequent to the movement of the sun and the moon, that is, the [name of] forty-ijive and [the name of] ijifty-two, and this is the numerical value of zeman [7 + 40 + 50 = 97].” See ibid., 41, and Immauel Ḥay Ricchi, Mishnat Ḥasidim im Perush Maggid Sheni, pt. 3 (Szilágysomlyó, 1909), Massekhet Leil Yom Ṭov, ch. 2, 122b, where the word zeman is said to symbolize the unity of the name of forty-ijive and the name of ijifty-two, associated respectively with Ze‘eir Anpin and Nuqba. Compare Yiṣḥaq Isaac Ḥaver, Beit Olamim (Warsaw, 1889), 55a. Commenting on the verse “For every time [zeman] and moment [et], and for every desire [ḥefeṣ] under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1), Ḥaver writes: “For the difference between time [zeman] and the moment [et] is that the [word] et is applied to the present time, in the moment that he acts in the world,

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The fuller implications of the gender properties of time may be culled from a third passage in Adir ba-Marom. Luzzatto remarks that in the “secret of the beginning” and in the “secret of the end” the masculine and the feminine are both designated as adam, which signiijies that they are in a state of uniijication (be-ḥibbur), but in the “secret of the middle” they are called ish and ishshah, “man” and “woman,” because they appear as two separate beings (kol eḥad le-aṣmo). Even so, in the intermediary domain, which is the period of history, the goal is for the lost part (ha-avedah), that is, the female, to be restored to the male (al ken ṣerikhah laḥazor le-ba‘aleha), a hyperliteral reading of the end of the account of the creation of man and woman in the second chapter of Genesis: “Then the man said, ‘This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman, for from man was she taken.’ Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:23–24). When the female is constructed from the male, she is transformed from the aspect of the back (aḥor)—consciousness (moḥin) is said to be aroused in her in the secret of the face (sod panim)—and and [the word] zeman is applied to what will come afterward, and it is from the language ‘to be summoned’ [mezuman] and the future that is coming. . . . And this can be expressed by way of the secret, for it is known that et is the aspect of the feminine, the name of ijifty-two, and zeman is the numerology of forty-ijive and ijifty-two together.” In the same passage, Ḥaver links the aspect of et with the governance of Ze‘eir Anpin and that of zeman with Attiqa Qaddisha; the former is the present, which is marked by the polarity of good and evil, whereas the latter is the messianic future, which is beyond all duality. See also Ḥaver, Pitḥei She‘arim, Netiv Olam ha-Tiqqun, ch. 10, 69a; Netiv Parṣuf Arikh Anpin, ch. 11, 92a. In Ṣevi Hirsch Eichenstein of Zidichov, Aṭeret Ṣevi, vol. 1 (Benei Beraq, 2009), 246, time is linked to the secret of Neṣaḥ and Hod, the seventh and eighth of the ten seijirot, to which are attached respectively the forty-ijive and ijifty-two letter name. The passage is referenced in Ya‘aqov Ṣevi Yalles, Qehillat Ya‘aqov (Jerusalem, 1971), s.v. zeman, 20b. The numerology appears frequently in the writings of Menaḥem Mendel of Shklov. One particularly interesting text is found in his Derushim al Seder ha-Hishtalshelut included in Kitvei ha-Gaon Rav Menaḥem Mendel, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 2001), 306: “Every rectiijication [tiqqun] without the ijiftieth gate [the letter nun], which is Keter, is teiqu [the word that talmudically signiijies the irresolution of a question], and it remains in concealment [bi-setimu], the secret of doubt [sod ha-sefequt], and the essence of doubt depends on the puriijication [berur] of the crowns that are within it, the inner light [or penimi] and the encompassing light [or maqif ], the interiority [penimiyyut] and the exteriority [ḥiṣoniyyut], in the secret of forty-ijive and ijifty-two. The puriijication is in the secret of [the names of] forty-ijive and ijifty-two, which is the numerology of zeman, ‘for every time [zeman] and moment [et] and for every desire’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1).” I hope to dedicate an independent study surveying the esoteric intent of the notion of sefequt in Menaḥem Mendel of Shklov.

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as a consequence, she is conjoined to the male and the unity is revealed in the mystery of the complete human (adam shalem). The body is then rectiijied and evil restored to the good.100 The reconstituted unity of the feminine end (sof ) returning to the masculine beginning (ro’sh)101 is symbolized by the letter zayin, which is composed of the yod that sits atop the waw, the female diadem (aṭarah) that is positioned on the head of the male consort.102 The quality of time can be elucidated further by delving more deeply into the motif of ṣimṣum and the trace of inijinity. I will not investigate Luzzatto’s sources nor will I refer to those whom he influenced; I will keep the focus only on his writings, and even this will be highly selective. Let me initiate the analysis by citing a passage from Adir ba-Marom: Know that the essence of everything is the secret of the soul and the body, for their roots in the [divine] lights are the interiority [ha-penimiyyut] and the exteriority [ha-ḥiṣoniyyut]. . . . Know that in this order the reality of the seijirot was ordered from the beginning of their existence, which is at the time of the contraction [zeman ha-ṣimṣum]. Greatly understand this matter, for there remained a trace [reshimu] within the space [ha-ḥalal], and from it the vessels [ha-kelim] were made. Afterward the line [ha-qaw] came into it and from it was made the essence [ha-aṣmut]. 100  Luzzatto, Adir ba-Marom, pt. 2, 48–49. 101  Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Adir ba-Marom, pt. 1, edited by Joseph Spinner (Jerusalem, 1990), 94: “I will explain to you the matter of the beginning and the end [sheiruta we-siyyuma]. In truth, this is a great and deep secret, for it is the principle of governance [kelalut hahanhagah] in truth in general and in particular as it pertains to each one . . . And the secret of everything is the secret of male and female, for the male is the secret of the head and the female is the secret of the end . . . And this is the secret of the governance that goes from the beginning, which is the male, to the end, which is the female . . . The matter is that the beginning of thought [teḥillat ha-maḥashavah] is the end of action [sof ha-ma‘aseh], and the beginning of thought is the male and his focus is toward the female, which is the end of action. Thus, the whole time that the male rules is the time of action [zeman ha-pe‘ulah] and when things reach the female, then everything is in the secret of repose [sod menuḥah] . . . In accord with this way, the world is governed, for the six thousand years are in the secret of the male, and they are the time of action and preparation, and afterward in the end is the restful Sabbath, which is the purpose of the world.” From this vantagepoint, there is a gender transvaluation—the female rises to a level higher than the male in the same way that the six millennia, which correspond to the six weekdays, culminate in the Sabbath and the cessation of activity. 102  See the text from Qin’at ha-Shem Ṣeva’ot cited and analyzed in Elliot R. Wolfson, “Tiqqun ha-Shekhinah: Redemption and the Overcoming of Gender Dimorphism in the Messianic Kabbalah of Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto,” History of Religions 36 (1997): 331.

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This is the difference between the essence and the vessels, for the vessels are from the aspect of the contraction [mi-beḥinat ha-ṣimṣum], and the essence is the secret of the Ein Sof, blessed be he, which enters into the vacated space [ḥalal ha-meṣumṣam].103 The time of the contraction does not refer to an actual time, since prior to the ṣimṣum there is no time of which to speak; it denotes rather the demarcating point whence we can commence to ruminate about temporality, a point that is marked by the triadic structure of beginning, middle, and end. In the pure light of inijinity, there is no time, for the oscillation of the latter is dependent on the distinction between the one that bestows and the one that receives, a distinction that does not pertain to the innate nature of light but only to its functional character when the agent of illumination is set in relation to the other that is illumined. In and of itself, light is beyond the contrast between light and dark, beyond the binary of masculine donor and feminine recipient. The wheel of history, which is impelled forward by the tension between these two poles, turns in such a way that the present proceeds according to a sequential order of one rectiijication after another, a process that leads to the gradual evisceration of evil and its reintegration into the good. In the future, by contrast, everything will be eternal (ha-kol niṣḥi) and thus all the lights will flow in an inijinitesimal moment (rega qaṭan) that surpasses the customary partition of time, the time before time began as a result of the contraction of the light.104 In the ijifth principle of Da‘at Tevunot, which is an explication of the notion of the reshimu, Luzzatto writes: “The ijirst time [ha-zeman ha-ri’shon] that we now have to explain is the time that his unity, blessed be he, was concealed as this day [zeman hit‘allem yiḥudo yitbarakh ka-yom ha-zeh]; this is the principle of the time of the worship of man [kelal zeman avodat ha-adam].”105 Luzzatto is alluding to the new order (seder ḥadash) of governance (hanhagah)106 that comes about as a consequence of the primordial act of withdrawal, the concealment of divine unity (he‘lem ha-yiḥud).107 The algorithm of historical time is based on the binary of good and evil (hanhagat ha-ṭov we-ra) and hence it demands a system of reward and punishment that is apposite to human worship. The ultimate purpose of that worship is to convert evil into good and 103  Luzzatto, Adir ba-Marom, pt. 1, 88–89. 104  Ibid., 107. 105  Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Da‘at Tevunot, edited by Joseph Spinner (Jerusalem: Hamesorah, 2012), 63. 106  Ibid., 63. 107  Ibid., 80.

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thereby facilitate the disclosure of unity (gilluy ha-yiḥud) and the comprehensive rectiijication (tiqqun ha-kelali).108 Time is commensurate to the trace of light that the supernal will innovates in proportion to the concealment of God’s dominion and unity (zeh kelal ha-derekh asher ḥiddesh ha-raṣon ha-elyon leiji inyan hit‘allem sheliṭato we-yiḥudo), a hiding of the face of divine goodness (hester penei ṭuvo), for had the truth been revealed without obstruction, all evil would have been transformed into good, and the durée of time would be dispelled in the limitlessness of eternity.109 The temporal efflux that issues from Ein Sof after the ṣimṣum is like the shadow in relation to the person or the small trace (roshem qaṭan) that remains from the writing on paper after the letters have been removed.110 Following previous Lurianic sources, Luzzatto contrasts the essence (aṣmut) and the vessel (keli), connected respectively to the images of the line (qaw) and the trace (reshimu). The extension of the line, which is an expression of ḥesed, is set in motion by the act of ṣimṣum, which is an expression of din, but the main goal of the withdrawal is to produce the vessels that will reveal the light by concealing it, since the nonmanifest cannot be manifest without being occluded. In accord with the main drift of the Lurianic teaching, for Luzzatto, the process of ṣimṣum provokes the emergence of the dyadic structure of light and vessel that marks the transition from indifferent oneness to differentiated unity. The source of the vessel is the trace that remains in the vacated space within the inijinite after the light has been withdrawn. The residual trace, therefore, preijigures the vessel that will receive the light, and thus, in relation to the ampliijication and expansion of the light, it signiijies delimitation and condensation. Two things are worthy of our consideration. First, even though the division of the indivisible luminescence produces the dyad of light and vessel, in its source the vessel is constituted by the light that lingers subsequent to the contraction. The dualism of light and vessel thus gives way to a monism wherein the vessel is subsumed in and by the light. Second, even though before the ṣimṣum the distinction between exteriority and interiority was not discernible, the potential for this distinction must have been in the inijinite essence based on the principle that the perfection of inijinity is such that it can lack nothing, not even the ability to lack. Paradoxically, we must posit the capacity for boundary that is completely incorporated within the boundless. However, we are still faced with a philosophical quandary with respect to the matter of time. 108  Ibid., 67. 109  Ibid., 65. 110  Ibid., 66.

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The dilemma is captured succinctly in the following passage from the Ma’amar Yiḥud ha-Yir’ah, a text that circulated amongst the students of Luzzatto. Even if it is not certain that he is the author, it is valid to assume the contents are in accord with his teaching: All of the worlds are naught but the disclosure of what was already arrayed in the perfection of the inijinite, blessed be he . . . for the reality of all the worlds is naught but as one who dreams a dream and sees the matter in the imagination, and similarly the entire potency of the inijinite, blessed be he, which has no temporality [ein bo zeman], is seen according to the way of time [derekh zeman]. . . . Thus, the inijinite, blessed be he, acts in the way of his perfection, and there is placed before him the curtain of withdrawal [masakh ha-ṣimṣum] in which are dependent all these colors, and they are all the laws of nature from beginning to end. All of these things vis-à-vis the inijinite, blessed be he, are in a verily different manner, which we cannot comprehend . . . Similarly, the matter of time is nothing at all but how we imagine nature as it appears to us in accord with the withdrawal [leiji ha-ṣimṣum]. As we see in the dream itself that days and years pass in one dream, and it seems to the dreamer that this is how it actually is. Analogously, when we are awake, we imagine the matters of nature in accord with what we see, and we call this imagining time, as if there could be one hour or one moment like the years of a dream, which are in truth a single moment [rega eḥad].111 Luzzatto utilizes an archaic trope in order to elucidate the relationship of the inijinite to the ijinite.112 This teaching, which probably originated in Chinese Confucianism and Daoism, and was then transported into the various schools of Hinduism and Buddhism, and eventually found its way into both Islamic and Jewish mystical sources, is predicated on the insight that the spatio-temporal world is but a dream. Luzzatto appropriates this wisdom to explain one of the deepest mysteries of the kabbalah. If we assume, as we must, that everything was contained in the incomposite oneness of Ein Sof prior to the ṣimṣum, then what appears to us as the progression of time itself is simply the manner in which the one single instant of eternity—a moment marked by the absolute simultaneity of inijinite velocity that is inijinite rest—is manifest on the phenomenal plane. On the one hand, we cannot speak of anything absolutely new occurring as a consequence of the withdrawal, since all was encompassed 111  Luzzatto, Adir ba-Marom, pt. 2, 150–151. 112  Wolfson, A Dream, 255–274.

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in the inijinite, and hence time would appear to be illusory like a dream; on the other hand, the trace that remains in the space after the withdrawal is the emanated light (or ne’eṣal) that provides the “place for all that exists” (maqom le-khol nimṣa), and thus it is viewed as a “new light” (or ḥadash).113 Time is accorded the signiijicance of the trace that is the genuine novelty of repetition. To grasp this paradox, which is the secret of time, we must distinguish two connotations implied in the word reshimu.114 An imprint (roshem), as it is ordinarily construed, is a mark of what is no longer ready at hand, a sign that evokes the absent presence of something that is presently absent. In Luzzatto’s image, the trace is what remains from the writing after the letters have been removed. Likewise, with respect to the divine, the trace is an impression that endures in the place of the void after the light of the inijinite has been withdrawn. However, the word reshimu is also related to the notion of inscription (reshimah), which is a portent that previews what is hidden from sight. One must bear in mind that rabbinically the term roshem connotes an act of inscripting or drawing aligned with but distinguished from writing (ketivah).115 Even more relevant is the use of reshimah in kabbalistic sources—based on the rabbinic texts—to name an amorphous form of writing, a pre-scripting that precedes the letters that assume a more determinate shape. For example, in a passage from Moses Cordovero’s Pardes Rimmonim, the formation of the letters involves four consecutive stages, reshimah, ḥaqiqah, ḥaṣivah, and asiyyah.116 Concentrating on the ijirst of these, reshimah denotes the highest or most sublime verbal gesticulation, which is not only the marking of a trace of what has been removed but a semiotic signpost that foreshadows what is to emerge, akin to the blueprint of a building that an architect etches on a tablet before commencing the actual construction. To plumb the depths of the myth of ṣimṣum, one must attend to the amalgamation of the two connotations of reshimah as trace and omen. The intermingling of these two connotations illumines the circular linearity that is emblematic of the curvature of time: the inscription presages the reality 113  Qelaḥ Pitḥei Ḥokhmah, ch. 26, p. 66. 114  I am here reworking the discussion in Elliot R. Wolfson, “Nequddat ha-Reshimu—The Trace of Transcendence and the Transcendence of the Trace: The Paradox of Ṣimṣum in the RaShaB’s Hemshekh Ayin Beit,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 30 (2013): 111–113. What I argued there with respect to Ḥabad speculation can be applied to Luzzatto. 115  Mishnah Shabbat 12:3, 4; Makkot 3:6; Tosefta Shabbat 12:5. 116  Moses Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim (Jerusalem: Yerid ha-Sefarim, 2000), 16:9, 208, afijirms the correlation of reshimah, ḥaqiqah, ḥaṣivah, and asiyyah respectfully with the four worlds, aṣilut, beri’ah, yeṣirah, and asiyyah. See ibid., 27:27, 447.

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that must be its precursor; what is left behind, therefore, is the trace of what is yet to be. From the notion of the trace, we may adduce the elementary constituency of time as the retroactive not yet, the achronic fecundity of the future that is the origin continually emptying itself in the coming to be of the beginning that passes away incessantly. The ijirst beginning is, as Heidegger mused, an original repetition. Sounding a similar note, Derrida wrote of the beginning that comes forth from the withdrawal, “from the ijirst it will have come second. Two times at the same time, originary iterability, irreducible virtuality of this space and this time.”117 It may be useful as well to translate the kabbalistic symbolism into the evolutionary logic articulated by Peirce: the inijinitely remote initial state is identiijied as the pure zero, which is to be distinguished from the nothing of negation. The former is the “germinal nothing,” the “womb of indeterminacy,” the “absolutely undeijined and unlimited possibility,” the origin that is prior to every ijirst; the latter, by contrast, is the leap, the springing forth of something new, the principle of ijirstness by which being is differentiated from nonbeing. The nullity of the monad yields the correlativity of the beginning, and the ijirst mathematically assumes the status of the second; indeed, the potentiality of the ijirst is determined from the actuality of the second, which entails the “nothing of not having been born” as opposed to the “nothing of death.”118 We can apply the same trinitarian logic to the kabbalistic cosmogony. The trace of inijinity is, concomitantly, antecedent and consequent to the withdrawal. The posteriority of the trace is its anteriority, that is, it comes before as what comes after. The potential for ijinitude is thus coiled within the folds of inijinity—it could not be otherwise because the inclusivity of the inijinite is such that it must possess even the capacity to be exclusive, the capacity to be less than inijinite. In virtue of its all-encompassing nature, inijinity must embrace its own other in a unity of opposition that is opposed to any opposition to itself. Within the indeterminate conijines of Ein Sof, every other is reduced to the identity of the same in relation to which there is no other, but that potential is not perceptible, since otherness qua otherness is dissipated in the indifferent oneness that includes the excluded other. Insofar as the trace 117  Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, translated by Peggy Kamuf, introduction by Bernd Magnus and Stephen Cullenberg (New York: Routledge, 1994), 163 (emphasis in original). 118  The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1–6, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1931–1935), 6:217, cited in John K. Sheriff, Charles Peirce’s Guess at the Riddle: Grounds for Human Signiijicance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 4.

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is the capacity for boundary within the boundless, a capacity that the boundless must contain as a facet of its perfection, it follows that we are led logically to an inijinite regress, the paradox of the point of the trace, which cannot be disentangled from the trace of the point, that is, the trace of inijinity in which there can be no trace that is not itself the trace of a trace, a nonphenomenal trace of what cannot be incorporated within the either/or economy of absence or presence, the erasure that is the inception of writing, the concealment of the concealment that is prior to there being anything to conceal, the timeless point that propagates the encircling line that is time.

PART 2 Philosophical Definitions of Mystical Time

⸪

CHAPTER 3

Neoplatonic Time in Isaac Israeli: On the Beginning of the End of Love [As the Beginning of the Beginning of Love] Sarah Pessin

Abstract In his Book of Definitions, Isaac Israeli defines time in terms of extension (al-mudda), separation, and the motion of the Sphere. After (a) considering a number of Aristotelian and Stoic backdrops to these ideas, and (b) emphasizing the methodological soundness of pursuing a more Neoplatonic understanding of Israeli, I reread Israeli’s definition of time in line with an emanationist approach to the Timaeus (as seen in Plotinus and in the Theology of Aristotle), and I eventually show how, taken in its properly Neoplatonic spirit, Israeli’s technical claim about time may be thought through in terms of love.

1

Introduction

In his Book of Definitions, Isaac Israeli defines time (az-zamān) as: [a]n extension (muddatun/ ‫ )מדדה‬separated (tafriquhā) by the movement of the Sphere (ḥarakatu’l-falak).1

* I am thankful to Brian Ogren for organizing the conference that led to the current volume; my thanks to Brian and other conference participants for engaging conversations and suggestions; I am especially thankful to Elliot Wolfson for sharing insights on the place of time within Soul in Plotinus, and to Moshe Idel for sharing insights on intersections between my project and materials in Alexander of Aphrodisias and Averroes; I hope to pursue these ideas in future work. I am also thankful to Adam Afterman for his exploration of time within higher realms; while the Neoplatonic theories addressed in my chapter do not place time in the world of Intellect, there are Neoplatonists who indeed do speak of time at the level of Intellect; see Samburksy and Pines 1971 on Iamblichus and Proclus in this regard. 1  Israeli, Book of Definitions; Altmann and Stern 1958, 74; the Arabic for this text is reconstructed by Altmann and Stern; see 75. (For extant Judeo-Arabic of other parts of this text, see Hirschfield 1903).

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In this chapter, I set out to unpack and explain this definition against its medieval Neoplatonic backdrop, as I at once aim to show how, like most Neoplatonic claims, this definition can be seen to resonate with a depth of theological and existential insight that might at first not meet the eye. After (a) considering a number of Aristotelian and Stoic backdrops to Israeli’s idea of time, and (b) emphasizing the methodological soundness of pursuing a more Neoplatonic understanding of Israeli’s idea of time, I pursue analyses of “mudda”2 and “motion” in line with an emanationist approach to the Timaeus (as seen in Plotinus and in the Theology of Aristotle), and I eventually show how, taken in its properly Neoplatonic spirit, Israeli’s technical claim about time may be thought through in terms of love. I end by showing how, within a broader Neoplatonic framework, the idea of time in relation to the Sphere beckons to (a) the beginning of the end of one love and to (b) the beginning of the beginning of another love.

2

Finding Aristotle in Israeli’s Motion and “Mudda”?

Defined in Physics as the “measure of motion with respect to before and after” (ἀριθμος κινήσεως κατὰ τὸ πρότερον καὶ ὕστερον),3 Aristotle theorizes time as the measure of the motion of bodies, including celestial motion.4 Regarding the particular uniform circular motion of celestial rotation he notes that it is “the best standard” by which to measure time, and that “time and such a standard rotation mutually determine each other,”5 going on to state at De Caelo 2  The term “muddatun” that appears in the actual definition is the indefinite form of the definite term “al-mudda” (extension); I will refer to the definite form as “mudda” throughout. 3  Aristotle, Physics 4.11 (219b2–3); Wicksteed and Cornford 1929, 386–387 (my modified translation; for “arithmos” Wicksteed and Cornford translate “calculable measure or dimension”; one might also translate the term as “number”; for “before and after” they translate “beforeand-afterness”). See too Aristotle’s discussion at Physics 8.1 (251b11–19). 4  See Sambursky and Pines 1971, 10. The motion of the celestial sphere is directly included in Aristotle’s definition of time in many Arabic accounts (i.e. they recount his definition of time as being the measure of the motion of the heaven); in this regard, see for example the view of the Brethren of Purity; cf. Altmann and Stern 1958, 75; see too the view of Al-Tahānawī in Mallet 2012. 5  Aristotle, Physics 4.14 (223b18–34); Wicksteed and Cornford 1929, 422–425; consider too note c (422–23): “Aristotle does not say what particular circular motion we are to take as our standard, but the commentators are probably right in supposing that for practical purposes he accepted the solar day . . .”; and consider too Sambursky’s insight that Aristotle “realized that the prerequisite for time measurement is a clock, i.e. a periodic mechanism, and that

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that there is no time beyond the heaven for “time is the measure (αριθμός) of motion, and without natural body there cannot be motion. It is obvious then that there is . . . [no] time outside the heaven, since it has been demonstrated that there neither is nor can be body there.”6 Looking at Israeli’s definition of time, we do indeed see the idea of motion, as well as direct reference to the motion of the heavenly Sphere. That said, Israeli does add the idea of “mudda” to his account; is this Aristotelian? Reflecting on the use of the term “mudda” in various Islamic and Jewish medieval philosophical definitions of time (though not addressing the case of Israeli per se), and considering the relation of such definitions of time to Aristotle’s own account, H. A. Wolfson notes that such definitions are just “phrased differently from Aristotle’s definition,” but that they are “essentially the same as Aristotle’s” definition “in so far as they make time dependent upon motion or upon the existence of things which have motion.”7 That said, a consideration of points 1–2 below—together with additional points in sections 3 and 4 of this chapter—suggests that, in spite of surface similarities to Aristotelian accounts of time, we ought not simply approach Israeli’s definition in Aristotelian terms. (1) Based on Altmann’s and Stern’s reconstruction of the original Arabic, Israeli speaks of time in terms of something being separated (rooted in the Arabic verb faraqa), not in Aristotle’s own terms of something being counted or measured, an idea that is indeed found in many other Arabic texts (rooted in the Arabic verb ‘adda). This already suggests the possibility that there is something extra-Aristotelian at play in Israeli’s account. (2) What is key for Aristotle about motion in an account of time is that it be a measure of motion—which is in part to say that it depend, as Wolfson puts it, “upon motion or upon the existence of things which have motion.” Along these lines, Aristotle emphasizes that “time is not identical with movement,”8 but that it is a by-product of  bodily motion. Reflecting on the possibility that Israeli’s “being separated” is not identical to the Aristotelian idea of “being

the revolution of the celestial sphere, being a regular circular motion, is the best measure of time . . .” (Sambursky 1959, 100). 6  Aristotle, De Caelo 1.9 (279a15ff); Guthrie 1939, 91 (I replace “measure” for Guthrie’s “number” for arithmos). For discussion of this argument in Aristotle, see Rudavsky 2000, 13. 7  Wolfson 1929, 638–9. See Wolfson 1929, 638ff. for the term “mudda” in definitions of time in Saadya, possibly Abraham bar Ḥiyya, al-Ghazali and their relation to ideas in Plutarch, Zeno (as reported by Simplicius), Chrysippus, Plotinus, et al. 8  Aristotle, Physics 4.10 (218b18): Wicksteed and Cornford, 1929: 378–9.

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measured,” we suggest that Israeli’s account has more in common with the Timaeus view in Plato and Plotinus, according to which time is a product of the self-moving motion of Soul (a point about which we will say more in section 4), not, as for Aristotle, a by-product of the motion of bodies.

3

Finding Stoic Intervals and Substance in Israeli’s “Mudda”?

To further recommend the non-Aristotelian flavor of Israeli on time, consider the term “mudda” in his definition a bit more closely. While Wolfson has shown that the term “mudda”—even though it adds to Aristotle’s own definition of time— can appear in Aristotelian Jewish and Islamic accounts of time, he also has shown that the term stems from Stoic contexts—and in particular, Stoic notions of interval (diástēma), where—as Sambursky notes—we can discern something of a critique of Aristotle’s own phrasing: Strato objected to the use of the term “number” [or “measure”] in connection with time, as number is a discrete quantity whereas time is continuous. Zeno and Chrysippos [sic] put “interval” [diástēma] in place of “number”, a term which fits the idea of continuity better . . .9 We may hear Stoic overtones in Israeli’s mudda phrasing that exceed an Aristotelian account per se; we may also hear non-Aristotelian resonances related to diástēma accounts of time in a range of other contexts, such as Pseudo Plutarch’s description of Plato’s idea of time in terms of the diástēma of the motion of the world.10 Within a Stoic context, we also find time described in substantial terms that would be foreign (and antithetical) to Aristotle. In this latter regard, consider Chrysippus’ sense that “it is in time that everything moves and exists.”11 We might also note a similar impulse at play in Galen (as recounted by Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī’s recounting of Alexander of Aphrodisias)12 who describes Plato as having held that time is a substance; the view of Plato is recounted there as follows:

9  10 

11  12 

Sambursky 1959, 100–101; my square bracketed additions. On Ps. Plutarch in this regard, see Wolfson 1929, 639 and Altmann and Stern 1958, 75. [We will leave aside in our current context the further important question of how this term moves between Stoic and Platonic contexts.] As cited in Sambursky 1959, 101; my italics. See Pines 1997 and Altmann and Stern 1958, 75.

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. . . he held that time was a substance—he means by this the mudda— and that movement measures it and marks it off.13 Where Aristotle speaks of time as the measure of motion, the idea here is that the substance of time is measured and “marked off” by motion, and that time is in this sense—qua measured, marked off substance—the mudda. Here we seem to find an anti-Aristotelian implication to talk of mudda. Reviewing our Aristotelian, Stoic and Platonic findings so far, we must ask: 1)

2)

In what sense are we to bring together Stoic with Aristotelian insights? Wolfson on the one hand shows that “mudda” accounts are generally consistent with Aristotle, but also goes on to point to the roots of Islamic and Jewish “mudda” traditions in Stoic “diástēma” accounts which we’ve seen can be non-Aristotelian and even anti-Aristotelian on the issue of time. It is not clear how to bring these pieces together. In what sense are we to bring together Aristotelian and/or Stoic insights with Israeli’s Neoplatonic world-view? Returning to Wolfson, we might ask not only how he means us to bring together Aristotelian and Stoic insights, but how he means us to bring these pieces together within the overall Neoplatonic contours of Israeli’s project.

And we might ask this same question of Altmann and Stern. Highlighting the Stoic element in their analysis of Israeli’s notion of time,14 it is not clear how Altmann and Stern think that the Stoic idea of diástēma fits within the contours of Israeli’s Neoplatonic project. In the above two considerations, we have found our way to a larger methodological question: Should we ever be satisfied explaining a Neoplatonist’s account of time in Stoic terms (moreover without any attempt to harmonize the elements of Stoicism with the entirety of the thinker’s Neoplatonic project)? As a general point of method, the answer to this ought to be ‘no’. We ought, rather, search for Neoplatonic ways of understanding an account of time in a Neoplatonic context.

13  14 

As cited in Altmann and Stern 1958, 76. Altmann and Stern 1958, 74–6; they cite Wolfson and others on the link between “mudda” and the Stoic “diástēma” and they emphasize that the idea of time recounted by Yaḥyā (above) is Stoic, not Platonic (Altmann and Stern 1958, 76, note 1).

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Finding Neoplatonism in Israeli’s Definition of Time: Sphere, Mudda, Emanation

While important in many ways, the details explored in extant scholarship about Aristotle-on-motion and Stoicism-on-interval fall short of making sense of what Israeli’s definition is actually saying, especially if we want to situate that definition within the context of Israeli’s overall Neoplatonic world-view. In what follows, I recommend thinking about the ideas of mudda (as extension) and “separation” in particular light of Israeli’s Neoplatonic idea of “Sphere,” and the relation of such an account to Plato’s Timaeus15 idea of time as “a moving likeness of eternity” (Timaeus 37D) and “an everlasting likeness moving according to number” (37D) that is rooted not in bodies but in Soul. Within Neoplatonic contexts, what is most important about the view of time in the Timaeus is that time stems from Soul, and that Soul is self-moving; in other words, unlike Aristotle whose account makes time the by-product of bodily motion, Plato’s account makes time the product of Soul—an essential product, moreover, that is nothing less than, as Cornford describes it, the “movement of life.”16 And so, while both Aristotle and Plato talk of heavenly motion, only Plato views time as an essential product of the Soul (which moves the heavens), whereas Aristotle views time as the function of the motion of bodies (including the heavens). It is precisely this aspect of Aristotle which Plotinus rejects in his own use of the Timaeus to emphasize that “time is the life of Soul.”17 It is precisely in this Platonic context that Israeli’s Neoplatonic idea of “Sphere”—and with it his sense of time in terms of “extension” and “separation”—takes root. Available to Israeli through the Neoplatonized lens of the Theology of Aristotle,18 the idea of time in the Timaeus take on an emanationist flavor: in the context of describing the upper world and Intellect as “complete and perfect,” the Theology of Aristotle notes that the upper world’s virtues are “flowing with eternity, not with time,” going on to contrast the perfect upper world’s eternity with the realm of non-eternal time by describing time in the

15  16  17  18 

See Cornford 1935/1997, 97–105. Cornford 1935/1997, 103. He also emphasizes that for Plato “the self-moving soul is the source of all physical motions” (93). Enneads 3.7; see Sambursky and Pines 1971, 11. For analysis of the Longer Theology of Aristotle in Israeli, see Altmann and Stern 1958, 99–100 and Pessin 2013, Appendix A7. For impact of Plato in general and Timaeus in particular on Islamic medieval philosophers (including al-Rāzī, al-Tahānawī, Abu ’l-Baḳāʾ, and in general the Arabic Plotinus materials in the Theology of Aristotle and Kalām fī maḥḍ al-khayr), see Mallet 2012 and de Boer 1936.

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lower realm as (in line with the Timaeus text) resembling eternity.19 Part and parcel of this Neoplatonic system of emanation, Israeli’s notion of Sphere— overtly referenced in his definition of time—marks the boundary between incorporeal and corporeal reality; it is the boundary moment of Nature’s flowing forth from Soul which is itself marked by the emergence of time; and as the boundary moment between Soul and Nature, it is the manifestation of the movement of Soul in Body. It is precisely in the spirit of this boundary notion that we find Israeli describing Sphere sometimes as Nature, but sometimes as “higher in rank than the corporeal substance”20 (suggesting that it is above Nature): as the boundary between spiritual and corporeal reality, Sphere demarcates the beginning, as it were, of the realm of all bodies and in this respect can both be identified with and demarcated from Nature. To the extent, that is, that it represents the very onset of—or outermost perimeter of—Nature in the motion of Soul (which, in Israeli’s emanationist context, is the causal origin of Nature),21 Sphere can be said to not be Nature (it is the boundary marking Nature’s onset), or it can be said to be Nature (it is the beginning of the natural realm of corporeal bodies). As is common in Neoplatonic discourse, the concept is fluid—which is to say, its use and meaning rely on which perspective of a situation we are trying to illuminate.22 Related to the Timaeus’ own description of Soul’s sharing a boundary with World Body through the image of a central light permeating outward throughout a sphere (and meeting its edges along the circumference of that sphere), Israeli engages a vertical image: Soul gives way to Nature/body in the way that a light shines down from an upper source, or in the way that water flows downward from a fountain. In both cases, however, (a) the authors are selfconsciously speaking metaphorically (and using spatio-temporal images to give voice to philosophical insights about the nature of being and becoming, spirituality and corporeality), (b) the image is constructed precisely to emphasize the boundary moment, as it were, between spirituality and corporeality (emphasized all the more in the Neoplatonic focus on the emanation of the 19  20  21  22 

Theology of Aristotle, Book 8; see English at Lewis 1959, 269; see Arabic at Badawi 1955, 111. Israeli, Book of Definitions; Altmann and Stern, 45. As I explain elsewhere, both God and an intermediating causal source can simultaneously be origins in Israeli (and in other Neoplatonists); see Pessin 2012a. Neoplatonists frequently engage a perspectival approach according to which something may be said to be x relative to one thing (or, from a certain perspective), but not-x relative to another (or, from another perspective). For more on Neoplatonic method, see Pessin 2013 (esp. chapters 8–9); as I explain there, the language of Neoplatonic cosmo-ontology does not work in straightforwardly denotative ways; rather it is part of a creative response to the “Paradox of Divine Unity” and ultimately aims to illuminate and enable human comportments to self, God, and world.

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corporeal from the spiritual), and (c) it is on that boundary that we may speak of time being born of Soul, marking the inception of becoming, imperfect motion, and the growth of difference over and above sameness. It is in the context of all of these ideas that the Timaeus speaks of time as the moving image of eternity: infused by reason with traces of perfection and being (evidenced in the Timaeus imagery in its being created by the Demiurge in consultation with the Eternal Paradigm, and in its being infused with a blend of difference along with existence and sameness), time marks the beginning of the end of reason, the beginning of the end of perfection, and the beginning of the end of the victory of sameness over difference. It is precisely in the context of this Timaean imagery—amplified through the additional imagery of Neoplatonic emanation—that Israeli’s account of time as “mudda” and as “separated” can be best understood: With a Neoplatonic sensitivity to time’s marking the boundary between spiritual and corporeal reality in the downward flow from Soul, we can revisit “extension” (al-mudda occurring in the indefinite form ‘muddatun’ in Israeli’s definition) as the very act of emanative unfolding itself, and the idea of “being separated” as a reflection on the very idea of boundary that is at play in this downward flow. Turning to “mudda” in particular, and reflecting on its root in the Arabic verb madda, to extend or stretch or spread, we are invited to think of Israeli’s description now as a description of an extending or a stretching or a spreading—which, within the broader context of his emanationist cosmology, is the very downward spreading of emanation itself. While one might have first read in this idea of “extension” a reference to some bit of stuff of some sort (an extended “something” or “barest of bare somethings” or a “something I know not what”), moving to a Neoplatonic context we are invited instead to think of “extension” as the spreading out—or rupture or fracture—of the purity of God into Intellect, Intellect into Soul, and Soul into the manifest plurality of the discursive, recalcitrant, bodily realm of privative becoming (an idea that can be seen in Ibn Gabirol in the move from God to pure materiality, and from pure materiality to ever-descending manifestations of form).23 And it is in this framework that we are invited to consider Israeli’s definition of time as “extension separated by the movement of the Sphere” as a reflection on the precise boundary moment between spirit and body—as a reflection on the moment of Soul’s unfolding/ spreading out that, in its birthing and animation of the heavenly Sphere (as the first moment, as it were, of corporeality and natural motion), heralds the separation between lower and upper realities. Understood in this way, Israeli’s definition of time gives voice to a broadly and deeply Neoplatonic vision. Such a reading of Israeli, of course, does not 23 

For a fuller analysis of Ibn Gabirol’s emanationism, see Pessin 2003, 2010, 2013.

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preclude and is not disproven by his employment of Aristotelian language; all Greek, Islamic, and Jewish Neoplatonists engage their Neoplatonic visions while incorporating Aristotelian terms, concepts, or both.24 Taken in this Neoplatonic context, we can easily accommodate Israeli’s description of Sphere in terms of the “fifth essence,” the Aristotelian quintessence that is the stuff of the celestial (as opposed to terrestrial) realm. Using this Aristotelian insight, he identifies Sphere as “the substance of the heavenly body” ( jism) in contrast to “the substance of the body” ( jirm), viz. the bodies made up of the four terrestrial elements.25 As a heavenly-substance-body above the terrestrial-substance-bodies, “Sphere” points to the heavens as the boundary between the upper world of Soul and the lower world of Body; it is, as it were, the moment just beyond the last moment of spirituality and the first moment of corporeality—albeit of a quintessential variety more exalted than terrestrial bodies—beneath the upper world of simple spiritual substances. In its details, we find in Israeli a Neoplatonic—and not an Aristotelian— account of time rooted in a Neoplatonic emanationist sensibility about mudda as the spreading forth of Soul to Sphere itself as the separation of corporeal from spiritual reality. Time marks (or, we might say, is born in) this very emanative moment of spreading-as-separation as Soul gives way to Nature.

5

From Time to Love in Neoplatonism: On the Beginning of the End of Love (as the Beginning of the Beginning of Love)

With the above elements in place, we can finally turn to love, and to an appreciation for how the Islamic and Jewish Neoplatonic sense of time relates to the end (or the beginning of the end) of Love. In my work on what I call a “Theology of Desire” in Islamic and Jewish Neoplatonic contexts (related to themes of Intellect-as-Love in Plotinus),26 we find strong grounds for reading 24 

25  26 

As I explain elsewhere, Ibn Gabirol is a case in point of a thinker who uses many Aristotelian terms (such as form, matter, and substance) but in non-Aristotelian ways; it is important to distinguish between merely using Aristotelian terms and actually employing Aristotelian concepts with their Aristotelian meanings; for my analysis of Ibn Gabirol’s using Aristotelian terms but not actually engaging Aristotelian concepts, see Pessin 2010; Pessin 2013. On the fifth essence and the contrast of jism with jirm (and the root of that terminological distinction in al-Kindi), see Altmann and Stern 1958, 47–48. For analysis of the Theology of Desire, see Pessin 2013; for development on Intellect-asLove in Plotinus and for an examination of love in a range of Greek and Islamic Neoplatonic sources (including Avicenna’s “Treatise on Love” and the Theology of Aristotle), see Pessin 2014a.

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God, being, and the upper world within these traditions in terms of love, and for reading emanation itself within these traditions as the downward flow of God’s own desire. On my reading, emanation itself in such thinkers as Israeli and Ibn Gabirol is best understood as the unfolding of divine love/desire which gives rise to the inception of love/desire in all beings (a point which I show is seen especially strongly in Israeli’s and Ibn Gabirol’s own Ps. Empedoclean additions of a pure supernal matter as a moment of pure desire at the very core of all beings and as God’s own first disclosure—in the form of His own outflowing of love/desire—into the world of beings).27 While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore this theme in detail, consider just two examples of the Theology of Desire in Israeli’s and Ibn Gabirol’s Neoplatonic context. Turning to the Theology of Aristotle, we find the identification of the “upper world” with a love that roots all life:

‫ف‬ ‫� ت‬ ‫ف��اإ �م�ا ا ��ع�ا ل ال�إ ع�� ف��ا ف‬ ‫ح����ت ف��لت‬ ‫ح���ا �ت ت��فم�م� ث� �م ف‬ ‫م‬ � � ‫�ه‬ � ‫ا‬ � ‫م‬ � ‫ا‬ � ‫ه‬ �� ‫ط‬ ��� �� ‫ك‬ � �‫ل‬ �� ‫و ا �لت��لا‬... � ‫حت���ا‬ ‫و ت ف‬ ‫و ف‬ ‫لى إ‬ ‫� ل‬ ‫م‬ ‫ل �لت ف ت‬ ...� ‫� ت���ر‬ The upper world is love and life alone, whence are sent forth every life . . . and union that is not severed . . .28

And in like spirit, Avicenna (in his “Risālah fi’l-‘ishq,” “Treatise on Love”) theorizes God as both the ultimate subject and object of love29 and sees God’s origination of all beings as the investment into all things of being-qua-love.30 In his reflections on love and being, Avicenna concludes that

‫�ث ف‬ ‫ف‬ ‫ف‬ ‫ف‬ ‫ح دا ت‬ ‫�ف�م�ا فد ف� ا �ل‬ �‫�و ف� و ف‬ �‫حو ف‬ � ‫ت�ه�م�ا واإ���م�ا ا � ت� ك‬ ‫� إا ���م�ا ا � ت� ك‬ ���� �‫ع��� ت‬ �‫حود �ه�م�ا ف����ف�م� ف‬ � ‫�و‬ ‫و‬ ‫إ‬ ‫ثف فت ف إ‬ ‫ت ت‬ ‫ف‬ ‫�ف‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ع��� ت‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ح�م��ل ف� �ع� ف ا �� ث‬ � �‫حود �ه�م�ا وا ��ع��� �هو �هو ف��ع�م���� ��م ف����� ا � ا ����هو�م�ا � ل‬ �‫و ف‬ � � � ‫ت‬ ‫ت‬ In all beings, therefore, love is either the cause of their being, or being and love are identical in them. It is thus evident that no being is devoid of love . . .31 27 

28  29  30  31 

For the development of this idea (including my eliding ‘love’ and ‘desire’), see Pessin 2013; for related explorations of love-as-receptivity in Ibn Gabirol and its implications for a feminist voice, see Pessin 2004. Theology of Aristotle, Chapter 8; English at Lewis 1959: 473; Arabic at Badawi 1955: 99, lines 7–8. Avicenna, Risālah fi’l-‘ishq; Fackenheim 1945: 214. Avicenna, Risālah fi’l-‘ishq; Fackenheim 1945: 213. Avicenna, Risālah fi’l-‘ishq; Fackenheim 1945: 214; Arabic at Mehren 1894, p. 5, lines 7–9.

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Rooted in a grounding vision of divine love/desire, the Islamic and Jewish Neoplatonic landscape envisions a God as not just object but subject of love, with emanation itself as the unfolding of Divine-Love-as-Desire. Taking these insights seriously has thoroughgoing implications: In the broadest sense, it requires that we revise many of the dry and lifeless ways that these traditions have so often been recounted in the history of philosophy.32 In our current context, it also provides us with a new lens through which to engage Israeli’s idea of time. If, as we have seen, time is born of Soul in Soul’s downward descent into Nature, then, in light of the Neoplatonic Theology of Desire, we may speak of time in this very regard as the beginning of the end of love—precisely in the sense that it demarcates the first moment, as it were, of becoming versus being; the first moment, as it were, of the end of the upper world towards a lower world; the first moment, as it were, of Love’s fracture (through the journey of Soul) from the fullness of plenty to the privation of lack. In this regard, we might describe Soul’s birthing of Time through the metaphor of love sickness, as she moves from unity to fracture and from home to exile. Within the context of Neoplatonic Islamic and Jewish Theologies of Desire, time is in this very regard the beginning of the end of love. Turning to Plotinus himself, and to parts of the Greek Enneads that we don’t currently know to have been available to Islamic and Jewish Neoplatonists,33 32 

33 

There seems to be a strong scholarly trend tacitly dedicated to unfairly calcifying Neoplatonism—be it in terms of “intellect, not love,” impious theology, outdated science, et al.; I address this methodological failure in chapters 8–9 in my study of Ibn Gabirol; see Pessin 2013. A few methodological points about why it is worth including insights from Plotinus that are not known to have been available to Israeli: (a) Historical Possibility: Given the predominance of Theologies of Desire across a range of Islamic and Jewish philosophers, it seems plausible to imagine that Book 3 of the Enneads, in which Plotinus addresses love, was available in some form; in other words, just because we have evidence for the availability of Enneads 4–6 does not mean that other books might not also have been in circulation. Plotinus’ account of love in Enneads 3 in particular seems to resonate with themes found in Islamic and Jewish Neoplatonists, as do insights of his in that same book on intelligible matter—an idea that resonates, for example, with Ps. Empedoclean traditions of “first matter” (see Pessin 2013, section 2.5 and chapters 3–7). In light of these and other resonances, it is not unreasonable to think that some aspect of Enneads 3 might have indeed been available to Islamic and Jewish Neoplatonists. (b) Conceptual Openings: Regardless of whether or not Israeli has direct access to ideas in Enneads 3, the concepts explored by Plotinus are very deeply at play in the overall concept-space of Jewish and Islamic Theologies of Desire; reading these parts of Plotinus helps strengthen our Neoplatonic intuitions which allows us to more creatively engage conceptual possibilities at play in the writings of other Neoplatonists.

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we may also demarcate the onset of time as the beginning of the beginning of a second love. Looking to Enneads 3 in particular, our sense of time’s relation to love is deepened: In describing Soul, Plotinus points in particular to Soul’s “unquiet power” (δύναμις οὐχ ἥσυχος; see 3.7.11)—related to what we have above described as Soul’s exile from Intellect and “love sickness” for the upper world—as that from which time arises. In this reflection, Plotinus finds particular recourse to the myth of the birth of Eros recounted in Plato’s Symposium (2013D1–2) where we are told that at Aphrodite’s birthday party in the garden of Zeus, the god Poros (Plenty) gets drunk from too much nectar and is slyly seduced by Penia (Poverty) resulting in the birth of Eros. Plotinus finds in this story a creative framework for reflecting most deeply on the nature of Soul’s descent. We ought, says Plotinus, read Aphrodite as Soul because at her core, she is exalted, and by thinking of Soul in terms of Aphrodite, we will be invited to reflect on “the beauty and brightness and innocence of soul.”34 We ought also, says Plotinus, read the two-fold claim that the birth of Eros takes place at Soul’s birthday party in the Garden of Zeus as the idea that Soul’s very inception (her birthday party, as it were)—even though it is in Zeus’ garden (which is to say, within the fullness of Pure Intellect itself where Soul is precisely “beautiful, bright, and innocent”)—has already always contained the seeds of her fall. In reading the myth in Plato’s Symposium, Plotinus finds that in the root of Soul in her home in Intellect there is already signified her descent into Nature, here described as the rape by Poverty of Plenty and with it the birth of Eros. And again, it is precisely this idea that we may connect up with his claim at 3.7.11 about it being the unquiet, “restless” (we might say lovesick) aspect of Soul that gives rise to time—marking we may now add, not only (a) the beginning of the end of the pure love of the upper world (now understood as a love of plenty and fullness found in the purity of Intellect), but also, in her very descent away from that complete love—in her very marking of the beginning of time—also marking (b) the very beginning of the beginning of a world of Eros in which love is marked by Plenty and marred by Poverty; a world of love predicated already always on loss and exile and on the searching and yearning emptiness-that-desires-to-be-completed-by-the-other that comes with that exile.35 [We might note in closing that Plotinus uses the same term, ‘eros’, to 34  35 

Plotinus, Enneads 3.5; Armstrong 1967, 197. The precise spirit of this idea—absent any of the specifics of Plotinus’ treatment of the Symposium myth—can be seen at the heart of Ibn Gabirol’s (and possibly Israeli’s) thesis of “pure matter” at the core of all being and at the core of human being. For an exploration of this theme (including the implications of Ibn Gabirol’s views on matter for a phenomenology of receptive, humble, fragile living in which one is invited to live through the

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describe both the pure full love and the love-filled-with-loss; this point ought certainly be thought through with care as it invites us to reexamine any overly dualistic or mistakenly Gnostic-inspired intuitions we might have about how Neoplatonism thinks about the “lower” world of life; even while described as “lower,” the lived day-to-day world is, for the Neoplatonists, of a piece with the divine presence]. Within the fluid Theology of Desire found in so many guises across a range of Neoplatonisms, we may return to Israeli’s definition of time, finding now in the spirit of his words the reminder that time marks the beginning of the end of love, and—drawing on additional insights in Plotinus—the further reminder that in marking the end of one love, time marks the beginning of another love: the love grounded in the presence-with-absence of human living.36

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image of being, at one’s very root, nothing but the open receptive expectancy of matter), see Pessin 2013, section 7.8, and chapters 8–9 (and especially sections 8.5 and 9.3). (For a comparison of Ibn Gabirol and Israeli, see Pessin 2013, appendix A7). For related insights on the play of lights and shadows in Israeli and what I call “The Jewish Philosophy of Shadowed Light” (seen too, I would argue, at the root of Greek Neoplatonism), see Pessin 2014c.

CHAPTER 4

Solomon Maimon’s Philosophical Exegesis of Mystical Representations of Time and Temporal Consciousness Dustin N. Atlas

Abstract This paper explores Solomon Maimon’s philosophy of time through his engagement with Hassidism and Kabbalah. It begins by discussing the hermeneutic Maimon formulated for reading mystical texts, which proceeds by prescinding concepts from representational ijigures. A brief analysis of Maimon’s deijinition of both ‘concept’ and ‘representation’ follows. Finally, Maimon’s transcendental notion of time is explicated, as both a schema for concepts and a space of appearance. The movement from the former to the latter is accomplished by a negation of ijinitude, which I suggest is influenced by his interpretation of Hassidism.

Solomon Maimon is well known—perhaps too well known—for bridging multiple worlds. This bridging is complicated, and it complicates the reception of his work. It is complicated because his own self-image, as presented in his Autobiography, is one of succession: ijirst a Polish Jew, then a German enlightener; ijirst a scholar of Talmud and mysticism, then a philosopher. Astute commentators have noted that this story is overly simple: philosophy inflects his earliest mystical work, and mystical themes recur throughout his philosophy. This fusion of modern and pre-modern genres—commentary, autobiography, and philosophical system—has impeded his participation in most academic discourses. Scholarship of the 1960s apologetically emphasized his historical importance for the development of German Idealism.1 On this view, Maimon is valuable because he was important for Fichte and company. This is a questionable reason to engage a thinker, and recent work, especially that of Buzaglo and Freudenthal, has insisted that Maimon’s philosophy be taken seriously in 1  Samuel H. Atlas, From Critical to Speculative Idealism: The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964). Samuel Hugo Bergman, The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967). Rotenstreich is a notable exception.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004290310_005

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its own right.2 This paper continues this approach, exploring Maimon’s work for its understanding of time and consciousness in mystical discourse. Here his ‘mixed’ character is not an obstacle, but a strength: it is precisely because Maimon bridges two worlds, having studied with both Moses Mendelssohn and the Maggid of Mezritch, that his theory of time is valuable. Maimon gives us an example of a philosophical engagement with mystical texts that does not compete with historical methods, but augments them by discerning ways obscure texts can speak within contemporary discourse. To this end, my paper will explicate the hermeneutic Maimon used to guide his own engagement with mysticism.3 The ijirst section will explicate the structure of his hermeneutic, in the context of his youthful engagement with kabbalistic texts. The second section will deijine what Maimon means by ‘concept’ [Begriff ] and ‘representation’ [Vorstellung]. The third and ijinal section will lay out his transcendental notion of time as a schema of difference and actuality, and will suggest that this notion is related to his involvement with Hassidism.

1

A Way of Reading

Maimon’s philosophical hermeneutic is found in his Autobiography and his Essay on Transcendental Philosophy. It might seem illegitimate to employ these sources simultaneously: it is difijicult to imagine two books more dissimilar than the recondite Essay and the playful Autobiography. But this distinction is more apparent than real: the Essay is not the direct presentation of a system, but is written as a commentary (on Kant’s ijirst Critique). It includes Maimon’s ijirst person ‘I’ more than is typical for a philosophical work, and verges on the autobiographical.4 Conversely, the Autobiography is replete with commentary

2  Meir Buzaglo, Solomon Maimon: Monism, Skepticism, and Mathematics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002). Gideon Freudenthal, “A Philosopher between Two Cultures,” in Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatist, Empirical Skeptic: Critical Assessments, (New York: Springer, 2003). 3  By hermeneutic is meant a set of rules for exegesis, in this case aimed at prescinding the transcendental concepts from obscure texts. I use the term ‘prescind’ in Peirce’s sense: an abstraction that separates off presuppositions and treats these as independent objects. Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), cp 1.549. 4  See: Salomon Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2010), 173 vt334. Hereafter ‘vt’ refers to Versuch Uber Die Transzendentalphilosophie (Berlin: Christian Friedrich Voss und Sohn, 1790).

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and frequently diverts from the narrative to offer lengthy commentaries on philosophical and mystical texts and practices.5 In the Essay, Maimon inverts a standard 18th century theory of language which held that ‘primitive’ language begins with concrete things, from which abstract concepts are slowly extricated. Instead, Maimon proposes the (equally problematic) thesis that “the names of abstract things must have been invented before those of concrete things . . . because the former presuppose only a single comparison, whereas the latter presuppose several comparisons.”6 Maimon’s story—which is as compelling as its competitors—assumes that terms are invented by an elite and are thereafter confused by common people. Maimon’s story substantiates a basic assumption of his work: abstract processes underlie sensuous representations and manifestations. Primitive discourse, like the primitive functions of consciousness, are closer to the rational than their later accretions. The foundations of reason, unlike science, are not acquired by discovering new things, but rather by uncovering origins. Basic transcendental ijigures in need of clariijication are buried in archaic discourses. Thus, where philosophy is concerned, there should be no bias against prescientiijic texts, as they contain legitimate transcendental ijigures (however cloaked in representational forms.)7 This is another theme that runs through Maimon’s thought: day-to-day consciousness begins and ends with representations, so we falsely assume that representations lie at the origin of thought. The philosopher corrects this error by identifying the non-representational processes that underlie and produce representations. The work of philosophy is to avoid deception by representations through discerning the ‘machine’ which underlies them. Maimon takes this to an extreme, and famously denies the intellectual validity of experience itself.8 Naïve experience produces errors because it distracts from the primary 5  For a philosophically problematic reading that nonetheless offers literary insight into this work, see: Abraham P. Socher, The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 127. 6  “[O]ne ijinds in every language expressions for transcendental concepts (those that are identical in different types of things): But expressions for concrete concepts (transcendental concepts determined in particular ways) are often lacking; for example, there may be an expression for movement in general, but not for physical or mental movement.” Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 162 vt311. 7  Gideon Freudenthal, No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 17. 8  “Kant assumes there is no doubt that we possess experiential propositions (that express necessity), and he proves their objective validity by showing that experience would be impossible without them; but on Kant’s assumption, experience is possible because it is actual, and

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process that manufactures representations and focuses on the secondary state of manufactured representations. With reading, imagination [Einbildungskraft], and not experience, is the source of deception. As Maimon sees it, the imagination works with representations, which are essentially pictures, and wants to grasp them “all around” rather than exploring the process which constructs them.9 The consequence is that whatever imagination requires to generate pictures seems real, and what cannot be pictured seems impossible. Against this, Maimon holds that there is no reason to assume that truth accords to our ability to imagine it. So we must be content grasping only the means by which something arises or is constructed. This is not seen as a limitation. For Maimon, the truth, or secret, of imagistic texts is precisely their image producing structures, not their speciijic images.10 These structures will not satisfy the imagination’s desire for totality, but do provide the deep mechanisms that enable understanding. Following Maimon’s Autobiography, it seems that this transcendental hermeneutic was not ijirst developed and then applied to kabbalistic texts, but was formulated to make sense of these very texts: Maimon assumed that they were written with rational intent but were cloaked in exoteric images. In a protoStraussian fashion, for Maimon, the esoteric meaning of texts is precisely their most universalist, philosophical structure.11 The elite intentionally employed the language of the commoners for their communications, keeping the code to themselves. For us late-comers, there is a difijiculty: we must reconstruct the cipher from the script. As Moshe Idel notes, Maimon viewed Kabbalah as a body of truths,

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this is why these concepts have objective reality. But I doubt the fact itself, that is to say, I doubt whether we possess experiential propositions and so I cannot prove their objective validity the way Kant does.” Maimon is not saying that we ‘don’t experience things’ as if we were blind and deaf. Maimon merely denies that we can draw philosophical judgments from experiences. Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 100 vt86. “It is not reason but the imagination that presses for totality in the employment of the understanding.” Understanding [Verstand] seeks to ‘grasp’ [ fassen] while imagination [Einbildungskraft] wants to ‘enclose’ [umfassen] An Autobiography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 23 L87. ‘L’ refers to Lebensgeschichte (Munich: Georg Muller, 1911). Maimon recognized this strategy could not be employed for many mystical texts, and could ijind no “rational meaning” for the “representations [Vorstellungen]” of both the tree and God’s beard. An Autobiography, 99 L156. Such writers “understood the art of communicating truths of reason by means of sublime ijigures, and of transforming these ijigurative representations into truths of reason . . . [T]hey understood the language of animals . . . which is indispensable to every teacher of the people.” An Autobiography, 186 L363. (translation modiijied, emphasis added).

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transferred in a code for which the decoder has been lost.12 While once these writings were cogent but masked in ijigures, now that the key is lost, the ijigures are all we have. These intoxicate the imagination, which seeks to grasp the obscure in images, and so generates fanciful interpretations.13 For Maimon, the solution is a combination of philology, which provides the semantics, and philosophy, which provides the grammar.14 Employed together, these two can partly reconstruct the text’s rational core. Note that philosophy is only the grammar: one should not enlist the semantic objects of a mystical text, or any text, into a speciijic philosophy, but should purify ijigures such that they can be engaged by any rational framework. Maimon was something of a philosophical pluralist and was engaged with several forms of philosophy throughout his life, assembling aspects of each of them into a “coalition system,” an approach he recommended to his readers.15 To philosophically read Kabbalah means to rid symbols of their imaginal evocations and prescind their rational core. As with much unphilosophical language: the transcendental concepts are good, but their grammar is lacking.16 Time presents an absolute limit for any such hermeneutic work. This is made explicit in the details of one attempt to “raise” a kabbalist ijigure from literary knowledge [literarischen Kenntnis] to rational knowledge [Vernunfterkenntnis]: Thus, for example, I explained at once the ijirst instance with which the Cabbalists commonly begin their science. It is this. Before the world was created, the divine being occupied the whole of inijinite space alone. But God wished to create a world, in order that He might reveal those attributes of His nature which refer to other beings besides Himself. For this purpose He contracted Himself into the centre of His perfection.17 The idea of time drives the philosophical interpretation of this image: “I knew from my Moreh Nebhochim [Maimonides’ Guide], that time is a modiijication

12  13 

14  15  16  17 

Moshe Idel, “On Solomon Maimon and Kabbalah,” Kabbalah 28:79. “[A]s it was easy to perceive that these signs necessarily had meant something, it was left to the imagination to invent an occult meaning which had long been lost. The remotest analogies between signs and things were seized, till at last the Cabbalah degenerated into an art of madness according to method.” Maimon, An Autobiography, 95 L152. “[P]hilosophy is nothing other than a universal grammar.” Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 154 vt296. An Autobiography, 280 L312. Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 155 vt298. An Autobiography, 103 L60.

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of the world, and consequently cannot be thought without it.”18 With this limitation as his guide, Maimon reconstructed the ijigure of tzimtzum as a principle that allowed for a genetic account of the world. Accordingly I sought to explain all this in the following way. God is prior to the world, not in time, but in His necessary being as the condition of the world. All things besides God must depend on Him as their cause, in regard to their essence as well as their existence. The creation of the world, therefore, could not be thought as a bringing forth out of nothing, nor as a formation of something independent on God, but only as a bringing forth out of Himself.19 Here there is a clear move away from a ijigure of creation to a set of transcendental categories presupposed by this same ijigure of creation. While problematic for any historical understanding of what Kabbalists ‘actually meant,’ this account provides a good example of a philosophically productive reading. It is not a coincidence that Maimon’s ijirst reported reading is driven by the impossibility of reconciling a text with time. While the Autobiography is inadequate for reconstructing the actual sequence of Maimon’s life, it does allow access to his self-perception.20 As Maimon presents it, at the age of six he began to doubt representations of God because he could not accept the conventional depiction of God as eternal.21 His confusion is ascribed to his youthful reliance upon imaginary ijigures, with understanding following his ‘recognition’ that these ijigures are representations of more fundamental processes. Again, both imagination and experience rely too much upon completed representations rather than mechanisms. Representations have their place in the economy of knowledge, but it is easy to confuse their completed forms for understanding. His reading strategy seeks to avoid this confusion by prescinding what a text’s ideas require from their experiential and imaginal forms. Maimon’s antipathy towards experience and imagination seems to run against the very idea of mysticism, especially if one privileges a model where claims of transcendent experiences are the heart of mysticism.22 This 18  19  20  21  22 

An Autobiography, 104 L61. Ibid. Shumuel Feiner, “Solomon Maimon and the Haskalah,” in Aschkenas (2000). Socher, The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy. Maimon, An Autobiography, 22 L87. Jonathan Garb shows that a signiijicant minority of mystical texts are critical of mystical experience. See Jonathan Garb, “Mystics’ Critiques of Mystical Experience” Revue de

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difijiculty, while real, is less obtrusive if one considers that philosophy is Maimon’s chief genre. The loss of experience and imagination, seen philosophically, is not as signiijicant as one might think. Philosophy, especially Kant’s, deijines experience such that it can be useful for philosophy. Mystical ‘experiences’ don’t really count as experiences in the ijirst Critique. In its war against the imagination, Maimon’s philosophy unhinges ideas that are important for mysticism—such as the inijinite—from our ability to imagine them.23 In allowing us to conceive concepts outside the realm of experiences and imaginings that philosophy’s discursive practices accept, Maimon’s hermeneutic gives mystical texts philosophical purchase in ways most hermeneutics do not.

2

A Difference between Concepts and Representations

To understand the potential of Maimon’s hermeneutic requires a brief reconstruction of how a concept differs from a representation. For our purposes, the most important aspect of concepts and things is that they are composed of differentials. While Maimon modeled his idea of the differential on contemporaneous calculus, what is important for us is that concepts, indeed all things, are composed of differences. Differences precede objects and our representations of objects.24 This is a counter-intuitive position: it is common to think that objects come before differences (objects are different from each other). Maimon’s retort is simple and compelling: to say that the difference between two objects is that they have different predicates, or are differently determined, does not answer a more basic question—what is the difference between the two predicates or determinations?25 For this reason we must presuppose differences as fundamental. In the same way, differences pierce the veil of appearance. After Kant, it is somewhat conventional to hold that we can only access appearances and not things themselves. Maimon responds: even if we only see appearances, surely we see different appearances? If only here we access differences that are not merely appearances.

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l’histoire des religions 221, no. 3 (2004). Maimon’s critique is not limited to, or even primarily concerned with, mystical experience. Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 137 vt261. Buzaglo, Solomon Maimon: Monism, Skepticism, and Mathematics, 2, 8, 35. Freudenthal has suggested in a coversation that Maimon’s ‘differential’ is a midpoint between the inijinite and the ijinite, an idea promulgated by the mathematics of his time. Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 177 vt340.

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Maimon follows this line further, and holds that representations are constituted by an inijinite number of differentials. To say that things are composed of differentials is much the same as to say that they are composed of relations. One of the most interesting and contemporary things about Maimon’s philosophy is his insistence that relations precede objects.26 However, precisely because they are available only as appearances, these differences, and the relations that they form, are ideal entities: as ijinite beings, we will never grasp them completely. But we can infer and prescind these differentials from representations. When I see or imagine something, I can postulate the differences that make it up—the immediate, unprocessed intuitions—but I can never represent these differentials directly, much as I can never grasp sensation directly, but can only grasp representations, or objects, that I have composed from it.27 Sensation—including ‘internal’ sensation—provides us with differentials; from these, imagination and experience build ijigures. Simultaneously the understanding produces concepts “out of the relations of these different differentials, which are its objects.”28 The error of the imagination and experience is to presume that ijigures precede these differential concepts. This false presumption is owed to the belief that concepts work upon representations. But this would imply we passively receive representations and then actively organize them, and Maimon rejects any such dualism. Rather, “the understanding does not subject something given a posteriori to its a priori rules; rather it lets it arise in accordance with these rules”.29 The ‘letting arise’ is a process of construction, and one that (for us, at least) takes place in time. Representations, both imaginal and experiential, are actively created in time, which is a schema for the differentials (organizing the order of the arising). This is the second most important aspect of Maimon’s theory of concepts: consciousness uses conceptual differences to create its objects (in time). These creations are not ‘pretend’ objects: they are, strictly speaking, real. Differentials and intuitions are ideal, or logical entities that precede representation, but they are made real by representing them. The understanding of a circle—an inijinite number of differentials organized by a rule—is nominal until it is drawn, or represented. Only then it is real. A representation, or applied thought, “is a 26 

27  28  29 

Levi R. Bryant, Difference and Givenness: Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence, Topics in Historical Philosophy (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2008), 41; Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 173. Atlas, From Critical to Speculative Idealism: The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon, 109–17. Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 21 vt31. (emphasis added) Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 48 vt82. (emphasis added)

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limit concept between pure thought and intuition by means of which the two are legitimately bound.”30 Buzaglo considers this a parallel between Maimon and Kabbalah: “the human ability to create real objects in the course of making judgments.”31 Whether this is enough to consider Maimon’s thought ‘kabbalistic’ is doubtful. But it is worth noting that concept’s creative power is where consciousness partakes of the inijinite: “[S]ymbolic cognition extends to inijinity . . . for example, a circle viewed as a polygon with inijinitely many sides. . . . Although we cannot think the inijinite as an object this is beside the point here, since we do not make use of inijinity to think the object, but merely to think the way it arises.”32 The inijinite—which for Maimon is godly if not in fact God—is not representable, but allows us to have representations. As Freudenthal pithily notes: “[t]he intellect testiijies to the God-likeness of man, even if God does not exist.”33 I suggest that Maimon’s idea of the creative in-ijinite intellect, at least in the Autobiography, owes more to Hasidism than it does to Kabbalah. This is because of the role that self-limitation plays in our access to the inijinite.34 The inijinite is accessed through limiting our own representations. While representations are owed to our ijinitude, when we limit our limitations (usually through philosophy), we partake of the inijinite. In doing so, we recognize that “the schema of the inijinite understanding is our own understanding.”35 The only instance I know of where Maimon discusses self-limitation that leads to involvement with God concerns Hassidism, and not Kabbalah. While he

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Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 103, vt92. Buzaglo, Solomon Maimon: Monism, Skepticism, and Mathematics, 134. Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 143 vt274. Gideon Freudenthal, “The Philosophical Mysticism of Maimonides and Maimon,” in Maimonides and His Heritage, ed. Lenn E. Goodman Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, James Allen Grady (Albany: suny Press, 2009), 126. The closeness of Maimon’s inijinite reason to Maimonides’ active intellect has led to commentators over-identifying the two. Both thinkers posit a difference between our limited intellect and God’s inijinite intellect, and both seek to bridge this gap. But Maimonides’ philosopher ‘bridges’ through contemplating an object (unifying with it,) while Maimon overcome this gap through limiting a limitation. See: Eliezer Schweid, A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy, (Boston: Brill, 2011), 179. Atlas, From Critical to Speculative Idealism: The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon. Freudenthal, “The Philosophical Mysticism of Maimonides and Maimon.” Buzaglo, Solomon Maimon: Monism, Skepticism, and Mathematics, 101. Atlas argues something similar as regards the “function” of the inijinite mind, but shows that Maimon at points writes as if the inijinite mind is a “metaphysical reality.” Atlas, From Critical to Speculative Idealism: The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon, 82, 88.

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makes no explicit comparison between the two, the Kabbalists are described as wanting “closeness of communion” with God, whereas the Hassidim seek “self-annihilation [Selbstvernichtung]” in order that they might act as “organs of the Godhead.”36 While Maimon considers Hassidic self-annihilation to be incomplete (as it is unguided by philosophy), it seems that Hassidism, and not Kabbalah, furnished his idea of inijinite creation through limiting our ijinitude. This interplay between the ijinite and the inijinite is worked out in the schema of time.

3.1

Time as a Concept is a Schema of Difference

Differences and relations are prior to representations, and thus, prior to our representation of time.37 However, seen from the perspective of the understanding, time is not a representation but the most important schema for organizing differences: we collect and unify these differences in the schema of time, and so form representations from them; it is through being ordered in time that differences cease to be ideal entities and become real representations. This non-representational ‘schematic’ time is a more like a machine than an empty space we populate with sensual images. It has its “ground in the universal forms of our thought,” and not in “a separate faculty of intuition.”38 Maimon’s non-representational time is squarely aimed against Kant, for whom time not only contains representations, but is a representation that grounds other representations: “Time is a necessary representation that grounds all intuitions.”39 Kant’s argument has two major parts. First, if time were a concept, I could think of multiple times; Kant claims that this is impossible. Second, and more important for Maimon, Kant holds that the representation of time precedes all other representations: “In it alone is all actuality of appearances possible. The latter could all disappear, but time itself, as the universal condition of their possibility, cannot be removed.”40 This is one of Kant’s proto-phenomenological

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Maimon, An Autobiography, 92, 153 L53, 86. Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 14 vt 18. Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 14 vt18. Peter Thielke, “Intuition and Diversity: Kant and Maimon on Space and Time,” in Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatist, Empirical Skeptic: Critical Assessments (New York: Springer, 2003), 92. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 162, A31 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 162, A31. (emphasis added)

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moves: if I subtract all the various representations from my consciousness, I am left with the empty form of time. Against this, Maimon holds that if I subtract all of time’s contents, I don’t have an intuition of time: I have nothing. In a manner reminiscent of Hermann Cohen, Maimon tries to out-Kant Kant. His phenomenological argument is at least as compelling as Kant’s: if I subtract all the component parts of time, there is no longer succession (I no longer have a ‘before and after’), but, at best, something like a simultaneity without parts or moments. Maimon convincingly holds that this is not time.41 Instead of being an appearance that structures other appearances, time is a basic structure of the understanding: “Time is the preceding [Vorhergehen] and succeeding [Folgen] of objects with respect to one another.”42 The last part of this sentence is essential: time is a relationship between different events. Time is not populated by differences, but is rather the relationship between these differences: “only their relation to one another represents time.”43 Time is only a type of relation. But time is a real relation, not a projection. If anything, time is more real for Maimon than Kant. For Kant, time tells us nothing about the structure of things as they are independent of their appearances. For Maimon, we can say that differences are ordered in relations of preceding and succeeding. Our own representations of this order may be incorrect, but the formal structure of temporal relations between differences tells us something about differences themselves. Maimon is very prescient here: it is not our ‘natural’ image of time that is demonstrated, instead his philosophy implicates multiple ways of organizing space and time (such as with multiple geometries). Kant only allows for one (Newtonian) way to represent time, but this representation of time tells us nothing other than that we must represent objects in this way. For Maimon, the structure of time precedes its representations; we can formalize time multiple ways, as long as we maintain its basic structure: relating differences through succession.44 Time, a way of unifying differences, does not ‘unify’ them in the sense of erasing their difference.45 Time is better seen as a way of gathering differences: it organizes, but thereby enables a type of difference.46

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Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 12 vt13. (emphasis added) Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 13 vt17. (emphasis added) Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 18 vt25. Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 71 vt126. Differences are “brought under” [unter . . . bracht] a unity [Einheit]. The gathering process is left unexplained by Maimon. Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 22 VT33. Thielke, “Intuition and Diversity: Kant and Maimon on Space and Time,” 90.

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77

Time as a Representation is the Place of the Incomplete Actual

The conscious I, unlike the process that organizes differences, always begins and ends in the middle of representations. Our consciousness is inextricably linked with represented time. Maimon comes close to equivocating on this point: the understanding is more truthful than the imagination and representation. But, the actuality [Wirklichkeit] of a thing lies in its being represented in (conscious) time.47 With a philosopher’s perversity, for Maimon, imagination and experience are actual, but not true.48 Actuality—the realm of representation, experience, and imagination—is always incomplete because it is given, whereas understanding is formal: complete, but produced (by us). An unsteady and temporary alliance between understanding and actuality is possible, but this is something we can’t be sure of, a limit we strive towards. The actual is understood only at this limit. Beyond this limit, when we understand something (rather than representing it) it ceases to be actual, as its given matter is transmuted into constructed form. I suggest that this destructive/constructive act of understanding is close to Scholem’s reading of the Hasidic ‘raising the sparks’.49 To begin within representation means we begin with things ‘given’ to us by imagination or experience. It is here, and not in a concept, that we encounter actuality: “According to the Leibnizian-Wolfijian school, actuality is the complete possibility of a thing. But on my theory, the actuality of a thing is its representation [Vorstellung] in time and space.”50 This involves a break with the Rationalist party line, as actuality is not a complete concept, but an encounter with a given representation (or matter). However, this encounter is problematic and incomplete: “ ‘given’ signiijies only this: a representation that arises 47  48 

49 

50 

Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 131 vt248. “Truth is the relation of correspondence between a sign and the designated thing; falsity is the opposite of this. A concept or a judgment is, considered in itself, neither true nor false; instead it either exists, or it does not.” Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 133 vt252, 36 vt 60. (emphasis added) Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken Books, 1995), 240. Scholem’s reading developed through a polemic with Buber. Koren’s nuanced account takes a middle path between the two, and ends up with an account even closer to Maimon’s. Israel Koren, The Mystery of the Earth: Mysticism and Hasidism in the Thought of Martin Buber (Boston: Brill, 2010), 355. Maimon’s ‘raising’ is unidirectional and does not involve katabasis. “In so far as they are represented in time and space, all intuitions are actual; but they are not possible, in so far as we do not have any insight into the way they arise.” Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 131 vt248.

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in us in an unknown way.”51 Actuality—the space of the given—is inextricably linked to our ijinitude and passivity. This confusing state of affairs is owed to the different manner in which consciousness and the understanding take objects. Consciousness views objects as given, or as having already arisen. The understanding can only think objects as flowing . . . [for] the business of the understanding is nothing but thinking, i.e. producing unity in the manifold, which means that it can only think an object by specifying the way it arises or the rule by which it arises: . . . consequently the understanding cannot think an object as having already arisen but only as arising, i.e. as flowing.52 But Maimon rejects any hard bifurcation between passive consciousness and active understanding, and proposes a spectrum leading from the passive to the active. Passive sensuality is the realm of incomplete, but actual, representations, while the active intellect is the production of ideal differential presentations. The spectrum between the inijinite and the ijinite, the active and the passive, occurs in the schema of time. Insofar as we represent objects in space and time, the relations between their differentials have not been fully worked out.53 When we do work out the ideal form of an object, we cease to receive it (in either imagination or experience) and produce it. But in so doing, it is no longer actual.

3.3

The Completion of Creation is the Destruction of Consciousness and Time

The ‘I’ is only conscious in time; hence the actuality of representation: it is the encounter of the I and something in time. Again, it is the incomplete representation, and not the inijinite differential presentations that compose it, which are actual. A complete representation, or a fully presented differential “are mere ideas, i.e. they are two limit concepts of a synthesis, in that without synthesis no consciousness is possible.”54 Time mediates between a complete synthesis and the differentials that compose it, and it is in this mediating structure that consciousness occurs. 51  52  53  54 

Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 108 vt203. Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 22 vt33. (emphasis added) Thielke, “Intuition and Diversity: Kant and Maimon on Space and Time,” 103. Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 181 vt349. (emphasis added)

Solomon Maimon ’ s Philosophical Exegesis

79

Consciousness, be it experiential or imaginary, produces its objects (however unknowingly), and this production occurs in time. The philosopher’s duty is to push back against time, and attempt to create complete representations out of the inijinity of parts that compose them. This is literally an impossible task: its achievement would destroy the consciousness of the philosopher and the actuality of the object. The duty of the philosopher is thus positioned by Maimon as a movement towards a limit. But why this limit, and what would happen were we to achieve it? I suggest that the answer to this is found in Maimon’s reading of a group that claimed exactly this achievement: the Hassidim depicted in the Autobiography. Whether or not this is what the actual Hassidim were doing is beside the point. What is relevant is that Maimon himself felt that this was their goal, and despite his criticisms, it is a goal which he respected. To iterate: the conscious ‘I’ begins in the middle of time with the passive matter of perception. Reaching the differential ‘endpoints,’ or form of perception, requires the negation of our limited representations.55 Maimon suggests that this negation, which is a consequence of active knowledge, is confused by the Hassidim for the cause of active knowledge. To grasp pure difference requires nothing less than a retreat from time. This is the great cost of the admission to the inijinite: the negation of time, which requires a parallel negation of experience and imagination.56 In this sense, Maimon aligns himself with the self-limiting practices of the Hassidim, but considers his own method superior, because their annihilations proceed from hints and “obscure experiences,” and not from “distinct knowledge.”57 The Hassid has an intonation of that which cannot be experienced, and confuses this experience—and the self-negation that accompanies it—for a technique. There are multiple parallels between Maimon’s presentation of Hasidism and his own philosophical practice. Buzaglo notes that Maimon’s reduction of representations to presentations “is a puriijication (of the intuition) that operates within the dimension of time, and it has a similar effect . . . to the kabbalistic notion of light. In exposing the foundation of intuition, Maimon raises the level of objectivity and makes it transparent to consciousness.”58 Buzaglo identiijies this with Lurianic Kabbalah, but, at least based on Maimon’s own reports, this is a mistake on two fronts. Maimon identiijies two main systems of 55  56  57  58 

Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 75 vt134. Pure difference precedes the more speciijic difference of being ‘outside each other,’ which is required for the relationship of time. Ibid. An Autobiography, 153 L87. Buzaglo, Solomon Maimon: Monism, Skepticism, and Mathematics, 137.

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Kabbalah, that of Isaac Luria and that of Moses Cordovero; Luria, he claims, has a more complete formal system, but Cordovero’s system “approximates more closely to reason [Vernunft],” and is to be preferred (and Luria’s rejected).59 Further, as mentioned, on Maimon’s reading, Kabbalists seek communion with God, whereas Hassids seek self-annihilation, so that they might participate in creation as an organ of God. He writes of the Maggid’s court: “they are vain enough to consider themselves organs of the Godhead,—which of course they are, to an extent limited by the degree of perfection they attain.”60 The Maggid’s court is guided by caprice, and lacks a proper method, but its practice is very close to Maimon’s. Both seek to negate their own ijinitude, meaning the time of representational consciousness, in order to grasp the truth. And for both, the process of elevation destroys the boundary between the ijinite and the inijinite. But Maimon’s method is more precise, and he is skeptical about the possibility of completing this process. The result of Hassidic practice is postulated by Maimon as a limit we desire.

4

Conclusion

Maimon’s interpretation of Hassidism may not be historically accurate, but his process of exposing himself to the Hassidic tradition and abstracting concepts from it allowed its texts and practices to speak to him in a productive manner. His engagement with such works not only issued in an intriguing textual interpretation, but more importantly, it brought them into dialogue with multiple philosophical practices. This resulted in a powerful theory of time and difference in which Hassidism is given a partial voice. While this is hardly the only, or even primary, reason to engage such texts, it provides a possibility, or justiijication for such involvement. In an age of historicism, such an approach may seem hopelessly naïve, but that it bore fruit—Maimon’s theory of time—is beyond doubt.

59  60 

Maimon, An Autobiography, 96 L153. An Autobiography, 153 L87.

part 3 On Time and Pre-existence

∵

CHAPTER 5

Chaotic Beginnings: Yohanan Alemanno on the Time of Creation Brian Ogren

Abstract This paper examines the thought of the late ijifteenth century Italian Jewish thinker Yohanan Alemanno, concerning the beginning of the universe. By combining philosophical thought with kabbalistic symbolism, Alemanno sought to reach an understanding of the biblical notions of tohu and bohu as that which is beyond prime matter and form. In so doing, he expounded a theory of proto-creation of that which precedes time, which had an effect upon the philosophical kabbalah of his own day, and which sparked the ire of important modern Jerusalem kabbalists several centuries after his own death.

Jewish thinkers throughout time have spent a lot of time ruminating on the relationship between the time of the creation of the world and the worldly creation of time. Much of this stems from the traditional belief in creation ex nihilo, according to which the universe had an absolute temporal beginning. But was there an absolute beginning to temporality itself? To even postulate this question is to enter into an irresolvable conundrum, which Elliot Wolfson has aptly termed “the hermeneutical dilemma of the beginning.”1 To formulate the dilemma, Wolfson asks: “How does the beginning begin without having already begun? If, however, the beginning cannot begin without having already begun, in what sense is it a beginning?”2 There is indeed no clear answer to these ontological questions concerning the beginning of the world, especially since our own readings of time are forever situated within time and are thus conditioned by our temporal existence. Even the assertion of Augustine that “the world was created not in time but together with time”3 does not avoid the 1  Elliot Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (Berkeley: University of California Press), 118. 2  Ibid. 3  Augustine, City of God 11.6.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004290310_006

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problem, for the question can still be asked: how was time created if the very turn of the phrase “was created” denotes a temporally conditioned creation? If created, then time has to have begun, but without itself it cannot possibly have been created at a beginning, for beginning is a point in and of time. This “hermeneutical dilemma of the beginning” received substantial treatment in late ijifteenth and early sixteenth century Italy, in relation to the philosophical notion of prime matter and the biblical concept of initial chaos. The celebrated humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the reputed biblical exegete and scholar Isaac Abravanel, and the latter’s famous philosopher son Judah, better known as Leone Ebreo, all addressed the beginning of time in relation to chaos and to that which is labeled in the very ijirst chapter of Genesis as tohu and bohu.4 In addition to these was another eminent thinker who discussed this matter and who was influential upon all three of the thinkers named above. This was Yohanan ben Isaac Alemanno, who addressed the issue of time and chaos with philosophically charged kabbalistic ruminations. Alemanno sought to moor his thoughts concerning the matter in expositions on the ijirst part of the book of Genesis, which narrates the temporal creation of the world. Alemanno offered new philosophical-kabbalistic conceptions of the beginning of time and of that which atemporally came before, thereby entering into that branch of esoterica known as Ma’aseh Bereshit, and thereby challenging the admonition of the rabbis not to gaze at that which came before.5 This paper will show that in so doing, Alemanno helped to begin entirely new trends in thought concerning the beginning, most of which were based on texts which came before but which received a novel and influential form in their syntheses and in their innovative interpretations. In Alemanno’s Hay ha-‘Olamim, which, according to Umberto Cassuto, was a continuously written text from 1470 to 1503, and which Cassuto fervently claimed to be “Alemanno’s most important work,”6 Alemanno jumps straight to the heart of the matter of beginnings. He does this by going to the very beginning of the Torah itself:

4  I plan to treat the complex thought of these thinkers on chaos and tohu and bohu, in extensio, elsewhere. 5  See: Mishnah Hagigah 2:1, which states: “Anyone who gazes at four things, it would be merciful to him if he had not come into the world: what is above, what is below, what is before and what is after.” 6  Umberto Cassuto, Ha-Yehudim be-Firenze bi-Tequfat ha-Renesans [Hebrew], translated from the Italian by Menahem Hartum (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1967), 241–242.

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The Torah began to make known the manner of the formation [of the cosmos]; and it said Bereshit, i.e., ‘In the beginning.’7 This is a polysemic word, which indicates [four beginnings]: the material part; the temporal beginning; the formal beginning and cause; and the intellectual beginning. And this word did not expound upon its essential parts, but only, for the sake of a mass understanding, it [here] indicates the beginning of a thing in time. This is the least of the depictions of the word Bereshit, as will be explained in my book that I have named Einei ha-Edah.8 On the surface, Alemanno’s reading of the four beginnings contained “in the beginning” seems to be based on Aristotle’s four causes.9 This is especially due to his mention of “the material part” and “the formal beginning and cause,” which seem to resonate with Aristotle’s ijirst and second causes, respectively. Nevertheless, a closer look at his Einei ha-Edah, as explicitly suggested by him in the above passage, reveals a different picture. In a section of his Einei ha-Edah entitled “Interpretations of the perplexing and polysemic and synonymous and metaphoric letters and words from In the beginning until And there was morning, day one,”10 Alemanno indeed interprets and explains the polysemic, four-fold sense of the word reshit. The ijirst of these is a separate material part of a thing. Unlike Aristotle’s material cause, which is exempliijied by the bronze out of which a statue is made, Alemanno’s material part is the ordinal “ijirst” of all like material things. He exempliijies this with the term reshit as “ijirst,” as utilized in the following biblical verse: The ijirst of your dough you shall set apart as a cake for a gift.11 Alemanno’s second understanding of reshit is that which indicates a temporal beginning. This has no direct correlation in the Aristotelian theory of causality, and is exempliijied by Alemanno with the biblical verse: Even though your beginning was small, your end should greatly increase.12 Alemanno’s third understanding of reshit seems 7  8 

9  10  11  12 

Genesis 1:1. Yohanan Alemanno, Hay ha-‘Olamim (L’Immortale), parte I: la retorica, edizione, traduzione e commento a cura di Fabrizio Lelli (Firenze: Olschki, 1995), 71: ‫והתחילה תורה להודיע‬ ‫ ועל התחלה‬:‫ שהוא שם משותף מורה על חלק הדבר החמרי‬:‫ ואמרה בראשית‬:‫אופן היצירה‬ ‫ ולא ביאר – הדבר – ]השם[ הזה בחלקיו‬.‫ ועל התחלה וסבה צוריית ועל התחלה שכלית‬:‫זמנית‬ ‫העצמיים רק בהבנה המונית מורה על התחלת הדבר בזמן שזהו הציור הפחות בשבציורי שם‬ ‫בראשית כאשר יתבאר בספרי אשר קראתי לי עיני העדה‬. Cf. Aristotle, Physics ii 3; Metaphysics v 2. Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 6b: ‫הוראות האותיות והמלות הנבוכות והמשותפות והנרדפות והמושא־‬ ‫לות מבראשית עד ויהי בקר יום אחד‬. Numbers 15:20. Job 8:7.

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to correlate directly with Aristotle’s formal cause, and according to Alemanno, is that which causes something to move and rest by way of essence and not by way of accident. Alemanno exempliijies this with the use of reshit as “beginning” in the biblical verse: You are my ijirst-born, my might and the beginning of my strength.13 He explains: Jacob said to his son; “you have been the beginning and the cause of my might, which is the natural heat that is in me, and my strength, which is my seed that gives birth to that which is similar. It moved from me and rested ijirst in the womb, for you were the ijirst of the essence of my kind to remain, and not by way of accident. For an accident does not persevere, and does not leave behind one’s kind perennially.14 The father as the cause of the child is, perhaps not coincidentally, an explicit example used by Aristotle for his efijicient cause, which denotes something external and effective. In contradistinction, for Alemanno, something of the essence of the father carries over into the child in a type of proto-genetic essentialist reading, in which the father is the formal beginning and cause of the child. Alemanno’s fourth understanding of reshit is perhaps the most complex. It is that which indicates intellectual beginning, and is exempliijied by the biblical verse: The beginning of wisdom (reshit Hokhmah) is fear of the Lord.15 Similar to Aristotle’s efijicient cause, Alemanno’s intellectual beginning “is the cause of something else.”16 However, it is also simultaneously essential and purposeful, and thus parallel to the Aristotelian formal and ijinal causes, “for internal intellectual fear is the essential cause of wisdom, since no ignoramus fears sin.”17 Here, Alemanno seems to be entering into the long debated Aristotelian idea of nous as both active and passive,18 since he frames Wisdom, i.e., Hokhmah, as both the divinely efijicient and the divinely ijinal cause, both of and for the universe. It has its formal causality in the intellect, and as prime matter, Hokhmah

13  14 

15  16  17  18 

Genesis 49:3. Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 6b: ‫אמר יעקב לבנו אתה היית התחלה וסבה לכחי שהוא החום הטבעי‬ ‫אשר בי ואוני שהוא זרעי המוליד בדומה אשר התנועע ממני ונח ברחם בראשונה כי אתה הייתה‬ ‫ראשון לזה והעצמות להשאיר המין ולא בדרך מקרה כי המקרה לא יתמיד ולא ישאיר המין נצחי‬. Psalms 111:10. Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 6b. Ibid. See Aristotle, De Anima iii 5.

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is the material cause. This idea of prime matter is expressed in a later passage in Einei ha-Edah, where Alemanno writes: Wisdom, i.e., Hokhmah is like the hyle, which clothes itself with the four elements, and none of these are rejected by it. And it is the median of existence, between that which is actual and that which is potential. And it is the beginning and the ijirst of all existents, and all of that which is below Keter Elyon only exists from the truth of its existence (i.e., of the existence of Hokhmah), and it is the beginning of existence.19 Not only does Alemanno thus bring Aristotelian causality full circle through Hokhmah, he also ties this circle of causality back to the beginning in intellection and wisdom through his fanciful exegesis of the biblical word for beginning that begins the bible itself, i.e., reshit. He is able to accomplish this move by entering into the realm of kabbalistic hermeneutics, in which the beginning itself takes on a hypostatic character. Alemanno takes his philosophically kabbalistic readings of the beginning even further by focusing on Genesis 1:2, which states: “The earth was tohu and bohu, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.” In a passage in Hay ha-‘Olamim, Alemanno comments upon the temporal verb “was” in this verse. Reverting back to the four-fold philosophical meaning of reshit as causal beginning, he writes that the earth “ ‘was’ in a manner that it came to be in existence on account of four beginnings: tohu; bohu; darkness; and the spirit of God.”20 He does not expand, but just like with the word reshit, he promises to clarify the matter in his Einei ha-Edah. There, Alemanno cosmogonically treats the latter two of these beginnings: among various other meanings, “darkness” represents cosmic privation for Alemanno, and “the spirit of God” represents the life-giving force of the universe.21 In regard to the ijirst two beginnings, tohu and bohu, he again turns to kabbalistic hermeneutics, but this time, he relies upon the following passage from Sefer ha-Bahir:

19 

20  21 

Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 14b: .‫החכמה היא כמו ההיולי המתלבש בד' יסודות ולא ישוללו ממנו‬ ‫ והוא התחלה וראשית כל הנמצאים וכל‬.‫והוא ממוצע במציאות בין מה שבכח ובין מה שבפעל‬ ‫מה שלמטה מכ"ע לא נמצאו אלא מאמתת מציאותו והוא ראשית המציאות‬. Alemanno, Hay ha-‘Olamim, 72: ‫היתה באופן שהיא עליה מן המציאות מפני התחלותיה שהם‬ ‫ כאשר יתבאר בעיני העדה‬:'‫ ורוח אלהי‬:‫ וחשך‬:‫ ובוהו‬:‫ והם תוהו‬:‫ארבעה‬. See fn. 261 on p. 109. Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 7a.

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What is the meaning of “was”? This means that it had already been. And what is tohu? This is something that astounds people. And what is bohu? This is something that was formerly tohu and returned to bohu; it is something that has real substance, as it is written: bo hu, i.e., “there is something in it.”22 Here the temporal verb “was” is based on Genesis 1:2, and the version of the Bahir that Alemanno had before him enigmatically attempts to explain away the problem by stating that at the beginning, the earth did not begin, because it already was, i.e., “it had already been.”23 Alemanno raises serious temporal doubt regarding this reading: “If the word ‘was’ indicates the time that was before the creation, then this necessitates that the earth ‘was’ before it was, and this turn of events is not possible.” He continues: “And if it indicates a time that was after it was, then after it was it was not, since tohu and bohu indicate emptiness and nothing (ha-efes v’ha-ayin) in accord with their saying [i.e., of the Rabbis]: ‘I will turn the world to tohu and bohu.”24 The Paradox for Alemanno turns not only on the “was,” the impossible past being of a world that has not yet been, it also turns on the adjectives of emptiness and nothingness purportedly describing this being. If Alemanno can show that tohu and bohu mean something other than efes and ayin, i.e., “emptiness” and “nothing,” then perhaps he can solve the puzzle. Alemanno attempts to do this by casting the meaning of bohu in Aristotelian language: Bohu is the existent that makes known the lack, and the actuality that makes known the potentiality.25 “For it is an existent,” Alemanno writes, 22  23 

24 

25 

Bahir 1:2: ‫ שהיתה‬,‫ ומאי בהו‬.‫ דבר המתהה בני אדם‬,‫ ומאי תהו‬.‫ שכבר היתה‬,‫מאי משמע היתה‬ ‫ דכתיב בו הוא‬,‫ דבר שיש בו ממש‬,‫תהו וחזרה בהו‬. A variant, early manuscript tradition reads: “What is the meaning of ‘was tohu’? This means that it had already been tohu.” In this reading, the focus is not upon the temporal verb, as it is in Alemanno, but it is upon the prior state of the earth as having been eternal tohu. Cf. The Book Bahir: An Edition Based on the Earliest Manuscripts [Hebrew], edited and arranged by Daniel Abrams (Los Angeles: Cherub Press), 119. Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 6a: ‫אם מלת היתה מורה על הזמן אשר היה קודם הבריאה יתחייב א"כ‬ ‫ ואם היא מורה על זמן היה אחר שהיתה א"כ‬.‫שהארץ היתה קודם שהיתה וזה חלוף לא יתכן‬ ‫אחרי שהיתה לא היתה הואיל והיא תוהו ובוהו המורים על האפס והאין כאמרם אהפוך את‬ ‫העולם כלו לתוהו ובוהו‬. The references in rabbinic literature to God wanting to turn the world back to tohu and bohu abound. For the idea that the existence of the world is contingent upon Israel’s acceptance of the Torah, and will otherwise be returned to a state of desolation, see: Exodus Rabbah 47:4; Deuteronomy Rabbah 8:5; Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 88a; Babylonian Talmud Avodah Zarah 3a. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 7:9.

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“and it turns the thing into that which is conceivable and sensible.”26 Gershom Scholem has identiijied the philosophical source of this idea of bohu as divine form in contradistinction to tohu as inconceivable prime matter in Abraham bar Hiyya’s early 12th century Hegayon ha-Nefesh,27 which by Scholem’s account actually predates the Bahir. Notwithstanding this precedent, bar Hiyya seems to cast bohu Neoplatonically as eternal divine form, which takes ontological precedence to and temporally gives shape to a separate prime matter. As bar Hiyya writes in his Hegayon ha-Nefesh: Everything that has been said about the hyle, you can also say about the [biblical] tohu. But they [the philosophers] said of the form that it is something that has the power to clothe the hyle with a ijigure and a form. And in this sense, the word bohu can be divided into two meanings, since, according to the sense of the language, it is composed of two words, each of which has two consonants. One is bo and the other hu . . . [and thus bohu means] that through which the tohu is endowed with existence. Bohu is thus the form in which tohu is clothed and given existence.28 In contrast to this formula, which privileges form as that which comes to endow matter with existence, Alemanno takes a slightly different approach, as based on a more composite Aristotelian hylomorphism. In this formulation, form gives existence to matter and matter gives existence to form. Alemanno writes: There is no existence for the ijirst hyle without a physical form that has measure and an essential form of quality. And there is no existence for material forms without a hyle that bears them, for they can only stand and endure in matter. Thus, it is said according to the roots of wisdom that the earth was, by its essence and by its core and by its existence, in

26  27 

28 

Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 6a: ‫כי הוא דבר נמצא וכי הוא המשים את הדבר המושג והמוחש‬. See: Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, edited by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and translated from the German by Allan Arkush (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 63. Scholem claims that bar Hiyya may have actually influenced the Bahir itself. Hegayon ha-Nefesh (Leipzig, 1860), fol. 2b, quoted in Scholem, Origins, 63, fn. 22. For a fuller exposition of bar Hiyya on tohu as hyle, see: Andrew Mayer Hahn, Tohu va-Vohu: Matter, Nothingness and Non-Being in Jewish Creation Theology (New York: Ph.D. Dissertation of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2001), 236–238.

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existence by way of the composition of tohu and bohu, which exist in a composite manner.29 By way of casting this hylomorphism in biblical terms, here Alemanno indeed seems to directly correlate hylic matter with tohu and primordial form with bohu. But in true Aristotelian form, he does not stop with the double correlation; indeed, he correlates the two with each other as well, claiming that neither matter nor form can in fact exist without the other, and bohu as form cannot exist alone in a totally abstracted realm. In regard to tohu as prime matter, Alemanno repeats the Bahiric formulation of tohu as “that which astonishes,” and then he explains that it is “an essence that neither exists nor is absent,” but that it is a type of tertium quid “between complete lack and complete actuality.”30 Alemanno’s language here is indeed very consistent with medieval Aristotelian philosophy in relation to abstract potentiality, as espoused by the likes of Averroes, Levi ben Gershom, and even John Duns Scotus. As Esther Eisenmann has recently explained, as based upon these sources, According to the principles of [medieval] science, a thing cannot come into being from nothing. But it also cannot come into being from that which already exists in actuality, for that which already exists in actuality already is, and already subsists. From this comes the conclusion that all things necessarily come into being from something that is neither absent nor existent, i.e., something that exists in potential. That something is prime matter, or hylic matter, which is a matter that is unqualiijied as it is in itself, but which changes all the time in accord with the forms that are given over to it.31 29 

30  31 

Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 12a: ‫אין מציאות להיולי הראשון בלא צורה גשמית בעלת הכמות וצורה‬ ‫ ואין מציאות לצורות החמריות בלא היולי נושא להם כי אינם עומדות‬.‫עצמית בעלת האיכות‬ ‫ ולזה אמר כפי שרשי החכמה כי הארץ היתה מהותה ועצמותה ומציאותה‬.‫וקיימות כי אם בחומר‬ ‫במציאות הרכבת התוהו ובוהו שנמצאו בהתרכבם‬. Ibid., 7a: ‫ויורה על עצם שאינו לא נמצא ולא נעדר ולא מציאות חסר אמצעי בין ההעדר הגמור‬ ‫והפעל הגמור‬. Esther Eisenmann, “The Scholastics after Thomas Aquinas and the Thought of Rabbi Moshe ben Yehuda” [Hebrew], E-Lecture at the Goldstein-Goren International Center for Jewish Thought at Ben Gurion University, p. 2: http://hsf.bgu.ac.il/cjt/ijiles/electures/ Rambi2.htm: ‫ אך גם לא יכול להתהוות‬,‫ דבר לא יכול להתהוות מן האין‬,‫לפי עקרונות המדע‬ ‫ מכאן המסקנה שכל הדברים חייבים‬.‫ כי הקיים בפועל כבר הווה ונמצא‬,‫ממה שהוא קיים בפועל‬ ‫ המשהו הזה הוא החומר‬.‫ כלומר נמצא בכח‬,‫להתהוות ממשהו שהוא אינו נעדר ואינו נמצא‬ ‫ המשתנה כל הזמן בהתאם לצורות‬,‫ שהוא חומר לא מאוייך לכשעצמו‬,‫הראשון או החומר ההיולי‬

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91

This description indeed holds true for Alemanno’s tohu, which he then explains in terms of the Bahiric conception of astonishment: “The intellect will be astonished and dumbfounded when trying to contemplate it,” he writes, “for it cannot be depicted, due to the fact that it has no form of its own that deijines and demarcates its essence, in the words of the wise men of natural science.”32 For Alemanno, prime matter as tohu has an ontically apophatic character in that it is paradoxically a non-existent existent that is necessary for all of existence. It is an open corpus, but it remains undeijined in its very openness. In the words of Elliot Wolfson reflecting on Maurice Merleau-Ponty in regard to language and embodiment: “Prior to the division into antinomies, subject and object, interior and exterior, mind and body, embodiment bespeaks the correlation of a ‘prereflective zone of the openness upon Being.’ ”33 Although the context there is individual cognition, the description can certainly be applied to Alemanno’s tohu, which is a more cosmic, pre-formed zone of openness into Being. In this sense, for Alemanno, it is the true beginning of all material and temporal beginnings, which at the same time cannot be understood to have begun. How, then, is one know anything about tohu if it is truly formless and thus apophatic in nature? For this, Alemanno turns to a dual reading of tohu as both symbol and desire. In the ijirst part of this reading, Alemanno suggests that the word tohu should be understood as the compound of tav hu, i.e., “it is a symbol.” He argues that this symbol of tohu was set forth “in order to symbolize that it is an existent, and is not lacking.”34 Here, Alemanno seems to be setting up an inevitable paradox of nominal essentialism, in which the word tohu is a symbol that points beyond itself to the essence of tohu, which is in itself a symbol that by its very non-essential essence essentially points beyond its non-essence to another essence that it is meant to essentialize in symbolic form. Though clearly absurd, Alemanno’s casting of tohu as such precisely captures its enigmatic, dumbfounding nature. It becomes a mystical symbol as explained by Gershom Scholem: “In the mystical symbol a reality

32  33  34 

‫הניתנות עליו‬. See also the primary sources of Averroes, Levi ben Gershom, Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, Narboni, and Duns Scotus: http://hsf.bgu.ac.il/cjt/ijiles/electures/RambiNotes .htm#F1-7 Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 7a: ‫והשכל תוהא ומשתומם להשכילו כי לא יצויר מצד שאין לו צורה‬ ‫מגבלת וגודרת מהותו מצד מה שהיא חלק ממנו כדברי חכמי הטבע‬. Elliot Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 24. Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 7a: ‫תוהו שם מורכב ממלת תו שהיא מורה סימן כאמרו והתוית תו‬ ‫)יחזקאל ט' ד'( לסמן שהוא דבר נמצא לא נעדר‬.

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which in itself has, for us, no form or shape becomes transparent and, as it were, visible, through the medium of another reality which clothes its content with visible and expressible meaning.”35 This type of statement by Scholem has been criticized by Moshe Idel as overemphasizing the referential nature of language as pointing to the radically transcendent,36 and it is indeed important to pay attention to Idel’s admonishment to regard the performative, as well as the referential role of language in kabbalistic literature. This is especially so in the case of Alemanno, for whom magical language played a prominent role.37 Nevertheless, in reading Alemanno on tohu, Scholem’s observations concerning mystical referentialism via the symbol seem quite germane: Just as, for Scholem, the symbol seeks to concretize and to become an embodiment for the abstract, and remains wholly other than that abstract yet at the same time cannot exist as symbol per se without embodying the abstract that it is not, so too, for Alemanno, the prime matter of tohu relates to the primordial form of bohu in a way in which it abstractly embodies it yet without losing its non-essential essence by taking on essential form. Tohu as beginning at once begins the cosmos as a semantic ijield captivated by bohu, and points beyond itself to that which is before all before and beyond the beginning. Such is tohu as symbol. In the second part of Alemanno’s dual reading of tohu, he suggests that the compound tav hu be read as “it is a symbol,” but as tav.alef.bet hu, i.e., “it is a desire.” “That is to say,” writes Alemanno, “that it is a desire for everything that it lacks, as it lacks every form, and it desires that they come into contact with it, that it can receive them.”38 Here, the beginning of all beginnings is desire. Yet it is a receptive desire that precedes and acts as the ground for the 35  36 

37 

38 

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, Schocken Books, 1941), 27. Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 274–275. See also the important rejoinder of Elliot Wolfson that “the symbol, by Scholem’s account, always points to what cannot be declaimed and therefore must be polychromatic,” and that there is no evidence, either from Idel’s work or from Wolfson’s independent study of kabbalistic texts, “that undermines the philosophical claim regarding the inherently symbolic nature of language as the expression of the inexpressible” (Language Eros Being, 402, fn. 57). See: Moshe Idel, “On Talismanic Language in Jewish Mysticism,” Diogenes 170 (1995): 23–41; Harvey Hames, “Jewish Magic with a Christian Text: A Hebrew Translation of Ramon Llul’s ‘Ars Brevis,’ ” Traditio 54 (1999): 283–300; Guido Bartolucci, “Marsilio Ficino, Yohanan Alemanno e la ‘Scientia Divinum Nominum,’ ” Rinascimento 48 (2008): 137–163. Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 7a: ‫ומורה ג"כ תאוה כלומר תו שהוא תאב לכל דבר לחסרונו שהוא חסר‬ ‫מכל צורה ותאב להם להכותו לקבלם‬.

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93

active desire, which without it cannot activate desire at all. Thus, in its passivity, it is paradoxically the ijirst actual beginning that brings forth the beginning of all of creation. This reading of tohu has strong resonances with that which Sarah Pessin, in her recent magisterial work on ibn Gabirol, has called a “pure material Grounding Element,”39 which is apophatic in character and is based within divine desire. This is, in the words of Pessin, “a material underpinning to existence, a pulsing God-born and God-directed desire-to-be at the heart of all things,”40 which ijirst and foremost marks God’s entry into the world, by and through a desire to embrace the other. Alemanno was indeed familiar with the Fons Vitae, as well as the Pseudo-Empedoclean Book of Five Substances, which Pessin has shown to be at the core of ibn Gabirol’s theology of desire. Indeed, Alemanno explicitly cites both by name in Einei ha-Edah,41 albeit in different contexts, and this ibn Gabirolian concept of matter may very well be at the heart of his discourse here. Whatever the case may be, Alemanno’s notion of matter here is certainly positive, thereby creating a sense of hylomorphism that turns the traditional Neoplatonic sense of matter as the source of evil on its head. Later in the same treatise, Alemanno temporalizes his positive hylomorphic idea of tohu and bohu by relating it to the initial biblical recounting of time. This recounting comes in Genesis 2:4, which states: These are the generations of the heavens and the earth.42 In relation to a statement in Genesis Rabbah by Rabbi Abihu that the word “these” in the verse negates that which came before, which for Rabbi Abihu are, tohu and bohu,43 Alemanno writes that “the Scripture does not speak about the past.”44 What he means by this reading is that the ijirst creation story of Genesis 1:1–2:3 tells not of time, but in its entirety, it tells of tohu and bohu as necessary antecedents to time. For Alemanno, the ijirst creation story of Genesis actually tells of that which Shaul Magid, in relation to later Lurianic mythology, has termed “protocreativity.” This is described by Magid as “the transformation of God from undifferentiated Inijinitude to cosmos—which creates the necessary condition for creation to unfold.”45 39  40  41  42  43  44  45 

Sarah Pessin, Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 107. Ibid., 108. Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 1a, 13a. Genesis 2:4. Genesis Rabbah 12:3. Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 68a: ‫לא על העבר דבר הכתוב‬. Shaul Magid, “Origin and Overcoming the Beginning: Zimzum as a Trope of Reading in Post-Lurianic Kabbala,” in Beginning/Again: Toward a Hermeneutics of Jewish Texts, edited by Aryeh Cohen and Shaul Magid (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2002), 164.

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Alemanno writes that along with darkness, tohu and bohu are “prior to the coming into being of the generations of the heavens and the earth, and they are the reason for existents and for things that are born. They themselves are not amongst the generations of the heavens and the earth.”46 They are ontically before and outside of time, but they are also paradoxically the cause and the beginnings of time, without which time would not exist. How, then, is one to make sense of the ijirst story of creation in all of its temporal language of succession and days if it is not a temporal recounting, and is in fact prior to time? To answer this, Alemanno relies on a theory of the hypostatization of tohu and bohu, as based upon a passage from the Talmudic tractate Hagigah, which states: It is taught: Tohu is a green line that encompasses the entire world, out of which darkness proceeds, for it is said: He made darkness His hiding-place round about Him.47 Bohu, this means the slippery48 stones that are sunk in the deep, out of which the waters proceed, for it is said: And he shall stretch over it the line of tohu and the stones of bohu.49 Alemanno quotes: “Tohu is a green line that encompasses the entire world,” subsequently explaining: “this is Binah.” He then continues the Talmudic quote: “Bohu is the slippery stones,” explaining that “this means that they are moist,” and that they are “gagat nahi,” i.e., Gedulah, Gevurah, Tif’eret, Netzah, Hod and Yesod. “Their beginning,” he notes, “is Hesed, which is water.”50 This last bit about moisture and water is not insigniijicant, for in another place in Einei ha-Edah, Alemanno allegorizes the formless form of the beginning to water, which is a substance that has no form of its own, but which takes on the form of that to which it is applied. Just as water takes on the form of the vessel into which it is poured yet has no form of its own, so too hylic matter is formless on its own, and thus ungraspable. Following out this metaphor, he takes 46 

47  48  49  50 

Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 68a: ‫ומה פסל תוהו ובהו וחשך והסבה כי אלה הם ראשית הנמצאות‬ ‫למביני מדע הם חמר וצורה והעדר הקודמים להויה לתולדות השמים והארץ והם סבה להוים‬ ‫ונולדים לא שיהיו הם מכלל תולדות השמים והארץ‬. Psalm 18:12. ‫מפולמות‬. Jastrow renders this “smooth (chaotic) stones,” but I render it here “slippery” due to Alemanno’s idea that these stones are “moist” (‫)לחות‬. Isaiah 34:11. Ms. Paris bn Heb. 270, 68a: ‫הם בינה אשר קראוה תוהו כדברי רז"ל תוהו זה קו ירוק המקיף‬ ‫ בהו אלו אבנים מפולמות פי' לחות הם אבנים הבניין שהם גג"ת‬.‫את העולם כלו שהוא הבינה‬ ‫ וקראו האחרונות בוהו המורה על ישות וצורה להיותם פועלות‬.‫נה"י שתחילתם חסד שהוא מים‬ ‫בתחתונים פעולה מורגשת יותר מהראשונה לרוב רוחניות שבה‬.

Chaotic Beginnings

95

the Hebrew word for water, mayim, to be a plural form of mah, i.e., “what,” which thereby indicates a plurality of “whats,” or essences, which by its nature causes it to elude any one single essence.51 In this manner, bohu as the moist stones, which start from Hesed as water, shares apophatic qualities with tohu. Given that this allegory of the six wet stones is cast as that which precedes the generations of the heavens and the earth, before which no chronology exists, it seems that they relate to the six days of creation before the Sabbath as recounted in the ijirst chapter of Genesis. Tohu, by contrast, remains the liminal point of the beginning beyond these manifest beginnings in bohu. It is the primordial Sabbath, Binah, which is classically cast as the womb without which nothing can be born into existence, and through which Nothing is born into existence. In regard to the liminal beginning of tohu, Alemanno subtly ties the discourse back to the Bahir passage with which we began, stating that “in relation to the lower elements . . . tohu is something that does not have a real substance (davar she-eyn bo mamash).”52 This is the precise language of “real substance” that the Bahir claims for bohu (davar she-yesh bo mamash). Hence, without explicitly stating his prooftext here, Alemanno is bringing his discussion of tohu and bohu full circle through the unreal existence of tohu, which begins the real existence of bohu. In regard to bohu, however, Alemanno writes here that this too is temporally liminal. Like the tohu of Binah, so too the six seijirot of bohu “are not included amongst the generations of the heavens, for they are the beginnings of them.”53 For Alemanno, tohu and bohu are the beginnings of the generations that they begin to generate, but at the same time, they are outside of these generations, beyond the beginnings of the heavens, and of time itself. In conclusion, Alemanno’s reading had deep resonances in his own times. In fact, it has strong parallels in the thought of some of his contemporaries, such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Isaac Abravanel, and the latter’s illustrious son Judah, better known as Leone Ebreo.54 Whatever the case may be for influences, Alemanno’s philosophically charged kabbalistic thinking concerning the beginning of time is highly representative of the speculative thought of his age. Moreover, it ushered in a whole new way of thinking about the atemporal 51  52  53  54 

Ibid., 22b: ‫ובארו מפרשיו כי אלה המים הם המציאות שבו נתלו הצורות והיו המהיות בכל דבר‬ ‫ כי מים מלשון מה כלומר מהיות שונות‬.‫שהוא מה‬. Ibid.: ‫קראוה בערך אל התחתונים תוהו כדבר שאין בו ממש מורגש למטה‬. Ibid.: ‫גם אלה לא נכללו בתולדות השמים כי הם התחלות להם‬. As I mentioned in note 4 above, I will deal with the larger picture of Alemanno and these other thinkers, at length, elsewhere.

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beginnings of temporal creation, offering a radical theory of protocreativity that is prior to Lurianic kabbalah. This is based on Aristotelian hylomorphism, on Neoplatonic ideas of desire, and on the Bahir, but it is read into the entire ijirst chapter of Genesis. Such exegesis ignited the ire of no less a ijigure than the seventh head of the Bet El Yeshiva, Yedidya Raphael Abulaijia, known by his acronym as “the Rav Yirah.”55 In a colophon of a copy of Einei ha-Edah that was in the Yirah’s possession, the latter writes that he has read and examined it closely, that he has seen strange and ungodly things in it, and that “it is almost ijitting to bury it away, and it is forbidden to read it, on account of its assumptions and suppositions concerning things that stand with the Exalted One of the world, which are forbidden for the human being to ponder.”56 It is quite possible that one of these assumptions concerns the beginnings of the beginning of time. For the Yirah and his ilk, this would certainly not be framed in the hylomorphic terms of Aristotelian philosophy, and it would probably stand wholly outside of the biblical account, in the Lurianic idea of tzimtzum. Notwithstanding, the very existence of this copy of Einei ha-Edah with the Yirah’s colophon shows that Alemanno was being read by serious kabbalists into the nineteenth century, and the very tone of the Yirah’s criticism points to the seriousness with which Alemanno was being taken. In any case, one thing is clear: Alemanno provoked thought, both in his own time, and subsequently. This includes thought concerning protocreation, creation ex nihilo, and the place of both tohu and bohu at the beginning of time.

55 

56 

Yedidya Raphael Abulaijia (the Yirah) presided over the Bet El Yeshiva from 1850–1871. He is known as the primary editor of Shalom Sharabi’s writings, who produced the most deijinitive version of Sharabi’s siddur. For more on this important ijigure, see Pinchas Giller, Shalom Shar’abi and the Kabbalists of Beit El (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 86–88. Ms. Jerusalem 8°598, 133a: ‫כמעט ראוי לגונזו ואסור לקרות בו מחמת הנחותיו והשערותיו‬ ‫דברים העומדים ברומו של עולם אשר אסור לאדם להרהר בהם‬.

CHAPTER 6

The Case of Jewish Arianism: The Pre-existence of the Zaddik in Early Hasidism Shaul Magid

Abstract The relationship between Hasidic zaddikism and the Christian notion of the Incarnation has become a matter of scholarly debate. In the past few decades, scholars have looked more closely at the similarities and nuanced differences between zaddikism and incarnational theology. This essay focuses on two components of incarnationalism: the preexistence of the Son, and the Son’s coeternality with the Father, and argues that if we separate these two components of the incarnational doctrine that became canonized in the Nicean Creed, we can more readily see the compatibility between Hasidic zaddikism and incarnational thinking. The essay uses the Arian controversy in the mid fourth century where Arius argued that the Son was pre-existent yet not coeternal with God to suggest that Hasidic zaddikism is a kind of Jewish Arianism. Hence Hasidism does indeed have a notion of the pre-existent zaddik, one who precedes creation yet is still begotten and, under certain circumstances, is given the power to create. Under these conditions, Hasidism is practicing a kind of incarnational thinking.

He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1,1:17

The creation of time and the question if anything precedes time (and thus creation) has been a matter of metaphysical speculation for millennia. Even before the introduction of Greek metaphysics to the Jewish theological orbit, the Talmudic rabbis contemplated the ambiguous notion of pre-existence, that is, whether creation is a product of time, or whether all of creation is, in fact, equally created. The fifth chapter of Pirkei Avot (Avot 5:1–8) is perhaps the earliest rabbinic articulation of this question. Most of it reads as a laundry list of “tens” “sevens” and “fours”; ten utterances of creation, ten generations from Adam to Noah, ten tests of Abraham, ten miracles in Egypt etc. Culminating this imaginative flourish of “tens” we read that “ten things were created on the sixth day of creation between sunset and nightfall.” (Avot 5:6). These things include the fissure in the earth that swallowed Korah, the mouth

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�903�0_007

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of Balaam’s donkey, Noah’s rainbow, Moses’s staff, and the worm that cut the stones in the Temple. In short, objects of miracle or divination. More striking we read a braita cited in bt Pesahim 54b and Nedarim 39b that seven things came into being before creation, two being Torah (Logos) and the name of the messiah. This rabbinic sentiment could easily have been born from earlier notions of the pre-existence in Wisdom Literature where Wisdom (Hokhmah/ Sofia) is said to exist before creation.1 All this may not speak of pre-existence per se although that may depend on how we understand the process of creation as articulated in Genesis 1. At least one position holds that creation during the first six days was only in potentia and did not exist in actu until the creation of Adam on the sixth day.2 Thus the things listed in the Mishnah as created beyn ha-shemashot (dusk) on the sixth day may have come into existence before the actualization of the rest of creation and thus technically be “pre-existent.” The notion of the Logos being the “Firstborn Son of God,” or “Man of God”, or “Second God” already exists in Alexandrian Jewry as transmitted by Philo of Alexandria. This already suggests a pre-existence that does not imply or require coeternality. Here Ioan Couliano makes the relevant distinction. “The differences between God and Logos are those between the eternal, ungenerated, and incorruptible on the one hand, and simply ‘deathless’ (athanatos), generated, and incorruptible on the other.”3 The topic of pre-existence also becomes a focus in the Israelite orbit in the early Church’s reflection of the Christ-event. Once High Christology became a central tenet of the church, perhaps most forcefully articulated in the Nicene Creed in 325 ce, “Christ was begotten as only begotten of the Father, God of God, Light of Light . . . [Christ was] begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father” the pre-existence of Christ became a topic of theological reflection and vigorous debate. New Testament scholars argue about whether we can detect in Paul’s epistles a gesture toward Christ’s pre-existence, specifically in I Corinthians 15 and Philippians 2:6–11 known as Adam Christology (e.g. The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit [1 Corinthians 15:45]). References, oblique as they may be, in John and even more so in the gnostic-influenced Gospel of Thomas lend themselves more strongly to this position. Even though scholars such as James Dunn are highly 1  See, for example, on Helner Ringgren, Word and Wisdom: Studies in the Hypostatization of Divine Qualities and Functions in the Ancient Near East (Lund, Sweden, Ohlsson, 1947), 99. 2  See, for example, bt Hulin 62b and Moses Nahmanides Persuah ‘al Ha-Torah (Jerusalem, Mosad Ha-Rav Kook, 1959), 32 to Genesis 2:5. 3  Ioan Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 122.

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skeptical as to whether in fact the New Testament supports a pre-existent Christ, it is certainly ambiguous enough to suggest that the pre-existent Christ that comes into focus with the Nicenes exists in a more diffuse form in the New Testament and then more strongly in Origen’s First Principles before the Nicean creed.4 We should note that early Christians varied a great deal on the actual doctrine of Incarnation, especially as it relates to pre-existence. As Dale Martin writes, “Some Christians thought Jesus was divine, but of a more junior divine status than God the Father. Only eventually, through much theological debate and conflict, did the Christian Church come to believe that in order to be ‘orthodox’ one had to believe that Jesus was fully divine, of equal divine status with God the Father.”5 While Origen in his First Principles may have been the first early Christian to gesture toward a notion of non-identity of God (Father) and Jesus (Son), it was Arius (c. 256–336) and his followers who concretized this position in the early Church.6 The Arian doctrine that argued that Christ was “made” before creation but not coeternal with God was the source of a great controversy in the early church. “That the son is unbegotten, not in any way part of Unbegotten, not derived from some (alien) substratum, but that exists by will and council before times and before ages, full of truth, and grace, of God.”7 This doctrine also became known a subordinationism or the notion that Jesus and, in some cases, the Holy Spirit, are divine creatures not equal to God, existed among the many Christian Gnostics such as the radical Cathars,

4  See James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1980), 113–128. On Origen see Origen, On First Principles, G. W. Butterworth, trans. (Gloucester, ma: Peter Smith, 1973), 108–115. On Nicene see Lewis Ayer, Nicea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 52–61; 105–130. 5  Dale Martin, New Testament History and Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 165. Martin is likely referring to the Arians, whose belief in the non-identity of Father and Son was deemed heretical at the council of Nicea. 6  Arius (c. 256–336) was a priest in Alexandria whose controversy with Bishop Alexander regarding the coeternality of the Son sparked a major rift in early Christianity. Aruis’s thinking was influenced by Origen’s First Principles that lends itself to a belief in the pre-existence but not coeternality of Jesus. Church leaders such as Eusebius of Nicomedia were supporters of the Arian position until it was marginalized though the Nicean Council. On this particular dimension of Arian doctrine see Lewis Ayers, Nicea and its Legacy, 15–20 and 105–130. Cf. R. P. C. Hansen, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381 (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 3–18, 99–128. 7  From Arius’s Thalia cited in R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381 (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 6.

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Bogomilists, and other forms of Christianity that were influenced by Origen on this question.8 In his Thalia, Arius writes, “The one without beginning established the Son as the beginning of all creatures . . . The Son possess nothing proper to God . . . for he is not equal to God, nor yet is he of the same substance.” According to Arius, the Son is born from the Father before creation but he is not coeternal with the father the way the Niceans preferred.9 The Arian creed is finally effaced by the Niceans through the Nicean Creed in 325 c.e. Through this, pre-existence became synonymous with coeternality with God as the orthodox doctrine of High Christology of the Catholic Church. Hence, when I use the term pre-existent in regards to the Hasidic zaddik below, I do not refer to the post-Nicean linkage of pre-existence and coeternality. Rather, I leave open the possibility of what I will call an Arian reading of these Hasidic texts that affirms pre-existence without coeternality which, while not Nicean, is still incarnational. The notion of pre-existence in early Judaism is examined by Daniel Boyarin in Border Lines and The Jewish Gospel in his reading of Daniel 7. Boyarin argues that the rabbis entertained the possibility of a kind of co-eternal binitarianism.10 He argues that the distinction between Judaism and Christianity in this early period was “not via the doctrine of God, and not even the question of worshipping a second God . . . but only in the specifics of the doctrine of this incarnation.”11 As Boyarin’s focus is largely Christianity in the Gospels he does not address the Arian controversy that exhibits an inner-Christian debate about the nature of the incarnation. In any case, the early inner-Jewish controversy arguably does not survive the end of the rabbinic period in what became in the normative rabbinic imagination the heresy of “two powers in heaven.”12 The kabbalistic tradition, however, tells a different story. It is to Kabbalah that we must turn to view the persistence of pre-existence that informs Hasidic literature. On medieval Kabbalah Elliot Wolfson states, “it may be said that the medieval Jewish mystics recovered the mythic dimension of a biblical motif regarding the appearance of God in the guise of the highest angels . . .

8  9  10 

11  12 

See, for example, in Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis, 221–229. See Lewis Ayers, Nicea and its Legacy, 54, 55. See Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 120–125; and idem. The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: The New Press, 2012), 50–59. Border Lines, 125. See also, Boyarin, The Jewish Gospel, 43. Cf. Boyarin, Border Lines, 127. See Alan Segal, Two Powers in Heaven (Leiden: Brill, 1977).

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which sometimes appears in the form of man.”13 The Tikkunei Zohar reads shekhinah through the numerical value of the Tetragrammaton rendered as 45, equaling ADAM.14 The early kabbalistic reflection on Metatron, the Zohar’s reading of ehyeh asher ehyeh and keter and the Lurianic rendering of Adam Kadmon, while not offering clear notions of Nicene pre-existence, certainly test the elasticity of creation ex-nihilo (yesh me-ayin) that became standard Jewish nomenclature by the High Middle Ages. My focus here will be on the much later refraction of the kabbalistic imaginary in the form of Hasidic zaddikism. It should be noted that while the medieval kabbalistic dalliance with pre-existence is largely contained in its cosmology and cosmogony, Hasidism draws this down into the corporeal in the person of the zaddik which in some ways brings kabbalistic metaphysics into closer proximity to Christianity’s theories about the Christ-event. Below I examine a selection of a few early Hasidic texts to illustrate my point, focusing specifically on the notion of pre-existence that reflects the Arian position of incarnation that separates pre-existence from coeternality.15 The complexity of Hasidic zaddikism is well documented in scholarship.16 While Jews rejected the doctrine of Incarnation that fuses God and the savior (“Light from Light”), as close readers of medieval Kabbalah, particularly the Zohar, many Hasidic masters do not accept the categorical distinction between

13  14 

15  16 

Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 255. See Tikkunei Zohar, Into. 18a and section #22, 65b discussed in Wolfson, “Suffering Eros and Textual Incarnation: A Kristevan Reading of Kabbalistic Poetics,” in Towards a Theology of Eros, V. Burrus and C. Keller eds. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 360–361. See in Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 106–116. For some examples see, Arthur Green, ‘The Zaddik as Axis Mundi’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 45 (1997): 327–347. In terms of the doctrine of the zaddik as the only real innovation of Hasidism, see Mendel Pierkarz, Be-Yemei Zemikhat ha-Hasidut (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1978), 28–304 and idem, Hasidut Polin, Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1990), 157–180. Cf. Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany, ny: suny Press, 1995), 189–208; and Immanuel Etkes, “The Zaddik: The Interrelationship between Religious Doctrine and Social Organization,” in Hasidism Reappraised, A. Rapoport-Albert ed. (Portland and Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997), 159–167. Following Max Weber, Stephen Sharot describes the zaddik as a “mystagogue.” See Sharot, “Hasidism and the Routinization of Charisma,” in Journal for the Sociological Study of Religion 19 (4) (1980): 328.

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God and the zaddik that is common in non-mystical Judaism.17 Put otherwise, Hasidism, as I understand it, is not party to the Maimonidean paradigm as conventionally understood.18 Elsewhere I argue that since Hasidism develops in modernity largely outside the “Christian gaze,” that is, not invested in defending why Judaism is not Christianity (I suggest this is endemic to the modern Jewish project in Western Europe), it more freely engages in descriptions of God and the zaddik in ways that bring it in closer to proximity to Christianity showing, perhaps, that the categorical theological division between the two religions is less sound than we think.19 I begin with a text from Noam Elimelekh from the third generation Hasidic master Elimelekh of Lyzinsk (1717–1787). I begin with this text in order to illustrate what I could call a normative theory of cosmic zaddikism that approaches but does not traverse the border of the pre-existent zaddik that I will claim exists more baldy in the second series of texts by Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezritch (d. 1772). In Noam Elimelekeh we read: . . . . We read, “We learn in b. T Haggigah “one does not infer from arayot with three, ma’aseh bereshit with two, and ma’aseh merkavah even with one . . .” (Hagigah 11b). One can explain this in the following manner: God creates and makes the world to God’s will. Opposite that, God creates the zaddik who can nullify divine decrees. Yet we can ask: how is this possible to nullify divine decrees that were already decreed in the supernal heavens? However, as I have written numerous times, we read in Psalms (Ps. 33:6) with the word of God the heavens were made (b’davar Ha-Shem shamayim na’asu). This means that the zaddik, by means of engaging in Torah [the word of God] for its own sake (lishma) and drawing from this study new meaning (me-hadesh hidushim), makes/creates (na’asu) new heavens and engages in the act of creation (ma’aseh bereshit). Therefore, by force the decrees [of the old heavens] are nullified (betaylin) as they were now not part of the world that created [anew] by the zaddik.20

17  18  19  20 

See, for example, Yehuda Liebes, “The Messiah of the Zohar: On R. Shimon bar Yohai as a messianic Figure,” in idem. Studies in the Zohar (Albany, ny: suny Press, 1993), 1–84. See Menachem Kellner, Maimonides Confrontation with Mysticism (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006), 286–296. See my Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). Noam Elimelekh (Jerusalem, 1976), 277.

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Here the zaddik is surely created and not coeternal with God but he is created in a manner that enables, perhaps empowers him, when encountering the word of God in purity (‘osek be torah lishma), not merely to alter the existing creation but to create something new, thereby making the divine creation (creation as we know it from Genesis) mutable. The zaddik here becomes a creator by engaging the creation-blocks (the word of God—Torah) of God’s creation. I would suggest considering the possible symmetry of the term ‘osek be-torah lishmah relating to the zaddik here with the term sha’ashua to describe God’s playful engagement with Torah in Proverbs 8:30, 31, Ps 199:24 and other places.21 In both cases, Torah is used as a creative tool by the one who is intimate with it. The term sha’ashua in Kabbalah has overt erotic implications. I suggest the term ‘osek, literally “involved or busy with” also implies a kind of proximity that gestures toward intimacy. The notion of using language, here lashon ha-kodesh/the language of Torah, as the building blocks of creation is common in Hasidism and has its roots in rabbinic midrash.22 It is used here by the Maggid in very specific ways to describe symmetry and perhaps even unity between the zaddik and God. Note in this text the implied symmetry between the zaddik speaking Torah (‘osek be-torah) and God playfully engaging with Torah (sha’ashua). Another example can be found on the Maggid’s mediation on the verse from Genesis, And he [ Jacob] took stones from that place and put them under his head (Gen. 28:11). It is known that the “stones are [Hebrew] letters. When the zaddik prays with these letters and binds (me-kasher) himself to the supernal wisdom (hokhmah elyonah), as is known, he has already entered the gate of eternity/nothingness (sha’ar ha-ayin). He will elevate his heart until it is as if God’s power is in it. At that moment he achieves complete nullity (efes mukhlat). As such, everything is divine power (koah) and his [the zaddik’s] speech is from the speech of God that created the world. The world of speech (‘olam ha-dibbur) is drawn from the supernal wisdom (hokhmah) which is the pleasure (ta’anug) and playfulness (sha’ashuim) that God gets from the world. And now he [the zaddik] speaks only for the playfulness (sha’ashua) of God. And through this the letters return to their original source, which is the wisdom (hokhmah) from which they were drawn.23 21  22  23 

See the discussion in Wolfson, Aleph, Mem, Tau (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), 127–132. See, for example, Bereshit Raba, 18:4 and 31:8. The Maggid of Mezritch, Torat ha-Maggid, vol. 1, 73a/b. Cf. 1, 76a.

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God’s playful engagement with Torah (Proverbs 8:30 et al.) is now expressed as the pleasure God receives from the zaddik while praying with words of creation as explained in Sefer Ha-Bahir. And the prayer of the zaddik results in his folding into divinity (efes mukhlat) and returning the letters to their original place in the Godhead, assumedly, before creation. Here the prayer of the zaddik creates a similar result as to zaddik who studies torah lishma. On Christ’s incarnation, Augustine suggests that the way beyond the word is through the word. Reading this into our Noam Elimelekeh text, when the zaddik fuses with the word through pure engagement with it (‘osek torah lishmah), he transcends the product of the word, or creation, becoming a creator of new worlds through the word. Reading Elimelekh of Lyzinsk this way we could ask whether through pure engagement (torah lishmah) the zaddik actually becomes the word? I admit this may be too strong a reading but with it we could then understand why the zaddik now has the power to nullify what God created. We could ponder whether the term “creation” (bara) used to describe the zaddik’s coming-to-be in these texts is best read as “made” or “begotten’ (to import for a moment Christian nomenclature). To cite one example, reading Nahmanides’ rendering of Genesis 1:1 Bereshit bara Elohim . . . as a description of the higher sefirah hokhmah to the lower sefirah binah, Frank Talmage chooses to translate bara as emanate rather than create, a term that may gesture toward the Christian distinction between “made” and “begotten.”24 I would prefer a simpler Arian reading meaning that the zaddik is created but created in such a manner that by fusing with the word (torah lishmah) he can cross over from a created being to a creating one. This cross-over, from the immutable to the mutable, and back again, is precisely the foundation of incarnational thinking without Nicean coeternality. This locution does not bring us to the coeternal Christ of the Nicenes or even the binitarianism suggested by Boyarin, but it may come close to the Arian notion of Christ as a divine body lower than the Father but still pre-existent. The following text in the name of Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezritch, engages the identical notion of the zaddik as empowered to create. Here, however, I think we may cross the very border Elimelekeh of Lyzinsk only approaches: I heard from the Maggid of Ravna, “Adon olam ha-shem malakh beterem kol (Master of the world, the Name who rules before all was created . . .”). The word “kol” (all) is called zaddik (the righteous one) who 24 

Frank Tamage, “Apples of Gold: The Inner Meaning of Sacred Texts in Medieval Judaism,” in Jewish Spirituality I (New York: Crossroads, 1986), 329.

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achieves the generalities (‘oseh kelaliot) of God with the people of Israel.25 This is what it means when it says “before all [was created]”: the zaddik nullifies divine decrees. God, as it were, is not king, rather [God is king only] with the zaddik, which is why the zaddik has so much power (koah). This is what I heard . . .26 This reading of the popular liturgical poem Adon ‘Olam moves us further than the previous text in Noam Elimelekh toward a notion of the zaddik’s actual preexistence by suggesting be-terem, that is, before all, the zaddik was created/ nivra suggesting a strange kind of incarnationalism I call Jewish Arianism. Its suggestion that God shares the throne with the zaddik (God, as it were, is not king, rather [God is king only] with the zaddik) should evoke Psalm 110:1, The Lord said to my lord, sit at my right hand that became a central text for High Christology in the early church and a source for the binitarianism Boyarin suggests in rabbinic literature.27 Even if the zaddik is created (or “begotten”) and not coeternal or consubstantial with God the Father, he is created before the rest of creation and thus has a divine status exhibited by his ability to alter divine creation. The zaddik here is no simple angelic emissary without a will but a divine entity, a willful authority that can alter a divine decree. “The will of God and the will of the zaddik become one (na’aseh ehad). That which the zaddik wants, God also wants, and thus he [the zaddik] can turn judgment into mercy. . . . Only the words of the zaddik are bound to their source. Behind the words of the zaddik are literally (mamash!) the word of God out of which the heavens were created.”28 Our text reads the word “kol” (all) as a proper noun (the zaddik) and in doing so, completely alters the grammar of the liturgical verse. Elsewhere we read, “God only dwells on one who humbles himself (maktinin ‘et azmo), therefore the zaddik is called “kol (‫ ”)כל‬the language of a vessel (kli ‫)כלי‬, as it is written, Its capacity was 2,000 baths (alpayim bat yakhil ‫)יכיל‬. The is the language of suffering (‫ )סבלות‬that the zaddik suffers (‫ )סובל‬God within himself (betokho).29 We no longer read Adon olam ha-shem malakh be-terem kol, Master

25  26  27  28  29 

The Noam Elimelekeh text also includes a discussion of the term “kol” in a similar but not identical way. See Noam Elimelekh, 277a. Seer of Lublin, Zikharon Zot #7 cited in Torat ha-Maggid, vol. 2 (Bnei Brak: Mishur Books, 2011), 442. See Boyarin, Borderlines, 112–127. The Maggid of Mezritch, Torat ha-Maggid, vol. 1, 99b, 100a. Torat ha-Maggid vol. 1, 118b. Apparently the meaning here is that the notion of “kol” or everything, is linked etymologically to vessel (kli) what which holds something within in.

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of the world, the Name who rules before all was created . . .” but “Master of the world, the Name who rules, before [everything] (be-terem), the zaddik (kol) was created. . . .” The Maggid then follows with a paraphrase of the rabbinic dictum, “the zaddik nullifies divine decrees” (bt Mo’ed Katan 17b) as a prooftext and illustration of the zaddik’s pre-existence read into Adon ‘Olam. That is, if the zaddik precedes creation, his divine status maintains the power to alter creation.30 This follows by introducing a caveat to divine kinship, the centerpiece of the verse (ha-shem malakha) which is founded on God’s mastery of creation (adon ‘olam). God is not king (“as it were”) because God is not fully a master of creation, “I make decrees and [the zaddik] nullifies them” we read in BT Mo’ed Katan 17b. Our text lends itself to a kind of binitarian reading making the zaddik a partner with God, “God is only king with the zaddik,” since the zaddik, being “kol,” was created “before” (be-terem) creation. This seems close to what we read in 1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human. . . . While we can surely differ as to how literally to take our Hasidic texts, the superhuman status of the zaddik is quite common in Hasidic zaddikism and should not be summarily dismissed simply because it comes close to High Christology. The question as to how such heretical teaching, if it is indeed heretical, can emerge from a community deeply inside the normative tradition is a sociological question that is beyond the scope of this essay. I would simply say that according to my larger thesis it is precisely because these individuals were thinking outside the Christian gaze and thus in a non-defensive or at least non-apologetic posture, their understanding of what was and was not acceptable may be quite different than ours. For our limited purposes this text introduces a divine/zaddik symbiosis, perhaps symmetry, depending on how strongly we want to read it, that will serve our goal of viewing God not in a pure, perhaps Maimonidean, monotheistic sense but “with the zaddik” or through the zaddik. The zaddik is the part of this

30 

Thus the zaddik, who is “kol ” becomes a holder (or sufferer) of God within himself. On the zaddik as “kol ” in the Maggid see his Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov, R. Shatz-Uffenheimer ed. (Jerusalem: Magnus Press, 1990), #60, page 96. The pre-existence of Jesus was most forcefully argued in the Gospel of John but absent in the other synoptic gospels and does exist in some form in the Gospel of Thomas. We should note that early Christians varied a great deal on the actual doctrine of Incarnation. See Dale Martin, New Testament History and Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 165. Martin is likely referring to the Arians, whose belief in the non-identity of Father and Son was deemed heretical at the council of Nicea.

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partnership who participates in the cross-over from immutability to mutability in the divine descent from heaven to earth, from the heavens to the people, and this is precisely a reflection of his zaddik’s “divine” pre-existent stature. My argument is built on the assumption that the zaddik in the Maggid’s teaching describes something other than a Creator/creature relationship. That is, it is more than a text supporting theurgy (how humans can affect the divine).31 By suggesting the zaddik as “kol ” in Adon ‘Olam, the zaddik may or may not be created but even if created certainly precedes creation. Thus we do not read, be-terem kol-yazir nivra (God ruled before everything was created) but perhaps be-terem—kol, yazir nivra (Before, there was the zaddik, who helped fashion creation). When the zaddik then enters the world of creation he is already more than God’s emissary in a representational or normative sense but as an extension of the divine. The king and his son (God and the zaddik) are, as it were, extensions of one another (perhaps a different version of “Light from Light”). The zaddik travelling to retrieve the divine embedded in creation, to “retrieve the sparks” is an extension, via a reversal, of God embedding Godself in creation. While this reading can obviously be accused of being overly Christological, my intentions are precisely to illustrate the extent to which the Hasidic texts examined here (which are not atypical, albeit perhaps somewhat evocative), born in its deep engagement with medieval kabbalistic literature, replete with texts that engage pre-existence on a cosmogonic and not human plane (ehyeh asher ehyeh, keter, or Adam Kadmon) and its focus on the re-personalization of God in the zaddik, can openly advocate a notion of the zaddik’s pre-existence without coeternality, thus suggesting an Arian reading of the zaddik. The creative twisting/misreading of the first line of Adon ‘Olam leads me to believe the Hasidic masters knew exactly what they were doing. The Hasidic masters probably did not know of the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence, and almost certainly knew nothing of the Arian controversy, which may be precisely what enabled them down a similar path. Another admittedly more oblique text from the Maggid’s reading of Proverbs 8:30, a popular text in various forms of High Christology, lends itself to this perspective. Here the Maggid subtly inserts the zaddik into the pre-creation/ existent space in the biblical and rabbinic imagination of God’s taking delight (sha’ashua) in wisdom/Torah. We begin with the verse, And I was with Him (ezlo) as an amon, a source of delight (sha’ashua) every day (yom yom), rejoicing

31 

For example, see this approach in Moshe Idel’s Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany, ny: suny Press 1995), 103–146.

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before Him at all times (be’kol ‘et) (Prov. 28:30).32 I intentionally leave the word amon untranslated here as this will be the operative word in the Maggid’s reading of the verse. The new JPS TANAKH translates amon here as “confidant” but as we will see, the Maggid uses it in a very different sense. The term “sha’ashua” has been analyzed at length in various studies by Elliot Wolfson. Wolfson argues that sha’ashua, God’s delight either with Godself (autoeroticism) or wisdom/Torah, denotes the very act that constitutes beginning.33 Wolfson suggests the term sha’ashua is an indication of eternality (“enduring in its recurrence, eternal in its transience”). It is not something that happens “before” but one that, being pre-existent ( yom yom), exists always (be-kol ‘et) beyond the time/space modality. But after creation its existence, whatever it is God was delighting with before, embodies a kind of temporality. In Judaism this is the Torah received at Sinai. In Christianity it would be the incarnated Christ. As we will see below, the Maggid complicates the dichotomy, i.e. Judaism/Torah, Christianity/Christ, a dichotomy that Boyarin suggests is the logos theology of the rabbis, by inserting, but not substituting, the zaddik into this pre-existent space of divine delight (sha’ashua). The act of sha’ashua is an act of beginning but also denotes that which was before beginning, in the Bahir’s language “two thousand years” in the lap of the divine before creation. Below, the Maggid deploys this term in a longer discussion about the various dimensions of God’s love for his son/child. Curiously, wisdom/Torah, the object of God’s delight before creation, now becomes “the torah of the zaddik ” thus inserting the zaddik into this pre-existent space. Before Israel existed each zaddik, his torah and his works, was revealed to God. And from the beginning, immediately when Israel went up in God’s mind, God there was already taking delight (sha’ashua) and pleasure (ta’anug), as it were, from every zaddik and his actions.34 The proof of this is that we find God taking delight (mista’ashea) in the torah of

32 

33 

34 

The term sha’ashua appears numerous times in the Writings, e.g. Proverbs 8:30, Psalms 119:24, 70, 77, 92, 143, 174. I will refer solely to its use in Proverbs 8:30 as that is the verse cited in the Maggid’s text. See especially Wolfson, “Before ‘Alef/Where Beginnings End,” in Beginning/Again: Toward a Hermeneutics of Jewish Texts, A. Cohen and S. Magid eds. (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2002), 142–150. Cf. idem, Language, Eros, Being (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 278–285. See Torat ha-Maggid, vol. 1, 117a, “God created the world so that he should have pleasure (ta’anug) from the zaddikim.”

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the zaddik. . . .35 Rashi explains Proverbs 28:30 that the Torah grew in the lap of God for two thousand years. . . . .36 The plain-sense meaning is that the Torah was made an ‘amon (confidant) to God. But this is difficult to understand. God exists before everything (kadmon m’kol ha-kadmonim). But according to our way we can explain it that wisdom/Torah was praising itself that it was a confidant of God, as it were, to mean that God was taking such pleasure and delight from the Torah, that is, the torah of every zaddik and his good works, which are the mitzvot written in the Torah, that they were to God as an artisan (‘uman) and sustenance (parnasa).37 I acknowledge at the outset that this text can easily fit into a more normative idea that it is the Torah that is created before creation, an idea that occurs numerous times in talmudic and midrashic literature. However, it is curious that the zaddik appearing here as “the torah and good works of the zaddik, every zaddik,” is the confidant that is nurturing in God’s lap “two thousand years (before creation).” Moreover, there is a subtle twist of the term amon, or confidant, in the Maggid’s final comment. By shifting the letter vav from the third position to the second position of the word, the Maggid changes “confidant” (‘amon ‫ )אמון‬to “artisan” (‘uman ‫)אומן‬. This points to his earlier comment of the zaddik being a partner in creation itself based on the rabbinic dictum that the zaddik has the power to alter creation. It remains unknown why the Maggid appeared unsatisfied leaving wisdom/Torah as the pre-existent subject of divine delight and chose to insert the zaddik into that equation. However, elevating the zaddik to that supernal perch is yet another indication, in my view, of the Maggid’s consideration of the zaddik as something that precedes creation and that each zaddik in creation is an articulation of that pre-existent entity. Making “Torah” the “the torah of the zaddik ” appears to move us beyond Boyarin’s logos theology into the realm of what I am calling Jewish Arianism, an incarnational position that does not reach the bar of Nicean demand of coeternality but is incarnational nonetheless. The categorical distinction between Judaism and Christianity that is sometimes proffered by scholars often revolves around the doctrine of the incarnation. Included in this is the notion of Christ’s pre-existence, coeternal with God the Father. The complex details regarding the nature of this unity that 35  36  37 

The notion of “delight” as related to the act of study appears in Psalms 119:92, Were not your teaching my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. Rashi actually does not say this. Rashi merely says yom yom means “two thousand years.” The explanation the Maggid attributes to Rashi here appears in Sefer Bahir cited above. Torat ha-Maggid, “parshat Toldot” 65.

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has occupied Christian theologians for centuries was largely uninteresting for Jews because the unity of Father and Son implied in the doctrine solidifies categorical incompatibility. This, of course, assumes the formulation of the incarnation in the Nicene Creed. What remains puzzling to some scholars of Hasidism is that Hasidic articulations of zaddikism resonate quite strongly with incarnational thinking but reject any notion of coeternality. Yet they do, as I suggested above, gesture toward the zaddik’s pre-existence. What I am suggesting is that if we look at Hasidic zaddikism, particularly in the early Hasidic teachings of the Maggid of Mezritch, as something more akin to Arianism which understood the pre-existence of the Son (or, in Hasidism, the zaddik) as distinct from coeternality zaddikism can be viewed as a form of incarnational thinking. As I said at the outset, it is highly unlikely that Hasidic masters gleaned this from Christianity about which they knew little. Rather it was likely an articulation of similar inclinations in medieval Kabbalah that now coalesced around the doctrine of the zaddik at a time and place where Jews were able to theologize about the zaddik outside the “Christian gaze.”

part 4 Historical Time

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CHAPTER 7

The Ritualization of Messianic Time in Early Jewish Mysticism: The Apocalypse of Abraham as a Test Case Andrei A. Orlov

Abstract This essay explores a messianic passage found in chapter 29 of the Apocalypse of Abraham, in which the messiah is envisioned as a scapegoat. The study argues that in the Apocalypse of Abraham, messianic time becomes “ritualized” when the story’s eschatological characters become reinterpreted as celebrants of the apocalyptic Yom Kippur ceremony.

Before proceeding to the narrower subject of my paper, I would like to say a couple words about the Apocalypse of Abraham and its importance for the history of early Jewish mysticism, considered broadly. First, it is important to recognize that scholarly consensus now affirms the significance of this work for the history of early Jewish mystical developments. More specifically, researchers see this enigmatic writing as a manifestation of an important paradigm shift, considering it to be a conceptual bridge between the worlds of Jewish apocalypticism and early Jewish mysticism.1 Indeed, this obscure Abrahamic 1  Thus, for example, Michael Stone notes that the Apocalypse of Abraham “is . . . particularly significant as providing a link between the apocalypses and the Merkabah mystical books.” M. E. Stone, “Apocalyptic Literature,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran Sectarian Writings, Philo, Josephus (ed. M. E. Stone; crint, 2.2; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1984), 418. Similarly, Mary Dean-Otting believes that “ . . . in the Apocalypse of Abraham is found a text which bridges the gap between the biblicallyrooted, earlier heavenly journeys, such as 1 Enoch, Testament of Levi and 3 Baruch, and the later esoteric texts of the Hekhalot literature.” M. Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys: A Study of the Motif in Hellenistic Jewish Literature (ju, 8; Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1984), 255. Recently, Alexander Kulik affirms these earlier insights, arguing that the Apocalypse of Abraham can be seen as “representative of a missing link between early apocalyptic and medieval Hekhalot traditions.” Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Toward the Original of the Apocalypse of Abraham (tcs, 3; Atlanta: Scholars, 2004), 1.

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text opens before our eyes an impressive cluster of the unique motifs that were formative to the symbolic universe of early Jewish mysticism. The intensity and scope of this arcane lore is truly breathtaking, to the point that some scholars envision the Apocalypse of Abraham as an esoteric manual, which attempts, through the unfolding story of the famous hero of the faith, to describe the stages of initiation into mystical praxis. As Gershom Scholem once suggested: [I]n the Apocalypse of Abraham . . . Abraham is . . . the prototype of the novice who is initiated into the mysteries of the Merkavah, just as in the Sefer Yetzirah he is allowed to penetrate into the secrets of the cosmogonic speculations.2 Scholem’s emphasis on the role of the Apocalypse of Abraham as a manual of mystical initiation formative to the development of early Jewish mysticism is significant. Yet it is also important to underline that this initiation takes the form of cultic instruction by means of which the seer becomes not merely a mystical adept, but a high priestly figure. In this respect, the Slavonic apocalypse can also be seen as a textbook of sacerdotal initiation, through which the practitioner is able to learn, and then to re-enact, the actions of the high priest in crucial liturgical ceremonies. Such rites include, for instance, the central feast of the Jewish tradition, which is known to us as Yom Kippur. This cultic flavor also affects realities of eschatological time. We see this, specifically, when the messianic figures are reformulated as the celebrants of the apocalyptic version of the Yom Kippur ritual. The most important cluster of these cultic reformulations is situated in chapter 29, in which the deity reveals to Abraham one of the most profound eschatological mysteries. The revelation deals with the appearance of a future messianic leader, an ambiguous character, depicted in the text in very obscure terms. Apoc. Ab. 29:4–13 reads: and saw a man going out from the left side of the heathen. Men and women and children, great crowds, went out from the side of the heathen and they worshiped him. while I was still looking, those on the right side went out, and some shamed this man, and some struck him, and some worshiped him. I saw that as they worshiped him, Azazel ran and worshiped, and having kissed his face he turned and stood behind him. And I said, “Eternal Mighty One! Who is this shamed and struck man, worshiped by the heathen with Azazel?” 2  Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1954), 69.

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And he answered and said, “Hear, Abraham, the man whom you saw shamed and struck and again worshiped is the laxity of the heathen for the people who will come from you in the last days, in this twelfth hour of the age of impiety. And in the [same] twelfth period of the close of my age I shall set up the man from your seed which you saw. Everyone from my people will [finally] admit him, while the sayings of him who was as if called by me will be neglected in their minds. And that you saw going out from the left side of the picture and those worshiping him, this [means that] many of the heathen will hope in him. those of your seed you saw on the right side, some shaming and striking him, and some worshiping him, many of them will be misled on his account. And he will tempt those of your seed who have worshiped him.3 This depiction has been viewed by experts as the most puzzling passage of the entire apocalypse.4 Several interpretations have been offered which discern in these passages either a later Christian interpolation5 or the original conceptual layer.6 The vague portrayal of the main characters has also provoked impassioned debates about whether they display features of Jewish or Christian messiahs. These scholarly polemics, however, have not adequately considered the overall conceptual framework of the text, especially its cultic setting. More 3  Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 32–33. 4  Alexander Kulik conveys this consensus by affirming that “chapter 29, where a messianic (or anti-messianic) figure is introduced, is the most enigmatic in the entire writing.” Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 51. 5  See M. J. Lagrange, “Notes sur le Messianisme au temps de Jesus,” rb 14 (1905): 513; G. H. Box and J. I. Landsman, The Apocalypse of Abraham. Edited, with a Translation from the Slavonic Text and Notes (ted, 1.10; London, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918), 78; P. Riessler, Altjüdisches Schrifttum ausserhalb der Bibel (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1927), 1267; Y. Kaufmann, “Abraham-Apokalypse,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica. Das Judentum in Geschichte und Gegenwart (eds. J. Klatzkin and I. Elbogen; 10 vols.; Berlin: Eschkol Publikations Gesellschaft, 1928–1934): 1.552–53; J. Licht, “Abraham, Apocalypse of,” in Encyclopedia Judaica (16 vols.; ed. C. Roth; Jerusalem: Keter, 1971): 2.127; R. Rubinkiewicz, “La vision de l’histoire dans l’Apocalypse d’Abraham,” anrw 2.19.1 (1979): 137–151 at 143–144; idem, L’Apocalypse d’Abraham en vieux slave. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et commentaire (ŹM, 129; Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1987), 66, 193; idem, “Apocalypse of Abraham,” The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; New York: Doubleday, 1985 [1983]), 1.684; G. S. Oegema, The Anointed and His People: Messianic Expectations from the Maccabees to Bar Kochba (jspss, 27; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998): 214. 6  R. G. Hall, “The ‘Christian Interpolation’ in the Apocalypse of Abraham,” jbl 107 (1988): 107– 112; D. C. Harlow, “Anti-Christian Polemic in the Apocalypse of Abraham: Jesus as a PseudoMessiah in Apoc. Ab. 29.3–14,” jsp 22.3 (2013): 167–183.

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specifically, such interpretations have overlooked several features of the passage that hint at the sacerdotal traditions, including references to Azazel and his worship of the messianic figure. Recent studies on the Apocalypse of Abraham, however, point to the importance of cultic motifs in the text. Some have even suggested that a sacerdotal vision permeates the whole fabric of the Slavonic apocalypse. Daniel Harlow, for example, argues that priestly concerns influence the entire text.7 His research shows that all the main characters of the story are endowed with priestly credentials, and this includes not only positive figures, like Yahoel and Abraham, but also negative ones, such as Azazel, Terah and Nahor. The negative figures are depicted as corrupted sacerdotal servants, polluting the heavenly and earthly sanctuaries. Many scholars agree that the sacerdotal features of the text are connected with the Yom Kippur ordinance, the central atoning rite in the Jewish tradition, which culminates in two portentous cultic events: the procession of the high priestly figure into the Holy of Holies and the banishment of the scapegoat into the wilderness. Scholars have noted that the peculiar movements of the main characters of the Slavonic apocalypse resemble these sacerdotal events of Yom Kippur. While Yahoel and Abraham ascend to the celestial Holy of Holies, the main antagonist of the story, the fallen angel Azazel, is banished into a supernal wilderness. In this sacerdotal framework, the main angelic protagonist of the story, the angel Yahoel, represents the heavenly high priest, while the main antagonist, Azazel, represents the eschatological scapegoat. Further, some have noted that, in chapters 13 and 14 of the Apocalypse of Abraham, Yahoel seems to perform the climactic action of the Yom Kippur atoning ceremony. This is the enigmatic scapegoat ritual, by which impurity was transferred onto a goat named Azazel and then, through the medium of this animal, was dispatched into the wilderness. This connection with the main atoning rite of the Jewish tradition and its chief sacerdotal vehicle, the scapegoat Azazel, is important for our study of the messianic passage found in Apoc. Ab. 29. In that text, Azazel plays a distinctive role in the course of his interaction with the messianic character, whom he kisses and even worships. The sudden appearance of Azazel, the chief cultic agent of the Yom Kippur ceremony, is not coincidental, since the sacerdotal dynamics of the atoning rite profoundly affect the messianic characters depicted in chapter 29 of the Slavonic apocalypse. 7  D. Harlow, “Idolatry and Alterity: Israel and the Nations in the Apocalypse of Abraham,” in The “Other” in Second Temple Judaism. Essays in Honor of John J. Collins (eds. D. C. Harlow, M. Goff, K. M. Hogan and J. S. Kaminsky; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 302–330 at 302–30.

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Many scholars have noted how the messianic figure in chapter 29 is depicted in terms reminiscent of Christian motifs. It specifically seems to recall the traditions about the passion of Jesus and his betrayal by Judas. Indeed, in the Apocalypse of Abraham, the messianic figure is described as being ashamed and stricken, as well as being kissed by Azazel. The abuses that the messianic figure endures in Apoc. Ab. 29 have often been interpreted as allusions to Jesus’ suffering, and Azazel’s kiss has been linked to the infamous kiss of Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane. While the allusions to the Gospel accounts of the betrayal and passion of Christ have been noticed, insufficient attention has been given to the connections between the messianic passage and later Christian interpretations. Yet, in the second century ce, when the Apocalypse of Abraham was likely composed, Christian materials, including the Epistle of Barnabas, as well as the works of Justin Martyr and Tertullian,8 had sought to interpret Jesus’ passion and betrayal against the background of the scapegoat rite. In these Christian re-appraisals, Jesus was viewed as the scapegoat of the atoning ritual who, through his suffering and humiliation, took upon himself the sins of the world. These Christian elaborations often draw on some extrabiblical Yom Kippur traditions, similar to those found, for instance, in Yoma 6:4, which describes ritual humiliation and abuse visited upon the scapegoat. Although scholars have noted the similarities in the depictions of the messiah in chapter 29 and certain Jesus traditions, they have often been reluctant to address these second-century developments, in which the Christian messiah’s suffering and humiliation received a striking cultic significance.

1

The Messianic Duo

The aforementioned 2nd and 3rd-century Christian interpretations of the messianic figure often utilize the imagery of both goats used during the Yom Kippur festival: the scapegoat and the goat for YHWH. In these accounts, Jesus imitates features of both cultic animals. Sometimes the imagery of the scapegoat is associated with Jesus’ first coming and death, while the imagery of the goat for YHWH is linked to his second glorious parousia. Yet, more often, these early Christian interpretations paradoxically mix functions and attributes of the two goats, and apply this conceptual amalgam to Jesus. It is possible that the Apocalypse of Abraham employs a similar interpretive strategy, in which the scapegoat imagery is enhanced with features of the immolated goat. Moreover, given our hypothesis that the scapegoat’s symbolism takes on distinctive 8  Cf. Barn. 7:6–11; Justin Martyr’s Dial. 40; Tertullian’s Marc. 3:7 and Adv. Jud. 14:9.

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messianic overtones in the Apocalypse of Abraham, the two emblematic animals of the atoning rite might receive there the form of the messianic duo. A close reading of chapter 29 of the Slavonic apocalypse shows that its narrative is portraying not one but two messianic figures, the features of which represent a puzzling mix. In verses 4–8 we are told that the messiah will come from the side of the Gentiles, while verses 9 and 10 speak of the messiah as coming from the seed of Abraham.9 In view of this apparent contradiction, scholars have suggested that the text may be speaking about not one but two messianic characters—the first coming from the left lot, the portion associated with the Gentiles, and the second from the right, the portion of Abraham and God. Alexander Kulik proposes that “the eschatological scenario of Apoc. Ab. 29 might have the well-known Jewish eschatological duo-messianic structure10 (in this case: anti-Messiah vs. true Messiah).”11 There is no textual contradiction if we assume that 29:4–8 speaks of an anti-Messiah who is “going out from the left side of the heathen” and is “worshiped by the heathen with Azazel.”12 This hypothesis is promising for resolving the apparent contradiction of our text. The tradition of the messianic pair, in which each agent has distinctive eschatological roles and functions, is a recurrent motif in Jewish lore.13 An early example is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls materials, in which the messiahs of Aaron and Israel14 fulfill unique eschatological functions, one 9  10 

11  12  13 

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Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 51–52. Kulik’s strong belief in the messianic duo is also reflected in the title of the messianic section (Apoc. Ab. 29:4–13) of his English translation of the Apocalypse of Abraham, namely, “False and True Messiahs.” Cf. Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 32. Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 51. Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 51. Concerning the concept of the two messiahs in Jewish lore, see C. C. Torrey, “The Messiah Son of Ephraim” jbl 66.3 (1947): 253–277; R. E. Brown, “The Messianism of Qumran,” cbq 19 (1957): 53–82; P. J. Kobelski, Melchizedek and Melchirešac (cbqms, 10; Washington: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981), 70–71; J. J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature (n.y.: Doubleday, 1995), 74–95; H. Lenowitz, The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 31ff. Cf. 1qs 9:9–11: “They should not depart from any counsel of the law in order to walk in complete stubbornness of their heart, but instead shall be ruled by the first directives which the men of the Community began to be taught until the prophet comes, and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel.” The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (eds. F. García Martínez and E. Tigchelaar; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 91–93. cd 12:22–13:1: “And this is the rule of the assembly of the cam[ps]. Those who walk in them, in the time of wickedness until there arises the ‘messiah’ of Aaron and Israel. . . .” García Martínez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 571. cd 14:19: “. . . [until there arises the messia]h of Aaron and Israel.

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cultic and the other royal.15 Later Jewish materials are also aware of the concept of the two messiahs, one suffering and dying and the other victorious. For example, later Jewish sources often speak about the Messiah, the son of Joseph (or Ephraim),16 who will endure suffering to atone for the sins of the Israelites, as well as the Messiah, the son of David,17 who is predestined to be a glorious ruler.

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And their iniquity will be atoned [through meal and sin-offerings]. . . .” García Martínez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 575. cd 19:10: “These shall escape in the age of the visitation; but those that remain shall be delivered up to the sword when there comes the messiah of Aaron and Israel.” García Martínez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 577. cd 20:1: “. . . until there arises the messiah out of Aaron and Israel. . . .” García Martínez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 579. Scholars point out that this notion of two Messiahs, one priestly and the other royal, is present also in Testament of Simeon 7:2. Regarding this tradition, see J. Charlesworth, “From Jewish Messianology to Christian Christology,” in Judaisms and Their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era (eds. J. Neusner et al.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 231. There are several opinions concerning the provenance of this messianic figure. John Collins suggests that “while the origin of this figure (Messiah the son of Joseph) is obscure, he most probably reflects in some way the defeat and death of Bar Kokhba, whom Rabbi Akiba had hailed as messiah.” Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 126. Yet, Israel Jacob Yuval argues that the Messiah b. Joseph is best understood as a reflection of Jesus. I. J. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (trans. B. Harshav and J. Chipman; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 33–38. Thus, for example, bt Sukk. 52a unveils the tradition of two messiahs: “Our Rabbis taught, The Holy One, blessed be He, will say to the Messiah, the son of David (May he reveal himself speedily in our days!), ‘Ask of me anything, and I will give it to thee’, as it is said, I will tell of the decree etc. this day have I begotten thee, ask of me and I will give the nations for thy inheritance. But when he will see that the Messiah the son of Joseph is slain, he will say to Him, ‘Lord of the Universe, I ask of Thee only the gift of life’. ‘As to life’, He would answer him, ‘Your father David has already prophesied this concerning you’, as it is said, He asked life of thee, thou gavest it him, [even length of days for ever and ever].” I. Epstein, The Babylonian Talmud. Sukkah (London: Soncino, 1935–1952) 52a. Cf. also bt Sukk. 52b: “And the Lord showed me four craftsmen. Who are these ‘four craftsmen’?—R. Hana b. Bizna citing R. Simeon Hasida replied: The Messiah the son of David, the Messiah the son of Joseph, Elijah and the Righteous Priest. R. Shesheth objected, If so, was it correct to write, These are the horns which scattered Judah, seeing that they came to turn [them] back?—The other answered him, Go to the end of the verse: These then are come to frighten them, to cast down the horns of the nations, which lifted up their horns against the Land of Judah, to scatter it etc. Why, said R. Shesheth to him, should I argue with Hana in Aggada?” Epstein, The Babylonian Talmud. Sukkah, 52b.

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It is significant that one member of the messianic dyad, like the eschatological figure from Apoc. Ab. 29, will experience maltreatment and suffering. It is also important for our study to note that in the second century ce, when the Apocalypse of Abraham was composed, we find highly elaborate reflections on the concept of the true versus false messiah;18 this was under the influence of the political situation and Christian messianic developments. Scholars trace the development of the true/false messianic pair to the Bar Kokhba uprising. Thus, Harris Lenowitz suggests: [T]he events of the Bar Kosiba uprising displayed the new doctrine of two messiahs—if they did not actually create the doctrine—in its most pernicious form . . . In peculiar countermeasure to the two-messiah doctrine, the idea of the false messiah was soon developed as well; it also arose in close interaction with Christian views. During the Galilean rebellions, the term “false” was first applied to a prophet in a messianic context, paving the way for the explicit application of the term to messiahs. But it was the Christian texts that coined the term pseudochristoi (Greek for “false messiahs”); Matthew 24:4, 6, 24; Mark 13:5, 21–22; and Luke 21:3 all use the term pseudochristos to refer to messianic pretenders. The Jewish tradition follows the Christian; the Greek term is borrowed and translated in the much later Hebrew term mashiah sheker, which reshapes and alters the previous Hebrew usage of the term “lying” (sheker), in connection with the witness and prophet, so that it means “false witness, false prophecy.”19 It has been noted that these conceptual developments “have no need for two authentic messiahs, the first of whom is doomed to die. Instead the false messiah identifies the true one by contrast.”20 If Kulik is right that the Apocalypse of Abraham 29 presumes two messiahs, then the second messianic figure, like the first, can be understood within 18 

19  20 

An early development of a rudimentary concept of the false messiah, who will serve as an eschatological opponent of the positive messianic figure, is already discernible in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In some Qumran materials (11QMelch, 4QAmram, 4Q280, etc.), various messianic characters, including Melchisedek, have their negative counterparts who bear conspicuous designations, such as Melchirešac, which come from the deformation of the names of their messianic counterparts. In these materials, the messianic traditions are often overlaid with Yom Kippur imagery. Regarding these traditions, see D. Stökl Ben Ezra, The Impact of Yom Kippur on Early Christianity: The Day of Atonement from Second Temple Judaism to the Fifth Century (wunt, 163; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2003), 90–91. Lenowitz, The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights, 31. Lenowitz, The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights, 31.

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the context of the Yom Kippur rites. This view is supported by the idea that the second messianic figure, also like the first, is identified with a distinctive eschatological allotment: the right portion, which is often identified in the text as the lot of Abraham and God. Such identification is important for discerning possible links with the Yom Kippur ceremony in which the right lot, associated with God, is also identified with the goat for YHWH. Another important detail of the messianic passage is that the depictions of the two messianic figures are not clearly demarcated, but rather confused. Such confusion has been taken by many students of the Slavonic apocalypse as proof that the entire messianic passage represents an interpolation. Yet, in the light of aforementioned Christian accounts, in which the characteristics of the two “messianic goats” were often paradoxically mixed and confused, it is possible that the mixing of the features of the positive and negative messianic characters represents a deliberate strategy of the authors of the Slavonic apocalypse. Nevertheless, while features of the two messianic figures often appear intertwined and sometimes confused, their respective eschatological functions are nevertheless clearly delineated in the program outlined by the authors. Thus, the first, mistreated messiah appears to be endowed with a rather misleading, yet purifying function As the scapegoat of the atoning rite, he can be understood as a gatherer and remover of the impurity associated with the Gentiles and with idolatrous Hebrews. In contrast, the second messianic character appears to be playing the more traditional messianic role. This is the role reiterated in Apoc. Ab. 31:1, which depicts the parousia of the victorious messiah who will come with the sound of the trumpet and with power, in order to gather the elect.21

2

Distraction for the Heathen

The ambiguous, misleading role of the mistreated messiah, who comes at the apex of impiety, cannot fully be grasped without a proper understanding of the multifaceted nature of the scapegoat’s place in the Yom Kippur ordinance. Later Jewish interpreters often stress that one of the essential functions of the scapegoat was to distract, or weaken the power of the Other Side during the most important atoning feast of the Jewish liturgical year. For example, in

21 

“Then I shall sound the trumpet from the sky, and I shall send my chosen one, having in him one measure of all my power, and he will summon my people blamed among the heathen. . . .” Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 34.

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the Zohar, the scapegoat weakens the power of the Left Side by serving as a distraction. Zohar i.113b–114b reads: Come and see: Similarly, on the day that judgment appears in the world and the blessed Holy One sits on the Throne of Judgment, Satan appears, accusing and seducing above and below, to destroy the world and seize souls. . . . On Yom Kippur one must pacify and appease him with that goat offered to him, and then he turns into an advocate for Israel. . . .”22 Isaiah Tishby offers interesting remarks on the famous parable in the Zohar in which a king makes special arrangements for a celebratory feast with his son and friends. He orders a separate meal for ill-wishers and quarrelers so their presence will not spoil the happy occasion.23 Tishby notes that “according to this parable the purpose of sending a goat to Azazel is to remove sitra ahra from the ‘family circle’ of Israel and the Holy One, blessed be He, on the Day of Atonement.”24 In view of these traditions, it appears that, in the Apocalypse of Abraham, the scapegoat-messiah serves as a distraction or decoy; he is sent to mislead and weaken the heathen of the left lot and to prepare the safe arrival of the true (second) messiah who will come forth from the right lot. One of the crucial pieces of evidence for this is that the scapegoat-messiah is openly 22 

23  24 

D. Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (12 vols.; Palo Alto, ca: Stanford University Press, 2003–) 2.170–173. See also, Zohar i.190a: “This is the impure side, the Other Side, who stands perpetually before the blessed Holy One, bringing accusations of the sins of human beings, and who stands perpetually below, leading humans astray. . . . But the blessed Holy One feels compassion for Israel and has advised them how to save themselves from him. How? With a shofar on Rosh Hashanah, and on Yom Kippur with a goat, given to him so that he will disengage from them and occupy himself with that portion of his, as they have established.” Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, 3.160–161; Zohar ii.184b: “Come and see: The goat that Israel sends to the desert is in order to give a portion to that Other Side, with which to be occupied.” Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, 6.37. Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 46: “Sammael said before the Holy One, blessed be He: Sovereign of all the universe! Thou hast given me power over all the nations of the world, but over Israel Thou hast not given me power. He answered him, saying: Behold, thou hast power over them on the Day of Atonement if they have any sin, but if not, thou hast no power over them. Therefore they gave him a present on the Day of Atonement, in order that they should not bring their offering, as it is said, ‘One lot for the Lord, and the other lot for Azazel.’ ” Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer (ed. G. Friedlander; 2nd ed.; New York: Hermon Press, 1965) 363. I. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts (3 vols.; London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1989), 892. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 892.

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labeled as the “weakening” of the Gentiles25 (Slav. ослаба).26 Like later Jewish reinterpretations of the atoning rite, here the messianic scapegoat is depicted as an eschatological instrument for weakening and distracting the sitra ahra, represented by the heathen. The Apocalypse of Abraham provides several affirmations of this messianic role, noting that “many of the heathen will have hope in him,” that some people from the right lot “will be misled on his account,” and that “he will tempt those of your [Abraham’s] seed who have worshiped him.”27 Since, according to the text, the false messiah will mislead not only Gentiles but also sinful Hebrews, it seems that the Slavonic term oslaba has an additional meaning of “liberation,” which would refer to the cathartic purifying release of Israel’s sins to the realm of the Other Side associated with Gentiles, since the messianic figure will take with him the idolatrous portion of Israel.28 In this respect, the text specifically mentions that the messianic figure will appear at the apex of impiety, defined as the “twelfth hour of the age of impiety,” and that he will release it to the Left Side, represented by Azazel.29 This context underlines the principal “elimination” aspect of the scapegoat ritual, whereby impurity must be removed from the human oikoumene into an uninhabitable realm.

25  26 

27 

28 

29 

“ослаба от языкъ.” Philonenko-Sayar and Philonenko, L’Apocalypse d’Abraham, 100. Rubinkiewicz translates oslaba as “liberation, security, relaxation,” tracing this term to Gk. adeia, anesis. Cf. Rubinkiewicz, “The Apocalypse of Abraham,” 1.703. Rubinstein also notes that oslaba is used in the Slavonic Bible (for anesis) in Acts 24:23. A. Rubinstein, “Hebraisms in the Slavonic ‘Apocalypse of Abraham,’ ” jjs 4 (1953) 108–115 at 113. Reflecting on the misleading function of the false messiah in chapter 29, Alexander Kulik suggests that the Slavonic term oslaba might be connected with the notion of laxity in relation to the weakness in observance of the Torah, which the messianic man will bring to the Hebrews, misleading some of them. He points to some later rabbinic materials in which the false messiah brings neglect or laxity in upholding the Law. Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 51. Rubinkiewicz thinks that the concept of liberation was present in the messianic traditions that constitute the conceptual basis of chapter 29. In his opinion the interpolator used an ancient text, a messianic apocryphal prophecy, which he inserted in the Apocalypse of Abraham, after adjusting it in line with Christian convictions. The original text presented the messianic figure as the liberator who would break the yoke of the heathen. Rubinkiewicz, L’Apocalypse d’Abraham en vieux slave, 66. Robert Hall underlines this aspect arguing that “the man who is worshiped severs the unfaithful Jews from Abraham’s seed and joins them to the Gentiles.” Hall, “The ‘Christian Interpolation’ in the Apocalypse of Abraham,” 108.

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Conclusion

As we can see, in the Apocalypse of Abraham, realities of eschatological time become “ritualized” when the story’s messianic characters become envisioned as celebrants of the apocalyptic Yom Kippur. This development is not entirely novel. The roots of such an apocalyptic reformulation of Yom Kippur can be found already in the Book of the Watchers, an early Enochic work stemming from the early Second Temple period. In this text, the scapegoat rite is also reformulated eschatologically, incorporating details from the Yom Kippur ritual into the history of its antagonist, the fallen angel Asael. The cosmic tragedy of the angelic servant’s demotion unfolds in the midst of the exaltation of a human seer, namely, the patriarch Enoch. Like the Apocalypse of Abraham, the profiles of both characters of this Enochic text are overlaid with liturgical connections, both explicit and implicit. Yet, while similarities are evident, there are also some differences. While the Book of the Watchers stands at the beginning of the apocalyptic paradigm, the Apocalypse of Abraham manifests the very end of this apocalyptic trajectory. This was a time when apocalyptic sacerdotal imagery was shepherded into a new symbolic dimension of early Jewish mysticism.

CHAPTER 8

The Notion of Time as History in Kabbalistic Treatises from Renaissance Italy Fabrizio Lelli

Abstract Notwithstanding the declared tendency to refute any Greco-Arabic philosophical influence on the Jewish tradition, Italian Renaissance kabbalists followed in the footsteps of earlier thinkers—especially Spanish and Provencal—to postulate two modes of temporality: one that applies to corporeal beings, and one that may be attributed only to entities that are not subject to generation and corruption. This second category, albeit eternal, interacts with human time through God’s knowledge of particulars, and this may be thought of as the atemporal time of the Torah, whose ongoing revelation can thus be related to the changing nature of the reception of the kabbalistic doctrine according to the various periods of the history of Israel.

In Moshe Narboni’s Commentary on Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,1 the 14th century Provencal philosopher discusses the Maimonidean distinction between time and eternity2 by referring to a short essay written by Averroes on the nature of time.3 In it, the Arabic philosopher affirms: Time [in Hebrew: zeman] is a term for the passing of the existence [in Hebrew: halikhat ha-metzi’ut] of movable existents, and therefore it cannot be conceived except with motion. And eternity [in Hebrew: ʽet] is a term for the duration of the existence [in Hebrew: hemshekh ha-metzi’ut] of immovable existents. In his Commentary to the Averroan passage, Narboni explains: 1  Part ii, Premise 15.35. 2  See Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, ii, 16. 3  Ms. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, hébr. 988, c. 95rv (Averroes); cc. 95v–97r (Narboni). See W. Z. Harvey, “Albo’s Discussion of Time,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 70 (1980): 210–238: 220 and note 34.

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Time may be taken in two aspects: one, the true aspect, with respect to its perfect essence, which is with respect to time’s being consequent upon motion, and motion upon that which is moved [. . .]; and the second aspect is the abstract form of time [in Hebrew: tzurat ha-zeman ha-mufshetet], which is the duration of the existence [in Hebrew: hemshekh ha-metzi’ut] of a thing without regard to whether that duration is the duration of motion in a movable object or the duration of the existence of something in which motion is not of its nature, and [this second aspect of time] is an image, or likeness of time, not the reality of time [in Hebrew: demut zeman, lo amittat zeman], for time is of motion, and motion is of what is moved. According to Narboni’s interpretation of Maimonides via Averroes, there is a difference between a time that can be defined (and measured), following the Aristotelian categories, and a time that is an abstract “continuum,” or a “duration” in thought (or in imagination), which is independent of the created world. This twofold time, which appears more or less in the same formulation in other late fourteenth or fifteenth-century Spanish sources (i.e., Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo,4 who mainly agree on this description), is also associated to the concept of a “time within the soul”5 (a concept which already appears, e.g., in Augustine).6 This double category of time was certainly not new in Jewish thought. What interests me here is that the Hebrew expression used to refer to the perception of divine time—or of time as related to God—is “hemshekh [or meshekh] hametzi’ut” (“the duration of existence”). On the basis of the Spanish philosophical tradition based on Greek-Arabic speculation, numerous Hebrew writings which were composed in Italy between the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century drew upon this formula.7

4  On Albo’s discussion of time, see his Book of Roots, 3 Book ii, Chapter 18. The topic of Albo’s chapter is the principle of God’s independence of time. On Albo’s distinction between absolute time (unmeasured and imagined), and ordered time (measured and cognized by the intellect), see T. M. Rudavsky, Time Matters: Time, Creation, and Cosmology in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2000), 50–51. 5  See The Light of the Lord, i, 2, i. On Crescas’ assessment that the second kind of time is “ba-nefesh,” see Harvey, Albo’s discussion of Time, 217. 6  On the issue as a whole, see Rudavsky, Time Matters: Time, Creation, and Cosmology. 7  It should be stressed that it was a period when Narboni’s, as well as Crescas’ and Albo’s systems of thought were especially cherished by Jewish scholars who were active in the major Renaissance centers of the Mediterranean peninsula.

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In the context of the Italian intellectual milieus, which cherished the rational understanding of esoteric matters, it should not be surprising that the philosophical expression hemshekh ha-metzi’ut occurs also in kabbalistic contexts. We find it, for instance, in a late fifteenth-century letter-treatise that has been attributed to Isaac ben Yehiel of Pisa, a member of a wealthy family of Italian bankers. In this document, the formula meshekh ha-metzi’ut refers specifically to the sefirah Binah. When describing the divine world, the author of the Epistle, following a well-documented interpretation, maintains that the third sefirah is “a house of fifty, which means that the fifty gates of discernment [hamishim shaʽare binah] came into existence from within God’s original will.” The anonymous author then adds: “This refers to the specific appointment of this sefirah, consisting in the eternal renewal of [God’s] creation, in order for all created things to last for fifty thousand years: this is the meaning of ‘the duration of existence [meshekh ha-metzi’ut]’.”8 From such an assumption, which originates in the traditional theory of the shemittot, or cosmic cycles, we understand that the ‘duration of existence’, according to the anonymous author, does not really affect God’s world, which is outside of time, but mainly determines the temporal sequence in the lower world from the lower world’s perspective. Like several other Jewish scholars who lived in Renaissance Italy, the writer meant to solve the major quandary of atemporal time in connection to God’s providence in human history, in order to ultimately reject the Aristotelian category of time as related to the divine realm. Yohanan Alemanno, Isaac Abravanel, David Messer Leon, and Abraham De Balmes9 were all familiar with this interpretation. When defining Binah, they all drew upon the association of the third sefirah with the Great Jubilee that 8  In this context, the expression may be translated “the duration of existence” or “of creation,” as well. See M. Idel, “The Letter of R. Isaac of Pisa (?) in its Three Versions,” Kovetz al-yad, 10 (1982): 163–214: 174–175, and note 73 (Hebrew). According to Idel, this formula should be related to the definition of time in Narboni’s introduction to his Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed (Vienna 1852, c. 29r). On the idea of time in connection with the doctrine of the shemittot and the great jubilee see Idel, ibidem; B. Ogren, “La questione dei cicli cosmici nella produzione pugliese di Yishaq Abrabanel,” Itinerari di ricerca storica, 20/21 (2006): 141–161. See also Harvey, Albo’s discussion of Time, 220–221. On a new attribution of at least one version of the epistle so far attributed to Isaac of Pisa, see F. Lelli, “Pico, i Da Pisa e ’Eliyyà Hayyim da Genazzano,” in F. Lelli (ed.), Giovanni Pico e la cabbalà (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2014), 93–120. 9  See Ogren, “La questione dei cicli cosmici”; F. Lelli, “Cabbalà e aristotelismo in Italia tra xv e xvi secolo: le ‘radici’ nell’Iggèret ha-‘aśiryà (Lettera della decade) di Avraham ben Me’ir de Balmes,” in E. De Bellis (ed.), Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition. Innovative Contexts for

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will interrupt the duration of this world’s existence.10 For them, moreover, the ascent of the human soul to Binah should be the ultimate goal for those who long to be reunited with their divine source. These authors were mainly adhering to conceptions that were current in the Italian fifteenth century environment, and especially in the Tuscan-centered Jewish milieu, which may be held responsible for the transmission of a variegated series of kabbalistic corpora among Italian Jews. One of the scholars who lived in late fifteenth century Tuscany and had close ties with the contemporary social and intellectual Jewish elite was Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of Genazzano. Among other works, in the last decade of the century he composed a long letter-treatise, entitled Iggeret hamudot [Epistle of Delights], in which, following a literary genre rather common in late Medieval Italy, he responds to another Tuscan intellectual on various kabbalistic questions. Among the major issues at stake in Genazzano’s treatise, the correct kabbalistic interpretation of Jewish commandments and liturgy seems to be prominent. Genazzano asks himself how the fulfillment of the commandments and of liturgy may enhance the correct flow of the emanation of the Divine essence onto the lower world through the sefirotic realm. It is this same flow that, from the very beginning of creation, never ceased and therefore constantly produces life. According to the theosophical doctrine with which Genazzano seems to be familiar, such an emanation does not have a chronological development, because it is eternal and continuous. Likewise, holds Genazzano, the Torah is infinite and timeless. The opening words of Genazzano’s treatise remind the reader that the Torah is “longer than the earth and broader than the sea.”11 In other words, the Torah is outside of space, like the kabbalistic conception of time. In this, Genazzano follows the kabbalistic rejection of Aristotelian time, as based on space and the motion of bodies.12 As a matter of fact, the author fiercely attacks any philosophical understanding of the Jewish faith and traditional lore, and especially Iberian philosophical ideas current in his own generation. He states that what has been received from tradition is nothing but an ongoing meditation on a timeless text, which is full of symbols that are hidden

10 

11  12 

Cultural Tourism (Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Lecce—12, 13, 14 giugno 2008), (Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2008), 229–242. See also M. Idel, “Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish Mysticism,” in G. L. Blidstein (ed.), Sabbath: Idea, History, Reality (Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2004), 57–93. Ps. 119:96. He also rejects the Platonic conception of the time resulting from the influence of eternal forms upon the world of matter.

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even in its apparently more irrelevant parts, since the Scripture is expressed differently every time it is read or uttered.13 However, Genazzano maintains in his Epistle that there is an endless process of interpretation that unfolds throughout human time. This is why he develops a long excursus on the history of Israel, in which he points out the parallel reception of the divine emanation on earth and the varying degrees of understanding and fulfillment of the kabbalistic doctrine. Thus, in spite of the timeless nature of the core of kabbalistic speculation, the analysis of the various phases of human history, especially when connected to the advent of the Messiah, acquires a significant role in Genazzano’s speculation.14 As a matter of fact, in spite of his anti-philosophical bent, Genazzano’s thought is definitely set against the background of the speculative authorities that were current among his contemporaries; this is not unlike the authors that we have previously mentioned. For instance, he writes, on the basis of Gersonides’ Commentary on Job: You are well acquainted with what Ralbag wrote [. . .] on Job, “do you have the eyes of flesh” and so on.15 His opinion on this verse is that “Job means to present two powerful [apodictic] demonstrations that he uses to deny that the Lord, may He be exalted, has knowledge of the particulars [. . .] he establishes the second demonstration as follows: the Lord, may He be exalted, is outside of time and moves eternally because He is immaterial, but whoever apprehends particulars within temporality is himself temporal and subject to being moved because he is material of necessity [. . .]”16 (end of quotation). This is my response: Elijah says “Do not all philosophers agree on the fact that God and his knowledge are one and the same? If we stand on that premise, then, the nature of His knowledge also cannot be understood since it is not possible to comprehend the essence of the Lord, may He be exalted. Why should we need the philosophers, given that David, peace be upon him, has already explained the basis of it since he has told us, in various places, that God knows the particulars? [. . .] But these syllogisms, which Ralbag claims to be apodictic proofs, can be refuted rationally because, even though 13  14  15  16 

See M. Idel, Absorbing Perfections. Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 88–89. On a “heroic time” and the beginning of “history” or “historia sacra” after the completion of the primordial week, see Idel, “Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish Mysticism.” Gen. 18:21, 22:1; Job 10:4. Job 10:4–5; Gersonides, Commentary on Job, ad loc.

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God [. . .] is outside of time, ‘actions are measured by Him’ through the knowledge of particulars.17 Call them ‘faculties’ or ‘qualities’ as you like, but why claim that anyone who [. . .] is outside of time cannot apprehend particulars? This is precisely why we should not—on account of these syllogisms that are sophisms in light of the truth—diminish the value of the words of all the prophets who testify that God, may He be exalted, possesses particular knowledge of human events. Indeed, He “watches over the steps of the righteous.”18 Following the usual twofold distinction of time, Genazzano holds that zeman is therefore a mode of temporality that applies to corporeal beings, which are subject to generation and corruption, whereas ‘et is the mode of temporality that may be attributed to intelligible beings that are not subject to generation and corruption. This divine eternal time interacts with human time through God’s knowledge of particulars, i.e. through God’s providence. This may be thought of as the atemporal time of the Torah, whose ongoing revelation discloses itself in history. Thus, inasmuch as the Torah emanates from Ein Sof, it cannot be subject to the laws of space and time—just as the destruction of the Temple, and the consequent termination of the sacrifices, in no way diminished or altered the effectiveness of Jewish liturgy. The timeless study of Scriptures can therefore be related to the observance of Jewish ritual. The attitude expressed in this liturgical interpretation stresses the timeless character of the Torah and contrasts the restriction of commandments to spatial and temporal preconditions. This is what makes the quest for Scriptural meaning necessary in time. Though this is not as a linear sequence subject to calculation, but as a series of sudden intuitions that connect the two different times present in man’s soul.19 These instantaneous flashes of light may thus be related to a chronological description of God’s interactions, through his divine realm, with man’s world. Genazzano devotes a large section of his Epistle to the description of the divine revelations that occurred to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and the later prophets, and that reached forward to the period of haza”l. By this sequence of historical events, the author explains the reasons that have brought him to deal with dangerous issues like those he is discussing in his Epistle. As a matter of fact, in his introduction, after stressing the unchanging and atemporal 17  18  19 

1 Sam. 2:3. 1 Sam. 2:9. See E. R. Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau, Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2006), 71.

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nature of the Torah, Genazzano posits a difficulty experienced by his own generation. He claims that the meaning of the sacred text has become less and less univocal and more and more problematic due to the multifold interpretations offered by self-styled kabbalists of major esoteric traditions that have induced men to sin. This is why, he exclaims at the beginning of his Epistle: This is “a time to act for the Lord,” since the generations before us have filled their bellies with the words of the Greeks and turned the words of the living God into useless nonsense.20 Genazzano’s understanding of the relation of good and evil through time allows him to establish a direct relationship between the divine Torah and its development as set in history. The latter is a Torah that acquires significance due to the ups and downs of the mutual contacts between the people of Israel and God. The destruction of the First and Second Temple and the growing disintegration of the ritualistic aspects across the different diasporas led to a partial loss of the true meaning of the kabbalistic doctrine.21 If it is true that the Torah is timeless, then its varying interpretations throughout time make its exegesis temporal. However, if we have to hold to the rabbinic principle that the Torah should be studied each day in the same way that it was revealed at Sinai,22 then it can be claimed that its ability to be interpreted according to time is in the Torah’s timeless nature. If “each interpretative gesture is a reenactment of the revelatory experience, albeit from its unique

20 

21 

22 

See Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of Genazzano, Epistle of Delights (English Version forthcoming). The verse quoted is from Ps. 119:126, often cited by the Zohar to call for restoration (tikkun) of the order of the physical and spiritual worlds after the commandments have been broken; cf. Jer. 23:26. It is the changing nature of the different interpretations of the Torah in the numerous exiles of the people of Israel that brought forth what Moshe Idel calls the “ongoing arcanization of the canonical text.” See Idel, Absorbing Perfections, 461–462: “To a certain extent, the secrets of the Torah multiplied throughout time because of the exile. This historical explanation of the development of the status of the text and its “secrets” has been seen in quite a different light by some Lurianic Kabbalists writing at the end of the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries. The Torah and its secrets have been regarded as central issues before and beyond any historical development, and only a certain deterioration could be attributed to a historical event; with the destruction of the Second Temple, the Torah was described by Lurianic kabbalists as burned and its secrets imprisoned in the realm of evil.” bt Berakhot 63b, quoted by Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau, 64.

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vantage point, each moment a novel replication of the past,”23 then it is also true that some new interpretations of the text have caused problems in certain generations that can be solved only by soliciting more propitious occasions in historical time. Obviously, this process is ever-changing, since good periods alternate with periods of evil and, as was well explained by Genazzano and his contemporaneous Italian colleagues, it is this alternation of better and worse historical periods that influence the upper world (at least in part), a situation that can be swayed through the correct fulfillment of the commandments. According to Moshe Idel, “since the end of the fifteenth century the emergence of the Christian Kabbalah attracted the attention of some Jews acquainted with the situation in northern Italy.”24 Idel assumes that certain critical attitudes to the kabbalah or its circulation among Christians were due to such an encounter. If so, we may assume that Genazzano’s speculation was motivated by his awareness of the contemporary achievements of humanist thought in matters of kabbalah, and by the contemporary debates current in non-Jewish speculation on the meaning of the transmission of revealed knowledge throughout time. This could explain why, while adhering to a traditional interpretation of the kabbalah (intended in its original meaning as a transmission/reception of oral teachings), Genazzano added to this category that of a hokhmat ha-emet, according to which there is one true esoteric kabbalah that aims to investigate specific aspects of the Scripture and its interrelations with the liturgy and the commandments. If the real extent of the weight on Genazzano of the contemporaneous non-Jewish speculation may be still a matter of discussion, it is a fact that in his system of thought, even non-Jews and their authorities are held to be partially responsible for the fulfillment of the tasks set by God when he created the universe: Actually, you should know that when the nations fulfill the seven commandments given to Noah’s children, even they contribute something to repairing the channels of the seven sefirot, although theirs is not a complete restoration, like the one accomplished by the 613 commandments that God gave to Israel.25

23  24  25 

Ibid., 54–65. Absorbing Perfections, 462. See Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of Genazzano, Epistle of Delights (English Version forthcoming).

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In the same generation and probably in the very same years when Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano composed his Iggeret hamudot, a similar approach to the question debated in the Tuscan milieu was carried out by Peretz Foah, who wrote another letter-treatise, shorter than Genazzano’s, to his brother-in-law, Abba Mari Halfan, who had requested his advice on specific matters concerning kabbalah. We owe the survival of this document to the rich Kabbalistic material transmitted in the Halfan family. The son of Abba Mari, Elijah Menahem, who spent most of his life in Venice, copied the treatise written by his uncle from his father’s library, in what presently is Ms. Moscow, Russian National Library, Günzburg 333.26 In his Epistle, Foah stresses the providential role of God in history, through the mediation of His qualities or aspects, i.e. the sefirot. He affirms: God, may He be blessed, was certainly aware of the necessity for him to accomplish specific deeds to activate a complete Mercy, by changing, e.g., the nature of creation, as it happened with the exodus from Egypt, the giving of the Torah, and other miracles that took place in the past but will occur in the future, too. The manifestation of being from non-being will bring forth “a world of mercy.”27 That is why the Lord emanated the quality of Mercy [. . .] But when, by His wisdom, the Lord, may He be blessed, decreed that man should be endowed with the free will for him to overcome all other creatures, He was obliged to activate [c. 28r] the Judgment against the evil ones by destroying Sodom, by the universal deluge, and by drowning the whole Egyptian army in the sea, as well as everything else, in the past and in the future. These are called revealed miracles.28 The author stresses in particular the role of the third sefirah, Binah, by pointing out that:

26 

27  28 

Ashkenazi-Italian writing, fols. 52r–55r. This is a wide collection of kabbalistic works, written by different hands in different periods, which may have belonged to Abba Mari Halfan, and mainly contains information on talismans and prayers, works of Rheinland mystics, commentaries on Sefer Yetzirah (including Donnolo’s), Aristotle’s Otot haShamayim (the only Aristotelian authority quoted by Genazzano), Maimonides’ epistle to the sages of Montpellier, writings of Molkho, kabbalistic liturgical texts (even a prayer by Yitzhaq Mar Hayyim). See F. Lelli, “Ricezione e interpretazione della Cabbalà nel pensiero di Eliyyà Menahem Halfan”, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 47/3 (2011): 547–572. Ps. 89:4. Ms. Moscow, Russian National Library, Günzburg 333, fol. 52v.

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Referring to Binah is tantamount to saying that the name Yah embodies the fifty gates of discernment, those same gates of which it is said (Nahmanides, of blessed memory, at the beginning of his Commentary)29 that they manifest and renew themselves every thousand years [. . .], since according to the kabbalists temporal existence renews itself every thousand years.30 Peretz Foah sent his letter to Abba Mari Halfan, and among the works composed by the latter’s son, Elijah Menahem, one is especially significant for our topic. It is another letter-treatise, probably composed in the early 1540s, in which the author seems to follow in the footsteps of his uncle, as well as of Genazzano, in his conception of time.31 The letter is addressed to an unknown scholar, who may have asked Halfan for information about the development of the Jewish esoteric tradition. Taking for granted the introductory remarks which appear in Genazzano’s, as well as in Foah’s preliminary explanations about the esoteric doctrine, Halfan immediately makes the point about the transmission in time of some secrets which would have affected the history of the people of Israel. He also posits an interaction between the ongoing divine flow of creation and its reception in history that manifests itself through the alternating process of periods of good and evil. This temporal oscillation influences the upper world in its turn. However, the more traditional idea of the beginning of human time from the initial moment of God’s creation is here replaced by the conception that time came into existence from Adam’s sin on. By means of the fulfillment of the commandments and by the correct observance of the liturgical rite, human time can become divine as before the separation of the upper and lower entities caused by the primordial sin. Unlike the Greek tradition that gave a positive understanding to the introduction of time in creation, Halfan seems to adhere to the opposite interpretation, according to which it was the sin of the primordial man that gave rise to time. From Adam’s fall, the oscillation between ups and downs in the history of Israel, and the destruction of the Temple of

29  30  31 

See Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, ed. C. B. Chavel (Jerusalem 1970), i, 3. Ms. Moscow, Russian National Library, Günzburg 333, fol. 52v. See F. Lelli, “L’interpretazione teosofica della storia d’Israele nell’Epistola sulla storia della Cabbalà di Eliyyà Menahem ben Abba Mari Halfan,” in P. Arfé, I. Caiazzo e A. Sannino (eds.), Adorare caelestia, gubernare terrena. Atti del colloquio internazionale in onore di Paolo Lucentini (Napoli, 6–7 Novembre 2010) (“Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia” 58), (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 475–505.

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Jerusalem, were historically responsible for the progressive loss of the true meaning of the Scripture. Unlike Genazzano, who holds that even the nations may contribute to the redemption of the world and to the final end of historical time, Halfan stresses the unique importance of the Jewish tradition in the complex process of “de-arcanization” of the mysteries of the Torah. This change of perspective in the Italian author’s perception was probably caused, as he himself explains, by the Renaissance revival of the Christian interest in the Hebrew language and in the kabbalistic tradition. His was a period of intense messianic expectation that fostered a similar interest in the calculation of the times of redemption also among Christians and Muslims. Notwithstanding their criticisms of contemporary authors who were too eager to draw upon external sources, it is certain that both Foah and Halfan, like Genazzano, were sensitive to the speculative developments of humanism and took part in the debates between Jews and Christians on the nature of the kabbalah. In order to cope with the concept of Aristotelian time, Italian Renaissance kabbalists ultimately drew their inspiration from the post-Maimonidean thinkers that circulated in the Italian environment, in order to demonstrate the relationship of an atemporal God’s providence as interfering with man’s history.

CHAPTER 9

The Mitnagdim and the Rabbinic Era as the Age of Reason Eliyahu Stern

Abstract In the nineteenth-century, Elijah ben Solomon’s (1720–1797) students, known as the Mitnagdim, formulated a temporal framework that canonized rabbinic literature and limited religious innovations. This temporal framework was developed in the context of a larger ideological debate between warring nineteenth-century eastern European Jewish groups.

Elijah of Vilna passed away in 1797, leaving behind a commentarial nachlass that one of his students claimed was so large that even if one were to live a thousand years, he or she still wouldn’t be capable of producing what Elijah did in one life. Though Elijah was a strict follower of the tenets of rabbinic Judaism, his commentaries challenged many of the norms and mores of eastern European Jewry, and his emendations to classical rabbinic and kabbalistic works often called into question long held versions of ancient rabbinic texts. For his followers, these intellectual feats earned him the title “Gaon.” According to the mid-nineteenth-century Lithuanian rabbi, Shmuel ben Avraham Maltzan, the title “Gaon” reflected Elijah’s status as an equal to the ninth-century Geonim, a rabbinic group that followed the editing of the most authoratative rabbinic work, the Talmud. Like the Geonim, Elijah was said to have had an unmediated relationship to classical rabbinic literature. In the introduction to his work Emunah vehashgacha Maltzan claims that Elijah’s student Moshe Shlomo Tolchin related the following story to him: Our teacher [Rabbi Elijah] was asked if his soul had ever previously been in the world, and he responded that a great amount of time had elapsed since his soul was last in this world. And once a student of his visited Babylonia and found an ancient manuscript of Rav Hai Gaon’s emendations to the early rabbinic work Tosefta, and he sent it to Vilna. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�903�0_0�0

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The document was analyzed [and lo and behold] Rav Hai Goan’s emendations lined up perfectly with [Elijah,] the Gaon’s emendations. Therefore, it might be said that Elijah’s soul is Rav Hai’s soul, and thus one should always refer to them in the same manner, simply as Gaon.1 The story describes Elijah’s emendations of ancient rabbinic works as lining up perfectly with those written by the tenth-century rabbi, Hai ben Sherira who, among others, was given the title “Gaon” (pride). In the annals of Jewish history this title, Gaon, would become a signifier of rabbinic authority. While in most instances its usage was simply to designate the learnedness of a particular individual. In Elijah’s case it was also used to signify his rank, just below a talmudic sage and right above a medieval commentator. This definition of Elijah’s moniker, “Gaon,” sought to justify his radical relationship to rabbinic literature, and at the same time ensure that his bold hermeneutic and emending practices could not be imitated and employed by others to justify changes in Jewish law and life. In order to explain and to limit the radical aspects of his oeuvre, Elijah was transposed back in time, but not too far back. Allan Nadler, a scholar of nineteenth-century Lithuanian Jewish culture, has addressed this phenomenon in an insightful article entitled, “The Gaon of Vilna and the Rabbinic Doctrine of Historical Decline.” Nadler documents the way Elijah’s students, the Mitnagdim (the name given to those who opposed the spiritual-folk Hasidic movement), tried to square their master’s disregard for ancient and medieval rabbinic rulings with the temporal principle of the decline of the ages.2 Nadler sheds light on the tension between Elijah’s legacy as someone who was capable of fundamentally challenging those who came before him, and his students’ “inverted process theology,” in which humanity intellectually regresses as time passes. According to Nadler, “the writings of several generations of Mitnagdim are permeated with . . . a heightened awareness that they were living through impoverished times. The students of the Gaon of Vilna,” Nadler correctly asserts, “repeatedly bemoaned the depth to which their own generation had sunk.”3 Nadler’s study raises a host of questions, such as: why did belief in generational decline gain such prominence 1  See introductory remarks of Shmuel ben Avraham of Maltsan to Emunah ve-ha-Hashgaha (Koenigsburg: 1864) np. 2  Allan Nadler, “The Gaon of Vilna and the Rabbinic Doctrine of Historical Decline,” in Yashan mi-Pnei Hadash: Mehkarim be-Toldot Yehudei Mizrah Eropah u-ve-Tarbutam; Shai le-Immanuel Etkes, edited by David Assaf and Ada Rapoport-Albert (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2009), vol. 2, 137–161. 3  Ibid., 137.

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among the Mitnagdim? What accounts for the accentuation of this principle in nineteenth-century traditional sectors of Jewish society? Why did Elijah’s students neutralize their teacher’s legacy of challenging long held customs, and emending canonical texts? This paper suggests that the Mitnagdim’s inverted process theology reflected their attempt to create a temporal framework that would limit religious innovations as well as canonize rabbinic literature. This temporal framework was developed in the context of a larger ideological debate, which was taking place between warring nineteenth-century eastern European Jewish ideological groups: Mitnagdim, Enlighteners, and Hasidim.

1

The Rabbinic Era

In his work Nefesh ha-Hayyim (“The Soul of Life”) (Vilna: 1824), Elijah’s most well-known disciple, Hayyim of Volozhin (1749–1821) asserted that there was a fundamental difference between the present age and what might be termed a ‘Rabbinic Era’. “Still in the days of the Talmud,” Hayyim explained, “it was permitted to innovate laws by connecting them to sources in the Torah, such as the lighting of candles on Hanukah, and instituting laws, such as the eighteen edicts enacted by Hillel’s students.”4 For Hayyim, the “days of the Talmud” included kabbalistic, aggadic and halakhic works that were produced prior to the editing of the Babylonian Talmud, which according to Hayyim meant texts composed prior to roughly 500 ce.5 However, explained Hayyim, “from the day the Babylonian Talmud was written and sealed, there disappeared all possibility of understanding or ruling based on one’s own knowledge.”6 Hayyim was building on ideas that had been most notably expressed by the sixteenthcentury rabbi, Judah Loew of Prague (1525?–1609), who claimed that “what differentiated the Rabbis [of the talmudic period] and those who came after them was that in the early generations, the power of thought ruled over the body.”7 Hayyim was not simply addressing the authoritative nature of the Talmud (which had already been recognized during the time of the Geonim); rather, throughout his writings, he argued for the canonization of all literary works produced during a specific period of time, namely, the Rabbinic Era. Moreover he maintained that all kabbalistic, midrashic and talmudic works produced prior to the sealing of the Talmud (The Rabbinic Era) were to be considered authoritative. 4  See Hayyim of Volozhin, Nefesh ha-Hayyim (Jerusalem: 1989) Gate 1, Chapter 22. 5  Modern scholars now estimate that these texts were actually composed prior to 850–900 ce. 6  See Hayyim of Volozhin’s Introduction to Shenot Eliyahu (Lemberg: 1799). 7  See Judah Loew of Prague’s introduction to Be’er ha-Golah (Jerusalem: 2013), 4–5

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Abraham ben Elijah (d. 1808), the son of the Vilna Gaon, offers the most detailed example of the Mitnagdim’s canonization of texts produced in the Rabbinic Era. In his work Rav Pe’alim, he documented “all of the manuscripts of midrashim, aggadot, ancient ancillary texts, and the works of the Geonim that were kept in his father’s house.”8 These works comprised three genres: Talmud, Kabbalah, and Midrash. Each of these genres contained earlier and later layers.9 Just as the Talmud remained a work that was transmitted orally until after the sixth century, so too, Abraham claimed, the kabbalistic Zohar and Midrash Rabbah were only put into writing many years after they had been orally articulated. Just like the Mishnah was the base-text of the Talmud, so too the kabbalistic Idrot (the “Convocations”) were the core texts of the Zohar, and statements made by the early rabbinic sages were the basis for later midrashic (exgetical) works. Abraham charted out the various manuscripts, printing histories and, most importantly, early origins of over 100 Rabbinic texts (midrashic and kabbalistic). These ranged from the well-known midrashic work the Mechilta (a rabbinic commentary to Exodus,) to the magical textbook the Key of Solomon, which he refers to in its Latin form, Calvicula Salomonis. After documenting these works in alphabetical order, Abraham lists “those books about which he was unsure if they were composed by the sages of the Talmud [during the Rabbinic Era] or later.”10 In the latter camp, Abraham includes the seemingly late rabbinic anthology Yalkut Shimoni, and the Aramaic translation of the Bible Targum Onkelos.11 Rav Pe’alim sought to define the parameters of the canonical midrashic and kabbalistic works by explicitly distinguishing between historically unverifiable works, as well as commentaries written prior to and after the editing of the Talmud.12 8  9  10  11  12 

See Luria’s introductory comments in Abraham ben Elijah, Rav Pe’alim (Warsaw: 1894), 7–8. See Abraham ben Elijah, Rav Pe’alim, 20–21. On his treatment and dating of midrashic texts see 105–106 on Zoharic literature see 58. See Abraham ben Elijah, Rav Pe’alim, 126. For Abraham’s attempt to date Targum Onkelus prior to 100 ce see Rav Pe’alim, p. 120 Abraham’s own commentaries to midrashic writings were passed on to Zev Wolf Einhorn (d. 1862). Einhorn used them as the basis for a commentary to Pesikta de-Rav Kahane (Breslau: 1831). At the end of the introduction to his version of Pesikta de-Rav Kahane (Warsaw: 1852), 5 Einhorn explains that Abraham’s son Ya’akov Moshe gave him his father’s notes to Pesikta de-Rav Kahane and they were the basis of the text he used to for his commentary. David Luria (1798–1855) also seems to have continued Abraham’s project producing both the first authoritative bibliography of Elijah’s writings as well as penning his own commentary to the Rabbinic homiletic-mystical work, Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (Warsaw: 1852). Luria claimed Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer was written by the second-century

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In his posthumously published work Nahlat David (Vilna: 1882), Hayyim’s student, the Minsk rabbi, David Tevele (1792–1861) theorized a philosophic rule or measure that differentiated the Rabbinic Era from all other periods of time. “In the early days of the Talmud, they still had ruah ha-kodesh (prophetic powers),” he explained. “After the sealing of the Talmud, people’s ability to comprehend the reason for law was taken away.”13 Tevele argued that the rabbis’ “prophetic powers” were in fact “the use of natural reason, the four natural elements, in the service of God.”14 The rabbis of the Talmud were distinguished from the biblical Prophets in that the latter communicated directly with God, while the former deciphered God’s word by using their intellectual abilities. Biblical prophecy was based on an external, supernatural revelation, whereas rabbinic quasi-prophecy was based on the harnessing of one’s rational faculties. When employed for serving God, reason becomes prophecy’s equivalent. The Bible and rabbinic literature possess the same authority but through very different registers. Though the rabbis of the Talmud did not have supernatural powers, Tevele, explained, their rational faculties allowed them to correctly interpret God’s word. But Tevele understood the rational faculties of his contemporaries to be compromised. Turning to nineteenth-century Jews he rhetorically asked: “currently, how many of us could ever claim that we use our natural intellectual abilities only for the sake of Heaven?”15 Reason can no longer be employed in religious life, he asserted, because it is constantly used for self-gratification and self-justification. Reasoning has become nothing more than another mode through which the self tries to satisfy its own needs. Instead of serving God, reason serves the individual.16 Tevele’s distinction between a rational Rabbinic Era and the present must be understood in the context of the various responses to the long-debated question regarding the “reason for the commandments, (ta’amei ha-mitzvot).” Throughout Jewish history, scholars have been at odds with one another over whether the commandments were rational, utilitarian, ethical, mystical, or

13  14  15  16 

Sage whose name is attached to its title. Attributing the text to this early Rabbinic Sage allowed Luria to argue that both the earliest layer of legal writing (found in the Mishna) as well as mystical writing (Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer) were, in fact, authored by the same individual. See David Luria’s introduction to his commentary to Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (Warsaw: 1852) 6. On Luria more generally see Shaul Ginsburg, Historishe Verk (New York: S. M. Ginsburg Testimonial Committee, 1937), 35–47. See David Tevele, Nahlat David (Vilna: 1882), vol. 2, 8a. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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lacked all rationale.17 Some, like Sa’adia (882–942), believed that only certain commandments were based on reason, while the rest were divine decrees. Others, like Maimonides, argued that while human beings only knew the rationale for a limited number of the commandants, all of them were based on reason. Moses Mendelssohn straddled these positions, arguing that while the commandments were not based on reason per se, they were a handmaiden to ethics and did not contradict reason.18 According to the early nineteenth-century enlightener, Menashe Illya the issue of ta’amei ha-mitzvot was at the center of the debate between Mitnagdim, Hasidism, and Enlighteners. Though not mentioning the groups by name, Menashe asserted in his work Pesher Davar that, “there are three competing groups in Jewish life.”19 Alluding to the Mitnagdim, he maintained that there are those who ascribe to only the simple meaning of things and fulfill the Torah in all its particulars . . . They emphasize the observance [of the commandments] to the point that they distance themselves from those who wish to investigate the reason for the commandments. The entire idea that one could know the will of God seems strange in their eyes . . . As if they know all human beings’ intellectual capacities, they claim that the human mind lacks the capacity to understand.20 In contrast to the Mitnagdim, the other two groups both believed that they could understand the reason behind the commandments. Apparently referring to certain Jewish Enlighteners, Menashe identifies one group that uses its intellectual faculties to examine the very same matters in terms of the way the world functions. The members of this group privilege examining nature in order to understand the idea of distancing oneself from nature as well as the connection between the spiritual and material world. From this point they are able to study hokhmah elohit (metaphysics).21

17 

18  19  20  21 

For the range of Rabbinic sources on the topic see Ephraim Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, translated by Israel Abrams (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 362–389. See Isaac Heinemann, Ta’amei ha-Mitzvot be-Sifrut Yisrael (Jerusalem: 1956), 2:9–46. See Menashe Illya, Pesher Davar (Vilna: 1807), np. Ibid. Ibid.

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Finally, Menashe cites a third group who rejects this position with both hands. Human intelligence can never accomplish this feat, [understanding hokhmah elohit]. Rather, one must simply cleave to God. In so doing they hope that God will reveal secrets to them.22 The diaries of the nineteenth-century Jewish convert and Anglican missionary Joseph Wolff (1795–1862) further support Menashe Illya’s depiction of the fights between Hasidim, Mitnagdim and Maskilim. In a diary entry dated November 12, 1822 Wolff describes a conversation he had with Elijah’s student Menahem Mendel of Shklov in Jerusalem. Wolff claims that Menahem Mendel was struck with amazement when he found me acquainted with the principles of Israel ba’al Shem . . . The chief principle of that sect [the Hasidim] is, that the Mahshaba, the intuition, thought and the spirit of the law of Moses, is more important than the outward observance of it. They offer support for this principle from Jeremiah 31:31–33, which they believe indicates that the ceremonial law will be abolished in the time of the Messiah, and that we shall then understand the ta’am, (the taste or real purport,) of that law.23 At the beginning of the nineteenth-century, both Maskilic and Hasidic leaders employed ta’amei ha-mitzvot to explain apparent violations of biblical and rabbinical law by biblical and rabbinical figures. The Mitnagdim argued that while all of the commandments were given with a specific reason, as evidenced in many biblical and talmudic statements, both reason (philosophical knowledge) as well as reasons (kabbalistic explanations or other criteria of evaluation) could no longer be trusted as a valid source of authority. Hayyim of Volozhin explained that “God did not give the Torah to our Patriarchs [Abraham, Isaac and Jacob], because had it been given to them, Jacob would not have been able to marry two sisters [as outlawed by the Bible].”24 The patriarchs had direct access to God’s will, understood the essence of their soul (shoresh nishmatam), and thus could act accordingly. “Jacob understood that by marrying two sisters [Rachel and Leah] he would come to build the house of Israel.”25 Similarly, 22  23  24  25 

Ibid. Joseph Wolff, Missionary Journal and Memoir of the Rev. Joseph Wolff (London: 1824), 319, See Hayyim of Volzohin, Nefesh ha-Hayyim, Gate 1, Chapter 21. See Hayyim of Volozhin, Nefesh ha-Hayyim, Gate 1: Chapter 21.

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Menahem Mendel of Shklov maintained that the secrets of the Divine were known only up to the age of the Talmudic rabbis. Thus, “they were permitted to commit what appear to us to be transgressions.” And this, he concludes “is the greatness of what the Sages meant by one who commits a sin for the sake of God. God enlightened these individuals and showed them how to decipher between light and darkness in a different way . . . And God granted this ability to the Sages according to the spirit of their holiness.”26 Today, however, according to Hayyim and Menahem Mendel, “we no longer have mitzvot that can be instituted or abrogated based on time . . . For now one must follow what has been instructed. And the secret of Jewish law is encompassed in the sixty tractates of the Talmud.”27 Hayyim warned that in the present age, “one should not think he is so smart as to say that according to his advanced spiritual abilities . . . he may change any commandment based on knowing its rationale.”28 Menahem Mendel simply shut down all discussion on the topic by declaring: “The reasons for the commandments have been hidden from us . . . and they [the commandments] should be followed based on complete faith.”29 For the Mitnagdim, the antinomian behavior of the Patriarchs and Rabbis was justifiable only because they could use reason in an unalloyed manner, free of personal gain or ulterior motive.30

2

Kant and The Decline of Reason

The Mitnagdim’s division between the Rabbinic Era and contemporary Judaism was also based on a broader philosophical argument about the nature of knowledge in religious life. The Mitnagdim claimed that ideas espoused by 26  27  28  29  30 

See Menahem Mendel of Shklov, “Biur Mishnat Hasidim” published in Kitvei Menahem Mendel mi-Shklov (Jerusalem: 2001), vol. 1, 206. See Menahem Mendel of Shklov, “Raza de-Mehemnuta” in Kitvei ha-Gaon Menahem Mendel mi-Shklov (Jerusalem: 2001) vol. 1, 7. See Hayyim of Volozhin’s introduction to Elijah’s Biur ve-gam Hagahot al Kol ha-Zohar (Vilna: 1810). See Menahem Mendel of Shklov, “Raza de-Mehemnuta” published in Kitvei ha-Gaon Rabbi Menahem Mendel mi-Shklov, 1:97. It is important to note that Menahem Mendel and Hayyim of Volozhin believed that a select few living after the sealing of the Talmud (such as Isaac Luria and presumably Elijah of Vilna) had the ability to know the reasons behind the commandments. However, such knowledge was restricted to only the most elite scholars and was off limits to all others. See Hayyim of Volozhin’s introduction to Elijah’s commentary to the Zohar (Vilna: 1810).

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the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) supported their position about the present state of knowledge. Addressing those affiliated with the early nineteenth-century Reform movement, Menahem Mendel’s student Yitzhak Haver argued: And they too will not comprehend what they seek. For it is impossible for the human intellect to obtain full comprehension. It is beyond one’s natural capacities, namely one’s material senses that are based on material objects. This has been demonstrated in the books of the great wellknown diligent and nimble critic [Immanuel] Kant, whose intellectual strength and philosophical positions are known throughout the world and destroyed all the foundations of philosophy. He destroyed these foundations and took no pity on them . . . and philosophical knowledge is no longer true.31 For Haver, Kant’s critique of metaphysics led to the conclusion that the most authoritative form of knowledge was “that which has been handed down to us from our forefathers.”32 The grafting of Kantian theories of metaphysics onto modern notions of rabbinic authority is also witnessed in the Vilna Rabbi Abraham Zakheim’s response to the German scholar Julius Fürst’s dismissal of kabalistic knowledge. In a letter that Zakheim sent to Fürst on September 22, 1840, he argued that Kant’s philosophy actually supported the study of the seemingly irrational kabbalah: And who among the Geonim can be compared to the Gra from Vilna [Elijah ben Solomon] and our teacher the Gaon Yonatan Eybshuetz who brought worldly knowledge under their wings of understanding? And still nonetheless, regarding this knowledge [kabbalah] they placed it atop all other forms of knowledge. Indeed, words of judgment on matters [pertaining to the knowledge of kabbalah] exceed the margins on the page. For language is not wide enough to contain everything, and the ideas [of the kabbalah] exhaust language. [For language] is unable to fully make sense of kabbalistic images [such as the Godhead]. For in the defined nature of speech, there is not enough to explain or exhaust the ideas found in the subtleties of kabbalistic imagery. Not even the 31  32 

See Yitzhak Isaac Haver Wildman, Magen ve-Tzinah, 26. Ibid.

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greatest thinker could claim that according to his theory of metaphysics one could know the essence of something outside himself. And this is true even among present day thinkers! For even the wise one Kant was shocked that [Solomon] Maimon could think that someone could know something’s essence.33 Zakheim marshals Kant’s critique of Solomon Maimon’s defense of metaphysics to explain kabbalistic knowledge.34 He accurately records Kant’s critique of metaphysics. The Mitnagdim’s anti-rational reception of Kant’s critique of metaphysics was made possible through Maimon’s commentary to Maimonides’ Guide, Givat ha-Moreh (Berlin: 1791), and Pinhas Eliyahu’s Sefer ha-Brit (Brünn: 1797),35 a compendium of recent scientific and philosophic discoveries. Pinhas praised “Kant [for explaining] the processes and nature of human cognition in an amazing manner.”36 He asserted that Kant proved, “how little use are human beings’ intellectual abilities, even with all the tools of logic and philosophy, to know something in itself. One is unable to understand that which stands outside of one’s senses—that which we call beyond nature—and that which they call metaphysics.”37 Laying the groundwork for Tevele, Haver, and Zakheim’s position, Pinhas concluded that, “the truth on the Earth will blossom . . . through [knowing] the transmission and tradition of fathers to children.”38 Haver and Tevele both cited extensively from Sefer ha-Brit in their respective works. Originally some had thought that Elijah of Vilna himself had written Sefer haBrit.39 One edition of the book even listed Elijah as the author. The Mitnagdim were peddling a terrible misreading of Kant, who perhaps more than anyone else destroyed the heteronymous claims of tradition. Their selective reading of the German philosopher, however, expresses the 33  34 

35 

36  37  38  39 

See Abraham Zakheim’s letter to Julius Fürst dated September 22, 1840 republished in its entirety in Mordechai Aaron Guenzburg, Devir (Vilna: 1855), 106–107. On Maimon and Kant’s debates regarding reason see Fredrick Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 306–307. Pinhas ben Eliyahu’s Sefer ha-Brit was republished many times over the course of the nineteenth-century. Most editions were based on an expanded second edition published in Zolkiev in 1807. See Pinhas ben Eliyahu, Sefer ha-Brit (Vilna: 1818) section 1, Chapter 24, 174. Ibid., 175. Ibid. See the introduction of the second edition published in Zolkiew 1807.

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anti-humanist sentiments embedded in the Mitnagdim’s ideology of text study and the use of philosophical arguments to support their ideology.

3

Conclusion

The Mitnagdim’s employment of Kantian categories highlights the radical and extreme aspects of their notion of the “decline of the ages.” For most Jewish commentators, the decline of the ages was based on one of two forms of decline, anthropological or transmission-based. Those such as Rav Sherira Goan, Judah Loew of Prague and Rashi, in different ways, asserted that the “decline” was based on later generations’ essential anthropological deficiencies. Their respective refrains that “their hearts are not wide enough” or that “they were not righteous enough” can be traced back to talmudic sources. On the other hand, there were positions expressed in the Talmud that asserted that the decline of the ages was based on historical circumstance and the challenges of multi-generational transmission. In his introduction to Beit Yosef, the sixteenth-century rabbi, Joseph Karo succinctly articulated this position when he bemoaned the sorry state of Jewish knowledge due to it having “been poured from vessel to vessel.” Both models—the anthropological model and the transmission model— assume a sustained precipitous decline of knowledge, or of human intelligence, over an extended period of time.40 Hayyim of Volozhin and his students’ writings contain both transmission and anthropological models of decline. Most notably in Hayyim’s introduction to Elijah’s commentary to Sifra di-Tznieuta (Vilna: 1820), he repeats Karo’s claim about knowledge being transferred “from vessel to vessel,” as well as elements of Judah Loew of Prague’s position that “God has concealed his knowledge from human beings.” But Hayyim and the Mitnagdim did not argue that “the decline of the ages” was a precipitous downward slope over time, in which each generation knew less than its predecessor. Instead, Hayyim drew a stark line between a Rabbinic Era and everything that came after it. The line between these two periods of time was based on the inability of all those who came after this point in time to use reason in a non instrumental manner to interpret the oral and written law. The Rabbis, on the other hand, were able to resist using reason for instrumental purposes.

40 

For an overview of the various positions espoused regarding the decline of the ages see Menachem Kellner, Maimonides on the “Decline of the Generations” and the Nature of Rabbinic Authority (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 7–26.

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The Mitnagdim used Kant to buttress their claims that following the Rabbinic Era human beings could no longer truly understand the reason for any religious practice or observance. Hayyim’s distinction between pre and post Rabbinic Era allowed him to maintain that one could argue with their immediate and even distant predecessors, provided they did not contradict any position expressed in Rabbinic literature. Hayyim thought it to be perfectly permissible “to argue with our great teachers who now lie in the ground but whose well-known books are still with us. They themselves gave us permission to duel and fight against them . . . provided that one takes extra precaution not to treat them disrespectfully or be haughty when disagreeing.”41 According to Hayyim’s temporal scheme, it made perfect sense that one’s predecessors could be challenged. For anthropologically and historically, there was no difference between someone living in the fourteenth or eighteenth century; both equally lacked the ability to truly understand the source or essence of the law. One could argue with later commentators (as Elijah of Vilna had done), for they were just as ignorant about the true source or essence of knowledge as everyone who came after the Rabbinic Era. However, they had to accept rabbinic literature, i.e., everything written by the rabbis prior to the editing of the Babylonian Talmud, as authoritative. The fundamental rulings, tenets and beliefs of the rabbinic system were now considered beyond one’s ability to even comprehend. With the sealing of the Talmud came the closing of the rabbinic mind.

41 

See Hayyim of Volozhin, Ruah ha-Hayyim (Vilna: 1859), 1:4. On the relationship between Hayyim and Elijah on this adjudicative approach see the comments of Barukh Epstein, Sefer Mekor Barukh (Vilna: 1928), 3: 1167. While Epstein identifies Elijah as the primary source for Hayyim’s position he contends that Elijah was far from the first who adopted such a method. Epstein claims that such an approach can be traced back to the Talmud itself and was embraced by numerous medieval commentators.

part 5 Experiential Soul Time

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CHAPTER 10

Soul Time in Modern Kabbalah Jonathan Garb

Abstract Despite being a mainstay of Religious Studies, the issue of time has entered kabbalah scholarship only in recent years. Following an overview of the approaches of Elliot Wolfson and Moshe Idel, the discussion focuses on two forms of “eternal present” in modern kabbalah: That of the individual “redemption of the soul” (found especially in Hasidic texts) and that of the redemption of the national psyche, most developed within the school of R. Kook. A third form, the dreamtime, bridges the pre-modern and modern periods. Throughout, the kabbalistic notions are compared to post-Jungian psychoanalytic approaches, as in the works of Hillman and Giegrich.

1

The Theoretical Framework

Certainly since R. B. Onians and Mircea Eliade, time has been one of the central concerns of Religious Studies. The 1951 Eranos conference on “Man and Time” was a clear landmark in the development of the more mythical-mystical aspects of this preoccupation.1 However it was only in 2006 that the ijirst book-length study of time in Jewish mysticism appeared, with the publication of Elliot Wolfson’s Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies as Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death. As I shall exemplify soon, many of the Jewish and non-Jewish foundational texts discussed in this far-ranging work posit a close connection between the soul and time. It is this connection, perceived as emerging from the depth, or using Wolfson’s term, “truth” of these two realms, that informs the ijirst part of my title, soul time. The term ‘soul time’ entered popular discourse in the soul-jazz album under this title by

*

My gratitude to the Gershom Scholem Endowment Fund for Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah Studies, for facilitating the research for this article. 1  Corbin (ed.), Man and Time.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004290310_011

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Bobby Timmons, and is highly prevalent in New Age culture, thus belonging to what Michel Foucault termed “the heart of the present.”2 The second part of my own title, modern kabbalah, is related to one of the main reasons for the relative marginality of time in twentieth-century Kabbalah Studies, especially as compared with Religious Studies: The concept of history, and speciijically Jewish history, occupied its conceptual space. In this sense, Kabbalah Studies achieves not only its independence, but also a place in its universalistic, and what I personally see as more beneijicial neighborhood, that of Religious Studies. It does this through gradual and partial liberation—in the last two decades of the twentieth century—from the historicist paradigm in Jewish Studies. The direction of liberation offered here is through psychology, which shifts the focus from external, historical time to Henri Bergson’s duration (la durée), or inner, qualitative, and simultaneous time. However, this investigation should not take place in isolation from historical study. The scholarly moves described now at the turn of the millennium, just like Bergson’s philosophical move and the psychoanalytic moves to be described below, all took place within historical moments. Nevertheless, historicism shall be subsidiary to my main argument. Indeed, my claim is that the philosophical and psychological views presented here, just like historicism, are products of modernity. Wolfgang Giegrich, a master of philosophical-psychological thought, has persuasively claimed that modernity is not merely a historical process, but a psychological one that takes place through the soul. If the soul is indeed deeply temporal (just as time is deeply psychological), it cannot but be historical; yet this very insight requires us to think differently of history itself. As is well known, the move beyond historicism was greatly advanced by the studies of Moshe Idel, as exempliijied in his critiques of one of the main proponents of the Jewish historical paradigm, Hayyim Yosef Yerushalmi.3 Beyond his response to Yerushalmi, which from its outset aimed for a greater integration of kabbalah research into Religious Studies, Idel’s non-historicist investigation of time is best found in an article that follows the pattern that is seen in Wolfson’s title and my own here, of considering time in relationship to other concepts; in this case, that concept is the Sabbath. The Sabbath here is a concentrated manifestation of an entire realm that has been neglected in the historicist paradigm (here I am somewhat inserting my own terminology): the nomian, or the cyclical, non-historical, microchronos of frequently recurring experiences of plenitude, created through ritual. In his discussion, Idel 2  Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau, especially 9, on soul as the locus of temporality. One should also mention the theoretical discussions of time in Jewish mysticism in Pedaya, Nahmanides. 3  Idel, “Some Concepts of Time;” idem, “Yosef H. Yerushalmi’s Zakhor.”

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notes that these experiences include that of the return of the soul to its source, which is another cyclical move. In a strongly, though not explicitly, psychological or internalizing move, Idel notes that in some texts, the very category of time is a projection of inner experience.4 Such texts then remind us of Ralph Waldo Emerson in his “Over-Soul”: “Time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul.”5 Idel’s nomian model of the time-soul relationship, though not the only one in modern kabbalah, balances the more universalistic and comparative move into psychology offered here. Having briefly framed what is to come and the general approach within the history of scholarship that guides it, I would like to present the central philosophical and psychological idea with which I shall be working. I will then proceed to consider its diverse manifestations in modern kabbalah. Following discussions of the soul as the place of time by Augustine—to whose psychology William B. Parsons has recently dedicated a ground-breaking book6—Wolfson has pointed at the paradoxical temporalization of the eternal and eternalization of the temporal, thereby problematizing any sharp distinction between time and eternity. This opens the possibility for the presence of a radically different present—not a median and ephemeral phase in a linear progression from the past to the future, but rather a deeply full experience, as deep and full as the true fullness of time itself, as ever-recurring. Wolfson then unfolds this understanding of time through numerous Jewish mystical texts that, in his persuasive reading, describe the “secret of eternality” of the higher divine realm, not as being in opposition to temporality, but rather as “a more subtle manifestation of time,” as timeless time.7 A year prior to Alef, Mem, Tau, Wolfson had published an extensive discussion of time in a much larger work, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination. This work contains a profound critique of the latent assumptions informing historicist approaches, such as the linear, sequential 4  Idel, “Sabbath.” For the theoretical model, see especially 60 and 89. For the soul, see 77–80 and 85–86. Compare to idem, “Some Concepts of Time,” 153–54, 157–60, 177–78. Here and elsewhere (especially in idem, Enchanted Chains), Idel has transferred his earlier axis of technique leading to experience (e.g. in idem, Kabbalah: New Perspectives) to that of ritual leading to experience. Compare also to Wolfson, Alef, Mem Tau, 58 on ritual. On Idel’s approach, see Garb, “Moshe Idel’s Contribution;” idem, “Moshe Idel;” and cf. with idem, “Mystics’ Critique” and idem, Shamanic Trance. 5  Emerson, “The Over-Soul.” 6  Parsons, Freud and Augustine (see especially 38 on the soul in Augustine and his Platonic sources). Besides the discussion cited in n. 1, see also Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau, 8, 11 and compare to idem, 3, 13 on Plotinus, (and 15 on Proclus). 7  See Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau, 92.

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nature of time. Wolfson boldly poses the following question: “What would be the consequences if a historian were to take seriously the conclusion reached on the basis of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that spacetime . . . is to be regarded as a curve? Does this does not at least entail the possibility that the past is as much determined by the present as the present by the past?”8 Space does not permit engaging the working out of Wolfson’s reflection. However. one should note a subtle difference between his two major discussions of time: In his earlier work, the focus is on the effect of the present on the past, or the manner in which the past “may swerve its way curvilinearly, future awaiting its past, past becoming its future,” while in the slightly later work, the emphasis is on what one might describe as the eternal present, or more accurately, as atemporal temporality. This being said, one might wonder if the framing of the two discussions as “earlier” and “later” does truth to Wolfson’s challenge to such linear sequencing, especially of his own work.9 However, this comparison does enable the observation that Wolfson’s reflection on time in Alef, Mem, Tau resonates more with discussions of mythical, pre-modern time in the works of the leading post-Jungian thinker, Wolfgang Giegrich. In the latter’s recent book, The Flight into the Unconscious: An Analysis of C. G. Jung’s Psychology Project, Giegrich follows Jung in describing tradition itself as the eternal present.10 However, I must take issue with both of these psychologists in claiming that modernity is not a clean break with this mythical consciousness, but rather includes mystical modernity, in which the eternal present persists in new forms. Here I am also reijining my earlier argument: Inasmuch as modernity transformed the soul’s self-perception, this took multiple forms. This can be seen in the idea of the plural psyche, which is central to both kabbalah and Jungian thought, and in the model of “multiple modernities.”11 Following this line of inquiry, I shall examine two forms of modern kabbalah, in which ideas related to the ‘eternal present’, alongside other conceptions of time, both continue more mythical modes of thought and subtly transform them.

8  9  10 

11 

Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, xvii and compare to xxvi and idem, Open Secret, 21–24. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, xx. Giegrich, The Flight into the Unconscious, 182. See also idem, The Neurosis of Psychology: Primary Papers Towards a Critical Psychology, 62, 240; idem, D. L. Miller, G. Mogenson (eds.), Dialectics and Analytical Psychology, 45. Eisenstadt, Comparative Civilizations.

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155

Two Forms of Eternal Present in Modern Kabbalah

When considering soul and time in kabbalah, the most obvious association is reincarnation, clearly belonging to a cyclical model of time that Eliade strangely saw as absent in Jewish thought.12 In a masterly book on the Renaissance, Brian Ogren has described one of the important chapters of the history of Kabbalistic psychology in transition to Kabbalistic modernity, and has detailed the interest in reincarnation. He has pointed at the later peak in Safedian interest in the individual souls of contemporary kabbalists, as well as the interest in seventeenth-century Amsterdam in the issue of the souls of the conversos. This focus on ‘the contemporary’ can be seen as another sign of the beginning of modernity.13 However, with the progression of modern kabbalah, this interest gradually decreased, giving way to two alternatives: The ijirst is that of the ‘redemption of the soul’ in one lifetime and the other, national model shall be discussed below. The model of individual redemption of the soul overlaps with that of quotidian, thus mostly nomian messianism, as discussed by Idel in his Messianic Mystics. Hasidism, which largely avoided discussions of reincarnation, especially held to this model.14 Part of this increased interest in the ‘microchronos’ was an intensive discourse on the state of the soul during the yearly cycle.15 I wish to illustrate the range of ideas surrounding this theme through three texts from the “long nineteenth century.” In the introduction to his Bnei Yissaskhar, R. Tzevi Elimelekh Shapira of Dinov writes that the soul feels the “friendly, delicious, pleasant flow of the influx of holiness” according to the seder zemanim, i.e., the “order of times,” which here is re-interpreted as annual and nomian, and is not representative of cosmic time. He goes on to expand on the “joy of the soul that delights in the holiness of the delicious light.”16 The sense of the eternal, simultaneous present, though different from this cyclical move, blended better with it than with any linear, historical sense of time. This is especially clear once the focus zooms in to one day, as happens in many Hasidic discourses on the Biblical verses containing the word ha-yom, i.e., “today.”

12  13  14  15  16 

See Idel, Mircea Eliade, especially 135–156 for his critique of Eliade’s views of Judaism and time. Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth, 291, 294. Idel, Messianic Mystics, 222–24, 233, 235 (and see also 230, 232, on souls in this model, as well as 283 on cyclical and historical time). See also idem, “Sabbath,” 87–88. Garb, Shamanic Trance, 132–135. Shapira, Bnei Yissakhar, vol. 1, unpaginated introduction.

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It is worth elaborating on this theme through a discussion of a lengthy discourse on space and time by R. Dov Baer Shneuri, the second Rebbe of the Ḥabad-Lubavitch lineage: In the introduction to his Imrei Binah, one of the deepest and least-researched works of this proliijic dynasty, he discusses the connection through prayer of the essence of the soul and self to the inijinite source. He compares this goal to the aspiration to emulate the union of God’s attributes, or the Seijirot, with His inijinite essence. At this level, the days and years that correspond to these attributes become “completely and entirely limitless.” In my reading, R. Shneuri is evoking a state of consciousness in which temporality discards its imitated nature, thus becoming a form of atemporal temporality, echoed in the Talmudic term that he constantly refers to: “A day that is entirely long.”17 He goes on to say that at this level, where the souls are rooted in God’s essence, “time is also eternal.” I believe that this interpretation tallies well with Wolfson’s discussion of the eschatological vision of the seventh Ḥabad Rebbe, R. Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson, as entailing “the transijiguration of the spatiotemporal reality so that it no longer delimits or conceals the essence beyond space and time.”18 A subtle parallel to this idea may be found in an even more strongly nomian, yet less theoretical text by a colleague of R. Shneuri’s father, R. Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, namely, R. Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir. Referring to the Zoharic description of the lowest of the Seijirot, Malkhut, this Hasidic leader writes that time itself has nothing of its own. Therefore, it is only the divine worship performed every day that uplifts various times to their supernal source. In that rectiijied state, all times rest in undifferentiated unity. Thus, each member of the Jewish people should unify all of his moments by restoring them to this primal, undifferentiated state.19 The two texts, inspired by the same ‘root teacher’, R. Dov Baer of Mezeritch, describe a return of time to the source, a description reminiscent of the Neo-Platonic vision of the restoration of the soul to its root. Such a reading is certainly borne out in the case of R. Shneuri. Surprisingly, however, the idea of the eternal present also joined the abovementioned second move away from an interest in reincarnation, namely, the growing concern with the national psyche. It is customary to view the thinkers who developed Kabbalistic national psychology, most prominently the early

17  18 

19 

bt Qiddushin fol. 39b. Shneuri, Imrei Binah, fols. 6a and 7a; Wolfson, Open Secret, 122. Compare to R. Shneuri’s successor, R. Menahem Mendel Schneerson (the ‘Ṣemaḥ Ṣedeq’), Derekh Miṣvotekha, fol. 59a as well as the sources cited in Morgenstern, Yam Ha-Hokhma 5769, 84–85. Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir, Or Ha-Meir, vol. 1, 73.

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twentieth century Rabbi Kook, as concerned with ‘historiosophy’.20 However, I wish to show that the national form of messianism espoused by the school of Rabbi Kook actually aspires to the eternal present of the national soul, rather than seeking a mere historical resolution of the Jewish fate. Here I am also attempting to correct the standard interpretation of the school as being centered on the idea of territory. I propose a move from sacred space to sacred time, as in my book on twentieth-century kabbalah, I moved from sacred space to the sacred individual, or saint. Out of a wealth of texts from the school of Rabbi Kook, I shall bring but four: One is from his commentary on prayer, ‘Olat Rei’a. There R. Kook describes tehila, or praise, as: “the internal recognition that the good influx and source of life flow ceaselessly, and all that is exalted . . . beautiful . . . is in truth with no delay, and complete constancy (temidut) with no intermission of time . . . this is the supernal enlightenment.”21 A parallel text printed a bit later in the same collection refers explicitly to the soul: “In the connection of life with divine eternity, nothing passes, all exists. And all days stand always . . . and all that is done in them stands and shines, and satisijies the soul with light.”22 The third text is highly revealing, as it discusses prophecy, a level that R. Kook himself felt that he had attained, as I claim in my above-mentioned book: “The prophets’ ability to know the future is due to time being but one of the modalities of human reason, so that anything that will be is already present.”23 Reading forward from these texts, R. Kook’s messianism was closely allied to his prophetic consciousness and was not concerned with the hastening of a future state, as some of his disciples had it. Rather, it was concerned with the collective, and thus both mystical and political, realization of the eternal present. The ijinal goal of prophecy is the speculum that shines, of which he writes: “For divinity, time is eternal, and thus it is not time . . . anything that

20  21  22  23 

On soul, time, and history in Lithuanian kabbalah, see Garb, Yearnings of the Soul. Kook, Olat Rei’ah, vol. 2, 62 and compare to the text on sexuality in vol. 3, 299. Ibid., 78, and compare to vol. 2, 373. Idem, Letters, vol. 2, 38 (no. 378) and see also idem, Orot ha-Qodesh, vol. 1, 147 on the Holy Spirit enabling the righteous to see the future in the light of the present and to enliven the present in the light of the future, tasting the pleasantness of the World to Come in this world, and compare to vol. 3, 501, 504.

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manifests in time . . . is the speculum that does not shine, that receives from eternity . . . the speculum that shines.”24 I would posit that R. Kook and R. Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was of Hasidic origin, are two of the more traditionally Jewish twentieth-century ijigures who prominently foregrounded the concept of eternity. Similar to R. Kook’s poetic locution, Heschel writes: “The essence of the temporal is the eternal, the moment is an image of eternity in an inijinite mosaic.”25 The thread running through R. Kook’s texts is strengthened, as it were, in recently published diary notes by his close associate R. Yaakov Moshe Ḥarlap. This Kabbalist writes that we look to the future because it discloses the eternal nature of the present, as the present in holiness is always eternal. Indeed, all the blemishes of the individual and collective arise from dissatisfaction with the present, so that efforts should be directed at enjoying the present (a rather Buddhist, even Tantric formulation!). Elsewhere, he explicitly states that the notion of past and future are a great flaw in the depth of the height of the soul of Israel, which is above time. This is related to the name havaya (YHWH), that, as he wrote in the previous passage, denotes the present as transcending the smallness of seder zemanim, the order of times. By opposing this locution to the Hasidic text that use this term, we can discern an approach that is particularistic, yet subtly antinomian or—perhaps more accurately—hypernomian.26

3

The Time of the Dream

I would now like to provide a control group by entering a realm that, perhaps due to its very nature, does not reveal a marked difference between modern and pre-modern views: the dream. In his The Dream and the Underworld, my late lamented pen-pal James Hillman, Giegrich’s intellectual sparring partner, writes of the tendency of dreams to induce a sense that time is coming to a stop.27 For Hillman, the dream is the realm in which the soul comes into its own; its logic is that of the soul. The space, the inscape of the dream is

24  25  26 

27 

Ibid., vol. 2, 527 (see also vol. 1, 128, 226–27, 242 and Wolfson, Through a Speculum, for the history and phenomenology of this image). Heschel, Man is not Alone, 109. See also 46, 112 and idem, The Sabbath, 48, as well as Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift, 58–59. Ḥarlap, Mei Marom, vol. 18, 365, 404. For antinomian views in this circle see Garb, The Chosen will Become Herds. On the question of hypernomianism in R. Kook’s writing, see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond 236 n. 174, 284–85. Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld, 155–59.

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the underworld, the ijinal end, the telos, of the soul. This accounts for the strange temporality of the dream, for there is no time in the underworld. As Wolfson puts it, “death reveals the truthfulness of time,” or as Hillman earlier described soul in a reworking of a series of yet earlier deijinitions, such as one that describes soul as that which is communicated in love and has a religious concern, “the signiijicance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death.”28 This bold move reverses Freudian interpretation of the dream in light of day, in light of the day-world. Freud put his idea in strongly temporal terms: “Every dream without any possible exception goes back to the impression of the past few days.”29 Yet for Hillman, the daily life of the soul should be interpreted according to the logic of the dream-world. One should join this reversal of temporality to the book that he dedicated to the soul, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling. There Hillman claims that childhood should be interpreted through the entire life-course, rather than reducing the later to the earlier. Indeed, in a companion volume, The Force of Character, Hillman, like Wolfson, returns to Plotinus’ views of soul and time in voicing the soul’s longing to break out of clock time and to “ijind again a moment of utopia” by turning towards the eternal in this moment.30 Also in contradistinction to Freud, and like a good revolutionary, Michel Foucault describes the dream as declaring the future rather than reviving the past. This is discussed by Wolfson in his A Dream Interpreted Within the Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination. Following an important observation by Wolfson on the phenomenology of the dream as neither absent nor present, I would argue that like the messianic state, the dream is the eternal present, and as such, is not the present as usually perceived in the linear mode of the waking state.31 I would like to illustrate the role of the dream in understanding divine time, or messianic time that is not time, through a teaching of R. Naḥman of Braslav: In a teaching entitled “God, blessed be He is above time,” he writes that as the intellect grows, time becomes smaller. An example of this is the dream, in

28 

29  30  31 

Wolfson, Alef, Mem Tau, 162, commenting on the Zohar; Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, x (the italics are in the original). Looking back to Wolfson’s discussion of “the secret of eternality,” one should note another of Hillman’s earlier descriptions: “The soul not only has secrets but is itself a secret” (idem, Insearch, 32). Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, quoted in Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld, 9. Hillman, The Soul’s Code, especially 6–7; idem, The Force of Character, 126–8. See Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted within a Dream, 138, 109 (and 216) respectively.

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which the intellect is removed and there is only the imagination. In this state, a very short time can become a lifetime, and then on awakening, the lifetime again becomes a very short time.32 As is R Nahman’s wont, this seemingly rationalistic view is then immediately deconstructed. He writes that for the intellect above our own, our own lifetime is also less than a quarter of an hour; yet we do not understand this, just as a dreamer would not if told that his lifetime is so short. Eventually, one attains a ‘high intellect’ in which time is nothingness—ayin ve-efes legamrei. This paradoxical time of no-time can be accessed by the Messiah, which was a status to which R. Naḥman himself aspired. For the Messiah, the dream of the exile, as exempliijied by the biblical phrase “we shall be as dreamers (Psalms 126, 1),” is also nothingness. The importance of this teaching in R. Naḥman’s spiritual development and heritage can be gauged from the following statement by his main student, R. Nathan Sternharz of Nemirov: “The main hope is through the aspect of that which is above time that is attained by the righteous who partake in the aspect of the Messiah, as I understood from his [R. Naḥman’s] holy mouth, when he said near his departure that he walks now only with this teaching . . . that is the aspect of that which is above time, and this matter cannot be explained at all in writing.”33 Towards the end of his mystical career, when he saw himself as having achieved a Messianic attainment, R. Nahman focused his inner work and esoteric transmission on this teaching. I believe that a possible pre-modern source for the rationalistic part of R. Naḥman’s discourse can be found in the fourteenth-century philosophical Spanish text, Magen Avot, by R. Shimeon ben Zemaḥ Duran (Rashbaz). In this text, he quotes “the philosophers” as describing trance states of “divine people” in the land of Rhodes who are in a sleep-like state (nishka’im be-sheina) and who adhere to the divine intellect.34 Rashbaz writes that due to their motionless state, these “divine people” do not feel the passage of time. He uses this example to explain the rabbinical tale of Honi the circle drawer, for whom seventy years were as one night’s sleep, as he was unaffected by time. He then applies this idea to the continuous presence of Elijah, who is “above time.”

32  33 

34 

Sternharz (ed.), Liqqutei Moharan, part 2, paragraph 61. Sternharz, Liqqutei Halakhot, vol. 5, fol. 80b (Milah, paragraph 4, and see throughout for a clear parallel in one of R. Naḥman’s tales and for R. Sternharz’s own elaboration on this theme). See also idem, vol. 3, fols. 211a–b (Rosh ha-Shanah, paragraph 4). Duran, Magen Avot, 420 (my thanks to Ori Meitlis for calling my attention to this text). For time distortion in trance, see Schor, “Influence of our Teacher,” 139 n. 33.

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It remains to be investigated to which men of Rhodes he is referring; these are possibly Hesychasts or other monastic mystics.

4

Coda

Having touched on philosophy, history and psychology, I wish to visit a fourth realm in conclusion—poetics. Through several avenues, we have already visited the meeting-point of time, the soul and redemption. One of the strongest kabbalistic poetic statements on the soul and, following Hillman’s approach, of the soul, is yedid nefesh, friend of the soul, by R. El‘azar Azikri, who took part in the great revolution of modern kabbalah in the sixteenth-century Galilee. The poem is sung in liminal times, such as the entry or exit of the Sabbath, and reflects a desire to speed up time. This is especially noticeable in the concluding stanza, which expresses the desire for full, redemptive, disclosure: “hurry and love, for the designated time35 has come.”36 Following my reading of R. Naḥman, speed here refers to the acceleration of time as it draws to its climax or consummation, when it will be revealed in its apparent ending as nontime just as much as it is time. Furthermore, drawing in the dream, one should evoke T. S. Eliot in his poem “Ash Wednesday”: “Redeem the time, redeem the dream.”37 From poetry to fantasy, one can also evoke Tolkien, on Rivendell: “Time doesn’t seem to pass here, it just is.”38 Did not Tolkien write, in his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” that such stories awaken the desire to “survey the depths of space and time”39 in a child who is otherwise less habituated to habitual frames of reference?

35  36  37  38  39 

mo‘ed, also festival, perhaps reflecting an intention for a liturgical use similar to that adopted by worshippers. On speed and modernity, see Virilio, Speed and Politics. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday.” Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, vol. 1, 222. Idem, The Tolkien Reader, 41.

CHAPTER 11

Time, Eternity and Mystical Experience in Kabbalah Adam Afterman

Abstract In this article, I focus on the nexus between mystical cleaving, unio mystica, and the experience of time in several Kabbalistic sources. First, I examine the philosophical mysticism of the thirteenth-century Jewish mystic Abraham Abulaijia, in which union with God happens above and beyond time. The second mystical system I will turn to is that of classic theosophical kabbalah as represented in the Zohar, in which sacred time is the focus of mystical cleaving and union with the divine. In my view, this distinction marks a substantial difference in the religious experience that each mystical path has to offer.

Time is a key component of human experience, including of the religious type. When analyzing religious, and in particular religious-mystical experiences, the modalities of the perception of time become even more important; often they are central to the religious experience itself. For some of the Jewish mystics to be discussed below, the mystical dynamic is that of a movement of escape from the burden of the perception of time towards eternity; yet, for others, time, and speciijically “sacred time,” lies at the focal point of the mystical encounter with the divine. The experience of time in Jewish mysticism, and in particular, the experience of “sacred” time and eternity in Jewish mystical sources has been the subject of several important discussions.1 I wish to focus here on the 1  See: Elliot Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death, University of California Press, Berkeley 2006; Elliot Wolfson, “From Sealed Book to Open Text: Time, Memory, and Narrativity in Kabbalistic Hermeneutics,” in Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age, ed. by Steven Kepnes (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 145–178; Elliot Wolfson, “The Cut That Binds: Time, Memory, and the Ascetic Impulse,” in God’s Voice from the Void; Old and New Studies in Bratslav Hasidism, ed. by Shaul Magid, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 103–154; Elliot Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence: Angelic Embodiment and the Alterity of Time in Abraham

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004290310_012

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nexus between mystical cleaving, unio mystica, and the experience of time in several kabbalistic sources. To this end, I will compare two different Jewish mystical systems and I will examine the place given to time—in particular sacred time—in each system. Finally, I will examine the way in which time is associated with mystical cleaving and unio mystica in each of those systems. First, I wish to examine the philosophical mysticism of the thirteenthcentury Jewish mystic Abraham Abulaijia, in which union with God ensues above and beyond time.2 The second mystical system that I will turn to is that of classic theosophical kabbalah, particularly the Zohar, in which sacred time is the focus of mystical cleaving to and union with the divine. While both mystical systems promote mystical experience and spiritual empowerment, including the much desired cleaving to and mystical union with the divine,3 there is a fundamental difference in their respective approaches to the perception and experience of time. The ijirst type of mystical union, the “philosophical union” of Abulaijia, includes a static union in the midst of Eternity, while the “theosophical union” is a much more dynamic type of mystical cleaving to hypostatical or theosophical time. In my view, this distinction marks a substantial difference in the religious experience that each mystical path has to offer. In the following, I wish to examine how these different approaches to time impact the ways in which each mystical path articulates its respective understanding of mystical experience and the ideal mystical state. Since Philo introduced the religious ideal of unio mystica for the ijirst time,4 Jewish mystics have articulated different ideals of mystical union, drawing on

Abulaijia,” Kabbalah, 18 (2008): 133–190; Elliot Wolfson, “Undoing Time and Syntax of the Dream Interlude: a Phenomenological Reading of ‘Zohar’ 1:199a–200a,” Kabbalah, 22 (2010): 33–57; Moshe Idel, “Some Concepts of Time and History in Kabbalah,” in Jewish History and Jewish Memory; Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. by Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, David N. Myers (Hanover, nh: University Press of New England; Brandeis University Press, 1998), 153–188; Moshe Idel, “Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish Mysticism,” in Sabbath—Idea, History, Reality, ed. by Gerald J. Blidstein (Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2004), 57–93. 2  For an alternative reading of the mystical experience of time in Abulaijia’s ecstatic Kabbalah, see the important article by Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow,” 177–190. 3  See: Adam Afterman, Devequt: Mystical Intimacy in Medieval Jewish Thought (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2011) (Hebrew); Wolfson, ‘Kenotic Overflow’, 175–176; Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Abulaijia-Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy and Theurgy (Los Angeles, Cherub Press,2000), 55–57. 4  See: Adam, Afterman, “From Philo to Plotinus: The Emergence of Mystical Union,” The Journal of Religion 93.2 (2013): 177–196.

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various syntheses of Judaism with Platonism and Neoaristotelian philosophy.5 As part of this religious-philosophical tradition, God is considered to be transcendent above and beyond time and space, and in this way beyond all categories of change. The religious impulse of coming close to God was interpreted in philosophical and mystical categories that focused on the escape of the human soul or mind from embodiment in time, which ultimately meant reaching the transcendent and eternal planes that are associated with the divine. Drawing on philosophical sources, the Jewish mystical tradition holds that becoming one with God is conditioned on transcending all categories of change, including time, for the sake of reaching unity with eternity. Philo, for example, interpreted the biblical commandment to “cleave to God” and the religious ideal of “standing next to God” as the movement towards transcendence; thus, his religious path is designed, at least in some rare cases, to initiate a movement of transcendence that will eventually lead to an unmediated union with the One.6 What has become increasingly clear in recent years is the extent to which Platonic philosophy influenced the development of medieval Judaism, and in particular its mystical trends, including kabbalah.7 It is also well known that the Neoplatonists were deeply interested in the phenomena of time and space. Their varying, even contradictory approaches—to briefly be presented below—ijiltered into medieval Jewish mysticism, where they can be located in two divergent approaches to time. In his essay “On Eternity and Time,” Plotinus deijines eternity as “the life which belongs to that which exists and is in being, all together and full, completely without extension or interval” (iii 7 (45). 3, 36–8); time, in contrast, is “the life of soul in the movement of passage from one mode of life to another” (iii 7.11, 43–5). Time comes into existence at the level of the universal Soul as the ‘image of eternity’. Accordingly, the Soul, in producing the sensible world, unfolds in successive stages that, at the level above in the Nous, are present all together without temporal interval. As part of Plotinus’s distinction between the intelligible and the sensible, the sensible world is expressed in spatial extension and, most importantly, in its expansion in time. The sensible realm is the unreal, changeable “image” of the intelligible world, which by contrast is in the realm of the real, unchanging, non-spatial true being that exists “out of time.” In classic Neoplatonism, eternity is not a mode of time but rather the true being that exists in direct contrast to time. Time then seems to be a “fallen 5  See: Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 59–73; Moshe Idel, Enchanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005), 4–26. 6  See: Afterman, “From Philo to Plotinus.” 7  See for example: Afterman, Devequt; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 42–46.

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state” of eternity.8 The contrast between time and eternity stands at the heart of the spiritual transformation derived from classic Neoplatonism: the shift from time to eternity is a shift from multiplicity and movement towards unity and union with the One, which is Eternity. In this context, a return to “eternity” and true being is at once the process of standing apart from change and movement, as well as the process of regaining the unity that exists beyond the material life of the human soul. Because time contradicts unity, the mystical dynamics that ultimately lead to the union with the One negate time. This classic antithesis of moving time and immobile Eternity9 had a profound impact on the understanding of time and eternity in medieval Jewish mysticism, including the unitive mysticism of Abraham Abulaijia and other mystics working within the Neoaristotelian and early Neoplatonic paradigms of time. Abulaijia’s mysticism of union should be read in light of the Neoaristotelian philosophical tradition,10 including thirteenth-century Jewish and Arab Averroism,11 which associates the active intellect with the eternal. In several of his writings, Averroes refers to the active intellect as the “eternal intellect” and “eternal reality;”12 Abulaijia makes use of this term in several of his writings as well.13 Because the active intellect is “eternal,” in those rare moments of union with the intellect, and even more so with God, the mystic transcends time and reaches eternal existence. “Eternity” is then identiijied with the religiously charged concept of the “life of the world to come.” This and other states associated with the eschatological life are considered to be private mystical states achievable here and now.14 In several discussions Abulaijia follows this tradition, asserting that cleaving to the active intellect, and even a mystical union with God, are possible in this world.15 As for ibn Tufayl, Abulaijia promotes union with the ijirst cause, i.e. God, in certain circumstances. As part of the more radical Neoaristotelian tradition, these views stand in contrast to 8  9  10 

11  12  13  14  15 

See: Wolfson, Alef Mem Tau, 13–15. See the discussion by Shlomo Pines in: The Concept of Time in Late Neo-Platonism, Texts With Translation, Introduction and Notes by S. Sambursky and S. Pines (Jerusalem, 1987), 10. On Abulaijia’s philosophical sources, see the detailed discussion by Moshe Idel, Secrets and Pearls: On Abraham Abulaijia’s Esotericism (forthcoming); Moshe Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulaijia (New York, 1988), 124–134; Moshe Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (New York, 1988), 1–31; Moshe Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven, 1998), 58–100. See: Idel, The Mystical Experience, 74–75; 125–126; Wolfson, Abraham Abulaijia, 184–185. See: Ibn Rushd’s Metaphysics: a Translation with Introduction of Ibn Rushd’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book Lam, by Charles Genequand (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 50, 65. See: Idel, The Mystical Experience, 125–126. See: Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow,” 175–176. Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 1–31.

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those of Al-Farabi and Maimonides, to the extent that the latter tend to question the feasibility of full union with the intellect; consequently, they deny the possibility of union with God, or even with the active intellect.16 Although Neoaristotelian philosophers differ in regard to the possibility of cleaving to and uniting with the active intellect and God,17 they all understand time and eternity as a dichotomy, resulting in a contemplative path (sometimes mystical) that negates time and desires eternity. For Averroes, Maimonides18 and Abulaijia alike, time and divinity exist in opposition to each other. Time cannot be holy, but rather it is an obstacle to be overcome in order for one to reach the true divine being. I believe this point deserves to be emphasized; we shall see how, in the resulting frameworks, the idea of sacred time has no place conceptually or experientially. Such is the case in Abulaijia’s Neoaristotelian mystical path,19 where the movement towards mystical union and mystical cleaving is a private odyssey of the intellect back to its origin. Experienced as an intense shift in the modalities of the perception of time, this path sees the practitioner overcome time and thus become one with eternity. For Abulaijia, the religious ideas related to sacred time are “hints,” or symbols of what lays beyond human, material existence, i.e., the pure eternal divinity. The contrast between human, material existence and the eternal “life of the after world” is sharp, and institutionalized religion embodies the truth about the divine existence that lies beyond this world. For Abulaijia, eternity is the focus of mystical movement, while institutionalized ideas of sacred time merely hint at the more radical ideals that his mystical path pursues.

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See: Shlomo Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge According to Al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, I (1979), 82–109; Herbert Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge,” Maimonidean Studies 3 (1992–93), 92–98. For ibn Tufayl, for example, union with the ijirst cause is possible: See the discussion by Bernd Radtke, “How Can Man Reach the Mystical Union? Ibn Tufayl and the Divine Spark,” in The World of Ibn Tufayl, ed by L. I. Conrad (Leiden, 1996), 165–194; and Sami S. Hawi, Islamic Naturalism and Mysticism (Leiden, 1974), 232–235. For Maimonides, following Aristotle, time is created and there is nothing ontologically holy in time itself; See: Sara Klein-Braslavy, Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Story of Creation, Tel Aviv 1978 (Hebrew), 228–259. On Abraham Abulaijia’s mystical path, see: Idel, The Mystical Experience; Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah; Idel, Messianic Mystics, 58–100; Wolfson, Abraham Abulaijia; Wolfson, “Kenotic overflow”; Elliot Wolfson, “Abraham ben Samuel Abulaijia and the Prophetic Kabbalah,” in Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah; New Insights and Scholarship, ed. by Frederick E. Greenspahn (New York, 2011), 68–90.

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Abulaijia’s challenge is shared by other Jewish and Arab Neoaristotelian philosophers, like Maimonides. As part of a the wider synthesis of Judaism with different forms of Greek philosophy, we ijind the synthesis of the philosophical terms of “time” and “eternity” with rabbinical terms and concepts that had previously lacked a clear deijinition, such as “life of the world to come” (Hayyei ha-olam ha-ba), returning to or reentering the Garden of Eden\Paradise,20 and other eschatological and messianic states.21 The transition from the perception of normal “human” time to the experience of eternity is a radical shift that is then interpreted in light of traditional Jewish terms relating to the achievement of private eschatological or pre-eschatological states. In the case of Abulaijia, reaching union with the noetic metaphysical realm, and ultimately with God, is the experience of eternity associated with the religious vocabulary of the life of the world to come. In his Ozar Eden Ganuz, Abulaijia writes: And concerning this it says in the Torah, And you who cleave to the Lord your God are still living this day; and this is the matter of which they said, “And cleave to Him,”; “And to Him you shall cleave”, for that cleaving brings about the essential intention, which is eternal life for man, like the life of God, to whom he cleaves.”22 Abulaijia interprets the biblical commandment to cleave to God in terms of spiritual union with the active intellect and ultimately with the ijirst cause. The fact that the Torah already correlates its ideal of devequt (mystical cleaving to Abulaijia) with the ideal of “eternal life” is reflected in the term “this day.” The words “this day” hint toward the eschatological eternity reachable here and now: For he is your life and length of your days [Deut 30:20] and it says You, who cleave to the Lord your God, are all alive this day [4:4]. The one who is not united to God does not live eternal life that is like ‘this day’ (hayom), which is eternal (tamid), and thus the addition in the verse quoted “this day.”23

20  21  22  23 

See the detailed discussion by Moshe Idel, “On Paradise in Jewish Mysticism,” in The Cradle of Creativity, ed. by C. Ben Noon (Hod Hasharon 2004), 644–609 (Hebrew). See: Idel, Messianic Mystics, 58–84. Quoted and translated by Idel, The Mystical Experience, 125. Hayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba, 129.

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Through his realized human intellect, man reaches the moment of unio mystica and lives eternally. A similar idea appears in a source written by an anonymous student of Abulaijia: Whoever is drawn toward the vanities of temporality, his soul shall survive in the vanities of temporality; and whoever is drawn after the Name [of God] which we have cited, which is above temporality, his soul shall survive in the eternal [realm], beyond time, in God, may He be blessed.24 The mystical path ends with full mystical union with God. On the way to full unio mystica there are various stages of cleaving and uniting with the active intellect; these Abulaijia introduces as modes of prophecy. At the peak of the path, the entire noetic metaphysics of the “separate intellects” collapses, and man becomes one with the ijirst cause, the Tetragrammaton. In uniting with God and becoming one with the Tetragrammaton, man becomes one with eternity, as the Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton signify the unity of past, present and future, that is to say, the afterlife or the “time out of time.”25 Before I move on to the analysis of the experience of “sacred time” in theosophical kabbalah, I would like to turn briefly to concepts of sacred time in later Neoplatonism, as I believe these ideas impacted later developments in theosophical kabbalah. As shown above, it was the impact of Neoaristotelian and early Neoplatonic ideas that shaped the mystical path of Abulaijia in regard to time and eternity. Ideas of “sacred time” emerged only with the later Neoplatonists, who in contrast to Plotinus, developed ideas of higher planes of temporality that exist between normal or human time and eternity.26 In opposition to the more radical path of Abulaijia, in which one is required to transit or transform almost violently from the present to eternity, the alternative mystical path originating from Proclus advances toward eternity through a spectrum of mediated elements of sacred time. Instead of a radical shift that brings the “life of the after world” here and now, this alternative path allows for a more gradual experience of divine time that comes in-between or before absolute eternity. Unlike Plotinus and Aristotle, who “worked” only with the contrast of time and eternity, the later Neoplatonists developed the idea that time is a substance, or a hypostatic entity, unto itself. Iamblichus, at the beginning of the 24  25  26 

Quoted and translated by Idel, The Mystical Experience, 125. Compare to the detailed discussion by Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow,” 134–138, 175–178. See: The Concept of Time in Late Neo-Platonism, Texts with Translation, Introduction and Notes by S. Sambursky and S. Pines (Jerusalem 1987); Wolfson, Alef Mem Tau, 14–16.

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fourth century, was the ijirst to view time as a hypostatic entity of its own; he developed a system of hypostases that includes different grades of time emanating from eternity. As opposed to Plotinus, Iamblichus elevated time from the level of the universal soul to that of the divine intellect, while eternity was still above time in the purely divine realm.27 Iamblichus was the ijirst to identify and analyze the static quality of the time of the intellectual world. Like the essences that are part of the intellectual world, the time of the intellect is characterized as indivisible, permanent and stable, although it is not yet identiijied with eternity.28 In the middle of the ijifth century, Proclus added another layer which he called “intellectual time” or “primary time” or “invisible time;” it exists above the dynamic “participated time.”29 It is reported that Proclus argued further that “Time is not only intellect but also God,”30 and that “the most eminent theurgist have celebrated time also as a God.”31 After Proclus we ijind further attempts to theologize time and to identify the higher layers of time with the divine.32 This leads us to the theosophical kabbalah, which initially emerged in Spain in the thirteenth century, was developed more fully in sixteenth century, and received—in regard to the development of a theosophical understanding of time—its fullest development in the Palestinian kabbalah of Moses Cordovero.33 As in Proclus, the development of categories of divine time between transcendent eternity and mundane time is one of the characteristics of Kabbalistic theosophy. Proclus was known to kabbalists and Jewish philosophers in the thirteenth century,34 and I believe that the later Neoplatonic conceptions of higher planes of time were influential in the development of the Kabbalistic ideas of theosophical time. The inclusion of sacred time into the theosophy is one of the most signiijicant features of theosophical kabbalah. The dynamics of time, previously correlated only to celestial 27  28  29  30  31  32  33  34 

The Concept of Time in Late Neo-Platonism, 14. Ibid., 14. Ibid., 49–63. Ibid., 49. Ibid., 53. See the further discussion in: Ibid., 64–103. On Cordovero’s ideas of time see: Idel, “Sabbath,” 79–84; Wolfson, Alef Mem Tau, 62–63, 70,72–75, 78–83. On the impact of Proclus on Arab philosophy, see: Cristina D’Ancona, “Greek into Arabic: Neoplatonism in translation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, ed by P. Adamson and R. C. Taylor (Cambridge, 2005), 10–31; for a detailed discussion on the impact of Proclus on thirteen century kabbalah, see: Elke Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics (Tubingen, 2011), 153–160, 238–244, 276–282.

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dynamics or sublunary motions, were now projected from the complexities (usually erotic), dynamics and changes in the inner life of the godhead. We should certainly bear in mind that philosophy, with its fundamentally negative and monolithic approach to time, was not the only system informing medieval Jewish kabbalah. Later developments in Neoplatonic philosophy led to the articulation of a theology of time, while astrology viewed time as divided into segments that reflect the impact of celestial beings in addition to speciijic angels.35 In theosophical kabbalah, holy or hypostatical time was conceived to be the substance of the godhead, and therefore a range of segments or components of time were the focus of religious experience. Shabbat stands at the heart of classic kabbalah as the most important focus of “sacred time” and of experiential signiijicance for Jewish mystics.36 Shabbat offers unique possibilities for mystical encounters with the divine, as it is the time during which the divine and the human realm interact intimately. Shabbat is considered both a form of sacred time and a speciijic quality of the divine that is experienced exclusively on the appointed day. Two forms of experiencing the divine will be discussed below. Even before Judaism was enriched with the later Neoplatonic theories of time, ancient Jewish sources identify God with holy time and in particular with Shabbat.37 In the kabbalistic articulations of a dynamic godhead, the godhead is literally “made out” of holy time; the mystical path that leads to mystical union is thus focused on a wide range of mystical encounters with time as the energy, or substance of the divine. Sacred time, and in particular Shabbat, is here not only a major context in which mystical experience may take place, but is the actual content of the mystical encounter with the divine. This fundamental identiijication of God with sacred time, especially Shabbat, has its roots in antiquity; it is relatively developed in medieval and sixteenth-century theosophical kabbalah and, as briefly indicated above, also 35 

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In an anonymous Kabbalistic commentary to the prayer written in the circle of Abraham Abulaijia, we ijind the explicit connection between Shabbat, Saturn and Qaftziel the angel of divine anger; see: Adam Afterman, The Intentions of Prayers in Early Ecstatic Kabbalah (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2004), 228 (Hebrew); Idel, “Sabbath,” 61–67. Much has been written concerning the signiijicance of Shabbat in classical kabbalah: the following is just a short list: Elliot Ginsburg, The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah (Littman Library, second edition, Oxford 2008); Moshe Hallamish, Kabbalistic Customs of Shabbat (Jerusalem, 2006), (Hebrew), 17–43. See: Shlomo Pines, “Points of Similarity Between the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Seijirot in the Sefer Yeṣirah and a Text of the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies,” Proceedings / Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 7 (1989): 79–80, 96–97; Idel, “Sabbath,” 59 and note 4.

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has a parallel in Proclus’ theology of time. The absorption of time into the godhead was signiijied by the way the Kabbalist interpreted the biblical account of creation as a description of the unfolding of the divine itself. The process of emanation of the six “inner days,” as the Zohar puts it, was understood as the unfolding of the inner elements of the godhead that have continued to unfold since. Each day of creation is associated and identiijied with a different divine power. The six days of creation are identiijied with the lower aspects or potencies of the divine, and the seventh day, Shabbat, is associated with a higher source of being. Shabbat is identiijied as the higher and deeper point/fountain of light/spirit in the godhead, emanating/radiating its power and holiness into lower vessels and into history. A higher projection and state of relative harmony of the dynamic godhead, Shabbat is ultimately experienced in the human psyche. Through the absorption of the Jewish “life form”—including its complex rituals and sacred time— into the godhead, different segments of time were associated with different elements in the godhead. In this way, the idea of eschatological time, the world to come and eternity, were each identiijied with different theosophical powers and inner cyclical dynamics in the godhead. In turn, the cyclical dynamics of time were identiijied with the mental and spiritual cycles that characterize the spiritual and psychological life of God.38 Jewish ritual and prayer are attuned to these subtle changes in the divine. By performing the Jewish way of life, which is reflected in the godhead and performed in sacred time, the kabbalists participate in the inner life of the godhead. In this way, they share with God the joy and sadness, the moments of intimacy and of distance that He lives in His relationship with the people of Israel, who on a spiritual or metaphysical level are absorbed into the godhead and function as a divine persona. Because the human realm is an extension or a projection of the divine dynamics, there is an ongoing movement of emanation or power from the higher realms to the lower realms; this allows the enlightened or illuminated to be receptive to the different modes of power emanating in various forms of time from the godhead. Much of the theosophical teaching focuses on the nuances of dynamic “divine time” for two main purposes: ijirst, to effectively impact the higher dynamics through speciijic ritual that is performed during speciijic times, and second, to be ijit to receive and to cleave to the speciijic qualities of the divine power or Holy Spirit projected into the human realm. Shabbat is associated with a range of different elements in the godhead and with the Holy Spirit that descends from the godhead and dwells in the people of Israel during the Shabbat. The Zohar elaborates upon the notion that Shabbat 38 

See in detail Wolfson, Alef Mem Tau, 55–98.

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is a time in which Israel may experience the Holy Spirit and taste something of the higher form of time associated with the “world to come” and eternity: Sabbath is the secret of the gate by which someone enters to the life of the world to come because Sabbath is called the Grand Sabbath, and if one did not keep Sabbath in this world, he has no gate to enter to the World to Come, because Sabbath and the World to Come are designated by the same name39 The mystical process of reintegration into the godhead, cleaving to the godhead and the influx of the godhead, is a process of cleaving to and uniting with different aspects of divine time, which is understood to be the “time inside time,” or the “inner time” of the divinity that is shared with the assembly of Israel through the performance of ritual. The experiential aspects of cleaving to the spiritual powers of time that emanate from the divine are exempliijied in two major themes related to the Shabbat: the ijirst is the cleaving to Holy Spirit of Shabbat that emanates from the theosophical Shabbat; the second is the cleaving to the quality of the divine Shabbat through communion with the divine embodied in the three Shabbat meals. On Shabbat, those who are receptive experience the spirit of Shabbat known also as the “additional soul”—a holy soul that emanates from the higher theosophical Shabbat to man during the day of Shabbat. For a short while, a person may be elevated to the same rank that he will enjoy in “the world to come.” From the emergence of the kabbalah, we ijind that Shabbat is identiijied with the divine fountain of souls emanating influx onto the souls of Israel. During Shabbat, souls cleave to the Holy Spirit, which is identiijied as the spirit of Shabbat itself;40 emanating from the higher Shabbat, the spirit of Shabbat is identiijied as hypostatical time. In this way, divine time is the subject of mystical illumination. The important identiijication between the Holy Spirit, the Shabbat spirit and theosophical time is evident in many discussions in the Zohar and other thirteen century sources.41 From its creation, the seventh day has been invested with the Holy Spirit. Every Shabbat since the ijirst Shabbat has borne this quality of time and divinity, and the spirit of Shabbat is re-experienced weekly by those who are receptive. The higher divine Shabbat 39  40  41 

Gikatilla, Sod ha Shabbat, quoted and translated by Idel, “Sabbath,” 76. See for example Zohar 2:88b, where it is claimed that the additional soul “is called Shabbat.” See the discussion in Zohar, 2:200a–220b.

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emanates its life not only to the souls of Israel, but also to the lower seijirot, identiijied with mundane time—the six days of the week and the Shekhinah. Accordingly, secular time or history is not an empty form in which life unfolds, but rather a projection and an extension from the higher planes of time. Each day is a prism reflecting a speciijic quality of the higher time, and this quality changes throughout the day and night. It is on Shabbat that the time projected is of the highest quality, as it emanates through fewer ijilters and is experienced as a Holy Spirit dwelling in Israel. This projection during Shabbat is manifested in the form of spiritual energy known as the Holy Spirit; the higher state of harmony in the godhead allows the Shabbat spirit to descend directly through the different grades to the human realm. The additional soul allows those who keep Shabbat below to experience the three-fold Shabbat communion between the God of Israel, the assembly of Israel and the Shekhinah, which descends and cleaves to Israel during Shabbat. The Holy Spirit that descends upon Israel on Shabbat is itself an extension or an embodiment of the Shekhinah and of the higher Shabbat. In this way, Shabbat is experienced in all dimensions, both on the community level and on the personal level, through the spirit and joy42 that come through the embodiment of the divine Shabbat. Many kabbalists viewed the weekly halakhhic rituals as a mode of drawing sacred time into daily life during the week, much in the way that the Shabbat ritual is designed to draw, nourish and experience the Shabbat spirit or illumination. The second form of mystical experience of the Shabbat is associated with the Shabbat meals. Ritual meals are central to Judaism, and during Shabbat, a Jew is required to eat three meals. Eating during Shabbat is considered a form of spiritual eating, a manifestation of the eschatological consumption of divine light. The Shabbat meals offer a taste of the mystical eating in the “life to come” and are also associated with the eating of the manna in the desert.43 Ontologically, the meals on Shabbat embody the quality of the divine that manifests itself through the Shabbat, with each meal embodying a different persona of God. In this way, the Kabbalist may “consume” the quality of the divine light realized on the Shabbat as preparation for the eternal consumption, which is a mystical cleaving to the divine light in the “world to come.” Spiritual eating on Shabbat is a unique way of experiencing sacred time 42 

43 

The association of joy, Shabbat spirit which is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, is well articulated in early kabbalah, see: Haviva Pedaya, Vision and Speech: Models of Revelatory Experience in Jewish Mysticism (Los Angeles, Cherub Press, 2002), 158–207. See in detail: Joel Hacker, Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah (Detroit, 2005); Afterman, Devequt, 261–265.

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because the food embodies the same divine light, or spirit, which is associated with Shabbat. The eating of the “Shabbat” is possible only when the divine and human systems are elevated and in a relatively harmonious state. As the divine light or spirit associated with sacred time materializes into physical food, so too does the act of cleaving to the light manifest itself as spiritual eating. The spiritual eating during Shabbat represents the higher mystical cleaving associated with the eschatological Shabbat. Eating and sexual relations are considered to be on an elevated plane during Shabbat precisely because man, with all of his faculties, is elevated and spiritualized on Shabbat. This theory of mystical eating on Shabbat may fruitfully be compared to the ecstatic kabbalah, whose mystical path functions only with the dichotomy of time and eternity.44 Interestingly, we ijind a dense kabbalistic tradition associating the Shabbat meals with divine names and the entering into paradise in ecstatic kabbalah. Since the divine names are both utilized as the technique and perceived of as the substance of mystical union in this ecstatic kabbalah, it is possible that the concept of the three meals has a more metaphoric meaning here than in the theosophical kabbalah. I will ijirst quote one discussion by Abulaijia from his introduction to the mystical manual Hayye ha-‘Olam ha-Ba: The Intention of all these sacred names is to apprehend (lehasig— perhaps achieve) the three degrees, designated in our tradition as three meals known from the secret of haYom haYom haYom, as it is said “Gather it today for today is a Sabbath of the Lord” today you will not ijind it in the ijield “and the secret of the manna is the secret of the descending water and the descending dew”45 In his analysis of this text, Moshe Idel states that although Abulaijia writes about the three meals of Shabbat, the experience of devequt and union is beyond time and space.46 Despite the fact that Abulaijia is referring to holy space (“Paradise”)47 and holy time (“Shabbat”), his mystical system does not invest meaning into anything less than eternity, which is beyond any category of change and space. Therefore, in this context, paradise and Shabbat are but 44 

45  46  47 

Here I am following the detailed discussion by Moshe Idel on the meaning of Shabbat, and in particular the three meals for the ecstatic kabbalah; see Idel, “Sabbath,” 6, 7–74; Idel, “On Paradise,” 627–626. Quoted and translated by Idel, “Sabbath,” 70. Idel, “Sabbath,” 70. Idel, “On Paradise,” 626–627.

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metaphors for what is beyond time and space. The bliss of Shabbat—like that of Paradise and the Garden of Eden—may be experienced using the divine names. It seems, therefore, that for Abulaijia and for his teacher Tugarmi, the mention of the three meals of Shabbat is a symbol for the spiritual eating that constitutes the experience of Paradise. Sabbath becomes an allegory for the apex of a mystical experience that can be attained on any day, not only during Shabbat.48 The classic rabbinic idea that Shabbat is a form of anticipating the future Eschaton was applied by the ecstatic Kabbalist to an ecstatic experience in the present. The Shabbat meals represent the possibility of attaining eternity through union, achievable here and now. Yet, the experience is not that of holy time, but rather that of a union with eternity and the “world to come.” The divine names symbolized in the Shabbat meals can be used to enter paradise and to experience eternity on any day, not only Shabbat. In fact we have a very interesting testimony of one of Abraham Abulaijia’s students, R. Nathan, who testiijies that he was practicing his master’s mystical techniques on Shabbat evening following several nights on which he was practicing letter permutation techniques.49 We can learn from this important testimony that what matters for the ecstatic Kabbalist is the mystical technique and not the context of sacred time; evidently there was no difference between the way they practiced mystical techniques on Shabbat and the way they practiced these techniques on the others days of the week; furthermore, the experience itself was independent of Shabbat. Abulaijia’s mystical path wants to break through human material existence and to reach eternity in the here and now. This paper has sought to contrast two Kabbalistic traditions in their approaches to the experience of time as it relates to mystical encounters with the divine and to Shabbat. For the Zohar and classic kabbalah, the mystic fully experiences Shabbat both through the embodiment of the Holy Spirit of Shabbat and through the spiritual eating of the three Shabbat meals. In contrast, for Abulaijia, the ritual meals represent a gate into paradise and eternity. It is not Shabbat that he wishes to taste, nor even sacred time, but rather eternity itself. As such, the window to eternity is open every day, including, but not limited to, Shabbat.

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Idel, “Sabbath,” 68. Le Porte Della Giustizia Saare Sedeq, a cura di Moshe Idel (Milano, 2001), 479.

part 6 Conclusion Beyond Time

∵

CHAPTER 12

“Higher than Time”: Observations on Some Concepts of Time in Kabbalah and Hasidism Moshe Idel

Abstract The study surveys the variety of concepts of time in Judaism, and especially in Kabbalah, and addresses in more detail the concept of a super-temporal experience. While traditional forms of Judaism operated with a variety of concepts of time, the theosophical Kabbalists reified time by identifying terms of time with a various sefirotic powers. On the other hand, the ecstatic Kabbalah has been informed by Greek concepts that conceived time as related to movement and characteristic of the corporeal world, and pursued intellectually understood experiences that transcend time. This approach is similar to and in my opinion also informed the better known Hasidic concept of “higher than time.”

1

Introduction: On Types of Time in Judaism

No one was ever born a Kabbalist. Those who eventually turned to Kabbalah were, in the vast majority of cases, people who first experienced other forms of Judaism. More often than not, studies of the Hebrew Bible with Rashi’s commentary, Rabbinic Judaism including Midrashic and Halakhic thought, and sometimes even Jewish philosophy, preceded the encounter with Kabbalists and Kabbalistic texts. This is not only assumed by historical reconstruction, but it also explicitly shows up in the confessions of some Kabbalists who wrote about their religious journeys. Precedent forms of Jewish literature were much more standard in the first stages of the study curricula of would-be kabbalists, but with the progress of students, their encounters with more sophisticated forms of literature became less predictable; this is due to the fact that the latter were not part of a canonized curriculum. Thus, someone could first study Abraham ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Bible or his other writings, or he could begin by examining Maimonides’ books, or he could start to study Kabbalah in more than one way, as we know from the testimonies of Kabbalists themselves.

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The variety of possible contacts also shaped the manner in which some students understood the more speculative texts that they encountered. Given the non-theological proclivities in more traditional forms of Judaism, variations on theological themes were conceived of as a matter of someone’s choice. The specifics were not important, as long as they did not affect the crucial aspect of Rabbinic Judaism, namely, the performance of the commandments. For the purposes of our study here, this means that a variety of concepts about time were accumulated intellectually, and in many cases also experientially, throughout the lifetime of one who would become a Kabbalist.1 As a child, he would experience what I would like to call “shared time,” namely the cyclical time of the week, with the Sabbath as a central experience of that which is different. This was a time that an individual was to share with his family and community, but was also to share with the divinity, due to the latter’s description in the Hebrew Bible as one who rested on the Sabbath. This means that when one experiences the sanctified time of the Sabbath, he is living synchronically with other traditional Jews and with God. I should emphasize that such an experience is not only a matter of childhood practice, but that it may remain part of one’s mature life; this is regardless of the different meanings that may be attached to it with the development of one’s intellectual horizons. I shall refer to this type of time as microchronos, and in our case, it is a cyclical microchronos. Such a child could learn about another type of cyclical time, namely, the biblical laws of shemittah and Jubilee, but it is hard to assume that in the exilic situation, these were experienced in a direct manner. Let me emphasize that this kind of time, i.e., the cyclical microchronos, is strongly related to rituals, as found in the Hebrew Bible and in more detailed rabbinic instructions. By engaging in other types of Jewish literature, namely, rabbinical literature, one could come to see a broader perspective than that of the microchronos, which involves a more mythical history of the entire nation. This perspective of time is not just the awareness of a long past, but also an expectation of a better, messianic future. Such time can be described a linear, and couple very well with later views on progress in history. The periods of time in this view 1  For my emphasis on the diversity of conceptualizations of time in Kabbalistic literature see “Some Concepts of Time and History in Kabbalah,” Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, eds. E. Carlebach, J. M. Efron, D. N. Myers (Brandeis University Press, Hanover and London, 1998), 153–188; “Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish Mysticism,” in ed. G. Blidstein, Sabbath, Idea, History, Reality, (Ben Gurion University Press, Beer Sheva, 2004), 57–93; and “Multiple Forms of Redemption in Kabbalah and Hasidism,” jqr, vol. 101 (2011): 27–70. See also the end of the next footnote.

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transcend the weekly repetition and the annual cycle of feasts by centuries and even millennia, and I would like to refer to this view as the mesochronos. The mesochronos has little to do with rituals, and thus it does not necessarily conflict with the microchronos. More reflective approaches to time are encountered in more philosophical types of literature. For example, some 12th century Jewish thinkers like Abraham bar Hiyya and Abraham ibn Ezra adopted another type of cyclical time that I designate as macrochronic. This is cosmic time, which deals with cycles of many thousands, or even tens of thousands of years. These cycles are relevant for the fate of the universe, and not only of the nation or of the particular individual. This type of time cannot be experienced, but it too can be understood and accepted without any conflict with the two other types of time. In other forms of philosophy, however, especially in Neoaristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophy, a totally different approach to time can be discerned: This is a split between time and eternity as based on the assumption that the immutable divinity inhabits a supra-temporal, or extra-temporal realm, which can also be described as eternity. Such views as found in medieval philosophy reverberates also, mutatis mutandis, in some schools of Kabbalah. Here, the divinity no longer participates in events in time, but inhabits a realm that is beyond time. This category of eternity beyond time does not necessarily exclude the possibility of accepting the existence of the three other times. However, it is possible to envision cases in which an attraction to the supratemporal, or the eternal, would necessarily belittle or marginalize the importance of other forms of time. Last but certainly not least, it is important to mention that the emergence of the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah created other approaches to time, especially with its variety of perceptions of the mutability of divine powers. Some of the theosophical-theurgical systems were deeply impacted by an astrological manner of thinking, which allowed each of the seven lower sefirot to govern over of a cosmic cycle, or a cosmic Shemittah.2 Other views spoke 2  See Haviva Pedaya, Nahmanides, Cyclical Time and Holy Text (Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 2003), 213– 411 (Hebrew); Colette Sirat, “Juda b. Salomon Ha-Kohen—philosophe, astronome et peutetre Kabbaliste de la premiere moitie du xiiie siecle,” Italia 1.2 (1979), 48, n. 21; M. Idel, “The Jubilee in Jewish Mysticism,” in Fins de Siècle—End of Ages, ed. J. Kaplan (Merkaz Shazar, Jerusalem, 2005), 67–98 (Hebrew). About the circularity of time see also Elliot R. Wolfson, Aleph, Mem Tau, Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth and Death (University of Los Angeles Press, Berkeley, 2006), 55–116; and Brian Ogren, “La questione dei cicli cosmici nella produzione pugliese di Yishaq Abrabanel,” Itinerari di ricerca storica 20/21 (2006): 141–161. Given the negative connotations related to some Kabbalists’ assumptions that they lived in the most negative cycle, the attitude to time was also negative. This was especially the case with the

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about the consequences that the dynamic relations between the divine powers have upon this world,3 while others combine the various theosophicaltheurgical approaches to time. In later Kabbalistic schools, it is possible to discern efforts toward a mapping the sefirotic world by means of the hypostatization of temporal terms. This includes zeman, which sometimes refers to the all of the sefirot,4 and “days,” which represent the lower seven sefirot. It also includes an interpretation of the Rabbinic concept of seder zemanim, i.e., the “order of times,” as those seven lower sefirot,5 or in another case as Tiferet 6 and Malkhut.7 In other examples, “day” represents the last sefirah,8 Rosh haShanah is identified with Gevurah or Binah,9 and Yom Kippur is identified with Hokhmah10 or Binah.11 Shabbat refers to either Malkhut or Yesod, and in some cases to Binah, while Shabbat ha-gadol and Yovel, namely, Jubilee, refer to Binah.12 Following the theosophy of the Zohar, many Kabbalists used terms like ‘Attiqa’ Qadisha’, which is another temporal designation denoting “the Holy Ancient One,” in order to refer to the highest levels within the divine world.

3  4  5 

6  7  8  9  10  11 

12 

Kabbalists related to Sefer ha-Temunah and those influenced by it. Their attitude, sometimes antinomian, differs from those of Abulafia or other theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists. See M. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1988), 222–234. See the view of R. Joseph Karo, adduced in Wolfson, Aleph, Mem, Tau, 8. See e.g., R. Azriel of Gerona, Commentary on the Talmudic Legends, ed. I. Tishby, (Mekize Nirdamim, Jerusalem, 1945), 80, n. 6, 116, 142–144, Sefer ha-Shem, Attributed to R. Moses de Leon, 123. See also Wolfson, Aleph, Mem, Tau, pp. 84–86, 88, 90, who calls this view as “time without time”. Sefer ha-Shem, Attributed to R. Moses de Leon, 118. Ibidem, 181. R. Azriel of Gerona, Commentary on the Talmudic Legends, 115. See, e.g., R. Joseph Gikatilla, Sha‘arei Tzedeq, (Krakau, 1881), fol. 26a, Zohar i, fol. 226b, ii, fol. 32b. Sefer ha-Shem, Attributed to R. Moses de Leon, ed. M. Oron, (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2010), 69. See, e.g., Gikatilla, Sha‘arei Tzedeq, fol. 30b, Kabbalistic Commentary on Rabbi Yosef ben Shalom Ashkenazi on Genesis Rabbah, ed. M. Hallamish, (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1984), 46, 192, Zohar, i, fol. 220b, ii, fol. 39b, 40b, 135a, Sefer ha-Shem, Attributed to R. Moses de Leon, 72, 89. See Elliot K. Ginsburg, The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah (suny Press, Albany, 1989); idem, Sod ha-Shabbat, The Mystery of Sabbath (suny Press, Albany, 1989), and my “Multiple Forms of Redemption,” p. 45 n. 62, Sefer ha-Shem, Attributed to R. Moses de Leon, p. 148. Ya‘aqov ben Sheshet, Sefer Meshiv Devarim Nekhohim, (Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem, 1968), pp. 93, 168–169, Gikatilla, Sha‘arei Tzedeq, fols. 13b, 30b. See above n. 2.

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More prominent than all of these examples, however, seems to be that of “day” and “night” as symbolizing Tiferet and Malkhut, respectively, which need to be unified through the performance of rituals.13 It would be easy to give many more examples, and we should see the correspondences between time and the sefirot as just one among many forms of symbolism that include anthropomorphic, literal, and paradisiacal types. These were all used in order to flesh out the significance of the sefirotic system while conferring a special meaning on that system at the same time. Let me emphasize that Kabbalistic symbolism is not fixed, and various Kabbalists offered their own different sefirotic interpretations of the same word. These examples of the reification of time as referring to or corresponding with divine powers are part of a much broader phenomenon evident in the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah, namely, the ritualization of the sefirotic realm14 In my opinion, the reification and hypostatization of concepts of time reflect the importance of sacred time to kabbalists. On the mundane, experiential level, this includes the holidays and Sabbath, which parallel the divine map according to the principle of upper and lower correspondence. Sometimes this correspondent parallelism is understood in an interactive manner. In other words, unlike the sacramental approach to time, which offers the possibility of transcending ordinary time by performing ceremonial rules, the philosophical and the ecstatic Kabbalistic approaches attempt to transcend time altogether. Whether such a hypostatic approach is related to the supernal, hypostatic understanding of time in Neoplatonism is a question that cannot be dealt with here.15 As I shall try to show below, the main school of 18th century Eastern European Hasidism represents a combination of earlier concepts of time. Specifically, I shall be concerned with one single theory that

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Ya‘aqov ben Sheshet, Sefer Meshiv Devarim Nekhohim, ed. G. Vajda, 160, 171, 194; Zohar iii, fol. 177b, 260b; Sefer ha-Shem, Attributed to R. Moses de Leon, 123; and later on, R. Hayyim Vital, Sha‘ar Ma’amarei Rashbi, (Jerusalem, 1988), 9: “You should know that Ze‘ir ’Anpin [the Small Face, namely the divine Male] is called Day and his female is called Night, and see that the positive commandments correspond to 248 limbs, and this is the reason why all the commandments seize the place named Time [zeman] . . . since there is a cooperation [shittuf ] between Male and Female, which are called Day and Night.” See my Enchanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2005), passim, especially 215–220. See Shmuel Sambursky, “The Concept of Time in Late Neoplatonism,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, vol. ii, (Jerusalem, 1966), 153–167, S. Sambursky—S. Pines, The Concept of Time in Late Neoplatonism, (The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem, 1971).

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combines various ideas of supra-temporally transcending regular time on an experiential level.16 The possible accumulation of different ideas of time over time means that the phylogenesis of Jewish culture can be encountered in the ontogenesis of a later Jewish figure. Consequently, as both an inheritor of various traditions and as mature person, one can embrace a variety of concepts of time. This does not mean that all of the erudite Jews at any given time shared the same conglomerate concepts of time, even though some with similar intellectual itineraries may have. My assumption is that a turn to higher forms of literature, which may be different from tradition, does not necessarily signify a rupture with the earlier literature. This is especially the case, since the more mature consumers of higher literature remained part of the traditional societies in which they continued to live and be active as Jewish philosophers and Kabbalists. Regardless of the lack of rupture, ideas still differed from one Kabbalist to another or from one Hasidic master to another. The differences might stem from varying proportions that earlier theories of time were accorded in the various systems, or they may be because of the idiosyncratic nature of the various mystics. In other words, concepts of time heavily depend upon corresponding images of the deity that are imagined to either participate in or to transcend time, and since these images are diverse, so too are the time-images diverse. This does not necessarily point to a theologically oriented understanding of Judaism, since the God-images themselves are reflections, or projections, of the ideals of life here below. These observations about the variety of time concepts in Judaism are relevant not only for a proper understanding of Judaism, but also for a more adequate phenomenology of religion in general. Indeed, there is a stark distinction, found especially in the books of Mircea Eliade, between the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition as dependent on a linear time, and the so-called archaic religions as inhabiting circular visions of time. This distinction constitutes an extreme case of over-simplification that fails to take into account the variety of life-forms in Judaism. Eliade’s paradigm is especially challenged by the importance of cyclical time in traditional Judaism, since the time of the Hebrew Bible. His reduction of Judaism as dominated by a single, linear concept of time is the result of a simplistic approach, which unfortunately turned into the late 20th century’s most widespread theory of religion. The more cyclical approaches found in traditional Judaism and in Kabbalah have already been analyzed in relation to Eliade’s claim in other studies. Here, I would like to elaborate on another point that needs a more detailed analysis, namely, the 16 

For conglomerate ideas of time see my “Multiple Forms of Redemption,” 34.

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notion of the possibility of overcoming historical time in Jewish thought, an approach that Eliade attributed solely to archaic religion.17

2

Higher than Time in Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalistic School

Unlike many other Kabbalists, we know much about the life of Abraham Abulafia, the founder of ecstatic Kabbalah.18 He began his studies as a boy with his father, concentrating on traditional subjects such as the Bible and Rabbinic literature. He then turned to the Guide of the Perplexed, which he perused carefully and then taught for many years in several towns in Southern Europe. In 1270, he began his studies of Kabbalah, concentrating upon commentaries on Sefer Yetzirah. His intellectual itinerary is reminiscent of that of his student R. Nathan ben Sa‘adya Har’ar, and it represents a broader phenomenon in the

17 

18 

See my Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth (Peter Lang, New York, 2014), 135–155. Compare also to an analysis of Eliade’s time and history in general Carl Olson, The Theology and Philosophy of Eliade (Macmillan, Houndsmills, London, 1992), 139–156. Compare to the reverberations of his view in Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (Fordham University Press, New York, 2005), xviii. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1960), 119–155, and his last series of lectures at the Hebrew University printed as The Kabbalah of Sefer ha-Temunah and of Abraham Abulafia, ed., Y. ben Shlomo (Akademon, Jerusalem, 1969), (Hebrew). See my monographs The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia tr. J. Chipman (suny Press, Albany, 1987), idem, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia, tr. M. Kallus, (suny Press, Albany, 1989), idem, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (suny Press, Albany, 1988), and Natan ben Sa’adya Har’ar, Le Porte della Giustizia, a Cura di Moshe Idel, tr. Maurizio Mottolese, (Adelphi, Milano, 2001). Sustained discussions on some topics in Abulafia’s Kabbalah are available also in chapters of many of my other books, in particular Messianic Mystics, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1998), 58–100, 295–302, Kabbalah in Italy, 1280–1510, a Survey, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2010), 30–88, 297–298, or Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism, (Continuum, London, New York, 2008), and “Abraham Abulafia: A Kabbalist ‘Son of God’ On Jesus and Christianity,” in ed. N. Stahl, Jesus among the Jews (Routledge, London, New York, 2012), 60–93, as well as Elliot R. Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence: Angelic Embodiment and the Alterity of Time in Abraham Abulafia,” Kabbalah, vol. 18 (2008): 133–190, idem, Abraham Abulafia: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2000), Harvey J. Hames, Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder, Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans, and Joachimism, (suny Press, Albany 2007), Robert J. Sagerman, The Serpent Kills or the Serpents Give Life: The Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia’s Response to Christianity, (Brill, Leiden 2011).

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younger Jewish elite in the last third of the 13th century in Spain and Italy.19 Though a devout Maimonidean with strong Arabic Andalusian Neoaristotelian tendencies, Abulafia was also acquainted with and influenced by Neoplatonic books. These include R. Bahya ibn Paquda’s Sefer Hovot ha-Levavot,20 and Liber de Causis, which is a version of Proclus’s Elements of Theology found in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin.21 He was also interested in the writings of Abraham ibn Ezra.22 These bodies of speculative literature are quite disparate, and thus exemplify the diversity of the conceptual conglomerate that informed his thought. Like many other medieval Neoaristotelian thinkers, Abulafia adopted a theory of ten separate cosmic intellects that are mostly unrelated to changes taking place in the sublunar world, and whose intellectual activity does not change. According to Maimonides, anything unconnected to motion or change, including God, “does not fall under time;” this phrase has been translated into Hebrew as “lo nofel tahat ha-zeman.”23 Like in the case of traditional Jewish theology, in which God acts and rests and the Jew imitates Him, so too in philosophical texts the philosopher attempts to imitate God. But here God is conceived of in a totally different manner, i.e., as an intellect that exists beyond time. In some cases, the philosophical imitation of God is a matter of assimilation into the divine entity that is conceived of as intelligizing. In such a manner, according to some of the philosophical sources and to ecstatic Kabbalah, one may become a part of the divine realm.24 19 

20 

21 

22  23  24 

See my Moshe Idel, “The Kabbalah’s Window of Opportunities’, 1270–1290,” in eds. E. Fleisher, G. Blidstein, C. Horowitz, B. Septimus, Me’ah She‘arim, Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, (The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2001), 171–208. “We-Zot li-Yehuda,” in Ginzei H͟okhmat ha-Qabbalah, ed. Adolph Jellinek, (Leipzig, 1853), 18–19. Abulafia adopted an important aspect for his sort of mysticism from this book: the centrality of inner war as part of spiritual life. See my “The Battle of the Urges: Psychomachia in the Prophetic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia,” in ed. A. Bar-Levav, Peace and War in Jewish Culture, (Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem, 2006), 99–143 (Hebrew). See his ’Imrei Shefer, ed. A. Gross, (Jerusalem, 1999), 193–194, and M. Idel, “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of Kabbalah in the Renaissance,” in ed. B. D. Cooperman, Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1983), 216– 217, 220–223; idem, “Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance,” in ed., L. E. Goodman, Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought (suny Press, Albany, 1993), 332–333. A discussion of hypostatic time from this book is found together with Abulafian material in manuscripts, an issue that deserves a separate analysis. We-Zot li-Yehuda, 18–19. Guide of the Perplexed, I:57, and introduction to part ii, premise 15. For Abulafia’s views of time see Idel, The Mystical Experience, 124–125, idem, “ ‘The Time of the End’: Apocalypticism and Its Spiritualization in Abraham Abulafia’s Eschatology,”

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Following Maimonides, Abulafia sees the assimilation into the divine as the most important religious activity. In one of his prophetic books he writes that the separate “intellects themselves alone do not fall under the [category of] time”25 This is an important statement that should be remembered when dealing with the Agent Intellect, the last of the ten separate intellects, as it is in a category that transcends time. In good Aristotelian manner, Abulafia connects time to movement, and claims that there is no time without movement.26 In the framework of this paper, however, I am not interested in his concepts of time as such, but in the experiential implications of his views. I shall begin my analysis of Abulafia’s experiential approach to time by translating a short, neglected passage from his Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah. In describing humans, Abulafia he writes: We are the last of all the beings, and from this side we are the most distant from Him. And because we are the last beings [who are remote] from him, He desired that we should be closest to Him from another side. He

25 

26 

Apocalyptic Time, ed. A. Baumgarten, (Brill, Leiden, 2000), 155–185, in some sections in the first two of the studies mentioned above in n. 1, for example in “Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish Mysticism,” 69–74. Compare to Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence,” 138–139, where he claims that only the eschatological aspects of time in Abulafia’s thought have been investigated, and ignores not only what I wrote in those studies but also relevant texts that have been addressed there, which he did not engage, and some of which will be analyzed below. As to the manner in which he interpreted some of the texts he did engage, see below. He apparently forgot what he himself wrote earlier in Aleph, Mem, Tau, 211 n. 48. The following approach differs from the main assumption found in Wolfson’s studies about time in Abulafia, but in this framework, I cannot address all the details of my reservations. See Ms. Firenze-Laurenziana Plut. ii, 48, fol. 80ab. For Abulafia as the author of this untitled treatise see my “A Unique Manuscript of an Untitled Treatise of Abraham Abulafia in Biblioteca Laurentiana Medicea,” Kabbalah, vol. 17 (2008): 7–28. See also Sefer haMelammed, ed. A. Gross, (Jerusalem, 2002), 10, and also on 21 there, for what I interpret to be a natural event. Unaware of the translated statement that denies relations to time insofar as the separate intellects are concerned, Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence,” p. 190 n. 211, interprets a passage from ’Imrei Shefer, ed. A. Gross, 34, as if it deals with Metatron, regularly identified with the cosmic, separate Agent Intellect, as being “a personification of time”. However, the passage he quotes has nothing to do with Metatron, as it is evident from its wider context. Also his interpretations offered to Abulafian texts ibidem, 180–187 miss, in my opinion, the point. For an analysis of just one such example see below beside n. 52, and compare to the contents of the texts quoted beside nn. 51, 58 to the effect that God does not fall under the category of time. Sefer ha-Melammed, 9.

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saw that there was no manner that is more excellent than that in which He created us, and He set us as bodies that possess faculties [kohot] that receive from others hawayyot that exist for short times, and hawayyot that are present without time at all, and they are the eternal [hawayyot], and everything that is universal is eternal and everything eternal is universal.27 According to this passage, God demands that humans become eternal by becoming universal,28 a metanoic experience that is predicates the reception of eternal powers. Though such a reception is a change in the individual, it is not a change insofar as the eternal hawayyot are concerned. We may distinguish between a particular type of experience related to the body, which is extremely remote from the divinity, and a spiritual experience related to the faculties, which bring one close to God. According to another passage to be discussed below, these faculties actually bring one within God. Abulafia, who follows some brief discussions found in Abraham ibn Ezra,29 Was certainly not the first to posit this transformation from a particular individual to a general or universal being. Let me point out that the statement covers humans in general, and not just the Jews. This amounts to a more universalistic approach, which is indeed Abulafia’s main view.30 In general, I would say that the more Neoplatonic dichotomy between the universal and the particular informs this passage. This is also the case in Abulafia’s Sitrei Torah, a commentary on Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. There we read: And [it] will unite with it after many hard, strong and mighty exercises, until the particular and personal prophetic [faculty] will turn universal,

27 

28 

29  30 

Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, ed, I. Weinstock, (Mosad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1984), 19. Compare also to the similar views on general principles in Al-Bataliusi’s Sefer ha‘Aggulot ha-Ra‘yoniot, ed. D. Kaufmann, (Budapest, 1880), 50. On general principles see also in ’Or ha-Sekhel, ed. Gross, 40, 108–109. Abulafia’s quote translated here is reminiscent of Meister Eckhart’s statement in his commentary on Psalm 86: “We have been put into time for the purpose of coming nearer to and becoming like God through rational activity in time.” Cf. Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany, (Herder & Herder, New York, 2005), 192. Moshe Idel, “Universalization and Integration: Two Conceptions of Mystical Union in Jewish Mysticism,” in eds. M. Idel and B. McGinn, Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue, (MacMillan, New York, 1989), 27–58. As pointed out judiciously by Weinstock in his footnotes. See my Secrets and Pearls: On Abulafia’s Esotericism, ch. 21 (in preparation).

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permanent and everlasting, similar to the essence of its cause, and he and He will become one entity.31 This is not a union in which the particular identities of the factors interacting are preserved. Rather, in my opinion, there is here a total transformation of the particular intellect into a universal, everlasting entity. Abulafia imagines that this happens in the moment, and no individual existence is imagined to maintain itself or to survive the post-mortem state of existence.32 A similar position if found in another ecstatic Kabbalistic treatise written by someone from Abulafia’s school, Sefer Ner ’Elohim:33 The root of all the negative commandments is to allude [li-remoz] not to follow temporary matters, since whoever is drawn toward the vanities of temporality,34 his soul shall survive in the vanities of temporality; and whoever is drawn toward God, which is above temporality [le-ma‘lah meha-zeman], his soul shall survive in eternity, beyond time [be-lo’ zeman], within God, may He be blessed [ba-shem it[barakh]].35 Following Abulafia’s thought,36 the anonymous Kabbalist describes the effect caused by the union of a person to a specific object: if one adheres to temporary entities, then his survival will depend on time; if he adheres to an eternal entity, his survival will be eternal. Interestingly, the eternal is described 31  32 

33  34 

35 

36 

Ms. Paris bn 774, fol. 155a, ed. Gross, 138. On Abulafia and simplification or depersonalization, see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 18–19. This process of universalization by cleaving to the supernal spiritual realm also means an experience of supra-temporality. See also ’Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz, iii:8, ed. A. Gross, (Jerusalem, 2000), 337: dibbuq nitzhi. On the problems related to the authorship of this treatise see M. Idel, Abraham Abulafia’s Works and Doctrines, (Ph. D. Thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1976), 72–75 (Hebrew). Hevlei ha-zeman. This warning about the negativity and the futilities of time is a topos in the Middle Ages. It is recurs in Spanish Jewish poetry, and was shared by several Jewish thinkers, especially Maimonides. Cf. Israel Levin, “Zeman and Tevel in the Hebrew Secular Poetry in Spain in the Middle Ages,” ’Otzar Yehudei Sefarad, vol. 5 (1962): 68–79 (Hebrew). For Abulafia’s use of this phrase see, e.g., ’Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz, 331, Mafteah ha-Tokhahot, ed. A. Gross (Jerusalem, 2001), 62, ’Imrei Shefer, 136, or ’Or ha-Sekhel, 20, 21, 105. Sefer Ner ’Elohim, Ms. Munchen 10, fol. 154b, ed. A. Gross, (Jerusalem, 2002), 68. This text is especially close to ’Or ha-Sekhel, 21. This vision of the negative commandments as an allusion, namely as preventing someone from being immersed in mundane issues, deserves a separate discussion. See the passage from ’Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz, translated in my The Mystical Experience, 124–125.

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as God, who is beyond time, and adherence here means an entrance into the divine realm. God is described by the Hebrew phrase le-ma‘lah me-ha-zeman, an expression that is rare in the Middle Ages, but will become a leitmotif some centuries later in East European Hasidic literature, as we shall see below. Even though this passage from Ner ‘Elohim was probably not the first source to inspire later thinkers, for the time being, it seems to be the first dated occurrence of this phrase in Jewish literature. The experience of the soul, however, is described by a slightly different phrase: beli zeman, without time. This divergence may refer to a status achieved by the soul after leaving time. I wonder whether the expression “within” related to God reflects some form of transcendent the space, just as it reflects transcendent time. Or alternatively, perhaps it is perceived of as comprising all of space, just as God’s transcendent time was conceived of as comprising all of time. The process of universalization was expressed in two of the quotes above by terms stemming from ibn Ezra, but Abulafia also uses Neoaristotelian noetics in order to point to a rather similar transformation. In one of his commentaries on the Guide of the Perplexed, he writes: You should meditate on his [Maimonides’ words] in an intellectual manner, You should separate yourself because of them from the entire species, the universal man, and you will become for God distinguished and comprehensive, and you will be called by the name “Living God,” and you will become similar to God.37 The assimilation into God is quite explicit here, as it is a process of universalization. Nevertheless, the Kabbalist does not refer here to an experience that transcends time. Calling a mystic by divine names is not something new in Abulafia, nor is it new to Abulafia. In fact, it shows up in other forms of mysticism.38 For Abulafia, it can be seen in another passage that was written in the very same period, concerning one who becomes assimilated into God: If, however, he has felt the divine touch and perceived its nature, it seems right and proper to me and to every perfected man that he should be 37 

38 

Sitrei Torah, ed. A. Gross, (Jerusalem, 2002), 188. Compare to the description of a transformation into a divine species in the Commentary on Sefer ha-Melitz, Ms. Rome-Angelica 38, fol. 9a, printed in Matzref ha-Sekhel, ed. A. Gross, (Jerusalem, 2001), 19–20. This has been discussed in my Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 16. It is also discussed in the Untitled Treatise preserved in Ms. Firenze-Laurenziana, Plut. ii, 48, fol. 83a. On theophorism in Abulafia and its background see my Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism, passim, especially 286, 306–307.

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called ‘master,’ because his name is like the Name of his Master, be it only in one, or in many, or in all of His Names. For now he is no longer separated from his Master, and behold he is his Master and his Master is he; for he is so intimately adhering to Him [here the term devequt is used] that he cannot by any means be separated from Him, for he is He. And just as his Master, who is detached from all matter, is called . . . the knowledge, the knower and the known, all at the same time, since all three are one in Him, so shall he, the distinguished man, the master of the distinguished Name, be called intellect, while he is actually knowing; then he is also the known, like his Master; and then there is no difference between them, except that his Master has His supreme rank by His own right and not derived from other creatures, while he is elevated to his rank by the intermediary of creatures.39 It is clear that the transformation written about here not only concerns the eternal survival of the soul, but also concerns the essence of that soul, which is transformed into an intellective element. This obliterates the differences between the cause of the transformation, i.e., the Agent Intellect, and that affected by it, i.e., the human intellect. Perfection here is conceived of as being a matter of the intellect, and the perfect man comes to be seen as a comprehensive being: In the perfect man [ha-’ish ha-shalem] whose intellect has been actualized, his liver, heart, and head, that is, brain, are one thing until the vegetative soul and the master of knowledge [ba‘alat ha-da‘at] discerns, knows, understands, and comprehends to govern her matter according to God and not according to nature alone. The efflux overflows from the world of angels to the world of heavenly spheres and from the world of heavenly spheres to the world of mankind until the point that the distinguished universal person40 becomes intellectualized in actuality.41

39  40 

41 

Commentary on Sefer ha-Yashar, printed in Matzref ha-Sekhel, 103–104. For the sources and an interpretation of this passage see my Messianic Mystics, 299–301. Ha-meyuhad ha-kelali. My translation here differs from that of Wolfson’s rather oxymoronic phrase “particular universal,” which is erroneous, as are the conclusions he draws there as to Abulafia’s alleged particularism. For more on this issue see Secrets and Pearls: On Abraham Abulafia’s Esotericism. ’Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz, ii:1, 200. In general I used Wolfson’s translation in Venturing Beyond, Law & Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006), 72, with one major exception, mentioned in the previous footnote.

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It is evident that the “perfect man”—ha-’ish ha-shalem42—at the beginning of the passage is parallel to the phrase that occurs later in the passage, which I translated as “distinguished universal person.” In the two last quotes, an individual person signifies someone who has actualized his intellect. Thus, the supra-temporal achievement is a matter of intellectual activity that, as a part of one’s universalization, broadens his perspective. Let me turn to the occurrence of the divine name in some of the discussions above. For Abulafia, the function of the divine names is by no means an exegetical issue alone; the pronunciation of the divine names is a technique for reaching a prophetic experience, and the confidence in the possibility of its attainment stands at the core of Abulafia’s book, and of his system as a whole. Concepts of time, such as the Sabbath, for example, should be understood in the context of the main religious purpose of his Kabbalistic system, which is the attainment of an ecstatic experience that does not depend upon place and time.43 The Sabbath is therefore not only an important concept, whose connotation adds luster to the discussion; it also serves as an allegorical syntagm for the highest religious experience, which should and can be achieved in the present. 42 

43 

Cf. Ha-’ish ha-meyuhad. The source of this specific use of the term meyuhad is ibn Tibbon’s translation of the Guide I:14, and Shlomo Pines’s translation of the Guide of the Perplexed, (Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1963), i, 40 as “[outstanding] individual” that is described in opposition to hamon, multitude. About this phrase as referring to a distinguished individual, see also “Sheva‘ Netivot ha-Torah,” ed. A. Jellinek, Philosophie und Kabbalah, Erster Haefte, (Leipzig, 1854) 4, 9; ’Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz, Preface, 2, iii:9, 354; and Hayyei ha-Nefesh, ed. A. Gross, (Jerusalem, 2001), 9, 15. See also ’Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz I:8, 173, where Abulafia’s gematria of meyuhad = 68 = Hakham [wise] = ha-navi’ [the prophet]. This fits the view found in Hayyei ha-Nefesh, 9. See also the very important discussion of the “distinguished man” in ibidem, 128. These gematriot indeed define the meaning that Abulafia attributes to the distinguished individual. For another important passage where the “perfect man” is described as comprising everything, see ’Imrei Shefer, 121, translated into English by Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence,” 172–173. The more common expression, found already in Islam, al-insan al-kamil, is something connected to a prophet and approximates the later Hebrew ha-’adam ha-shalem, a phrase that also occurs in Abulafia’s writings, sometimes in the context of universalization. See, e.g., his Commentary to Sefer ha-Yashar, printed in Matzref ha-Sekhel, 99. For the closest parallel to Abulafia’s concept of “distinguished man,” see the view of ibn Arabi as described in Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger, The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1985), 314 and Paolo Urizzi, “L’uomo teomorfico secondo ibn ‘Arabi,” in eds. P. Spallino ad P. Urizzi, Il Fine ultimo dell’uomo (Officina di studi medievali, Palermo, 2012), 151–187, especially 167–168 n. 82. See my “Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish Mysticism,” 69–74.

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Likewise, Abulafia’s usage of the biblical noun ha-yom, today, has to do with a feeling of spiritual urgency that is characteristic of his mystical system. Indeed, an analysis of the occurrences of the term “today” shows that it does not stand for the transient in Abulafia’s writings, but that it stands for the everpresent, and for enduring sorts of experiences.44 According to Abulafia, regular time is in fact homogenous, despite the fact that the language used by him implies a certain temporal hierarchy. If Abulafia’s highest experience is described by a profound transformation that basically affects the intellect, I assume as plausible the cessation of ritual life as long as the supra-temporal experience is imagined to be occurring. The intellectual nature of the transformation and union is quite explicit in an anonymous text that I attribute to Abraham Abulafia: “from the side of his knowledge, the one that comprehends it will become a separate intellect, and this is the reason for his survival, which is the best that one can possibly achieve.”45 The acquired supra-temporal experience of the perfect human is not the only reason why ritual is conceived of as secondary or irrelevant in the ideal state. The permanent supra-temporal nature of God, which is described in a manner reminiscent of the perfect man, is another reason for the secondary nature of ritual. In order to illustrate this, I shall address an interesting passage from Abulafia’s commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed, entitled Hayyei ha-Nefesh: [a] But their issue46 is YHWH—in the world of the angels, which are the first Hawayah according to the secret of necessity47 YHWH—in the world of the spheres, which are the second Hawayah according to the secret of necessity, YHWH—in the lower world, which is the third Hawayah, the last according to the secret of necessity, in those according to their degree and in those according to their degree. This is the reason why the wisdom

44  45  46 

47 

See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia, 115–117. Ms. Sasoon 290, 235. On the authorship of this short anonymous treatise see Idel, Abraham Abulafia’s Works and Doctrines, 6. Namely of the three tetragrammata, which he mentions beforehand, where he refers to both the Talmud and to Maimonides’ Guide i, ch. 61. See Hayyei ha-Nefesh, ed. A. Gross (Jerusalem, 2001), 72–73. Hiwuv. I am not sure that I fully understand this term. From the broader context, it may be connected to the description of God as the “Necessary Existent” in the context of the Tetragrammaton. See Hayyei ha-Nefesh, 73. See also Idel, Secrets and Pearls: On Abraham Abulafia’s Esotericism, n. 683.

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comprises all the three together,48 those and those, and all the existent[s] of the three are [emerging] in a necessary manner from the unity of God, blessed be He. However, despite this, He, blessed be He, is Unique, One alone, since in One comes the unique Hawayah, which is not the case in that which is other than Him. [b] And since He does not fall under time, it is allowed to [attribute to] Him the three times equally, by saying about Him that He was, and is and will be.49 He was before man, and is together with man, and will be after man. And so the tradition is that He was before the world, and is together with the world, and will be after the world. [c] And the secret is that He was in the past, as He is now, and as He will be in the future, without change, for nothing of his actions changes in relation to Him and in accordance with His knowledge. All the more as He himself does not change, and inasmuch as his attributes are nothing but His essence, His attributes do not change. And the change that is thought by us, that is found in our world, is not a change in His operation, blessed be He, but [only] the revolution of the sphere. And the revolution of the sphere is not a change in the substance of the sphere, not in general and not in particular.50 Let me first analyze what is new in paragraph [c], especially since the term “secret” is found there. I will view this in comparison to the earlier discussion, in the passage about God and time. In my opinion, the secret has to do with Abulafia’s view of the immutability of the divine. This holds for all of the three worlds and times, and is an issue that is absent in the more traditional descriptions offered in paragraph [b].51 The ecstatic Kabbalist refuses to allow any change in the divine essence or in His attributes, since change is related to 48 

49  50 

51 

Hokhmah = 73 = HYH, HWH, WYHYH = 72. For the very probable source of this gematria in the writings of Abulafia’s teacher Barukh Togarmi, see Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence,” 189 n. 208. See also below nn. 57, 59, 69. In this passage, the term Hawayah refers to the Tetragrammaton, namely the threefold form of the Tetragrammaton that was sometimes conceived of as the Talmudic name of twelve letters, as Abulafia mentions earlier on the same page in Hayyei ha-Nefesh. See also Wolfson, ibidem, 187 n. 205. HYH, HYH W-YHYH. Hayyei ha-Nefesh, 72. Paragraph [b] and part of [c], have been translated by Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence,” 187. The denial of change even in the substance of the sphere, despite its motion, should be compared to the passage from ’Or ha-Sekhel, 29, and see Wolfson’s different interpretation, ibidem, 187. Compare, however, to Wolfson’s claim, ibidem, that the passage deals with “the mystery of time” [sic]. See also above n. 25.

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motion in time, and God and the separate intellects are explicitly understood in paragraph [b] as entities beyond the category of time. Such a view as to the immutability of the divine realm is also found elsewhere in Abulafia’s thought,52 and it counteracts the assumption that has been aired by Elliot Wolfson as to the impact of human acts on the divine realm, namely theurgy, as a relevant category for understanding Abulafia’s Kabbalah.53 However, what is important to emphasize is that immutability is conceived by Abulafia, in good Maimonidean fashion, to be a secret, since it contradicts the widespread Biblical, Talmudic and most of the theosophical-theurgical images of God, which are quite dynamic. Also a secret is the presence of a Tetragrammaton in each of the three worlds, as mentioned in paragraph [a]. This may be understood as connected to the presence of an immutable entity within increasingly mutable worlds. This is also a Maimonidean position, since it fits the Great Eagle’s assumption regarding the naturalness of the divine presence in the world, hinted at in paragraph [b] by the “togetherness” of the divine with the three worlds;54 this is a view that I have described as “limited pantheism.”55 In another commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed, there is a similar passage: There are three times that are intelligized by the human intellect, which are divided into three parts, and Howeh, ve-Hayah ve-Yihieh, are also always are in the divine intellect;56 all the three are in one principle . . . because the divine separate intellect does not fall under the

52  53 

54 

55  56 

See e.g., Mafteah ha-Ra‘yon, ed. A. Gross, (Jerusalem, 2002), 5, and Sitrei Torah, 111. I hope to elaborate on this issue in a separate study. See his Abraham Abulafia, 83–84, 172–173, and n. 213, 224. See also his Language, Eros, Being, 204, and Sagerman, The Serpent Kills, viii, 7 n. 13, 88, 235–236, etc. Interestingly enough, in his “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence,” 187, when dealing with the passage from Hayyei ha-Nefesh, Wolfson had nothing to say about this flat out contradiction between immutability and the concept of theurgy. See my “Deus sive Natura, The Metamorphosis of a Dictum from Maimonides to Spinoza,” in eds. R. S. Cohen and H. Levine, Maimonides and the Sciences, (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2000), 87–110, and Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence,” 185–186. See my Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 12–14, and Kabbalah in Italy, 147–148. See above n. 49 on the three times as represented by the three tenses found within wisdom. See also below n. 59. On intelligized times see Abulafia’s Mafteah ha-Sefirot, ed. A. Gross (Jerusalem, 2001), 16–17.

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[category of] past time, or under the [category of] future time, because the two [tenses] point to motion, and time is discerned by them.57 The mystic is thus capable of sharing an experience of the three comprised tenses with the world of the separate intellects, including God. This would amount to a supra-temporal experience. While the human intellect intelligizes these times separately, within the divine intellect they are unified. Since the divine intellect is not denied the present tense, it seems that Abulafia has in mind some form of perpetual now. Indeed, in his Sefer ha-Hesheq, he writes that “the influx that he [the recipient] receives and comprehends from the form of universal wisdom is without time.”58 This means that the noetic processes are conceived of as transcending time. Let me point out that nowhere in the above passages is the imaginative faculty mentioned, let alone integrated into the processes that have been discussed. An early 15th century anonymous text that was probably written in Italy under the impact of Abulafia’s views, as well as those of Neoaristotelian philosophers, writes: And I am telling you a principle that after the soul of the prophet becomes divine, united to “all,” it will become similar to God, blessed be He, in its operations. And [just] as God does not operate in time, so too the soul of the prophet does not have to operate in time. But given the fact that the prophet adheres to matter, he nevertheless has to operate in matter,59 though briefly and very swiftly, his prophetic soul will pass from form to form until it will arrive at the desired, ultimate form, where his soul will halt. And that form will be perceived by its seers, and they will think that it is a miracle and a wonder . . . he comprises them together, since 57 

58 

59 

Ms. Paris bn 774, fol. 148b. For more on this passage see M. Idel, “Sefirot above the Sefirot,” Tarbiz, vol. 51 (1982), 260–261 (Hebrew), and Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence,” 186. See also above n. 26. See his Sefer ha-Hesheq, ed. Gross, 80. On the process of comprehension as taking place “without time”—mi-bilti zeman, see also R. Nathan ben Sa’adya Har’ar, Le Porte della Giustizia, 476. On wisdom and the three times, see above n. 49. See also below n. 69. For the source of Abulafia’s concept of “universal wisdom,” see Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcendence,” 189 n. 208. Miracles performed by prophets are an issue discussed by several philosophers and by Abulafia himself. See Aviezer Ravitzky, History and Faith, Studies in Jewish Philosophy (Gieben, Amsterdam, 1996), 154–204, and my Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 63–66. For additional discussions of these issues in Toledot ’Adam see Ms. Oxford-Bodleiana 836, fols. 156a, 165b.

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he already became universal, and this is the reason why he can innovate forms in material entities, and perform wonders and miracles, since he is an absolutely righteous man.60 Theosis by universalization is an interesting formula, since it echoes the specific view found in Abulafia’s school of ecstatic Kabbalah, and here is found a century and a half later. It is also found in some examples in Hasidism. Moreover, the connection of this formula to prophecy is one more example of ecstatic Kabbalah’s attraction. In short, the transcendence of time in ecstatic Kabbalah has to do with the adherence of the human intellect to atemporal entities and processes, rather than with hypostases of time. This is the case even when such hypostatic views were known to these Kabbalists.

3

On “Higher than Time” in Eastern European Hasidism

Kabbalistic forms of thought changed over the centuries, and one of the greatest of these changes is found in Eastern European Hasidism.61 Since the last quarter of the 18th century, a more complex view of time can be discerned in the writings of several masters of Hasidism. The early Hasidic masters adopted the view that the last seven sefirot deal with the time of creation, but they added to it the assumption that the three higher sefirot are found higher than time. This view is different from the discussions in sources written in the centuries after Abulafia and before the emergence of Hasidism. In those sources, the phrase le-ma‘lah me-ha-zeman, i.e., “higher than time” appears, but it means something different. In the case of those such as R. Meir ibn Gabbai,62 it deals with the descent of the divine voice from the supra-temporal realm, and in the case of those such as R. Isaiah Horowitz in his Shenei Luhot ha-Berit,63 It deals 60 

61  62 

63 

See Sefer Toledot ’Adam, ibidem, fol. 165a. Some lines beforehand, on fol. 164b, the anonymous author writes that “the natural things are perceived by intermediaries, since they endure a long time, while the miracle is without time [beli zeman].” On the affinities between this book and Abulafia, see Idel, The Mystical Experience, 200–201. For a different assumption, that Kabbalistic tradition changed only slightly over centuries, see Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 128. See his ‘Avodat ha-Qodesh, iii:8, (Jerusalem, 1973), fol. 66c. See also the end of his introduction to Tola‘at Ya‘aqov, (Constantinople, 1560), fol. 5a, where God is described as “without time,” while in an earlier Kabbalistic text, emanation was described by the same phrase. See Ha-Shelah, (Jerusalem, 1969), iii, fol. 184a. There is no connection between this concept and the intellect, nor is there a requirement to ascend to a plane that is higher than time.

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with the view that the Torah and the soul stem from a hypostatic entity that is “higher than time.” In these two sources, there is no connection between this concept and the intellect, nor is there a requirement to ascend to the realm that is “higher than time.” These are just examples of other hypostatic understandings, but they have little to do with an individual that transcends his human condition, as we have seen was the case in Abulafian kabbalah, and as we shall see to be the case in Hasidism as well. Closer to Abulafia, however, is a statement by the little known 14th century Spanish thinker R. Yehudah ben Moshe Hallewah, who describes the strengthening of one’s intellect through the study of the Torah as bringing one to be “higher than time;”64 but this reference is more of an indication of the philosophical source of the phrase, rather than an indication that Hallewah was a plausible source that influenced later authors. For some of the Hasidic masters, the highest spiritual experience for a mystic constitutes an ascent from the times of the seven sefirot to the supratemporal plane of one of the higher divine powers. The phrase le-ma‘lah meha-zeman is used to refer to this supra-temporal experience. Thus, while in ecstatic Kabbalah, “higher than time” refers to a transcendence beyond mundane time and movement, in Hasidism it means not only extricating oneself from the mundane experiences, but also transcending the theosophical hypostatization of time in the seven lower sefirot. From this point of view, it is plausible to assume that regarding this point, Hasidism reflects a synthesis between the kinds of attitudes found in the theosophical and the ecstatic types of Kabbalah.65 Let me adduce just one of many examples from a major 18th century Hasidic leader, R. Dov Be’er Friedmann (1700–1772), known as the Great Maggid of Mezritch:66 64  65  66 

’Imrei Shefer, ed. Ch. Ben Zion Hershler, (Jerusalem, 1993), 422. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 58. On this seminal Hasidic figure, see Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, tr. J. Chipman, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1993), especially 15–79, 168–188; Joseph Weiss, Studies in Eastern European Jewish Mysticism, ed., D. Goldstein, (Littman Library, Oxford, 1997), 69–83 and more recently, Netanel Lederberg, The Gate to Infinity, Rabbi Dov Baer, The Magid Meisharim of Mezhirich, (Rubin Mass, Jerusalem, 2011) (Hebrew); and Menachem Lorberbaum: “Attain the Attribute of ’Ayyin: The Mystical Religiosity of Maggid Devarav Le-Ya‘aqov,” Kabbalah vol. 31 (2014), 169–235 (Hebrew), On this central Hasidic circle, see Speaking Torah, Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid’s Table, eds. A. Green, E. Leader, A. E. Mayse, O. N. Rose (Jewish Lights, Woodstock, Vermont, 2013), two volumes especially I, 1–74.

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Someone should think that he is as nothing, and he will totally abnegate himself 67 and will think in his prayer only about the Shekhinah. And then he will come higher than time, namely into the World of Thought,68 where everything is equal, life and death, sea and land . . . in order to come to the world where everything is equal, unlike what happens when someone adheres to the corporeality of this world, and he adheres [then] to the division [hithalqut] between good and evil, namely to the seven 67 

68 

Yishkah ’et ‘atzmo, literally, “he will forget himself.” Compare to “obliterate” in the passage to be translated below from ’Or ha-’Emmet, and in a passage in the name of the Great Maggid quoted in R. Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir, in ’Or ha-Me’ir, (Perizec, 1815), fol. 95cd. The Great Maggid is very fond of the term ’ayin, nihil. See Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, 67–79, 87, 193, 205 and Lederberg, The Gateway to Infinity, 251–281; and for his student, see Rachel Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidism, tr. Jeffrey Green, (suny Press, Albany, 1993), 173–178. It may be that self-annihilation in Hasidism is a parallel concept to the Sufi experience of fana’: the passing away of the self as part of an ecstatic experience. Compare, e.g., to G. C. Anawati et L. Gardet, Mystique Musulmane, Aspects et Tendences, Experiences at Techniques, (Vrin, Paris, 1976), 104–106, William C. Chittick, Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, (suny Press, Albany, 1989), 93, and Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997), 202–203, 211–212, 227–228 as well as Robert C. Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism, (Schocken Books, New York, 1972), 12, 46, 93, 121–123, 125, 141, 166–167. Especially interesting is the possible relationship between Hasidic annihilation and the union with the divinity, as a parallel to the relation between fana’ and baqa’. Whether there is also a Christian kenotic connotation in the Great Maggid’s terminology, as is implied in the comparisons to Christian quietism offered by Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, passim, is a matter still to be proven. This is a supernal layer of reality identical with the sefirah Hokhmah, and with the supernal hyle, a view found already in early Kabbalah. See also above nn. 49, 59 and especially below nn. 79, 90. The return to prime-matter has something to do with the possibility of a spiritual renewal, as we find in a passage to be quoted below from R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl. In some cases in Kabbalistic literature, the act of repentance and the soul’s return to the source are interrelated. See M. Idel, “Types of Redemptive Activities in Middle Ages,” in ed. Z. Baras, Messianism and Eschatology (Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem, 1984), 264–265 n. 46 (Hebrew). See also R. Levi Isaac of Berditchev, Sefer Qedushat Levi (Jerusalem, 1993), Bereshit, fol. 5a: “Despite the fact that man dwells here below, on earth, by virtue of his deeds, he merits to walk all his days in the supernal worlds, especially during the Holy Sabbath, because the holiness of the Sabbath is so great that man cleaves to the supernal holiness. Thus we find that man returns to his roots during the Sabbath. . . . During the Sabbath man returns to the supernal worlds in his thought, out of the great luminosity and holiness of the Sabbath.” Sabbath is interpreted, in a pseudo-etymological manner, as pointing to return.

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days of the building. And how shall he come higher than temporality, wherein lies absolute unity?69 Two types of experiential attitude to time are predicated on the existence of two layers of existence. Like in ecstatic Kabbalah, here the plane that is higher than time is not just a metaphysical realm, but is a state that is attained by a mystic who abnegates himself as part of his liturgical process. This sacramental activity allows for transcendence, not only of this corporeal world, but also of what is called the seven days of the building, namely, the seven lower sefirot that correspond to the seven days of creation; this is a common view among the theosophical Kabbalists. The two realms, the lower world and the seven lower sefirot, are described in rather negative colors, as including some form of distinction between good and evil, while above them there is a supreme state of absolute unity and harmony, to which the soul ascends. However, ’Ahdut, the term for unity that appears at the end of the quoted passage, has various meanings in the writings of the Great Maggid. Not only does it signify the divinity, but it also signifies “union,” as we learn from a famous passage dealing with mystical union.70 This means that the experience of ascent to the supra-temporal plane assumes not only a form of psychanodia, but also assumes a unitive experience.71 Indubitably, the concept of ’Ahdut here also stands in opposition to the term division. It should be mentioned that according to another tradition of the Great Maggid, the act of thought seems to be supra-temporal, while speech that attempts to express that supratemporal moment of insight may take a long time.72 Let me point out that in this seminal passage, there is no sense that the divine power descends as the result of the sublime experience. Though probably independent of ecstatic Kabbalah, there is a common denominator between this passage and the late 13th century Kabbalist: transcending time also means transcending the human condition. It is not just a moment of self-annihilation, but a state of heightened perception of the 69 

70 

71 

72 

Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘aqov, ed. R. Shatz-Uffenheimer, second edition, (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1990), 186. See also ibidem, 267. For a parallel view again in another collection of traditions, see ’Or Torah (Jerusalem, 1968), 160. Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘aqov, 38–39, and the discussions in Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, (Schocken Books, New York, 1972), 226–227; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 65–67; Lederberg, The Gate to Infinity, 279–280. For the ascent to the divine unity as culminating in an experience of union with it, see the view of a disciple of the Great Maggid, R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, discussed in Idel, ibidem, 66. ’Or Torah, 114.

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equality between opposites, a state of consciousness that is part of the drastic transformation. The ascent beyond time and temporality is related to a form of ontological coincidentia oppositorum on the one hand, and to a form of perception of the totality referred as “absolute unity,” on the other. In this case, explicit phrases are used, and this is not merely the projection of a scholar’s interpretation upon the text. A study of the components of this text may help us to understand its emergence. In my opinion, we may assume that the six or seven days of creation correspond to the concept of the six extremities that point to the lower sefirot and the existence of separate opposites. This is coupled with the assumption that unity is found higher, in the sefirah of Binah, which is an idea that was also found earlier.73 Such a view was reported by a contemporary of the Great Maggid and another student of the founder of Hasidism R. Israel Ba‘al Shem Tov, R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye. This is brought forth in the name of an anonymous “great person,”74 which may plausibly be identified, on the grounds of a partial parallel found elsewhere, as the Besht himself.75 Elsewhere, the same R. Jacob Joseph cites, in the name of the Besht, a view concerning the mixture of good and evil within the seven days, which holds that in the higher sphere everything is good.76 Interestingly enough, among the disciples of the Great Maggid, the seven days are sometimes described as the “world of separation.” This is a term used by Kabbalists to distinguish between the unified realm of the ten sefirot and the extra-divine world of multiplicity. Nevertheless, it seems that the issue of temporality and the ascent to the plane that is “higher than time” was only introduced into the discourse of Hasidic thought by the Great Maggid. We may discern this from the recurrence of this theme in the writings of many of his disciples. But it is absent in the writings of the other branches of Hasidism, namely, that of R. Jacob Joseph and of the Besht’s grandson, R. Moshe Hayyim Efrayyim of Sudylkov. It is found, however, in several instances in the writings of the great-grandson of the Besht, R. Nahman of Bratzlav.77

73 

74  75  76  77 

For examples of the distinction between the seven lower sefirot and the higher three, conceived as one unit, see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 74, and The Angelic World: Apotheosis and Theophany, (Yediyot Sefarim, Tel Aviv, 2008), 42, 174–175 n. 112 (Hebrew). Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef, (Koretz, 1780), fol. 60c. See his Ben Porat Yosef, (New York, 1976), fol. 69c. Tzafnat ha-Pa‘aneah, (New York, 1976), fol. 94b. R. Nahman was well-acquainted with theories from the court of the Great Maggid, as he was in good relations with R. Levi Isaac of Berditchev, a main disciple of the Great Maggid.

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The differences between the early Hasidic schools point to the fact that it was not the Besht who adopted the theory of a plane “higher than time,” but his disciple, the Great Maggid.78 In my opinion, this is also the case with the corollary term hithalqut, division, which is also absent in R. Jacob Joseph’s books and in those of R. Moshe Hayyim Efrayyim of Sudylkov. This distinction between the two Hasidic schools may have something to do with the pronounced divergence between the Besht and his brother-in-law, R. Gershon of Kutov, regarding the approach to extreme ecstatic experiences. The Besht expressed some reservations regarding extreme types of experience, while his brother-in-law was more accepting of the possibilities.79 The debate between the two brothersin-law has only been preserved in the treatises from the Besht’s student R. Jacob Joseph, and does not exist in the writings of the Great Maggid and his followers. This is a fact that I interpret as a rejection of the Besht’s reservations by the Great Maggid.80 On the other hand, the mystical theory based on the transcendence of time is not part of what I have designated as the three main models that informed the thought of the Besht: the agonic, the harmonistic and the noetic.81 It may be that the Great Maggid adopted a view that is closer to that of R. Gershon of Kutov concerning this point of ecstasy. This is an issue that deserves further investigation. In any case, if R. Gershon is in the background of the Great Maggid’s discussions above, or of the two thinkers share a common background, then we may assume that some form of Sufi views on ecstasy had an influence on this central Hasidic master.82

78 

79 

80 

81  82 

Whether or not this has something to do with the emergence of the concept of qadmut ha-sekhel in the school of the Great Maggid is an issue that deserves a separate study. See Gershom Scholem, The Last Phase, Essays on Hasidism by Gershom Scholem, eds., D. Assaf and E. Liebes, (‘Am ‘Oved and the Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2009), 268–276, (Hebrew) especially the last passage quoted by Scholem on 271, from Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘aqov. Unfortunately, I could not identify this in the editions of this book with which I am acquainted, but only in ’Or Torah, 26—where the concepts of “without time” and “qadmut ha-sekhel” occur together. In this seminal passage, divine wisdom is mentioned as related to timelessness and to hyle. See also above nn. 49, 59, and especially n. 69. See M. Idel, “Prayer, Ecstasy and Alien Thoughts in the Besht’s Religious World,” in eds., D. Assaf and A. Rapoport-Albert, Let the Old Make Way for the New: Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Eastern European Jewry, Presented to Immanuel Etkes, vol. I: Hasidism and the Musar Movement (Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem, 2009), 57–71 (Hebrew). For other, more general suggestions as to the differences between the two masters, see Haviva Pedaya, “The Besht, R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, and the Maggid of Mezritch: Basic Lines for a Religious-Typological Approach,” Daat vol. 45 (2000), 25–73 (Hebrew). Idel, “Prayer, Ecstasy and Alien Thoughts,” 71–105. Ibidem, 58–59 n. 7, 61–71.

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An important parallel to the above passage is adduced by a disciple of the Great Maggid, R. Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir, who quotes a tradition concerning the higher realm in his master’s name: There is certainly no aspect of division [hithalqut] of the degrees there, and it is appropriate that one should take to himself luminosity . . . so as to always be higher than time, since one should pay attention to where the inappropriate attitudes come from . . . everything is following under time . . . but if one considers himself to by naught, and he is equanimous toward the world, and he elevates himself to be higher than time, since by means of time he is prone to reach jealousy and hatred . . . since all those opposite attitudes emerge out of the “building” and the lower, since there is a division of time that generates the inappropriate attitudes . . . and he elevates himself higher than the world of division and the orders of time . . . and he sets existence and naught as equal indeed, and there, there is no division, and in any case they are higher than time.”83 In this passage, time has a double meaning: on the one hand, with the passage of time, negative feelings emerge, and this is the reason why it is better to transcend time. On the other hand, time refers to the seven divine attributes that correspond to the seven days, in which opposite qualities are found. In this situation, too, time should be overcome by ascending to the realm that is described as “higher than time.” This is a realm related to one of the three higher sefirot. In any case, the Great Maggid has also been reported to have said the following: [a] Elijah is alive forever, despite the fact that he is a compound of the four elements, and they are [immersed] within temporality, even though their root is in unity. And when he draws down the unity84 within them, they are aggrandized and become higher than temporality, and arrive to the simple unity. And [so] he can live forever . . . [b] And when someone wants to walk a distance of five hundred years,85 he must walk very

83  84  85 

’Or ha-Me’ir, fol. 15bc. Similar views recur many times in this book without mentioning his master. See, e.g., 46c, 49d, 201c. Basically a term for divinity. This is a standard Rabbinic unit of measure in order to describe gigantic beings.

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much. But in a dream86 he can walk them in one moment, because they are higher than temporality. And the delight that he enjoys there in the one moment that is above temporality he cannot enjoy in this world, because he is [immersed] in time, and time had been obliterated [batel mi-metzi’ut], as time is [part of] creation, and he cannot receive what is higher than time.87 Here we have a stark opposition between “time” and that which is “higher than time,” which are presented as two alternatives to each other: The former should be obliterated for the latter to be received. The obliteration of time parallels the abnegation of the self in the earlier passage of the same master. In paragraph [a] Elijah is considered to be someone who reached the plane that is “higher than time,” which in this passage means immortality. Here, as in the earlier cited passage, this plane that is “higher than time” is identified with unity. However, this term also means a certain type of existence that can be manipulated, namely drawn down into this world, ensuring corporeal immortality. In paragraph [b], the Hasidic master speaks about the possibility of reaching the plane that is “higher than time” through the experience of a dream. Again, the assumption that this is an experience and not just a technical reference to a metaphysical level is evident. Here we have the descent of the divine quality of unity, but this is only in order to elevate the four elements and thus to cause immortality. Interestingly enough, the Great Maggid also connects the state of being higher than time to the intellects. In one of his teachings, he interprets a Lurianic discussion in a very philosophical manner. He interprets the term shannah, year, as referring to shinnuy, change, while hodesh, month, is understood as hiddush, innovation. Thus, changes are conceived to be related to time. However, in the realm that is “higher than time,” all time is comprised in one moment. Thus, the emanation of all the supernal worlds, which are higher than time, takes place in the realm of the intellect, be-shikhliyyut, and “they came from one intellect to another until it arrived in the world of time, where all the changes are revealed.”88 Thus, we have a theory reminiscent of Abulafia’s view, which also connected the immutability of the realm that is “higher than time” with the intellectual world, as we have seen above. 86 

87  88 

The dream is an example for being higher than time. See R. Pinhas Shapira of Koretz, Midrash Pinhas, (Bilgoraj, 1930), fols. 26b–27a. Paragraph [b] is found in a different paraphrase in Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘aqov, 236. Sefer ’Or ha-’Emmet, (rpr., Benei Beraq, 1967), fol. 7d. The Hebrew formulation is not clear. Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘aqov, 123.

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Phenomenologically speaking, there is a sharp difference between the ecstatic Kabbalah and the Hasidic discussions, beyond that which we have already described above. For the ecstatic Kabbalists, the transformation involved in passing beyond time means a transcendence beyond normal corporeal existence, and implicitly also beyond ritual performance, by way of an intense intellectual operation. In Hasidism, by contrast, ritual is described as performed by strong devotion, which involves an operation performed by all the limbs, especially during prayer. Though “time” and its division are relegated to a negative status that should be transcended, the human body and its ritual operations are not. For example, we read in R. Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir: “He linked the particulars of his limbs by a strong link to thought,89 and there he was higher than the aspect of the division [hithalqut] of time, because there is there nothing but the simple unity.”90 This means that though ritual performance requires the unification of the various aspects of personality—indeed a requirement that is already recurrent in many of the Besht’s instructions— this intense moment takes that person out of the normal realm of time. This means a non-intellectual type of experience, which differs dramatically from the main gist of the texts of ecstatic Kabbalah. Elsewhere we read in a passage of the Great Maggid of Medziretch: What91 is written in the phylacteries of the Master of the world? [It is written]92 ‘And who is like the people of Israel, a singular nation on the earth.’ . . . as they reach a state of unity which transcends number . . . for time is under their control to do whatever they want, as they are higher than time [le-ma‘lah mi-zeman]. And He, blessed be He, is united to us, the only obstacle being our capacity, as it is written:93 “Turn to me, [says the Lord of hosts], and I will return to you,” as He, Blessed be he, dwells in thought. And when a person thinks futile things, he pushes Him away [as it is written],94 “And Moses was not able to enter the Tent of Meeting.” As

89 

90  91  92  93  94 

I assume that here there is an ambiguity: one must act with limbs in a manner that he is aware of what he is doing, in a way repeatedly recommended by the Besht, but also as adhering to the supernal world, designated as the “World of Thought,” often times identified as the sefirah of Wisdom. See also above n. 69. ’Or ha-Me’ir, fol. 165a. bt Berakhot, fol. 6a. I Chronicles 17:21. Zechariah 1:3. Exodus 40:35.

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the cloud was dwelling on him, the intellect cannot dwell on man, since darkness dwells in him.95 The Hebrew sekhel, intellect, is a veiled reference to God, who is alluded to earlier in this collection of traditions in the following way: “As if when we perform worthy acts, the ‘world of the intellect’, blessed be He, is broadening. Therefore, the divine intellect dwells in our thought, this state being regarded as one of union.”96 The simultaneity between the human and the divine acts of thought is conspicuous, and it presupposes a Neoaristotelian psychology and theology. This type of Neoaristotelianism is found in some of the followers of Maimonides, Abulafia among them; though the Neoaristotelian stand has been interpreted here in a theurgical manner that points to the broadening of divine consciousness. The Great Maggid, however, displays a much more Neoplatonic propensity. The concepts used by the Great Maggid forcefully point to the description of an experience, which may be designated as unio mystica. The type of cleaving described in this passage transcend the mere connection between two unities since, in the end, they achieve a state of union passing beyond unity. This is an attribute that is reserved in medieval source for God alone. Even the supratemporal nature of Israel at the moment of the cleaving is appropriate to the Neoplatonic concept of “the world of the Intellect,” which is identified here with the Deity as an entity that transcends time.97 The divine phylacteries include the statement of the unique—literally one—nation, while the human phylacteries, in which Israel is designated as if it is called by the Divine name, hint at the state of union; it is the union of two thoughts. Elsewhere, the same Hasidic master describes the spiritual activity “as if the Tzaddiqim cause God to be as their intellect, since He thinks whatever they think.”98 This is especially so when the thought is performed out of enthusiasm, which causes god to delight. We face here an interesting example of what was designated by Gershom Scholem as the transformation of thought into emotion during the process of devequt.99

95  96  97  98 

99 

’Or ha-’Emmet, fol. 8a. See also Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 48–49. Ibidem, fol. 5c. See, e.g., Ennead, iii:7. See also above n. 16. Maggid Devarav le-Ya’aqov, 11. See also the passage from the Great Maggid, ‘Or Torah, 35, and Gershom Scholem, Explications and Implications, (’Am ’Oved, Tel Aviv, 1976), 356 (Hebrew). See The Messianic Idea in Judaism, 218.

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Most of the disciples of the Great Maggid resorted to the concept of the supra-temporal, as we can see in the writings of R. Levi Isaac of Berditchev, R. Shne’ur Zalman of Liady, and R. ’Elimelekh of Lysansk. We cannot survey all of those discussions here, but let me turn to another main follower of the Great Maggid, R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl.100 He too refers to the concept of a plane that is “higher than time”101 several times in his writings. I shall cite one that deals with the fact that the time of repentance is not fixed, but can happen anytime. This is according to a Rabbinic statement that repentance is one of the seven entities that preexisted the creation of the world:102 The world is in time, but before the world, there was no aspect of time at all. And this is the reason why there is no time [fixed] for the performance of repentance, but it happens ex tempore, since one [who repents] arrives higher than time and immediately amends everything . . . and when he comes to the root and cleaves to the plane that is “higher than time,” he becomes a new being.103 The assumption is that by cleaving to the source of time and of change, one is capable of amending sins committed in time. This approach is reminiscent of the extraordinary powers acquired by the prophets who, according to some philosophers, cleave to the universal soul.104 According to this Hasidic master, the nature of lower time is cyclical. He describes the annual holidays as returning to the initial point of ancient events, as if a new beginning, in a manner reminiscent of Eliade’s concept of illo tempore.105 However, regeneration is related to a transcendence of cyclical time by reaching the higher plane. Indeed, the Hebrew phrase for the supra-temporal, “higher than time” lema‘lah me-ha-zeman, or le-ma‘lah min ha-zeman, as pointing to a lived or imagined human experience, and not only to a metaphysical layer, occurs hundreds of times in Hasidic literature. However, only a few pre-Hasidic sources for it may be detected. This ascent to a realm that is higher than regular time 100  On this figure see Arthur Green, Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, Upright Practices, The Light of the Eyes, (Paulist Press, New York, 1982), 1–27 and now Gadi Sagiv, Dynasty, The Chernobyl Hasidic Dynasty and Its Place in the History of Hasidism, (The Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem, 2014) (Hebrew). 101  Me’or ‘Einayyim, (rpr., Jerusalem, 1975), 90, 269, 302. 102  bt., Nedarim, fol. 39b, Tanna’ de Bei ’Eliahu Rabba’, ch. 31. 103  Me’or ‘Einayyim, 255. For an interesting parallel see the early 19th century Hasidic encyclopedia Qehilat Ya‘aqov, by R. Jacob Tzvi Yalish, (Lemberg, 1870), i, fol. 18a. 104  See above n. 60. 105  Me’or ‘Einayyim, 106.

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is sometimes tantamount to the soul’s going, or returning to its source, and thus transcending creation, which is determined by time. The Hasidic masters combined the two moments of transcendence and return to the source—the root—in an explicit manner. Let me point out that the above passages are not exceptional in Hasidism, and it is possible to adduce many other examples to this effect.106

4

Some Concluding Remarks

Regardless of the differences between the different forms of literature that we surveyed above, we may discern a certain general common denominator: new dimensions of time, in comparison to biblical and Rabbinic conceptions, have been added. These more “sublime” types of time create a certain tension with the older, regular types of time. In the theories of a realm that is “higher than time,” regular times are described as inferior and even negative, both in ecstatic Kabbalah and in Hasidism. In the Kabbalistic theories which mapped the sefirotic realm with terms related to time, the lower units of time, the michrocronoi, are not considered to be negative, but are regarded as counterparts to the supernal powers. Performances during those times are considered to be necessary for the perfect life of the individual on the one hand, and for the perfection of the supernal system, on the other. Thus, despite this duality, we may discern a stark divergence between the attitudes found in the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah and those found in philosophical thought and ecstatic Kabbalah, on the one hand, and the even more complex attitude we discerned in Hasidism, on the other hand. In the Hassidic approach, regular forms of time have been meshed together with the seven lower powers as necessary, multiple and ambivalent, while the realm that is “higher than time” is unified. There are other seminal differences between ecstatic Kabbalah and Hasidism, such as the difference between an anomian versus a nomian attitude respectively. Nevertheless, the common concern with ecstatic experiences and

106  See, e.g., in addition to the sources mentioned above also the Great Maggid’s collection of sermons Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘aqov, 116, 149, 234, 267–269. The Great Maggid’s ascent to the realm that is “higher than time” during prayer differs from the Besht’s ascent, as explicitly described in some sources as ascents during sleep. On this issue I hope to elaborate elsewhere. See, meanwhile, my “Ascensions, Gender and Pillars in Safedian Kabbalah,” Kabbalah, 25 (2011), 57–86.

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with unitive and intellectual terms brought them to develop similar attitudes that depreciate time in favor of an other-worldly, supra-temporal attitude. The proposal to see a possible Sufi impact on the Great Maggid does not preclude the possibility of the impact of ecstatic Kabbalah. After all, his resort to the same Hebrew form le-ma‘lah me-ha-zeman, reflects a Hebrew source. In addition, one main disciple of this Hasidic master, R. Shne’ur Zalman of Liady, has correctly been shown to have had some acquaintance with Abulafia’s views.107 In fact, the second phase in ecstatic Kabbalah, as exemplified by R. Nathan Har’ar and R. Isaac of Acre, already integrated some Sufi elements, some of which could have been known to the early Hasidic masters.108 In any case, the role played by the intellect in Hasidism, despite its very substantial emotional proclivities, goes far beyond the role that it played in the Cordoverian and Lurianic kinds of Kabbalah. In any case, as has been shown, both ecstatic Kabbalah and Hasidism, two schools in Jewish mysticism, considered the attainment of the supra-temporal realm as a possible experience. This is in a manner reminiscent of other religions. Let me emphasize, though, that I do not consider this idea of supratemporality to be a universal characteristic of mysticism.109 In fact, it is absent from the vast majority of Kabbalistic writings, which militated for a hypostatic understanding of time. This shows that Kabbalistic literature evinces more than one theory, and sometimes holds stark divergences. There is indeed quite a discrepancy between obliterating the various forms of time and hypostatizing them in order to enhance ritual performance related to specific moments in time. Let me draw attention to the obvious implications of the experience of transcending time: such an experience may also transcend ritual. Since, in most cases, the performance of ritual is based on motion, it is thus predicated on time; the transcendence of time may thus have what I call “anomian” implications. This does not mean that a person who has imagined enjoying the supra-temporal experience cannot return and perform rituals in a normal manner. There are, however, descriptions that maintain that the experience of

107  See Bezalel Naor, “The Song of Songs, Abulafia and the Alter Rebbe,” Jewish Review, April– May, (1990), 10–11; and idem, “Hotam Bolet Hotam Shoqe‘a, in the Teaching of Abraham Abulafia and the Doctrine of Habad,” Sinai, vol. 107 (1991), 54–57 (Hebrew). 108  See my Hasidism: from Ecstasy to Magic, (suny Press, Albany, 1995), 457, index, under item Sufism, and Kabbalah & Eros, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2005), 153–178. 109  See, e.g., Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism, 26, 27, 123, 124, 141–142, idem, At Sundry Times, An Essay in the Comparison of Religions, (Faber and Faber, London, 1958), 38, 41, 45–46, 92.

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union may impede such a performance.110 The new value of the peak experience of the individual, which differs from the communal, is the result of the introduction of categories stemming from Greek philosophy. This contributed to the emergence of an individualistic type of experience that encourages the human to share the supra-temporal state with the divine, even at the price of renouncing the social synchronization of time within the religious community. The emphasis, as shown by Abulafia’s exercise, came to be upon solitude and mental concentration.111 The main Hasidic approach attempted to mitigate the extremely individualistic and anomian approach found in ecstatic Kabbalah. Indeed, as we have seen above, it was emphatic in regard to the importance of prayer and of bodily involvement in both prayer and the ritual of phylacteries. The Great Maggid is reported to have said that “it is impossible to cleave to God but by means of Torah and commandments,”112 and that “the speech and the deed are done in their [fixed] time but thought is not in time . . . the supernal world is not in time.”113 Thus, the performance of a commandment is imagined to participate in both temporality and supra-temporality. This emphasis on the nomian is indubitably one of the reasons why Hasidism became a mass movement, unlike Abulafia’s Kabbalah, which remained elitist. The transcendence beyond time in the thought of the above-mentioned Jewish mystics is best understood as the adoption of sophisticated approaches, stemming from Greek philosophies and also perhaps Sufi themes. It is not, as Eliade would claim, a reflection of archaic mentalities. Insofar as Judaism is conceived, at least, it is the concentration on rituals that constitutes a continuation of archaic or pre-axial mentalities that have mitigated the axial theories stemming from Greek sources, which themselves dealt with an escape from time.114

110  See Idel, “Prayer, Ecstasy and Alien Thoughts,” 64–65. 111  See my Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 108–113. For hitbodedut in Jewish philosophy, see my “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Jewish Philosophy,” in eds. M. Idel, Z. W. Harvey, E. Schweid, Shlomo Pines Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Eighteenth Birthday (Jerusalem, 1988) vol. i, 39–60. (Hebrew). For possible source of concepts related to hitbobedut in Sufism see my Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 106–107. 112  ’Or Torah, 114. 113  Ibidem. 114  For the view of 18th century Hasidism as a combination of pre-axial and axial approaches, see my Hasidism: from Ecstasy to Magic, 225.

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Index Ab-grund 37–38 Abraham, Patriarch 97, 114–16, 118, 121, 123, 130, 142 absence 28–30, 50 Abulafia, Abraham 5, 10, 163, 165–68, 170, 174–75, 182, 185–90, 192–98, 204, 206, 209 actuality 15, 26–28, 39, 41, 49, 67, 75, 77–79, 88, 90, 191 Adam 97–98, 134 additional soul 172–73 Adir ba-Marom 40–41, 43–44, 47 Afterman, Adam 9–10, 53, 162–64, 166, 168, 170, 172–74 Alemanno, Yohanan 7, 83–96 amon 107–9 angels 170, 191, 193 Apocalypse of Abraham 8, 113–18, 120, 122–24 appearances 28, 66, 72–73, 75–76, 100 Arian Controversy 97, 99–100, 107 Arianism 97, 100, 104–5, 107, 109–10 Aristotelianism 20, 24, 55, 57, 61, 86 Aristotle 29, 54–58, 85–86, 88, 127, 166, 168 Arius 97, 99–100 ascent 2, 128, 198, 200–201, 207–8 Atlas, Dustin 6–7, 66 attributes, divine 70, 156, 194 Augustine 83, 104, 126, 153 Averroes 53, 90–91, 125–26, 165–66 Avicenna 61–62 Azazel 114, 116–18, 122–23 Ba‘al Shem Tov 201–2, 205 Babylonian Talmud 17, 119, 138, 147 Bahir 88–89, 96 Bar Ḥiyya, Abraham 25–26, 55 beginning 5–7, 31, 33–36, 39–45, 47, 49, 53–54, 59–61, 63–65, 83–88, 92–96, 100, 108, 128–29, 217 formal 85–86 intellectual 85–86 temporal 7, 83, 85, 91 Binah 95, 128, 133–34, 182, 201 bodies 6, 21, 43–44, 55, 58–61, 91, 128, 138, 188

bohu 7, 83–84, 87–90, 92–96 boundary 6, 46, 49, 59–61, 80 Boyarin, Daniel 100, 104–5, 108–9 Brann, Eva 27–29 Buzaglo, Meir 66–67, 72, 74, 79 change 32, 165, 174, 186, 188, 194, 204, 207 child 86, 108, 161, 180 Christ 7, 98–99, 104, 107–9, 117 Christianity 7, 100–102, 108–10, 185 cleaving 142, 163, 165–68, 171–72, 189, 199, 206–7, 210 coeternality 7, 98–101, 107, 109–10 commandments 128, 130–32, 134, 140–43, 180, 183, 210 concealment 2, 38, 43, 45, 50 confidant 108–9 consciousness 43, 67–68, 74, 76–78 continuum 1, 8, 126 contraction 44–46 corporeality 59–61, 199 creation 7–8, 19–24, 26, 71, 78, 80, 83, 93–95, 97–100, 103–9, 127–28, 133–34, 171–72, 197, 200–201 ex nihilo 83, 96, 101 work of 3, 102 cyclical time 180–81, 184, 207 darkness 87, 94, 143, 206 Day of Atonement 120, 122 days of creation 95, 171, 200–201 Deleuze 31–33, 73 delight 107–9, 128, 131–32, 155, 204, 206 divine 108–9 devequt 167, 173–74, 206 diástēma 56–57 difference 6–7, 30–33, 37, 39, 60, 67, 72–73, 75–77, 79–80 differences, identity of 32–33 differentials 6, 72–73, 78 divine 8, 10, 19, 25, 99, 105–8, 128, 134, 143, 162–64, 166, 169–73, 175, 187, 194–96 divinity 104, 157, 166, 172, 180–81, 188, 199–200, 203 dream 47, 158–61, 204

224 duality 40–42, 208 duration 8, 15–16, 23, 26, 29, 125–28 of existence 126–27 earth 19, 22, 87–89, 93–95, 97, 107, 128–29, 145, 199, 205 eating 173–74 Einei ha-Edah 85, 87, 93–94 Ein Sof 38–41, 44, 46–47, 49, 130 Elimelekh of Lyzinsk 7, 102, 104–5, 207 emanation 8, 58–60, 62–63, 128, 171, 197, 204 embodiment 4, 91, 164, 173, 175 emptiness 38, 64, 88 Enneads 4, 58, 63–64, 206 Epistle of Delights 128, 131–32 epithet 39–41 Eros ix, 2, 64 esotericism 2–4, 18 essence 23, 142 divine 8, 10, 19, 23–24, 27, 44, 46, 48, 99, 106–8, 129–30, 162–64, 169–75, 194, 196 eternity 1, 4–6, 8–10, 20, 23, 46–47, 58–60, 125, 153, 157–58, 162–69, 171–72, 174–75, 181, 189 evil 39–43, 45–46, 93, 131–34, 199–201 exile 63–64, 131, 160 existence 2–4, 7–8, 10, 19–20, 24–25, 87–91, 95, 97–101, 106–10, 125–28, 134, 164–66, 189, 200–201, 203–5 existents 26, 87, 94, 125 experience 8–10, 68–69, 71–73, 77–79, 152–53, 162–63, 166–68, 170–75, 179–81, 188–90, 192–93, 196, 198–200, 202, 204–10 mystical 8, 10, 72, 162–63, 170, 173, 175 religious 162–63, 170, 192 extension 6, 29, 37, 46, 53–54, 58, 60, 107, 164, 171, 173 faculties 130, 140–41, 174, 188 father 25, 43, 86, 97–100, 104–6, 109–10, 119, 133, 139, 145, 156, 185 female 42–44, 183 First Cause 19, 22–23, 25–26, 165–68 Gaon of Vilna 136–38, 143–45, 147 Garb, Jonathan 9–10, 39–40, 71, 151, 153, 155, 157–58 gate 43, 103, 127, 134, 172, 175, 198

index Genazzano, Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of 128–35 Genesis 4, 7, 23–26, 43, 84–88, 93, 95–96, 98, 103–4 Gentiles 118, 121, 123 Geonim 136, 138–39, 144 glory 2–3, 24 goat 116–17, 121–22 God 10, 19–26, 59–63, 70–71, 74–75, 98–109, 129–33, 140, 142–43, 162–71, 173, 185–91, 193–97, 206 godhead 75, 80, 104, 144, 170–73 González Diéguez, Guadalupe 16, 19–21, 26 ground 33–35, 37–38, 63, 75, 92–93, 147 Guide of the Perplexed 18, 20–21, 27, 125, 127, 185–86, 188, 190, 192–93, 195 Halfan, Abba Mari 133–35 ha-Shamayim 16–18, 20–25, 133 Hasidic masters 9, 101, 107, 110, 197–98, 208–9 texts 7, 100–101, 106–7, 151 Hasidim 75, 79, 138, 142–43 Hasidism 7, 10, 66–67, 74–75, 79–80, 97, 101–3, 110, 141, 179, 183, 197–98, 201, 205, 208–10 Hayyim of Volozhin 9, 138, 140, 142–43, 146–47 heathen 114–15, 118, 121–23 heavens 22, 42, 54–55, 58, 60–61, 93–95, 100, 102, 105, 107, 113, 116, 140, 191 Hebrew Bible 179–80, 184 Heidegger, Martin 5, 33–38, 41, 49 Heller-Wilensky, Sara 16, 18–21 hermeneutics 30, 72, 87, 153 High Christology 98, 100, 105–7 higher than time 10, 179, 185, 197–205, 207–8 Hillman, James 151, 158–59, 161 history 5, 8–10, 43, 45, 125, 127–31, 133–35, 137, 140, 152, 157, 161, 171, 173, 180 Hokhmah 86–87, 98, 103–4, 141–42, 182, 194, 199 holiness 143, 155, 158, 171, 199 Holy Spirit 18–19, 99, 171–73, 175 holy time 170, 174–75 human soul 128, 164–65 time 8, 125, 129–30, 134, 168

index human beings 107, 122, 141, 145–47, 187–88 hyle 87, 89–90, 94, 199, 202 Iamblichus 53, 168–69 Ibn Ezra, Abraham 17–18, 179, 181, 186, 188, 190 Ibn Gabirol, Solomon 24, 60–65, 93 Ibn Laṭif, Isaac 16, 18–21, 25–27 Ibn Tufayl, Abu Bakr 165–66 Idel, Moshe 10–11, 31, 53, 69, 92, 131–32, 151–53, 155, 174, 179 identity 29, 31–33, 49, 99, 106 image 6, 15–18, 25, 27–28, 35, 48, 59–60, 65, 69–71, 76, 126, 158, 164 imagination 15, 21, 27–30, 47, 69–73, 77–79, 100, 107, 126, 160 immutability 107, 194–95, 204 incarnation 97, 99–101, 104, 106, 109–10 infinity 37, 39, 44–46, 49–50, 74, 79, 198–200 intellect 25, 27, 53, 58, 60, 63–64, 74, 159–60, 165–66, 168–69, 189, 191–93, 195–98, 204, 206 active 10, 74, 78, 165–68, 187, 191 as-love 61 divine 160, 169, 195–96, 206 separate 193, 195 interval 23, 54, 56, 58, 164 Israel 8, 25, 88, 105, 108, 118–19, 122–23, 125, 129, 131–32, 134, 142, 158, 171–73, 205–6 Israeli, Isaac 53–65 Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye 201–2 Jesus 99, 106, 115, 117, 119, 185 Jewish Mysticism 1, 4, 8, 113–14, 124, 151–52, 162, 164–65, 209 Jewish Thought 2, 35, 126, 155, 185 Jewish tradition 2, 114, 116, 120, 125, 135 Judaism 1, 10–11, 100, 102, 108–9, 136, 143, 164, 167, 170, 173, 179–80, 184, 210 Kabbalah 1–2, 69–70, 74–75, 100–101, 103, 132–33, 135, 144, 151–52, 154–55, 169–70, 179, 184–85, 198–99, 208–10 Kabbalah, Ecstatic 10, 163, 174, 179, 185–86, 197–98, 200, 205, 208–10 Kabbalah, modern 9, 151–55, 161 Kabbalah, Theosophical 10, 162–63, 168–70, 174, 181–83, 195, 208

225 Kant, Immanuel 67–69, 72, 75–76, 78, 143–45, 147 knowledge 1, 17, 26, 70–71, 79, 125, 129–30, 132, 138, 142–47, 166, 191, 193–94 Kook, Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen 5, 9, 151, 157–58 Kulik, Alexander 113, 115, 118, 120–21, 123 language 68–70, 89, 91–92, 103, 105, 135, 144 left side 114–15, 118 Lelli, Fabrizio 8, 85, 127, 133–34, 211 letters 4, 19, 21, 46, 48, 85, 103–4, 168, 194 liberation 123, 152 life 58, 62, 65, 119, 137–38, 140–41, 143, 157, 159, 164–65, 167, 170–71, 173, 184, 186 of soul 58, 159, 164–65 of the world to come 165–68, 172–73 light 22, 37, 43, 45–48, 59, 79, 98, 101, 107, 130, 143, 155, 157, 171, 173–74 divine 173–74 limit 25, 70, 74, 77–80, 137–38 Lord 4, 26, 86, 105, 119, 122, 129, 131, 133, 167, 174, 205 love 6, 41, 53–54, 61–65, 108, 159, 161 divine 62–63 Luzzatto, Moshe Hayyim 39–41, 43–48 Maggid of Mezritch 7, 42, 67, 80, 102–10, 198–210 Magid, Shaul 7, 93, 97 Maimon, Solomon 6–7, 66–80, 145 Maimonides 18–19, 21, 23, 27, 70, 74, 126, 133, 141, 145, 166–67, 179, 186–90, 193, 206 male 42–44, 183 Malkhut 39, 156, 182–83 master 16, 102, 104–6, 137, 152, 175, 184, 191, 202–7, 209 matter 4, 20, 22, 61–65, 77, 79, 83–84, 86–87, 89–94, 128, 191, 196, 199 meals 172–75 Menahem Mendel of Shklov 142–44 Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl 199–200, 207 Messiah 98, 113, 115, 117–23, 129, 142, 160 messianism 8–9, 16, 42, 102, 113–21, 123–24, 135, 155, 157, 159–60, 167, 180 metaphysics 2, 7, 34, 97, 101, 141, 144–45, 168, 199

226 Midrash 103, 109, 138–39, 179 miracles 97, 133, 196–97 Mitnagdim 9, 136–39, 141–43, 145–47 modernity 102, 152, 154–55, 161 Moses 25, 98, 130, 142, 205 motion 29, 46, 53–60, 125–26, 128, 186, 194–96, 209 movement 6, 10, 15, 26, 28, 53, 55, 57–60, 66, 68, 162, 164–66, 171, 179, 187 mudda 53–58, 60–61 Naḥman 159–61, 201 Nahmanides 98, 104, 134 Name 4, 19, 21–22, 25–26, 30, 39–43, 98, 104, 106, 134, 158, 168, 190–91, 194 divine 174–75, 190, 192, 206 Ehyeh 24–26, 101, 107 Elohim 22–24, 26, 40, 104 YHWH 40, 117, 121, 158, 193 nations 119, 122, 132, 135 naught 47, 203 Neoplatonism 6–7, 26, 53–54, 57–65, 93, 96, 164–65, 168–70, 181, 183, 186, 188, 206 Nicean Creed 97, 99–100, 104, 109 nonbeing 27–29, 49 nothingness 37, 88, 103, 160 number 54–56, 58, 73, 205 object 15, 18, 27–28, 62–63, 74, 78–79, 91, 108, 126, 189 Ogren 1, 53, 83, 127, 155, 181 ‘Olam 4, 8, 20, 103–7, 167 Origen 99–100 Orlov 8, 113 paradise 167, 174–75 paradox 5, 22, 30, 32, 34, 38, 48–49, 88, 91 particulars 125, 129–30, 141, 205 patriarchs 142–43 people, divine 160 perception 10, 15, 27–28, 71, 79, 126, 135, 154, 162–63, 166–67, 200–201 perfection 6, 39–41, 46–47, 49, 60, 70, 80, 191, 208 Pessin 6, 24, 59–63, 65, 93 philosophers 1–2, 17–19, 23, 26–27, 58, 63, 89, 129, 160, 166–67, 169, 184, 196, 207 philosophical soul 19

index philosophy 27, 63, 66–68, 70, 72–76, 90, 96, 144–45, 161, 164, 167, 169–70, 179, 181, 210 Pinhas ben Eliyahu 145 Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 21–22, 139–40 Plato 27, 56, 58, 64 plenty 63–64 Plotinus 29, 53–54, 56, 58, 61, 63–65, 159, 164, 168–69 power 8, 33, 41, 64, 74, 89, 97, 103–6, 109, 121–22, 138, 171, 200 divine 103, 171, 181–83, 200 prayer 104, 133, 156–57, 170–71, 199, 205, 208, 210 presence, divine 65 Proclus 53, 168–69, 171, 186 prophetic soul 19, 196 prophets 17–19, 26, 130, 140, 157, 196, 207 psychology 27, 152–56, 161, 206 Rabbinic Era 9, 136, 138–40, 143, 146–47 Rabbis 3, 7, 9, 84, 88, 97, 100, 108, 119, 138, 140, 143, 146–47 Rav 16–19, 22, 25, 43, 96, 98, 136–37, 139, 146, 188, 211, 216 Rav Pe‘alim 16–17, 19, 22 realm, divine 127, 130, 153, 169, 186, 190, 195 reason 6, 9, 18–19, 60, 68–69, 74, 80, 136, 140–43, 146, 157 rectification 40–43, 45 reincarnation 155–56 repentance 199, 207 repetition 5, 30–34, 36, 39, 48–49, 181 representations 6–7, 36, 66, 68–69, 71–79 reshimu 5, 44–46, 48 reshit 85–87 return 30, 32, 41, 103, 153, 156, 165, 199, 205, 208–9 eternal 32–33 ritual 8, 10, 114, 116–17, 123–24, 130, 152–53, 171–73, 175, 193, 205, 209–10 Sabbath 44, 95, 152, 161, 172, 174–75, 180, 183, 192, 199 sages 18, 133, 139, 141, 143 scapegoat 113, 116–17, 121–24 Scholem, Gershom 2–3, 8, 16, 77, 89, 91–92, 114, 200, 202, 206 secrets 3, 18–19, 41, 114, 131, 134, 142–43, 159

227

index sefirot 43–44, 95, 104, 127, 132–33, 156, 173, 181–83, 197–201, 203, 205 self 4, 6, 59, 131, 140, 156, 199, 204 annihilation 75, 80, 199–200 concealing 36, 38 eliciting 34 gratification 140 image 66 justification 140 limitation 74 limiting 79 mediating 34 moving 56, 58 negation 79 perception 71, 154 withholding 36, 38 separation 6, 53, 58, 60–61, 134, 201 Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim 17–18, 20–24 sha’ashua 103, 107–8 Shabbat 10, 170–75, 182 Shekhinah 173, 199 Shneuri, Dov Baer 156 Ṣimṣum 37–39, 44–48 sins 117, 119, 122–23, 207 Sod ha-Yiḥud 39–40 son 8, 86, 97–100, 106–8, 110, 122, 185 soul 4, 6, 9, 53, 56, 58–61, 63–64, 136–38, 151–59, 161, 164, 168, 189–91, 196, 198–200 national 9, 157 universal 164, 169, 207 vegetative 191 space 1, 3–4, 27–28, 36–37, 44, 46–47, 49, 75–78, 107–8, 128, 130, 156–58, 164, 174–75, 190 pre-existent 108 sacred 9, 157 sphere 6, 53–55, 58–61, 194, 201 spirit 6, 18–19, 30, 53–54, 60, 87, 98–99, 157, 171–75 status, divine 8, 105–6 Stern, Eliyahu 8–9, 136 Stoicism 53–54, 56–58 stones 94–95, 98, 103 substance 19, 24, 34, 56–57, 59, 61, 88, 94–95, 100, 168, 170, 174, 194 Ṣurat Olam 18–19, 21–25 symbol 4, 6–7, 40, 42–43, 49, 70, 83, 91–92, 114, 117, 124, 128, 166, 175, 183

Talmud 7, 43, 66, 94, 97, 109, 136–40, 142–43, 146–47, 156, 194–95 temporality 5, 7, 9, 15–17, 30–31, 35, 129–30, 152–54, 156, 159, 168, 189, 200–201, 203–4, 209–10 Tetragrammaton 19, 21, 24–25, 42, 101, 168, 193–95 Tevele, David 140, 145 Theology of Aristotle 21, 53–54, 58–59, 61–62 Timaeus 6, 53–54, 56, 58–60 time divine 126, 168–69, 171–72 sacred 5, 9–10, 157, 162–63, 166, 168–71, 173–75, 183 segments 170–71 time-space 28, 36–37 Tishby, Isaiah 122 tohu 7, 83–84, 87–96 Torah 19, 23, 84–85, 88, 102–4, 107–9, 123, 125, 128, 130–31, 133, 135, 141–42, 167, 198 lishmah 103–4 trace 5, 44–50, 60 transcendence 25, 48, 164, 197–98, 200, 202, 205, 207–10 transformation 93, 165, 188–91, 193, 201, 205–6 truth 19, 33–37, 39, 43–44, 46–47, 69, 77, 80, 87, 99, 130, 145, 151, 159, 166 understanding 8, 69, 71, 73–78 underworld 158–59 union 10, 41, 62, 156, 162–68, 170, 174–75, 189, 193, 199–200, 206, 210 uniqueness 25, 33–35 unity 19–20, 24, 37, 40–43, 45–46, 49, 59, 63, 76, 78, 109–10, 164–65, 168, 200–201, 203–6 vessels 44, 46, 94, 105, 146, 171 water 59, 87, 94–95, 174 wisdom 16, 18, 20, 24, 47, 86–87, 89, 98, 103, 107–9, 133, 193, 196, 202, 205 withdrawal 37–38, 45–47, 49 Wolfson 2, 5–6, 15, 53, 83, 91–92, 100, 108, 151–54, 156, 159, 187, 191, 195 world 2–4, 19–25, 47–48, 58–59, 64–66, 70–71, 83–84, 88, 93–94, 102–3, 126–28, 135–36, 164–66, 191, 193–96

228 to come 23, 157, 165–68, 171–73, 175 divine 127, 182 intellectual 169, 204 lower 61, 63, 127–28, 193, 200 of separation 201, 203 supernal 58, 61–64, 132, 134, 199, 204–5, 210 of thought 199, 205–6 of time 204 worship 41, 45, 100, 114–16, 118, 123, 156, 161

index Yom Kippur 8, 113–14, 116–17, 120–22, 124, 182 zaddik 7–8, 97, 100–110 zaddikism 97, 101–2, 106, 110 Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir 156, 199, 203, 205 zeman 16–18, 26, 41–45, 47, 125–26, 130, 182–83, 186, 189–90, 196–98, 205, 207, 209 Zohar 10, 39–40, 101, 122, 131, 139, 143, 159, 162–63, 171–72, 175, 182