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Boaz Huss

ASK NO QUESTIONS: GERSHOM SCHOLEM

AND THE STUDY OF CONTEMPORARY
JEWISH MYSTICISM

By way of introduction, let me recount something that happened to a

young acquaintance of mine in 1924. The fellow came to Jerusalem,
unpretentiously bearing his training in philology and modern history,
and sought to get in touch with a circle of latter-day kabbalists who
had preserved, for over 200 years, the traditional mystical teachings of
the Jews of eastern lands. Eventually, he met a kabbalist who told him:
“I am prepared to teach you Kabbalah, but on one condition that I’m
not sure you’ll be able to fulfill.” Some of my readers may not guess
that condition: “Ask no questions.”1
Gershom Scholem used this mythical tale to open his lecture
“Kabbalah and Myth” at the Eranos Conference in Ascona, Switzerland,
in 1949—the first time he lectured at that conference. In a 1974 inter-
view with Muki Zur, Scholem disclosed that he himself was the young
man in the story, a fact that had no doubt been clear to his audience at
Eranos. He went on to tell of his reaction to the condition imposed by
R. Gershon Vilner, the aged Ashkenazi kabbalist from the “Bet-El”
yeshiva, a reaction that was likewise unsurprising: “I told him
I wanted to consider it. And then I told him I couldn’t do it.” 2
Paradoxically enough, by his negative response Scholem effectively
accepted the condition proposed by the kabbalist, for he chose not to
ask questions about—and not to study—Kabbalah as a living, contem-
porary phenomenon.3
In his partial autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem, Scholem
mentions several more encounters with kabbalists and mystics, but he
presents these meetings anecdotally, never raising the possibility that
these mystics might be the subjects of study or research.4 Indeed,
Scholem’s meeting with contemporary kabbalists left no impression
whatsoever on his vast corpus of scholarly work. He labored to examine
the most out-of-the-way kabbalistic manuscripts he could find, but he
devoted not a single study to the Bet-El kabbalists or any other kabbalistic
stream of his own time. The kabbalistic yeshivas that functioned in
Jerusalem during Scholem’s time (“Bet-El,” “Rehovot ha-Nahar,” and
“Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim”) and prominent kabbalists, most of them likewise
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142 Boaz Huss

in Jerusalem during Scholem’s period, such as R. Saul ha-Kohen

Dwlck, R. Judah Petaiah, R. Solomon Eliashov, and R. Judah Ashlag,
go nearly unmentioned in Scholem’s studies. That is the case as well
with respect to the few mystics of his generation for whom Scholem
expressed esteem—Rabbi Kook, R. Menahem Mendel Schneerson,
and R. Ahrele Roth.5
Gershom Scholem was trained as a philologist and engaged prima-
rily in historical study, and his inattention to contemporary Kabbalah
might be attributed to that historical-philological orientation. But
Scholem did not merely forgo ethnographic study of contemporary
kabbalists; he paid no scholarly attention even to kabbalistic texts that
were written and published in his time. Moreover, Scholem sought to
use philological and historical methods to get to the metaphysical and
mystical basis of the Kabbalah and to describe comprehensively the Jewish
mystical phenomenon. In his recent book on three great twentieth-century
students of religion, Steven Wasserstrom distinguished Gershom
Scholem, who rejected the possibility of learning from kabbalists them-
selves, from Mircea Eliade, who learned from and received the
approval of Indian gurus, and Henry Corbin, who engaged in pro-
found discussions with Sufi sheikhs.6 Noteworthy as well is the distinction
between Scholem and his friend Solomon Dov Goitein; the latter also
underwent philological and historical training in Germany but, after
immigrating to the Land of Israel (sailing on the same ship as Scholem),
turned to ethnographic study of Yemenite Jews.7
Gershom Scholem refrained from studying the Jewish mysticism
of his own time not because he was a historian and philologist but
because he denied its significance and value. In his monumental Major
Trends in Jewish Mysticism, published in 1941, he issued the following
pronouncement: “At the end of a long process of development in
which Kabbalism, paradoxical though it may sound, has influenced
the course of Jewish history, it has become again what it was in the
beginning: the esoteric wisdom of small groups of men out of touch
with life and without any influence on it.”8 And in his 1963 article
“Thoughts on the Possibility of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,” he
wrote as follows: “When all is said and done, it may be said that in our
time, for the most part, there is no original mysticism, not in the
nation of Israel and not among the nations of the world.”9
In the present article, I will argue that these findings should be
seen not as a description of actual circumstances but as a value judg-
ment reflecting the underlying assumptions of the modern study of
Kabbalah and of the conceptual framework and cultural stance that
shaped that study. That cultural stance, itself forged in the context of
modernist thought and with an orientalist perspective, contributed to
the cultural and social marginalization in Israeli society of mystical
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Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism 143

beliefs and practices and of the circles maintaining them. This has
made it impossible for Scholem, and, to a great extent, makes it difficult
for investigators of Kabbalah even today, to consider the study of
contemporary Jewish mysticism.
Let me stress that I do not make this argument as a moralistic
attack or “indictment,” nor do I mean to downplay the value of the
vast scholarly accomplishments of Scholem and his followers. My
intention, rather, is to cast a critical eye on the frame of reference and
underlying assumptions of the field of research from which and in
which I work, so as to test and understand how those perspectives
shaped the field’s corpus of knowledge and scholarly practices. A cri-
tique of this sort, made possible by the different historical and ideological
framework in which I operate, is based on the scholarly achievements
of Scholem and his disciples.
As Scholem himself made clear, his interest in Jewish mysticism and
Kabbalah grew out of the Zionist ideology he had adopted as a young
man in Germany. In the interview with Muki Zur referred to above,
Scholem says, “I wanted to enter into the world of Kabbalah through my
thinking of and believing in Zionism as a something alive, as a renewal of
a nation that had deteriorated greatly. . . .I was interested in the ques-
tion: “Was halakhic Judaism strong enough to persevere and endure?
Was halakhah without a mystical foundation really possible? Did it have
enough vitality of its own to persevere without deteriorating over the
course of two thousand years?”10 Scholem saw Jewish mysticism and Kab-
balah as an expression of Judaism’s vitality and revolutionary force,
which made possible its existence in exile and, in a dialectical manner,
ultimately led to the Enlightenment and to Zionism.11 The modern incar-
nation of this force, in Scholem’s view, appeared in his generation in a
new form as the Zionist enterprise. Thus, in “Thoughts on the Possibility
of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,” Scholem declares:

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

Scholem’s perspective identifies the period of exile as the period in

which Jewish mysticism occupied a significant place in Jewish history.
Scholem located the start of Jewish mysticism in the heikhalot literature,
which he dated to the first centuries C.E., and its conclusion in the
establishment of the Bet-El yeshiva and the emergence of the Hasidic
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144 Boaz Huss

movement. His view of Jewish mysticism as the vital force of Diaspora

Judaism explains the paradox of Scholem turning his back on the bear-
ers of the kabbalistic tradition precisely when he came to the Land of
Israel, settled in Jerusalem—a center of kabbalistic ferment in the
1920s—and finally had the opportunity to meet with them. Instead of
doing so, he returned to European libraries to do his research, in order
to lay the groundwork for the study of Kabbalah on the basis of the
manuscript archives preserved there.13 Scholem’s Zionist perspective
made Kabbalah into a significant factor in Judaism’s past, but one that
had lost its historical role in the present. In so doing, Arthur Hertzberg
argued—using the same locution Scholem himself had applied to the
Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars who had preceded him—Scholem pro-
vided an honorable burial for Kabbalah: “Scholem was quite clearly re-
evoking these fascinating shades but ultimately, to use the language of his
charge against the scholars of the Wissenschaft school, in order to bury
them with due respect. It was part of the Jewish past, the present was
Zionism.”14
As noted, Scholem concluded that not only Jewish mysticism but
mysticism in general had ceased to be a meaningful phenomenon in
the modern world. In his words, “Certainly, in recent generations
there have been no individual stirrings producing either new forms of
mystical teachings or movements having significance in the life of the
community. This is equally the case in Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam.”15 Scholem does not explain this phenomenon; but his claim
that the impediment to formulating significant Jewish mysticism in his
day was the lack of belief in “Torah from Heaven” and his declaration
that “we all, to a great extent, are religious anarchists” clarify Scholem’s
modernistic perspective, which believes in the triumph of secularization
and regards the traditional forms of religion as phenomena losing
communal significance in the modern world.16
Scholem does not abandon hope that mysticism will reappear on
the stage of history, but he assumes that any such reappearance will be
in a secularized form rather than in traditional dress:

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

Scholem concludes his reflections on the possibility of Jewish mysti-

cism in his day with a reference to none other than Walt Whitman—who
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Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism 145

represents, in his words, “a sense of absolute sanctity within absolute

secularity”—as an example indicating hope for a renewed appearance
of Jewish mysticism.18 Scholem elsewhere expresses this neo-romantic
concept, which sees literature and art as the heirs of religiosity in a
secular age, in his presentation of Kafka as a modern bearer of the
Jewish mystical spirit. He concludes his essay “Ten Non-historical
Statements about the Kabbalah” as follows: “For in a uniquely lofty
way, Kafka gave expression to the boundary between religion and
nihilism. For that reason, certain readers in our day see in his writ-
ings—which are representations in secular terms of a kabbalistic sense
of the world (which he himself did not know)—something of the
demanding light of the canonical, of the variegated whole.”19 These
“certain” readers, of course, included Scholem himself, who con-
cluded in his 1974 lecture “My Path to the Kabbalah” (delivered at the
Bavarian Academy of Art) that the three “books” that reflect the spirit
of Judaism are “the Hebrew Bible, the Zohar, and the writings of
Kafka.”20 One could say that this definition of the Jewish canon offers
the most succinct expression of Scholem’s understanding of Judaism.
The continuation of the Jewish mystical spirit can be found, accor-
ding to Scholem, not only in literature but also in academic inquiry,
from a Zionist perspective, into Jewish mysticism. Scholem saw the
Zionist academic study of Judaism in general, and of Kabbalah in par-
ticular, as part of Judaism’s spiritual revival; and he strove to reach
the metaphysical and mystical foundation of the Kabbalah through
the use of philological and historical methods.21 And so, at the end of
his 1937 letter to S. Z. Schocken, entitled “A Frank Word about My
True Intentions in Studying Kabbalah,” Scholem writes:
In the uniquely wondrous mirror of philological criticism, there is first
reflected for a man of our times, in the purest possible form and through the
time-honored processes of commentary, the mystical splendor of the system
whose existence necessarily has been completely hidden precisely through its
projection into historical times. It is the force of that paradox, and the antici-
pation of a response from the mountain top, of a slight, nearly imperceptible
movement in history allowing for the truth to speak through what appears to
be “development,” that feed my work today as they did when I first set out on
my path.22

In that sense, as David Biale has argued, Scholem saw the academic
study of Kabbalah as the modern heir of the kabbalistic tradition:
“Scholem therefore sees the Kabbalists as his precursors and Kabbalistic
theology as the precursor to his theological anarchism—but they are
not the same. Modern historiography is a new development in the
history of commentary in which the Kabbalah was an earlier stage.”23
It follows that in Scholem’s view, the continuation of the Jewish mystical
spirit is to be found not in contemporary kabbalistic and mystical
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146 Boaz Huss

circles but, rather, in the secular world—in Kafka’s literary creations,

in the Zionist effort to build the nation, and in the philological-historical
study of Kabbalah as practiced by Scholem’s school.
The modernist and Zionist perspective of Scholem’s scholarly
enterprise took shape, as some have recently shown, in the context of
orientalist discourse.24 Biale has considered the distinctive and com-
plex nature of the orientalist perspective of European Jews, in whose
consciousness the concept of “the Orient” became bound up with their
self-identification as Europeans and Jews (i.e., orientals) at one and
the same time.25 Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin has pointed out Zionism’s
ambivalence toward “the East”: “In a seemingly paradoxical way, the
Jews’ exodus from Europe and the establishment of Jewish settlement
in the East actually provided a basis for their integration into the
West, and for defining the Jews as a European nation.”26 This per-
spective provides the background for Scholem’s decision to immigrate
to the Land of Israel and to make the Kabbalah the focus of his schol-
arly work: the latter, like the former, partook of a turning to the East.
The fields of study in which Scholem determined to engage—Judaism
and mysticism—were regarded in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-
century western Europe as manifestly “oriental” categories.27
Scholem’s turn to the “East,” like that of many other Jewish intellectuals
of his time, entailed typical orientalist ambivalence—a posture of
being both drawn to and repelled by the East, which was simulta-
neously regarded as exotic and as degenerate, as authentic and as
primitive. This ambivalence, which took on particular complexity in
European Jewish consciousness generally and in Zionist consciousness
in particular, gained expression in Scholem’s emphatic insistence that
the return to the Land of Israel did not imply absorption into the
Levant.28 It shows up as well, as Gil Anijar has stressed, in Scholem’s
remarks on the feelings of admiration and disgust aroused in him by
his reading of the great kabbalists.29
A prominent manifestation of Scholem’s ambivalence toward
Kabbalah is his negation of contemporary Jewish mysticism. In assign-
ing enormous importance to Jewish mysticism as a historical phenom-
enon while spurning its present-day manifestation, Scholem displays a
characteristically orientalist stance, exalting the “East” as a source of
arcane and authentic information while regarding the “oriental”
present (which included, in the consciousness of western European
Jews, the milieu of their eastern European brethren) as fossilized,
degenerate, and backward.30
As we know, Scholem traces the roots of Jewish mysticism to the
East. The last significant developments in Jewish mysticism took place,
in his opinion, during the eighteenth century, with the establishment
of the “Bet-El Yeshiva,” which he described as “the center for kabbalists
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Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism 147

from the Sefardic and arabized tribes (as well as the Yemenites),” and
with the appearance in eastern Europe of Hasidism, which Scholem
defined as “the last great religious outburst within Judaism, as the
gates were about to close.”31 After Hasidism, Scholem says, “our cre-
ative forces turned, during the period of emancipation and liberalism,
in a totally different direction”—that is, toward the Enlightenment and
thence, dialectically, to Zionism, the final stage in the dialectical devel-
opment of the Jewish mystical spirit.32 Cultural phenomena that failed
to take part in that process—including the mystical currents of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which continued to flow through-
out the Islamic world and in eastern Europe—were relegated, in
Scholem’s view, to the margins of Jewish history.33 The Jewish mysti-
cism of his day, which continued as the living tradition of the eastern
European Hasidim and “the Sefardic and arabized tribes,” was por-
trayed by Scholem in terms of preservation and decadence: “In this
generation, the earlier forms continue, as a precious living inheritance
or as an inheritance that has decayed but that continues to exist in its
external garb, even though its soul has departed from it.”34 The con-
ception of Jewish mysticism held by Scholem and his school became
intertwined with the negative attitude of the hegemonic streams in
Israeli society toward the bearers of the mystical traditions and the
avatars of “diasporism”—emigrants from Islamic countries and east-
ern European haredim, the “blacks” within “white” Israeli society.35
The academic study of Kabbalah afforded a degree of legitimacy to
Jewish mysticism; at the same time, it justified marginalizing the bear-
ers of that tradition within Israeli society.36
There are, however, some exceptions to Scholem’s disdain for the
Jewish mysticism of his day. In reflecting on the possibility of Jewish
mysticism in his time, Scholem mentions three phenomena that he
found interesting: the Hasidism of R. Ahrele Roth, the Habad move-
ment, and, especially, Rabbi Kook.37 The importance he assigns to
Rabbi Kook—whom he elsewhere labels as the last instance of produc-
tive kabbalistic thought that he knows of—highlights Scholem’s
nationalist, secular, and orientalist perspective.38 The importance of
Rabbi Kook’s mysticism flows, in Scholem’s view, from the Zionist per-
spective of Kookian mysticism, from its ties to the intellectual world of
European philosophy, and from Kook’s readiness to acknowledge the
sanctity within the secular.39 Moreover, as already noted, Scholem
regards Rabbi Kook’s devotion to “Torah from Heaven” as an obstacle
to his mysticism being meaningful to the public of his day.
Along with the mysticism of the “oriental” kabbalists and of eastern
European Hasidism (which Scholem classified as fossilized and
decayed) and the mysticism of Rabbi Kook and a few other figures
(which Scholem regarded as authentic mysticism but void of historical
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148 Boaz Huss

significance in the modern age), Scholem also considered several rep-

resentatives of contemporary occult circles—Jewish and non-Jewish—
who showed an interest in Jewish mysticism. Although Scholem had a
certain curiosity about some of these circles, which arose in western
Europe, he rejected them as delusions, charlatanisms, and pseudo-
Kabbalah.40 This hostility exposes Scholem’s stance, which accepts tra-
ditional involvement in Kabbalah as authentic (albeit decadent and
lacking historical significance) and the academic study of Kabbalah as
professional. Nontraditional circles involved in Kabbalah in a nonaca-
demic manner, as seen from this perspective, are nothing more than
inauthentic charlatans.
To a great extent, Scholem’s studies defined the field of research
into Kabbalah, and his disciples and their successors continue their
work within the framework of discourse he shaped. And even though
his successors, as we shall see below, challenged many of the basic
premises that guided Scholem’s work, contemporary mysticism
remains beyond the pale of the research and teaching conducted by
academic investigators of Kabbalah. Most of the studies in the field
are done by sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and folklor-
ists. Departments of Jewish Thought in Israeli universities offer a
course of study in modern Jewish philosophy alongside the program
in medieval Jewish philosophy, but not one university has a course of
study—or a scholar—devoting time to modern Jewish mysticism.
Academic students of Kabbalah treat contemporary mysticism—to
the extent they treat it at all—as outside the context of their scholarly
work, primarily in media interviews. Contemporary groups of kabbalists
or mystics are presented, at best, as “preservers” of the kabbalistic tra-
dition and, at worst, as charlatans. Jewish mysticism is treated as a
phenomenon that has lost its relevance in modern times, and the key
to understanding it is said to lie with the academic investigators, not
with those who see themselves as its contemporary practitioners.
Thus, according to Joseph Dan, “the wellsprings of spiritual, intellec-
tual, moral, theological and even mystical creativity ran totally dry”
after the Holocaust.41 Dan, like other researchers of Kabbalah, rejects
nonacademic engagement with Kabbalah on the part of nontradi-
tional circles (especially R. Philip Berg’s Institute for the Study of
Kabbalah), and he regards them—as Scholem did the occultist
groups in his time—as delusional or as charlatans.42 Rachel Elior
manifests a similar attitude toward Yigal Arikha, the author of popu-
lar books on Kabbalah. In a review of his book Practical Kabbalah
(Heb.), she assigns an aesthetic value to Kabbalah and magic, which
she places, along with religious thought in general, in the realm of art
and literature, but she dismisses the effort to present mystical or magical
traditions as relevant in the present.43
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Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism 149

This approach is typical of hegemonic Israeli discourse, as it

appears in Israeli communications media. Early kabbalistic literature
and the academic investigators who work with it are regarded as
worthwhile, authentic, and “professional,” but contemporary kabbalistic
belief and practices (such as prostration on the graves of the
righteous, ritual reading of the Zohar, and exorcism of dibbuqs) and the
kabbalists who believe in and practice them are considered to be prim-
itives, charlatans, and even a menace to modern Western-Israeli
culture.44
During the eighties, as noted above, several scholars (including
Moshe Idel, Yehudah Liebes, Eliot Wolfson, Charles Mopsik, and oth-
ers) questioned the meta-narrative at the basis of Scholem’s studies
and many of the basic premises that shaped research into Kabbalah.45
In the context of this revision, the chronological framework of Jewish
mysticism constructed by Scholem was broken. In particular, texts
from earlier periods, including rabbinic and biblical literature, were
added to those considered by researchers of Kabbalah; but, at the
same time, scholars also became increasingly interested in various
aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Kabbalah that had not
been considered in Scholem’s studies.46
In this revisionist context, some of the scholars proposed a new
approach to contemporary mysticism. In his book Kabbalah: New
Perspectives, published in 1988, Moshe Idel suggested that investiga-
tors of Kabbalah forge links with contemporary kabbalists, pointing
out that familiarity with them could “enrich the academic conception
regarding the essence of Kabbalah.”47 A similar approach was recently
suggested by Yehudah Liebes in his lecture “Reflections on the Religious
Significance of Research on Kabbalah”: “I do not share the opinion of
colleagues who disparage the kabbalists who work among us—Rabbi
Kadouri will not learn from me what Kabbalah is; rather, we investiga-
tors must learn from him.”48
Despite these recommendations by Idel and Liebes, the study of
present-day Jewish mysticism remained very much at the margins of
their research efforts and those of other late-twentieth-century investi-
gators of Kabbalah. Recently, however, scholars have begun to show a
greater interest in contemporary Kabbalah. A comprehensive review
of twentieth-century Jewish mysticism and mystical groups appeared
for the first time in Charles Mopsik’s book Cabale et Cabalistes, pub-
lished in 1997.49 Jonathan Garb, in his 2002 article “The Understand-
able Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” offered a review of the
various contemporary mystical streams as well as analyses of various
aspects of these phenomena. And other investigators have recently
presented lectures dealing with various aspects of contemporary
Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism.50
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150 Boaz Huss

The recent (limited) awakening of interest in contemporary mysti-

cism on the part of investigators of Kabbalah can be explained as a
reaction to the enhanced status of mysticism in the Western world in
general and in Israel in particular. But, as I argued at the outset, the
neglect of contemporary mysticism in the work of Scholem and his
successors resulted not from mysticism’s disappearance but from a
cultural stance that denied the value and significance of present-day
mystical practices and beliefs and fostered the shunting of these phe-
nomena, and of the circles devoted to them, to the margins of the
hegemonic Israeli culture. The increasing scholarly awareness of con-
temporary mysticism can be seen not only as a response to “the revival
of mysticism” but as part of the process allowing mysticism a more
prominent presence in Israeli culture.51
In his study “The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our
Time,” Garb attributes the current rise of mysticism to, among other
things, the dismantling of the modernist-rationalist narrative and the
weakening of Western-Zionist cultural hegemony.52 In my judgment,
these factors, which have contributed to the more prominent presence
of mysticism in Western culture generally, and in Israeli culture in
particular, have also made it possible for researchers to direct their
attention to contemporary Jewish mysticism.
And so, research into contemporary Jewish mysticism is possible
in the twenty-first century, though it remains at the margins of the
field. The study of this mysticism poses challenges and difficulties, not
only because it requires new research methods but also—indeed,
primarily—because it requires confronting the framework of dis-
course and cultural stances that shaped the field of study in which
scholars of Kabbalah (myself included) have labored. Turning schol-
arly attention to the Jewish mysticism of today constitutes not merely a
widening of the investigative field of vision but also the adopting of
new types of perception, requiring researchers to direct a critical
glance at themselves and to confront the basic premises that shape
their research methods and establish their identity.
BEN GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV

NOTES

This article is based on a lecture delivered at a conference of Departments of

Jewish Thought held at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in March 2003.
A Hebrew version appeared in Pe’amim, vols. 94–95 (2003). My thanks go to
Yoni Garb, Hanan Haver, Andra Levy, Havivah Pedya, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin,
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Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism 151

and Ada Rappoport Albert, who provided important comments on an early

draft of the article. My thanks also go to Moshe Idel, who, despite his reserva-
tions about some of my contentions, engaged with me in a fruitful conversa-
tion that helped me to sharpen my arguments.
The article is dedicated to the memory of the late Charles Mopsik, who
opened new paths in the modern study of Kabbalah and many other areas of
Jewish mysticism. The English translation was done by Mr. Joel A. Linseder.
1. Gershom Scholem, Pirqei Yesod (Jerusalem, 1961), p. 86.
2. Gershom Scholem, Devarim be-Go (Tel Aviv, 1975), p. 45.
3. Steven R. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea
Eliade and Henry Corbin at Eranos (Princeton, 1999), pp. 32, 39–40.
4. On Scholem’s meetings with members of Oscar Goldberg’s circle, see
Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth (Tel Aviv, 1982),
pp. 174–178 (and see n. 42). On his meetings with R. David ha-Kohen, see
Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 204 (and n. 39). It is noteworthy that Scholem
does not speak in his autobiography of his meetings with the kabbalists of Bet-El.
They, along with the kabbalists of the “Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim” and “Porat Yosef”
yeshivas, are mentioned in the context of the kabbalistic book market in Jerusalem
(Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 206). Fanya Scholem (Kol ha-Ir, January 19,
1990) told of kabbalists meeting with her husband during the World War II
period, but these were kabbalists who had come to take counsel with Scholem.
5. A brief overview of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Jewish
mystics can be found in “Kabbalah,” Encyclopedia Judaica; it appears as well in
Scholem’s collected encyclopedia articles: Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New
York, 1974), p. 85. A brief treatment of R. Ashlag’s Kabbalah appears in
Scholem’s review essay of a book by R. Levi Isaac Krakovsky, a disciple of
Rabbi Ashlag, in Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 15 (1953), p. 312. On the absence
from Scholem’s (and from his followers’) work of any research into Jewish
mysticism and Kabbalah as living phenomena, see Charles Mopsik, Cabale et
Cabalistes (Paris, 1997); Daniel Abrams, “Presenting and Representing
Gershom Scholem: A Review Essay,” Modern Judaism, Vol. 20 (2000), p. 231;
Jonathan Garb, “The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time—
Innovation versus Conservatism in the Thought of Joseph Ahituv,” in Jewish
Culture at the Eye of the Storm—Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Ahituv’s Seventieth
Birthday, ed. A. Sagi and N. Ilan (Ein Zurim, 2002), p. 175. Ira Robinson
noted this as well in “Kabbalah and Orthodoxy: Some Twentieth-Century
Interpretations,” paper presented at the American Academy of Religion,
1987; my thanks go to Prof. Robinson for sending me a copy of his lecture.
6. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion, pp. 32, 40.
7. Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, pp. 186, 190–193; Miriam Frenkel,
“Historiography of the Jews of Islamic Lands in the Middle Ages: Landmarks
and Prospects” (Heb.), Pe’amin, Vol. 92 (2002), pp. 48–50.
8. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1974), p. 34.
9. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 71. See also Arthur Hertzberg, “Gershom
Scholem as Zionist and Believer,” in Gershom Scholem, ed. H. Bloom (New
York, 1987), p. 198; and see Weiner’s impressions of Scholem’s lecture in
Herbert Weiner, 91/2 Mystics (New York, 1971), pp. 84–87. My thanks go to
Dr. Yoni Garb, who directed my attention to Weiner’s comments.
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152 Boaz Huss

10. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 26–27.

11. See David Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, and Counter-History (Cambridge,
MA, 1979), pp. 162–163; David Myers, Re-inventing the Jewish Past (New York,
1995), pp. 163–164, 167; Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Nationalist Represen-
tation of the Diaspora: Zionist Historiography and Medieval Jewry,” Ph.D.
dissertation (Tel-Aviv, 1996), p. 132.
12. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 81–82.
13. In his 1937 review of kabbalistic research at the Hebrew University,
Scholem reaches the conclusion that research into Kabbalah can be conducted
only in Jerusalem, for only there can the scholar meet the still-extant rem-
nants of Kabbalah. But it becomes clear from the ensuing passages that he is
speaking of books and manuscripts, not flesh-and-blood kabbalists. See Gershom
Scholem, Kabbalah in the University (Jerusalem, 1973), p. 12.
14. Hertzberg, “Gershom Scholem as Zionist and Believer,” p. 199. Ira
Robinson (“Kabbalah and Orthodoxy”) uses the same phrase in connection
with Scholem’s attitude toward the kabbalistic tradition.
15. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 71.
16. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 79–80. In his article “Reflections on the
Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah” (forthcoming), Yehudah Liebes
considered Scholem’s denial of the possibility of new modern Kabbalah on the
grounds that a modern person cannot sustain a belief in “Torah from
Heaven.” I thank Prof. Liebes for providing me a copy of his article, which has
not yet been published. In Garb’s view, Scholem’s position “apparently
reflected the Ben-Gurion position that saw religious Judaism as a forgotten
resource” (“The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 175).
17. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 82. See also Hertzberg, “Gershom Scholem
as Zionist and Believer,” p. 199; Gershom Scholem, The Fullness of Time, Poems,
intro. and annotation by Steven M. Wasserstrom (Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 38,
139; Abrams, “Presenting and Representing Gershom Scholem,” p. 230; and
Liebes, “Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah.”
See also Scholem’s comments at the end of Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism:
“The story [of Jewish mysticism] is not ended, it has not yet become history,
and the secret life it holds can break out tomorrow in you or in me” (p. 350).
For an examination of these comments, see Garb, “The Understandable
Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 99; and Moshe Idel, “Abraham Abulafia,
Gershom Scholem, and R. David ha-Kohen (‘The Nazir’) on Prophecy” (forth-
coming). I thank Prof. Idel for providing me a copy of this yet-unpublished article.
As I read these remarks, they expresses Scholem’s premise that the revival of
Jewish mysticism will take place within his own peer group (“in you or in me”)
rather than in traditional kabbalistic circles.
18. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 82. In an interview with Muki Zur, Scholem
tells that he “took a beating” for referring to Walt Whitman in this context.
See Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 54; Weiner, 91/2 Mystics, p. 87; and Steven M.
Wasserstrom, “Introduction,” in Gershom Scholem, The Fullness of Time, Poems
(Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 38, 139.
19. Gershom Scholem, Od Davar (Tel Aviv, 1989), p. 37. See also Scholem’s
comments in his letter to S. Z. Schocken: “Agitated examination of the question
has led me both to an extremely rational skepticism about my areas of inquiry
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Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism 153

and to an intuitive affirmation of mystical theses situated at the delicate

boundary between religion and nihilism. The perfect expression of that border,
which cannot be improved upon, is a secularized account of a contemporary
man’s kabbalistic sense of the world, and it is that which later led me to see in
Kafka’s writings an almost canonical splendor” (Od Davar, p. 29).
20. Scholem, Od Davar, p. 304.
21. Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, and Counter-History, pp. 74, 100–103;
Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Nationalist Representation of the Diaspora,” p. 141 n.
37; Idel, “Abraham Abulafia, Gershom Scholem, and R. David ha-Kohen
(‘The Nazir’) on Prophecy”; Liebes, “Reflections on the Religious Significance
of Research on Kabbalah.”
22. Scholem, Od Davar, pp. 30–31. Even earlier, in 1925, Scholem had con-
cluded his famous letter to Bialik as follows: “At the end of these projects, I hope
to do what previously brought me to all these studies and led me, unwillingly, to
devote myself to philological studies whose limits I am well aware of; that is, to
answer the question, ‘Is there value to Kabbalah or not?’. . . And I acknowledge
unashamedly to you that it is this philosophical interest that has supported me
even while I was doing linguistic and historical research” (Devarim be-Go, p. 63).
23. Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, and Counter-History, p. 102.
24. See Gil Anijar, “Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable: On Ori-
enting Kabbalah Studies and the Zohar of Christian Spain,” Jewish Social
Studies, Vol. 3 (1996), pp. 96, 114–118; David Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and the
Seductions of Jewish Orientalism,” in The Dream and Its Destruction: The Sabbatean
Movement and Its Branches—Messianism, Sabbateanism, Frankism, ed. R. Elior
(Jerusalem, 2001), pp. 107–110; Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism, Jewish
Studies, and Israeli Society,” Jema’a, Vol. 3 (1999), pp. 49–52; Amnon Raz-
Krakotzkin, “From Covenant of Peace to Holy Temple,” Theory and Criticism,
Vol. 20 (2002), pp. 100–110; and Abraham Elqayam, “The Horizon of Reason:
The Divine Madness of Sabbatai Sevi,” Kabbalah, Vol. 9 (2003), pp. 43–48.
25. Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism,”
p. 88. On Western European Jews confronting their oriental image, see
P. Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism—The Aesthetics of the Turn
of the Nineteenth Century and Jewish Identity,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish
Thought, Vol. 3 (1984), pp. 631–633.
26. Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism, Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,”
p. 44. See also Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “From Covenant of Peace to Holy Temple,”
pp. 100, 406–407; and Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and the Seductions of Jewish
Orientalism,” p. 89.
27. On the orientalist connection of the infatuation with mysticism in the
Germany of that time, see Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism,”
pp. 623–629; on the Jew as an Oriental, see Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and
Mysticism,” pp. 629–641. On the European inclusion of Jewish studies within
the rubric of orientalist studies, and on the connection and distinction
between “Hebraism” and “Orientalism,” see Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism,
Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,” pp. 37–40. The commingling of the terms
mysticism and orientalism in Israeli anthropological research was considered by
Andrei Levy in his lecture “Anthropology and the Anthropologization of Eastern
Mysticism in Israel” (Heb.), delivered at the Van Leer Institute, June 2000.
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154 Boaz Huss

On orientalist perspectives in the study of Kabbalah, see Anijar, “Jewish Mysti-

cism Alterable and Unalterable,” pp. 113–118 (and see Moshe Idel’s response to
Anijar in “Orienting, Orientalizing or Disorienting: An Almost Absolutely Unique
Case of Occidentalism,” Kabbalah, Vol. 2 (1997), pp. 13–47). I do not join in Ani-
jar’s belligerent criticism of Idel and Liebes; on the contrary, I believe the recent
research suggests new perspectives that make it possible to examine critically the
frame of discourse and basic assumptions of research into Kabbalah. See also
Raz-Krakotzkin, “Orientalism, Jewish Studies, and Israeli Society,” p. 50 n. 17.
28. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 143. See also Biale, “Shabbetai Zevi and the
Seductions of Jewish Orientalism,” pp. 89, 107–108.
29. Anijar, “Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable,” pp. 90–91.
Scholem writes, “If one turns to the writings of the great Kabbalists, one sel-
dom fails to be torn between alternate admiration and disgust” (Major Trends
in Jewish Mysticism, p. 36). It is noteworthy that a similar turn of phrase
appears in Buber’s introduction to the legends of R. Nahman of Braslov;
Buber writes: “And thus were created texts such as the Book of the Zohar,
which arouse both admiration and disgust” (Abraham Huss’s Hebrew transla-
tion of Buber in Od Davar, p. 381); and see Martin Buber, The Tales of Rabbi
Nachman (Bloomington, IL, 1962), p. 5 (where the wording is softened a bit).
Ron Margolin (“The Internalization of Religious Life and Thought in the
First Generations of Hasidism—Sources and Epistemological Foundations,”
Ph.D. dissertation [ Jerusalem, 1999], p. 5) observed that Buber’s introduction
(first printed in German under the title Der Jüdische Mystik) constitutes the
schema used by Scholem in writing Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.
Scholem’s ambivalence toward Kabbalah and mysticism is expressed as well
in his assessment of the Zohar’s author’s personality (typical, according to
Scholem, to many mystics): “The author’s spiritual life is centered as it were in
a more archaic layer of the mind. Again and again one is struck by the simul-
taneous presence of crudely primitive modes of thought and feeling and of
ideas whose profound contemplative mysticism is transparent . . . a very
remarkable personality in whom, as in so many mystics, profound and naïve
modes of thought existed side by side” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism,
p. 175). And see Anijar, “Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable,” pp. 90,
117; and Raz-Krakotzkin, “From Covenant of Peace to Holy Temple,” p. 100.
30. See Andrea Grace Diem and James R. Lewis, “Imagining India: The
Influence of Hinduism on the New Age,” in Perspectives on the New Age, ed.
J. R. Lewis and S. J. Gordon (Albany, 1992), p. 53; and Edward Said, Oriental-
ism (New York, 1994), pp. 53, 92–93. See also Steven E. Ascheim, Brothers and
Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness,
1800–1923 (Madison, WI, 1982), p. 20; Aziza Kazum, “Western Culture, Eth-
nic Stigmatization, and Social Barriers—The Background for Ethnic Inequal-
ity in Israel,” Israeli Sociology, Vol. 1 (1999), pp. 395–396 (Heb.) (on the
conflation in western European Jewish consciousness of the Jews of the Islamic
countries with those of eastern Europe, see also p. 399); and Mendes-Flohr,
“Orientalism and Mysticism,” pp. 632–633. It is noteworthy that Buber mani-
fested a similar “orientalist” ambivalence toward Hasidism, whose origins he
exalted but whose present-day reality he saw as degenerate. See Ascheim,
Brothers and Strangers, p. 126; Sander Gilman, “The Rediscovery of the Eastern
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Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism 155

Jews: German Jews in the East, 1890–1918,” in Jews and Germans, 1860–1933,
ed. D. Bronsen (Heidelberg, 1979), pp. 345–349; and Mendes-Flohr, “Orien-
talism and Mysticism,” p. 656 n. 122. Buber (The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, p. 3)
also denied the existence of significant contemporary Jewish mysticism,
regarding R. Nahman of Braslov as the last Jewish mystic.
31. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 71; Scholem, Od Davar, p. 205. The chapter
on Hasidism in Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism is titled “Hasidism,
the Latest Phase”; see Margolin, “The Internalization of Religious Life and
Thought in the First Generations of Hasidism,” p. 5.
32. Scholem, Od Davar, p. 205.
33. Thus, the North African and Near Eastern Kabbalah of relatively
recent times (including that of R. Shalom Shar‘abi and the Bet-El kabbalists),
as well as that of the Vilna Ga’on and his disciples, merited very little attention
in Scholem’s research.
34. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, p. 75.
35. Translator’s note: In this context, the Hebrew imagery alludes not
only to the ethnic divisions within Israeli society but also to the black attire
characteristic of the haredim.
36. It is interesting to compare the attitude of the Christian Hebraists toward
the Judaism and Jews of their time, as A. Raz-Krakotzkin describes it, to
Scholem’s attitude, and that of other investigators of Kabbalah, toward contempo-
rary Kabbalah and kabbalists. Raz-Krakotzkin pointed out that Hebraist discourse
“made possible a distinction between various aspects of Jewish literature that were
taken to be authentic expressions of ancient truth, and those aspects of the
Jewish way of life that were regarded as foreign, or even hostile, to the Christian
European culture. The images of the Jews in this context are paralleled by those
assigned to ‘the Orient’ in Orientalist discourse” (“Orientalism, Jewish Studies,
and Israeli Society,” p. 39). On the similar position assigned in hegemonic Israeli
discourse to contemporary Kabbalah and kabbalists, see n. 44 below.
37. Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 75–76. Scholem (Devarim be-Go, p. 73)
also cites Nathan Birnbaum as an authentic mystic. In From Berlin to Jerusalem
(p. 187), he tells of his meetings with Birnbaum, in which he apparently
learned of the latter’s mystical experiences. In contrast, Scholem had no par-
ticular regard for Rabbi Kook’s disciple, R. David ha-Kohen, “the Nazir”: “All
my efforts to penetrate his thought produced only confusion, but what we share
is the impression made upon us by the thirteenth-century writings of R.
Abraham Abulafia. While we were neighbors, I visited him from time to time . . .but
to discuss the methods for studying Kabbalah and understanding it with a ba‘al
teshuvah is a hopeless assignment, as I foresaw in my gut” (From Berlin to Jerusalem,
p. 204). It is interesting to note that all of these mystics were Ashkenazim.
Even when Scholem met with one of the kabbalists of Bet-El, “the center for
kabbalists from the Sefardic and arabized tribes (as well as the Yemenites),” the
individual he met was an Ashkenazi kabbalist, R. Gershon Vilner!
38. Scholem writes, “Rabbi Kook’s great work . . .is a veritable theologia mystica
of Judaism equally distinguished by its originality and the richness of its
author’s mind. It is the last example of productive Kabbalistic thought of
which I know” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 354 n. 17). But in Reflections,
written later, Scholem downplays the importance of the kabbalistic and mystical
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156 Boaz Huss

element in Rabbi Kook as well as in the other mystics he mentioned: “These

already are not kabbalists in the manner of the Bet-El kabbalists or their
predecessors. One who reads Rabbi Kook’s book Orot ha-Qodesh understands
immediately that this is no kabbalist; rather, it is a great man who translated
his religious experience, drawn from the legacy of the generations, into
human terms. . . . [A]ll three of these phenomena share something strange
from the point of view of our question: they reduce to the extent possible the
mystical element of their inspiration to the point that it cannot be recognized”
(“Thoughts on the Possibility of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism,” pp. 76–77).
39. See Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Golem of Scholem,” in Politik und
Religion im Judentum, ed. C. Meithing (Tübingen, 1999), pp. 225–227; and
Scholem, Devarim be-Go, pp. 77–78.
40. Scholem met with members of Oscar Goldberg’s group, whom he
labeled “metaphysical magicians” (Walter Benjamin [Tel Aviv, 1987], pp. 98–100
(Heb.); Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, pp. 174–178). Despite Scholem’s
negative attitude toward Goldberg, whom he perceived as “schizoid” and
“delusional,” he showed a degree of interest in his circle (From Berlin to Jerusalem,
p. 154) and even dedicated an article to him in the Encyclopedia Judaica.
Scholem also met with the mystical writer Gustav Meyrink, whom he labeled a
“charlatan” and whose books he labeled “pseudo-kabbalah” and “historical
castles-in-the-sky” (From Berlin to Jerusalem, pp. 156–158; on Meyrink, see also
Mendes-Flohr, “Orientalism and Mysticism,” p. 634). In contrast, Scholem
classified Alfred Schmid-Noerr, the ghostwriter who wrote Meyrink’s last book,
as an “authentic mystic” (From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 159). Scholem called the
works of occultist Eliphaz Levy (Alphonse Louis Constant) “the products of
charlatanism rich in imagination” (From Berlin to Jerusalem, p. 158), and he
termed the works of Aleister Crowley “humbug” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysti-
cism, p. 2). My thanks go to Yoni Garb for directing my attention to these mat-
ters. Scholem called the theosophical circle of Madame Blavatsky a “pseudo-
religion” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 206, 398–399 n. 2).
41. Joseph Dan, “From Belief in the Torah to Belief in the Pious Man”
(Heb.), Ma‘ariv, February 12, 1988. See also Garb, “The Understandable
Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 175 n. 9.
42. See Sarit Fuchs: “There is a discernable tendency on the part of
academic researchers into Kabbalah to buttress their scientific rigor so as to
place a clear divide between themselves and groups of humbugs who, according
to Prof. Dan, are sometimes boors and ignoramuses wrapping themselves in a
kabbalistic mantle. The populism of Kabbalah—which does not exist among
true kabbalists, who tend to keep their studies under wraps—infuriates Prof.
Dan. He regards it as a monstrous perversion of Jewish spirituality, dissoci-
ated from the 613 commandments and seriously distorting the historical
nature of Kabbalah, which was always anchored in a life filled with study of
Torah and observance of the commandments. These religious sects, which
arrived here from California and speak of ‘pure spiritual life’ or ‘mystical con-
templation of reality,’ offer the masses the drug of false bliss” (“Where Are the
Roots of the Tree of Souls?” [Heb.], Ma‘ariv, February 14, 1986). M. Halamish,
in the preface to his book Introduction to the Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1991) (Heb.),
warns against secondary effects entailing dangers and charlatanism that are to
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Scholem and the Study of Jewish Mysticism 157

be found in “institutes and courses of various sorts that ‘sell’ Kabbalah to all
who ask” (p. 7).
43. Rachel Elior writes, “In no event does Kabbalah or magic withstand a
test of its objective force, of its capacity to heal, of its connection to the laws of
nature, or the discernable fulfillment of its promises. In other words, like art,
literature, or religious thought, they are found in the fascinating domain of
human creativity and cultural history, but they do not exist in the areas of nat-
ural forces or scientific understanding. Every attempt to present practical
Kabbalah and magic in scientific terms involving ‘energies and connections’
and removing it from the field of religion, belief, and creativity has a degree of
the misguided. . . . [I]t is necessary to distinguish clearly between, on the one
hand, folk beliefs, magical and mystical traditions, and customs and religious
thought grounded in the past . . . and, on the other, modern life, based on
open, free, and critical rational understanding of the present” (review of Yigal
Arikha’s Practical Kabbalah [Heb.], Yedi‘ot Aharonot, June 19, 1998).
44. One expression of this attitude—exalting “classical” Kabbalah (and,
even more, its academic study) while disdaining and manifesting hostility
toward its contemporary manifestations—can be found in the aricle of Sarit
Fuchs. Distinguishing between “sects of humbugs . . . who wrap themselves in
a kabbalistic mantle” and academic researchers of Kabbalah, Fuchs writes:
“But let us leave the delusions alone and consider the newly discovered schol-
arly truths at the center of the academic conference” (“Where Are the Roots of the
Tree of Souls?”). Ya’ir Sheleg, in his article “An Academic Dispute in the Shadow
of a Folk Ritual,” likewise distinguishes between “astrology sections . . . new-age
shops . . . the copy of the Zohar kept in many homes as a sort of good luck
charm against the evil eye . . . or even in roadside restaurants under a picture
of Rabbi Kadouri or some other kabbalist . . . an entire industry of institutes
and groups for the study of the Zohar” and academic scholars: “A totally differ-
ent group of students of the Zohar gathered last Friday at the Hebrew Uni-
versity’s Institute for Advanced Studies. About 25 scholars from Israel and
the United States, experts in research into Kabbalah” (Ha-Aretz, February 8,
1999). Sheleg writes that those who study the Zohar in such places (roadside
restaurants?) see the texts not as symbolic myth but as straightforward
accounts of the divine reality. Like Fuchs, who prefers “new academic truths,”
Sheleg presents the academic reading, which interprets the texts as “symbolic
myth” and rejects its original meaning (“a straightforward account of the
divine reality”) as the legitimate, authoritative reading of the Kabbalah.
45. On the challenge by Moshe Idel and Yehudah Liebes to Scholem’s
ur-narrative and its context, see Amos Funkenstein, “Annals of Israel among
the Thorns,” Zion, Vol. 60 (1995), pp. 335–347 (Heb.), especially pp. 342–344.
For an examination of various aspects of this revision, see Raz-Krakotzkin,
“The Nationalist Representation of the Diaspora,” pp. 134–139. See also Liebes’s
comments in his review of Idel’s book: “It seems that Idel’s world, like those of
others today (myself among them) differs somewhat. In a certain sense, we are
dealing with post-Zionism. This should not be understood as repudiating the
ideas of the Zionist revival. On the contrary: We are in a situation in which
Zionism is taken as self-evident, as a fixed and necessary circumstance that
makes the next stage possible. . . . What flows from this is an examination of
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158 Boaz Huss

Judaism’s religious and historical circumstances in their entirely, with no particular

direction being emphasized for reasons of ideology or apologetics. . . . This
approach enabled Idel (and others) to see additional possibilities that could
not be seen in Scholem’s time” (“Metaphysics of Interpretation” [Heb.],
review of Moshe Idel’s Kabbalah: New Perspectives, Ha-Aretz, October 15, 1993).
46. Some of these studies are summarized in Garb, “The Understandable
Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,” p. 181.
47. Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, 1988), p. 43.
48. Liebes, “Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on
Kabbalah.” In an interview with Ya’ir Sheleg (Kol ha-Ir, May 19, 1995), Liebes
told of contacts he had had with kabbalists that did not turn out well. Liebes
blamed the failure on his own deficiency: “When I began to study Kabbalah,
I made several attempts to approach those referred to as kabbalists. It did not
turn out well. I do not make an ideology of that. It was an aspect of it that
I found less engaging, and I see that as a flaw. But I deal with written sources”
(“Reflections on the Religious Significance of Research on Kabbalah”).
49. Mopsik, Cabale et Cabalistes, pp. 239–270. Mopsik also published an article
dealing with Kabbalah in twentieth-century France; see Charles Mopsik,
“La Cabale dans le pense francaise; available online at http://www.jec.cm.free.fr/
artmop.htm.
50. For example, lectures on contemporary Israeli mysticism were delivered
at the Van Leer Institute’s June 2000 conference “Kabbalah and Israeli-ness.”
At the Association for Jewish Studies conference in Los Angeles in December
2002, Jody Myers presented her study of the Institute for Research in
Kabbalah led by Rabbi Berg, and I recently examined the activities of the Cen-
ter for the Study of Kabbalah and of “Benei Barukh” in a lecture delivered at
Ben-Gurion University in May 2003. In a lecture that same month at Hebrew
University, Moshe Idel considered the contemporary revival of R. Abraham
Abulafia’s prophetic Kabbalah.
51. Garb (“The Understandable Revival of Mysticism in Our Time,”
pp. 182–183) notes that developments in the academic study of Kabbalah can
not be severed from the position of Kabbalah within the broader community.
52. In addition to these factors, Garb (“The Understandable Revival of
Mysticism in Our Time,” pp. 194–196, 199) cites the inherent power of the
mystical ideas, as well as other factors.