NEJS 124B
Divinity, Difference and Desire: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism
Spring 2018
Instructor: Yehudah Mirsky
Office time: W 11-12 or by appointment, MCH 318
Teaching Fellow: Yair Bar-Tzuri
Kabbalah, literally, “reception,” or, “tradition,” is a vast and rich body of texts, ideas and practices, which, though largely esoteric, played a crucial role in Jewish history, and are a significant chapter in the religious history of humankind. Like the halakha, (traditional Jewish law), as well as other streams of Jewish thought, the Kabbalistic tradition has sought seeks to integrate thought and practice in the service of God. Unlike halakha and philosophy, it does so through esoteric forms of knowledge and study, and seeks avenues to direct knowledge of, and intimate communion with, divinity itself, from within our own, deeply conflicted and imperfect world – and even to participate and effect changes in the inner life of God.
The academic study of Kabbalah is, beyond its intrinsic interest, a fascinating chapter in modern Jewish intellectual history and identity, a story of using the tools of modern critical scholarship to unearth, understand and come to terms with submerged and sometimes unsettling historical currents and energies.
This course offers an introduction to the Kabbalah, to the basic outlines of its history, trends and ideas. We will be reading primary texts, in English translation, along with important scholarly works that elucidate the primary texts, and are interesting and significant in their own right.
This is a vast subject, and hard to introduce in just one semester, but we have to start somewhere.
We will begin with foundational Biblical and Rabbinic texts, and make our way through late antiquity and the Middle Ages, when the Kabbalah as we know it emerged and flowered. The summit there is the13th century locus classicus, the Zohar. (We will also look at some of the other spiritual trends in the Middle Ages to which the Kabbalah was reacting.) From there we will explore Kabbalah’s crucial roles in shaping early modern Jewish history, and its engagements with such modern movements as Hasidism, Zionism and more, down to the present.
Our readings will be a mixture of primary sources, classic sacred texts and texts written from within the Kabbalistic tradition, and secondary works, i.e. historical and philosophical writings by modern scholars trying to unearth, understand, and interpret the Kabbalistic tradition and its ideas.[1] Central to our reading will be Gershom Scholem’s monumental work, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, which inaugurated the modern academic study of the Kabbalah. Scholem paints with a broad brush, offering a history not only of the Kabbalah but a powerful interpretation of Jewish religious history through the ages. We will throughout be reading not only him but other scholars, including those who challenge his powerful ideas.
Our goals in this course will be to survey the Jewish mystical tradition and the scholarship surrounding it, and give you basic tools for reading, interpreting, and writing with understanding about, these admittedly complicated texts, on their own terms, and in terms of the history of ideas.
The syllabus may well be modified in light of our pace, classroom discussions, ongoing assessment of the workload, etc.
Your grade will be reckoned as follows:
Class Participation: 40% - participation can mean active engagement in class, as well as a number of brief (one paragraph) written assignments on the readings, to be posted on Latte.
Midterm: 30%
Final: 30%
Please note that I generally discourage the use of laptops in class, so we can better foster shared attention to one another and the material, but I am of course willing to make exceptions. Our TF, Yair, will be taking notes on a laptop, which will be available on Latte.
The midterm will be in two parts, an in-class quiz and a 1500-2000 word reflection essay. (Quiz and Essay will comprise, respectively 25 and 75% of your midterm grade) The quiz will ask you to show a basic familiarity with the chronology, titles and authors and basic concepts we will have studied in class up to them. The essay will ask you to reflect on the materials we have read up to then. More details will be provided at the midterm.
The final will be a take home essay. It will have two parts. You will be asked to explain and interpret a Kabbalistc text we have not read together in class, and to write a 2000-2500 word essay on some larger themes of the course. More details will be provided at the final.
If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately.
I do want to meet with each of you one-on-one at least once in the semester, preferably early on. The better we know each other, the better we can learn together. And learning together is at the heart of what I hope we will do.
The required volumes in the course, which should be available at the university bookstore and on reserve in Goldfarb, are:
Peter Cole, The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012)
Also available on LTS as an ebook on LTS
Arthur Green, A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004)
Frederick E. Greenspahn, Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah: New Insights and Scholarship (New York: New York University Press, 2011) (hereinafter, Greenspahn)
Also available as an ebook on LTS
Ariel Evan Mayse, ed., From the Depth of the Well: An Anthology of Jewish Mysticism (New York: Paulist Press, 2014)
Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism [1941] (New York: Schocken Books, 1995)
Texts below other than those in the books will be available on Latte
Introductory Readings
Leszek Kolakowski, Metaphysical Horror (excerpt)[2]
Scholem, Introduction and First Lecture, “General Characteristics of Jewish Mysticism”
Hartley Lachter, “Introduction: Reading Mysteries: The Origins of Scholarship on Jewish Mysticism,” in Greenspahn
Section One: Bible, Talmud, Midrash
Bible
Genesis Chapters 1-2
Exodus 19-21, 32-33
Isaiah Chapters 1-3, 6,
Ezekiel Chapters 1-3:3
Daniel Chapters 10-12
Michael Fishbane, “Biblical Prophecy as a Religious Phenomenon”
Rabbinic Judaism
Segal, 1-21 (Eighteen Blessings and other prayers)
Segal 36-53 (Midrash)
Segal 54-64 (beginning of Tractate Brakhot)
Segal 130-134 (Talmudic mystical texts)
Section Two: Chariots and Palaces, or, Ascending to the Divine
Cole, 3-14 (Merkavah texts)
Segal 134-137 (Heikhalot)
“Visions of Ezekiel” from Jacobs, Jewish Mystical Testimonies
Scholem, Second Lecture: Merkabah Mysticism and Jewish Gnosticism
Swartz, “Ancient Jewish Mysticism,” in Greenspahn
Section Three: Cosmology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages
Cole, 37-47 (Sefer Yetzirah)
Cole, 55-58, 61-9 (Ibn Gabirol)
Cole, 70-76 (Yehudah Halevi)
Segal, 110-122, (Saadia, Bahya, Maimonides)
Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, III: 51
Section Four: Piety in the Shadow of the Cross Hasidei Ashkenaz
Scholem, Third Lecture, “Hasidism in Medieval Germany”
Cole, pp. 77-86
Louis Jacobs, “The Mystical Piety of Elazar of Worms”
Ivan Marcus, “Devotional Ideals of Ashkenazi Pietism”
Haym Soloveitchik, “The Midrash, Sefer Hasidim and the Changing Face of God” (optional)
Sefer Chasidim, Selections
Section Five: The Prophetic Meditations of Abraham Abulafia
Cole, pp. 113-120
Louis Jacobs, “The Prophetic Mysticism of Abraham Abulafia”
Scholem, Fourth Lecture, “Abraham Abulafia and the Doctrine of Prophetic Kabbalism”
Wolfson, “Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia and the Prophetic Kabbalah,” in Greenspahn
Section Six: The Emergence of the Kabbalah in Spain
Green, Guide, Part 1 (Introduction), pp. 3-59
Mayse, Introduction & pp. 1-42
Cole, 89-98
Section Seven: Splendor: The Zohar
Authorship and Publication History
Scholem, Fifth Lecture, “The Zohar I, The Book and its Author”
Green, Guide, pp. 162-177
Fishbane, “The Zohar: Masterpiece of Jewish Mysticism” in Greenspahn
The Teachings of the Zohar
Scholem, Sixth Lecture, “The Theosophic Doctrine of the Zohar”
Mayse, pp. 43-80
Cole, pp. 99-107
Green, Guide, pp. 63-156
Section Eight: Mystic Revival in Safed
Scholem, Seventh Lecture, “Isaac Luria and His School”
Mayse, 81-118
Cole, 133-167
Moshe Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim, Tomer Devorah (Selections)
Lawrence Fine, “New Approaches to the Study of Kabbalistic Life in 16th Century Safe,” in Greenspahn
Jonathan Garb, “The Psychological Turn in Sixteenth Century Kabbalah”
Section Nine: Sabbatianism
Scholem, Eighth Lecture, “Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy”
Moshe Idel, “One from a Town, Two from a Clan: The Diffusion of Lurianic Kabbalah and Sabbateanism: A Re-Evaluation,”
Pawel Maciejko, ‘Sabbatian Heresy: Introduction”
Nathan of Gaza, “A Prophetic Vision”
Mayse, pp. 135-143
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Gender and Kabbalah,” in Greenspan
Section Ten: Early Modern Kabbalah and Critique
Mayse 124-134
Cole, 171-228
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, 138 Apertures/Openings to Wisdom, selections
Goldish, Mystical Messianism, “From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment,” in Greenspahn
Allison P. Coudert, “Christian Kabbalah,” in Greenspahn
Yaacob Dweck, “Early Modern Criticism of the Zohar”
Section Eleven: Hasidism and its Kabbalistic Critics
Scholem, Ninth Lecture, “Hasidism: The Latest Phase”
Cole, pp. 231-238
Mayse, 144-197
Shaul Magid, “Hasidism: Mystical and Non-Mystical Approaches to Interpreting Scripture,” in Greenspahn
Martin Buber, “The Way of Man According to Hasidism”
Chaim of Volozhin, nefesh Ha-Chaim (“Soul of Life”), selections
Ada Rapoport-Albert, “God and the Zadik as the Two Focal Points of Hasidic Worship”
Yehudah Mirsky, “A Severe Ecstasy (On Mitnagdism)”
Section Twelve: Twentieth Century: Mysticism and Secular Modernity
Cole, pp. 241-249
Mayse, pp. 198-269
Mirsky, “The Old will be Renewed and the New will be Holy; Avraham Yitzhak Ha-Cohen Kook, 1865-1935”
Arthur Green, “Three Warsaw Mystics” (Judah Leib Alter of Gur, Hillel Zeitlin & Abraham Joshua Heschel)
Claire Sufrin, “On Myth History, and the Study of Hasidism: Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem”
Conclusion
Mayse, pp. 270-280
Boaz Huss, “The Theologies of Kabbalah Research”
Jody Myers, “Kabbalah at the Turn of the 21st Century,” in Greenspahn
Jonathan Garb, “Mystical and Spiritual Discourse in the Contemporary Ashkenazi Haredi Worlds”
Yehoshua November, “Two Worlds Exist”
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[1] This is a 4 credit hour course, and it’s expected you will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study time per week in preparation for class - knowing this should help you budget your time.
[2]Please don’t be put off by the title, he’s an engaging writer and it’s a stimulating title.