Moshe Idel Research Articles

Alternative interpretations of manifold texts: the case of Mircea Eliade’s political writings

ABSTRACT The interpretation of extensive collections of texts is central to the history of religions. Bruce Lincoln’s Secrets, Lies, and Consequences paints a decisive picture of Mircea Eliade based on the latter’s articles from 1932 to 1939. Before his death Mac Linscott Ricketts donated the contents of his office to me and to Liviu Bordaş and I am in possession of his many translations of Eliade’s Romanian writings otherwise unavailable in English. With reference to all of these translations a very different picture of Eliade’s position can be suggested than that proposed by Lincoln. The relevance of Moshe Idel’s 2014 analysis of Eliade is also considered. Conflicting interpretations can best be resolved by open access to primary sources. Ricketts’ translations – and more – need to be made available for non-Romanian readers to make their own assessments.

Kabała a mistycyzm

The article "Kabbalah and mysticism" is divided into three parts, in which the general understanding of Kabbalah based on mysticism is presented. The first is devoted to the general definition of mysticism, wanting to reflect on this: Is Kabbalah one? In order to be able to answer this question, the author gives voice to the more important scholars of Judaism who have dealt with this issue or are still dealing with it. They are clearly characterizing what mysticism is, they try to create an equivalent explanation of Kabbalah, thus showing its specificity. Once confirmed that Kabbalah can be considered a kind of mysticism, the author moves on to the second part, in which she presents the basic sources of mysticism of Kabbalah. It discusses the most important items of rabbinic and non-rabbinic literature, showing how the non-rabbinic is continuator of the rabbinic. The third part of the article focuses on a deeper description of the initial types of mysticism: creation, chariot and body, which form the foundation for the later mysticism of word and letter. The mysticism of words and letters is kabbalah, that is, the hermeneutical art of biblical exegesis, based on the properties of the Hebrew alphabet and language, as God's tool for knowing Him. The article is based on the considerations of such authors as: Gershom Scholem, Roland Goetschel, Joseph Dan, Charles Mopsik, Marc-Alain Ouaknin, or the controversial Moshe Idel.

Mircea Eliade’s Perennial Conceptual Placeholders : An Eranos Intellectual Itinerary

The topic of this article, «Mircea Eliade, C. G. Jung, and the Eranos meetings » , recently received considerable attention and a good number of critical analyses. Steven M. Wasserstrom and Hans Thomas Hakl both provided excellent reconstructions, from different perspectives, of the Eranos circle, especially in the period this article deals with, the 1950s. Moshe Idel, Florin Turcanu, Dan Dana, and Natale Spineto contributed a great deal to cast a light on Eliade’s literary, personal, and academic outcome during the 1940s and 1950s. While the present text does not claim to have uncovered new historical data in the relationship between Eliade and Jung at Eranos, already magisterially probed by Turcanu, it pursues three new avenues of interpretation. It first mines Eliade’s 1950s diaries to analyze the role of personal dream interpretation as secondary data for Mircea Eliade’s history of religion. It turns next to Eliade’s correspondence with Jung to re-examine the historian of religions’ involvement with analytical psychology. It finally advances the proposal for a new trajectory of Eliade’s development of the set of perennial conceptual placeholders, such as «sacred/ profane » , «labyrinth/ center » , «axis mundi » , «initiation » , «trans-conscious » , and «cosmic Christianity » . We dubbed them perennial conceptual placeholders in virtue of the epistemic and ontological work, of universalizing bent, Eliade had asked them to carry out in his scholarship. This article suggests that Eliade forged some of them in his cultural journalism, written in Romanian, and fully developed them during the 1950s Eranos meetings, as a form of personalized history of religion and cure for the souls.

Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic

Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic

Dr. Tsippi Kauffman, z”l: 1970–2019

Dr. Tsippi Kauffman, z"l1970–2019 Uriel Gellman Since she left this world in September 2019, the unique being that was Tsippi has transformed itself into fragments of memories clothed in the conversation, thoughts, and words engraved in her writings and in the hearts of her students, friends, and loved ones. Dr. Tsippi Kauffman was a senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish Thought at Bar-Ilan University. She was an esteemed teacher, a brilliant and original researcher, a wonderful colleague and, above all, a woman of intellect and a fabulous human being. Tsippi wrote many important works in the field of Jewish mysticism and was among the best-known and most influential scholars in the study of Hasidism. Her first book, Bekhol derakhekha daʿehu. Tfisat haʾelohut vehaʿavodah begashmiyut bereshit haḥasidut (In All Your Ways Know Him: The Concept of God and Worshiping God through Corporeality in the Early Stages of Hasidism, Ramat Gan, 2009), which was based on the doctoral dissertation she completed under the supervision of Professor Moshe Idel, is a broad-ranging and incisive exploration of Hasidic conceptions of the divine. This issue continually preoccupied Hasidic thinkers and had many practical implications for the development of Hasidism as a socioreligious movement over the generations. The book focuses on how the first Hasidic thinkers, members of the circle of the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples, conceptualized the relationship between the divine and the material world and between a human being and their God. Tsippi laid out a comprehensive phenomenological analysis of divine immanence and of the concept of "worship through corporeality," showing how, even in the earliest circles of Hasidic thinkers, there was a range of different understandings of these foundational concepts of Hasidic theology. [End Page 344] Her scholarship was rigorous and scientific to the highest degree. But her approach to the subjects she was researching was not simply that of a detached external observer. She was connected with every fiber of her being to the spiritual realities of Hasidism, to the teachings, tunes, and tales of the Hasidim. When she taught or spoke, the profound feeling and soulful connection she brought to these topics was palpable. But this true love never interfered with her keen discernment, her integrity, her down-to-earth honesty. The topics she wrote about reflected her character, her curiosity, and her ambition to uncover new depths and to describe them with precision and nuance. Along with her research into Hasidic thought, Tsippi also turned to the literary realm and became an outstanding scholar of the Hasidic tale. She pioneered a new and innovative discourse that brought to bear theological and gender readings of the Hasidic tale, which she saw as a variegated phenomenon, rich in multilayered meanings. She aspired to forge connections between her two great loves—the hagiographic and the homiletic Hasidic literature—constructing new methodologies and tracing the literary influence of various works from the long and multifaceted tradition of Jewish mysticism. Tsippi also wrote on a host of other topics, including the figure of the legendary Tsaddik Rabbi Zusha of Hanipol, the teachings of Rabbi Abraham "the Angel," son of the Maggid of Mezrich, and the practical kabbalistic rituals in the Hasidic practice of immersion in a mikveh, on which she authored several groundbreaking studies. Tsippi's critical sense often led her to conclusions that diverged from the established consensus in Hasidic studies. For example, her work on women and gender in Hasidism offers a complex vision of the movement, which recognizes the unfavorable status of women in the social fabric of Hasidic society yet highlights the participation of women, in their own distinct manner, in the Hasidic religious experience. Tsippi presented her position in a dispassionate and balanced manner, while respectfully differing from colleagues with whom she took issue. Indeed, her amiability and gentleness manifested themselves clearly in her relationship with her intellectual opponents. I recall an episode that took place when Tsippi was invited to give a talk at an evening program dedicated to a book I coauthored. A few days before the event, I met with Tsippi, and she shared with me the gist of her talk, which, in addition...

Mystical techniques, mental processes, and states of consciousness in Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalah: A reassessment

This article reevaluates the mystical techniques and experiences peculiar to Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalah and attempts to offer an alternative approach to their dominant understanding, which largely depends on Moshe Idel’s work. Current scholars of Jewish mysticism have a habit of highlighting the “unique character” of Abulafia’s mystical practices while asserting that they cannot be compared with the induction techniques and the psychophysical phenomena typical of hypnosis. While generally agreeing with the scholars discussed that the hyperactivation of the mind found in Abulafian Kabbalah contrasts sharply with the mental relaxation attained through the mystical practices of other religious traditions, the present study takes issue with the current view of Abulafian Kabbalah’s relation to hypnotic procedures, processes, and states. This work addresses the issues present with the current view and offers a more inclusive model for interpreting Abulafia’s Kabbalah, drawing from psychiatrist Roland Fischer.

Solovyov’s Metaphysics between Gnosis and Theurgy

This article provides a reading of Vladimir Solovyov’s philosophy as expressed in his ‘Lectures on Divine Humanity’ and ‘The Meaning of Love’. It seeks to unpack his eclectic thought in order to answer the question of whether there is a Jewish Kabbalistic influence on the Russian thinker amidst his usual platonic, gnostic, and Schellengian tropes. Interested as a young man in Jewish Mysticism, Solovyov fluctuates in his ‘Lectures on Divine Humanity’ between a platonic reading of Schellengian Gnosticism and some elements of Kabbalistic origin. In ‘The Meaning of Love’, he develops a notion of love that puts him very close to what Moshe Idel calls ‘theosophic-theurgical Kabbalah’. Showing how ‘The Meaning of Love’ completes the narrative of ‘Lectures’, we can affirm that there is a certain Christian Kabbalistic line in Solovyov’s thought that culminates in his theurgical understanding of love. In this sense, Solovyov might be called a philosophical Marrano as he is certainly a heterodox theosopher that fluctuates between Christian Gnosis and Christian Kabbalah, never assuming a solid identity.

Exegesis and Appropriation: Reading Rashi in Late Medieval Spain

Scholarship in the humanities has seen a recent burgeoning interest in the processes of “appropriation,” a conceptual category that moves us away from the idea of one-way transmission or “influence” and allows us to explore the complex ways in which intellectual, literary, and material expressions or artifacts come to represent something “different from their original purposes.” Though the term has not acquired much currency in studies of medieval Jewish biblical scholarship, its fruitful deployment is amply attested in broader explorations of premodern exegetical literature. This investigation takes “exegesis and appropriation” as a revelatory integrating perspective on a neglected body of Hebrew scriptural scholarship: commentaries on the most important and influential work of Jewish biblical interpretation ever written, theCommentary on the Torahof Rashi (Solomon Yitzhaki; 1040–1105). The focus falls on “Rashi supercommentaries” (as glosses on Rashi'sCommentaryare usually called) from medieval Spain and on some striking religio-intellectual dynamics evident in their pages. The study thereby addresses Moshe Idel's call for scholarship to engage more with questions about “the meaning of the arrival of a corpus of writings in a new cultural environment.”

Kabbalah: A Neurocognitive Approach to Mystical Experiences By ShaharArzy and MosheIdel. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 206. Cloth, $50.00.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 43, Issue 1 p. 66-66 Short Reviews on Recent Publications: Judaism: Hellenistic through Late Antiquity Kabbalah: A Neurocognitive Approach to Mystical Experiences By Shahar Arzy and Moshe Idel. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 206. Cloth, $50.00. Shaul Stampfer, Shaul Stampfer Hebrew University of JerusalemSearch for more papers by this author Shaul Stampfer, Shaul Stampfer Hebrew University of JerusalemSearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 March 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.12848Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume43, Issue1Special Issue: The Norton Anthology of World ReligionsMarch 2017Pages 66-66 RelatedInformation

The Influence of Abraham Cohen de Herrera's Kabbalah on Spinoza's Metaphysics by Miquel Beltràn

Reviewed by: The Influence of Abraham Cohen de Herrera's Kabbalah on Spinoza's Metaphysics by Miquel Beltràn Yitzhak Y. Melamed Miquel Beltràn. The Influence of Abraham Cohen de Herrera's Kabbalah on Spinoza's Metaphysics. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. vi + 449. Cloth, $218.00. Addressing the alleged "great secrets" contained in Scripture, Spinoza wrote in the Theological Political Treatise (TTP): "I have also read, and for that matter, known personally, certain Kabbalistic triflers. I've never been able to be sufficiently amazed by their madness" (TTP chapter 9, Gebhardt III/136/1–2). Were these words Spinoza's only reference to the Kabbalah, we would hardly have any reason to believe that his attitude toward the Kabbalistic literature was anything but dismissive. However, in a 1675 letter to Henry Oldenburg, Spinoza stressed that he shared the view that "all things are in God" with certain ancient traditions (traditionibus) of the Hebrews, "corrupted as they have been in many ways" (Epistle 73, Gebhardt IV/307/11). Since the very meaning of the word 'Kabbalah' in Hebrew is tradition, and since the view of the Kabbalah as a corpus of ancient wisdom that got corrupted was widespread among early modern writers, it is highly likely that Spinoza's claims in the letter to Oldenburg referred to Kabbalistic pantheism (which was the main current within Kabbalistic thought). The precise nature of Spinoza's relation to the Kabbalah has been subject to debate and speculation ever since Wachter's 1699 Spinozismus in Jüdenthumb; and the list of luminaries who took part in this debate include Leibniz, F. H. Jacobi, Salomon Maimon, Schelling, Gershom Scholem, Zev Harvey, and Moshe Idel. The main common feature that Spinoza's [End Page 544] metaphysics shares with Kabbalistic theory is the combination of pantheism and emanation. Furthermore, some Kabbalists conceived the flow of things from the Einsof (the infinite) as strictly necessary. We may also note the significant presence of Kabbalistic works in Spinoza's personal library. Miquel Beltràn's new book is an important contribution to this three-centuries-old debate. The book focuses on Spinoza's relation to the writing of the major Kabbalist of early modern Amsterdam, Abraham Cohen de Herrera (1562(?)–1635). Though Herrera's books were not in Spinoza's library, there are intriguing thematic similarities between his synthesis of Renaissance philosophy and Kabbalah on the one hand, and Spinoza's metaphysics on the other. Beltràn's book is very clear and highly erudite. It relies upon, and engages in, a critical dialogue with the recent wave of studies and translations of Herrera's books, and it is clearly the most comprehensive study of the topic. Some of Beltràn's claims are quite surprising. Thus, for example, he argues that Spinoza's 1656 excommunication was partly due to his interpretation of Herrera's works (44), and that natura naturans "does not refer to substance as substance, but rather as a free cause of that which follows from its nature" (377). The scope of Beltràn's study is quite wide, covering diverse issues such as amor Dei intellectualis, the notion of causa sui, the nature of the attributes, infinity, and acosmism. The book also contains some insightful discussions of Spinoza's reception of Maimonides and of Wachter's reading of Spinoza. Every so often, I found myself in disagreement with the author, but this is a rich, stimulating, and even exciting work, and is clearly one that should be addressed and studied by anyone with a serious interest in Spinoza's relation to the Kabbalah. Yitzhak Y. Melamed Johns Hopkins University Copyright © 2017 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.

Cain as the Scion of Satan: The Evolution of a Gnostic Myth in theZohar

The relationship between kabbalistic thought and ancient gnostic ideas has been debated by numerous scholars. Early on, Gershom Scholem argued that the rise of kabbalah represents the “reappearance, in the heart of Judaism, of thegnostic tradition.” In his wake, Isaiah Tishby has posited that the concept of thesĕfirot“emerge[d] and develop[ed] from a historico-literary contact with the remnants of Gnosticism, which were preserved over a period of many generations in certain Jewish circles, until they found their way to the early Kabbalists.” Joseph Dan, on the other hand, maintains that “historical connections” must not be confused with “phenomenological similarities.” There is no evidence for the existence of the former, in his opinion; all that may be claimed is a typological correspondence between gnostic ideas and medieval Jewish kabbalistic mysticism. Moshe Idel likewise claims that some early Jewish motifs penetrated gnostic texts at the same time they continued to flourish within Jewish circles until they finally found form in medieval kabbalah. Yehuda Liebes has adopted a corresponding view, although he makes fruitful exegetical use of the relationship and parallels between various gnostic and Jewish sources. The issue thus remains firmly on the academic agenda.

Messing with our minds

Ananthaswamy reviews Kabbalah: A neurocognitive approach to mystical experiences by Shahar Arzy and Moshe Idel.

Biographical Metamorphoses in the History of Religion - Moshe Idel and Three Aspects of Mircea Eliade

This paper includes an extended review of Moshe Idel’s Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth (New York: Peter Lang, 2014) through a triple analysis of Eliade’s early literary, epistolary, and academic texts. The paper examines Idel’s analysis of some important themes in Eliade’s research, such as his shift from understanding religion as magic to its interpretation as myth; the conception of the camouflage of sacred; the notions of androgyny and restoration; and also young Eliade’s theories of death.The paper also discusses Idel’s evaluation of Eliade’s programatic misunderstanding of Judaism and Kabbalah, and also of Eliade’s moral and professional abdication regarding the political and religious aspect of the Iron Guard, a Romanian nationalist extremist and anti-Semitic group he was affiliated with in 1930s.

Comparative mysticism: an anthology of original sources

Preface Contributors General Editor's Introduction, Steven T. Katz JUDAISM, edited by Moshe Idel CHRISTIANITY, edited by Bernard McGinn ISLAM, edited by Peter Awn HINDUISM, edited by Arvind Sharma BUDDHISM, edited by John Powers CONFUCIANISM AND DAOISM, edited by Livia Kohn NATIVE AMERICAN TRADITIONS, edited by John Grim

A Novel Look at Moshe Idel’s East-West Problem

A Novel Look at Moshe Idel’s East-West Problem David N. Myers Moshe Idel.Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought. Jewish Culture and Contexts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Pp. 336. For many of us in the field of Jewish studies, but not in the field of Kabbalah studies, our first encounter with Moshe Idel came in 1988 with the publication of his major work in English, Kabbalah: New Perspectives. Although he had been working in the field for more than a decade, from the time of his 1976 dissertation at the Hebrew University on Avraham Abulafia, it was Kabbalah: New Perspectives that brought Idel to wide public attention, announcing his own substantial methodological and substantive disagreements with the towering figure of modern Kabbalah studies, Gershom Scholem. Since then, Idel has gone on to attain a position of international distinction, publishing at a staggering rate in Kabbalah studies, and many fields beyond. In the process, he—like Scholem before and Wolfson and others after him—has used the study of Kabbalah as a gateway of inquiry into important methodological, theoretical, hermeneutical, philosophical, and historical questions. This leads us to the book at hand, Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought, which is indeed an inquiry into important methodological, theoretical, philosophical, and historical questions. It reflects Idel’s brilliant, capacious, probing, and wildly imaginative mind, as it ranges over terrain somewhat less familiar to him and his usual readers, but of critical significance to his overarching intellectual and cultural Weltanschauung. What I propose to do in these remarks is to undertake three tasks: first, to sketch out briefly the structure of the book and point to a major argumentative strand in it; second, to identify two central motifs that surface in the book—and that make for a surprising, counterintuitive, [End Page 289] and even troubling read; and finally, to adopt a literary conceit to read the book against the analytic and stylistic grain, as a way of getting at some of the intriguing psychodynamics involved in it. I Old Worlds, New Mirrors is a collection of previously published essays on modern Jewish thought divided into four parts. The first section deals with a number of renowned Central European scholars and intellectuals who belong to what Idel calls in the introduction to the book “a new Jewish elite” (p. 6). The second section contains three of Idel’s papers on one of the chief figures of that new elite, his own long-standing master, foil, and nemesis: Gershom Scholem. The third section offers up a wideranging assembly of pieces that deal with the place that Kabbalah played in the thought of a number of other members of the new cultural elite including Kafka, Rosenzweig, Benjamin, and Celan. The fourth and final section of the book deals with modern scholarly views of Hasidism, which since the late eighteenth century has been the most important site of ongoing kabbalistic activity and practice. Although disparate in focus and length, the four sections and thirteen chapters do betray a consistent theme. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to state that they present a consistent set of oppositions that add up to a theme and in fact, spell out a decided cultural stance on the author’s part. Among the recurring oppositions in the book are: i. Eastern European vs. Central European Jewish cultures ii. tradition vs. innovation iii. continuity vs. rupture iv. rootedness vs. cosmopolitanism v. homeland vs. galut (exile) vi. Jerusalem vs. Athens (or perhaps in its more modern incarnation, Hebrew vs. German) These oppositions, all of which circulate throughout the book, lend considerable weight to Idel’s critique of “the new Jewish elite”—the largely Central European Jewish intellectuals whose most famous constellation arose in Weimarera Berlin but which continued to exert itself up to the present through figures like the French literary critic Jacques Derrida and the arch cosmopolitan Jewish elitist (and diasporist, to boot) George Steiner. In casting his gaze on these figures, Idel positions himself as their cultural opposite, recalling his own origins in a small shtetl in northern [End Page 290] Romania that was “largely untouched...

On Getting It Right

On Getting It Right Vivian Liska (bio) Moshe Idel. Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought. Jewish Culture and Contexts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Pp. 336. The importance of Moshe Idel’s Old Worlds, New Mirrors can hardly be overstated. It is both a seminal and daunting intervention in the field of modern European Jewish thought that takes to task its towering figures: mainly German Jewish modernists from Kafka, Scholem, Benjamin, and Buber to Steiner, Celan, and Derrida, with occasional references to Freud, Arendt, Adorno, Jonas, Leo Strauss, and others. The book also questions the cult that developed around these figures, suggesting that it led to a disproportionate attention to a “quantitatively tiny elite culture” (p. 70) at the expense of the actual wealth of Jewish thought and writing. Idel’s critique of the ways these celebrated European Jewish figures and their followers approach Judaism and integrate elements of the kabbalistic tradition in their thinking is pertinent and profound. It is also unsettling, disconcerting, and even shocking at times. Idel’s intervention in this field is more important than he himself concedes in his misleadingly mild introduction where he defines the objective of his book in a dry scholarly manner as “adding the Eastern European perspective to the Central European one,” an approach, he states, that “would yield a more complex and informative description” of the field (p. 12). Idel believes that this added perspective can correct “misunderstandings of the mystical texts under scrutiny” (p. 12). If these two assertions—complementing and correcting existing scholarship—covered the scope of the book, it would be little more than another scholarly revision. The book’s importance, however, lies neither with being a more complete description nor a rectification of modern understandings of Jewish mystical texts. Of course this is a key part of the book: an eminent expert sets [End Page 297] things right and chides those who have torn kabbalistic elements out of their rich and variegated context at the price of the distortion and reduction of their original meaning. The title points to this aspect of the book: the Old are worlds, alive and manifold; the New are mirrors—a treacherous medium of representation in which the Old is reflected as a mere illusion. But the book’s scope reaches far beyond this delimitation and also beyond another assertion at the end of its introduction where Idel claims that his effort “should not be seen as a critique of the Central European [translate: essentially German Jewish] approaches to Judaism but as an interrogation of the two perspectives, the Eastern and Western one, a questioning that may serve as a corrective to each” (p. 12). It is, however, noteworthy that the shortcomings of the Eastern perspective—described by Idel essentially as a “lack of critical approach” (p. 12)—are barely addressed. Instead, the book offers an extended critique of the Western perspective from an Eastern one that is implicitly considered more authentic. Idel’s critique of the group of mainly German Jewish intellectuals mentioned above and of their impact on a widely accepted vision of Judaism in contemporary thought is his real work in this collection of essays. As a challenge to current approaches and practices in the field of German Jewish studies, it is monumental, both in what I consider to be the book’s most important and its most problematic claims. In what follows I will sketch two examples for each of these assessments, the remarkable and the dubious, taken mostly from the chapter on George Steiner. In the first two cases, these examples will illustrate Idel’s powerful and convincing critique of the modern understanding of the “Jewish spirit” and of a liberal and cosmopolitan metaphorization of Jewish existence. In the last two examples, I question critically Idel’s perspective on the relation between the Holocaust and Israel as well as his understanding of the German Jewish legacy as a whole. What Idel in his introduction somewhat harmlessly calls “adding the Eastern European perspective” (p. 12) to the Central European one—something he considers part of a scholarly, pluralistic, and nonessentializing approach—is actually a radical critique of what Derrida calls...

Fragments and Demons: A Strong Reading

Fragments and Demons: A Strong Reading MOSHE IDEL. Old Worlds, New Mirrow On Jewish Mysticism and TwentiethCentury Thought. Jewish Culture and Contexts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Pp. 336.MY REMARKS on Idel's book are written as a gesture of admiration. I have learned much from his book, which is filled with wisdom. Idel's book not only tells a fascinating history of reception- reception of Jewish mysticism and its sources in twentieth-century thought- but it also reveals genealogies of misinterpretations and hints at anxieties of influence in world of modernist Judaism. The book shows again how ambiguous and fruitful modernist perspectives on Judaism were. Modernist interpretations of Jewish tradition, far from being merely secular, opened critical viewpoints into depth of tradition and transformed theological figures and motifs into new textures of poetical and philosophical writing. To this modernist world German Jewish project of tradition also belonged. This cultural project, whose contributors include authors such as Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Franz Werfel, Else Lasker-Schiiler, Walter Benjamin, Gustav Landauer, Gershom Scholem, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig, offered new and radical interpretations of Jewish tradition that were associated with political urgency -a critique of violence and Utopist views. These authors often dealt with possibility of transforming theological tropes- revelation and redemption, messianism, and eschatological concepts of justice- into new frames of poetical and political thinking. For many of them, Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, and Gnosis served as an additional source for new thinking on human condition and possibilities of tikun (repair). In his book, Idel returns to examine this project of tradition and its legacies from a critical vantage point. His study reveals wisdom and failures, creativity and damages, beauty and cost that were and still are part of this cultural heritage.My remarks on Idel's book are echoes of learning. But writing of such remarks has its own logic. Remarks are inverted forms of dialogue; there is something unfaithful in writing remarks. Remarks are short, selective, and fragmented. They tear subject matter out of its context and bring it back, upturned and distorted. Remarks are fragile and weak, and yet they often offer a There is a notion of freedom, albeit a demonic one, in writing remarks. Here, nevertheless, a paradox is revealed. For Idel's book calls for such a reading. His book demands a strong reading of fragments and demons.THE FRAGMENT (A METHO-THEOLOGICAL REMARK)In introduction to his book, Idei reminds his readers of distortions involved in writing of Jewish history. All scholarship, he argues, is a product of a certain rearview or perspective of past, and thus, as every mirror does, it creates a distorted, limited, and fragmented picture of its subject. Idei wishes to present a different, more complex set of several (p. 1). He calls for reading Jewish history in plural, with multiple, perspectives. This will bring us, he asserts, to a more comprehensive treatment of Jewish past. A study of Judaism that is based on different methodologies and multiple perspectives could lead us to a less limited and less distorted scholarship than one influenced by traditional theologically oriented approach (p. 2) of Christian scholars. Idel's methodological decision is significant. He is, however, well aware that using a new set of mirrors instead of old set does not yet solve problem, namely, paradox of image. Rather, it reproduces it. The past remains in reflection, a mirror effect. All views of past are distorted, inverted images, fragmented representations of our own time.This paradox is reflected also in Idel's second, significant decision to devote his writing to what he calls the fragmenting trend (p. …

Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510: a survey

This sweeping survey of the history of Kabbalah in Italy represents a major contribution from one of the world's foremost Kabbalah scholars. The first to focus attention on a specific center of Kabbalah, Moshe Idel charts the ways that Kabbalistic thought and literature developed in Italy and how its unique geographical situation facilitated the arrival of both Spanish and Byzantine Kabbalah. Idel analyzes the work of three major Kabbalists-Abraham Abulafia, Menahem Recanati, and Yohanan Alemanno-who represent diverse schools of thought: the ecstatic, the theosophical-theurgical, and the astromagical. Directing special attention to the interactions and tensions among these forms of Jewish Kabbalah and the nascent Christian Kabbalah, Idel brings to light the rich history of Kabbalah in Italy and the powerful influence of this important center on the emergence of Christian Kabbalah and European occultism in general.

Andrei Oişteanu . Inventing the Jew: Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romanian and Other Central‐East European Cultures . Foreword by Moshe Idel . Translated by Mirela Adăscăliţei . (Studies in Antisemitism.) Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press , for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Jerusalem. 2009 . Pp. xii, 468. $60.00.

Andrei Oişteanu . Inventing the Jew: Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romanian and Other Central‐East European Cultures . Foreword by Moshe Idel . Translated by Mirela Adăscăliţei . (Studies in Antisemitism.) Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press , for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Jerusalem. 2009 . Pp. xii, 468. $60.00.

Inventing the Jew: Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romania and Other Central European Cultures (review)

Reviewed by: Inventing the Jew: Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romania and Other Central European Cultures Andrea Pető Inventing the Jew: Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romania and Other Central European Cultures, by Andrei Oisteanu. Studies in Antisemitism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2009. 468 pp. $60.00. Moshe Idel, the most prominent kabala scholar of our time, sets the tone of this volume, as the first sentence of his introduction labels Oisteanu as "an expert in Romanian folklore and an active Jewish intellectual in Romania." The lengthy book is a summary of "ethnic imagology" of Jews in Romania and a long overdue historical milestone in Romanian research on stereotyping. The book comes out of a very controversial national legacy. In 1940 the second largest European Jewish community, with 800,000 members, lived in Romania, labeled by Hannah Arendt as "the most anti-Semitic country." However the, "Olympics of antisemitism"—examining who is the most antisemitic of all—does not lead anywhere, as Oisteanu himself also pointed out, especially not after 1945, when the antisemitic climate reflected in the sheer denial of the existence of any other nationalities than Romanian living in Romania caused the book by Lion Feuchtwanger, The Jewess of Toledo, to be published in Romanian with a neutral title, The Spaniard Ballad. The book summarizes Oisteanu's research, executed at an often daunting level of detail, in the best tradition of Romanian intellectual life: it is rich in content and flamboyant in style and in its empirical basis. The book's divisions show the physical, occupational, moral and intellectual, mythical and magical, and religious portrait of the Jews. It resembles an encyclopedia which aims to include all possible details and information about the "image of the other," and its stringent demands on the reader's concentration makes it difficult reading. It is very useful for those who want to experience the richness of this very complex matrix of stereotyping based on all possible written sources about Romanian culture. The empirical base of the book is very wide and heterogeneous: from jokes to newspapers and literary works. The author has examined every possible corner of Romanian culture to find out what people have thought about the Jews—every corner except visual sources such as artwork and cartoons. [End Page 183] My critical comments are related to how the book handles temporality. Stereotypes are presented as timeless, and regardless of the fact that the chapters present the material more or less chronologically, the reader is left in the dark as to why certain types of stereotypes surface at a certain historical period, while others do not. This timelessness, on the other hand, has an advantage because it shows how invisible the line is between marking a group of people according to certain characteristics and denying their existence along the very same lines. In the book "Jew" stands as a "category," understood by Rogers Brubaker in disaggregated, dynamic, and relational terms (Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe [Cambridge, 1996, p. 16]). This understanding could have been more fruitfully explored in some cases, such as that of the stereotypical "Jewess." This issue is discussed in a rather old fashioned way in the section of the book on the physical appearance of the Jew, where the author describes the female Jew as beautiful, tempting but inaccessible, wearing silk and sophisticated jewelry, but does not examine how gender stereotypes are constitutive parts of constructing the image of the other and how these stereotypes change over time in different contexts. In the introduction of the book the author describes the methodology as comparative in time and in space, in cultures and in ethnicity. This is a very ambitious aim. We cannot blame the book for failing to meet this broad goal, or for the number of rich but heterogeneous details that often make the argument difficult to follow. We should rather celebrate the book as a closing cornerstone which is a historical snapshot of difficult centuries of the co-habitation of Jews and Romanians in Central Europe. Andrea Pető Central European University Budapest Copyright © 2010 Purdue University...