Greenspahn, Frederick, ed. Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah: New Insights and Scholarship. New York: New York University Press, 2011. xviii + 250 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8147-3286-1
If there is any area within the field of Jewish studies that has captured the imagination of people beyond the academy, it is kabbala. A person walking into a bookstore with a Judaica shelf containing a mere twenty titles cannot help but notice that a half dozen or more of these books will have the word “kabbala” in the title. For those who have heard the word kabbala and want to know what it is all about, and even for those already engaged, at whatever level, in the academic study of Jewish mysticism, Greenspahn’s book is a must read.
The book, which is part of a series entitled “Jewish Studies in the Twentieth Century”, under Greenspahn’s general editorship, has brought together eleven of the best scholars of Kabbala and Jewish mysticism currently active in North America. These authors have collectively accomplished two important objectives. First of all, they have succeeded in giving the reader a clear idea of the development of scholarship in the sub-field they covered from the pioneering work of Gershom Scholem in the first half of the twentieth century to the present in all its complexity and controversy. In doing so, they have laid bare the conceptual breakthroughs and the differing interpretations that have brought us to the current “state of the art”. For this achievement alone, we should be grateful to them. However, their contribution does not stop with bringing us up to date on the history of scholarship. Each article, in its own way, serves to advance our understanding of the field by creatively engaging the status quo and pushing it in specific and original directions.
Particularly outstanding in this respect are Elliot Wolfson’s chapter on “Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia and the Prophetic Kabbalah”, and Shaul Magid’s contribution on “Hasidism: Mystical and Nonmystical Approaches to Interpreting Scripture”. Wolfson brings to the fore a compelling analysis of Abulafia’s complex relationship with Christianity and its symbols, which encompasses both strong opposition and a certain recognition of Christianity’s spiritual power. Magid utilizes his chapter to advance a thesis that Hasidic literature, from its eighteenth century origins, “is engaged in its own Bible revolution, framing its unique perspective through creative and often daring readings of the scriptural narrative”. (p. 142)
It is significant that all of the contributors in this book teach at American universities. This means that, necessarily, their primary perspective is North American. This does not at all mean that they ignore the tremendous scholarship in this field that has been published, primarily in Hebrew, by Israeli scholars. On the contrary, they are all careful to evaluate all substantive scholarship in the field, North American, Israeli, and European. However, as the book points out time after time, there are important differences in perspective between Israeli and North American scholarship in Jewish studies in general, and in the field of Jewish mysticism in particular. That means that the use of exclusively American scholars necessarily loses for us the advantage of looking at the field as a whole from both North American and Israeli perspectives.
The editor of the volume, Frederick Greenspahn, conveys both the complexity and the excitement inherent in the current state of the field of Jewish mysticism when he states:
“[S]cholarship’s inability to stand still can be confusing. Its ability to let us know more than previous generations knew comes at the expense of proving that these earlier interpretations were inadequate or sometimes incorrect. That, in turn, suggests the possibility that what we know today, including the contents of this book, may be superseded as research continues and our knowledge grows. That may be unsettling—we all crave certainty—but it is also a sign of liveliness….” (p. xi)
It is a tribute to the authors of this book that they have succeeded so well in conveying both the uncertainties and the excitement of one of the most dynamic fields within Jewish studies today.
Ira Robinson
Academic Fellow, CIJR
Department of Religion, Concordia University