Elliot R. Wolfson's Books

Circle in the Square

Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Circle in the Square

Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

This book deals with aspects of the gender imaging of God in a variety of medieval kabbalistic sources. It provides the key to understanding the phenomenological structures of mystical experience as well as the thematic correlation of esotericism and eroticism that is central to the kabbalah. The author examines the role of gender utilizing current feminist studies and cultural anthropology. He explores the themes of the feminization of the Torah, the correlation of circumcision and vision of God, the phallocentric understanding of divine creation as a process of inscription mythologized as an act of sexual self-gratification, and the phenomenon of gender-crossing in kabbalistic myth and ritual. Collectively, the studies explore in great depth the androcentric phallocentrism that is characteristic of medieval Jewish mysticism.

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284

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State University of New York Press

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ISBN 10

143842437X

ISBN 13

9781438424378

Language, Eros, Being

Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Language, Eros, Being

Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

This long-awaited, magisterial study-an unparalleled blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology-draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, comparative religion, philological writings on Kabbalah, Russian formalism, Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig, William Blake, and the very physics of the time-space continuum to establish what will surely be a highwater mark in work on Kabbalah. Not only a study of texts, Language, Eros, Being is perhaps the fullest confrontation of the body in Jewish studies, if not in religious studies as a whole. Elliot R. Wolfson explores the complex gender symbolism that permeates Kabbalistic literature. Focusing on the nexus of asceticism and eroticism, he seeks to define the role of symbolic and poetically charged language in the erotically configured visionary imagination of the medieval Kabbalists. He demonstrates that the traditional Kabbalistic view of gender was a monolithic and androcentric one, in which the feminine was conceived as being derived from the masculine. He does not shrink from the negative implications of this doctrine, but seeks to make an honest acknowledgment of it as the first step toward the redemption of an ancient wisdom. Comparisons with other mystical traditions-including those in Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam-are a remarkable feature throughout the book. They will make it important well beyond Jewish studies, indeed, a must for historians of comparative religion, in particular of comparative mysticism. Praise for Elliot R. Wolfson: "Through a Speculum That Shines is an important and provocative contribution to the study of Jewish mysticism by one of the major scholars now working in this field."-Speculum

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1256

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Fordham Univ Press

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ISBN 10

0823224201

ISBN 13

9780823224203

Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

No one theory of time is pursued in the essays of this volume, but a major theme that threads them together is Wolfson’s signature idea of the timeswerve as a linear circularity or a circular linearity, expressions that are meant to avoid the conventional split between the two temporal modalities of the line and the circle.

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799

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BRILL

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ISBN 10

9004449345

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9789004449343

The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes

Between Nihilism and Hope

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes

Between Nihilism and Hope

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes offers a detailed analysis of an extraordinary figure in the twentieth-century history of Jewish thought, Western philosophy, and the study of religion. Drawing on close readings of Susan Taubes's writings, including her correspondence with Jacob Taubes, scholarly essays, literary compositions, and poems, Elliot R. Wolfson plumbs the depths of the tragic sensibility that shaped her worldview, hovering between the poles of nihilism and hope. By placing Susan Taubes in dialogue with a host of other seminal thinkers, Wolfson illumines how she presciently explored the hypernomian status of Jewish ritual and belief after the Holocaust; the theopolitical challenges of Zionism and the dangers of ethnonationalism; the antitheological theology and gnostic repercussions of Heideggerian thought; the mystical atheism and apophaticism of tragedy in Simone Weil; and the understanding of poetry as the means to face the faceless and to confront the silence of death in the temporal overcoming of time through time. Wolfson delves into the abyss that molded Susan Taubes's mytheological thinking, making a powerful case for the continued relevance of her work to the study of philosophy and religion today.

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612

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Stanford University Press

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ISBN 10

1503635309

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9781503635302

Giving Beyond the Gift

Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Giving Beyond the Gift

Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

This book explores the co-dependency of monotheism and idolatry by examining the thought of several prominent twentieth-century Jewish philosophers—Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas. While all of these thinkers were keenly aware of the pitfalls of scriptural theism, to differing degrees they each succumbed to the temptation to personify transcendence, even as they tried either to circumvent or to restrain it by apophatically purging kataphatic descriptions of the deity. Derrida and Wyschogrod, by contrast, carried the project of denegation one step further, embarking on a path that culminated in the aporetic suspension of belief and the consequent removal of all images from God, a move that seriously compromises the viability of devotional piety. The inquiry into apophasis, transcendence, and immanence in these Jewish thinkers is symptomatic of a larger question. Recent attempts to harness the apophatic tradition to construct a viable postmodern negative theology, a religion without religion, are not radical enough. Not only are these philosophies of transcendence guilty of a turn to theology that defies the phenomenological presupposition of an immanent phenomenality, but they fall short on their own terms, inasmuch as they persist in employing metaphorical language that personalizes transcendence and thereby runs the risk of undermining the irreducible alterity and invisibility attributed to the transcendent other. The logic of apophasis, if permitted to run its course fully, would exceed the need to posit some form of transcendence that is not ultimately a facet of immanence. Apophatic theologies, accordingly, must be supplanted by a more far-reaching apophasis that surpasses the theolatrous impulse lying coiled at the crux of theism, an apophasis of apophasis, based on accepting an absolute nothingness—to be distinguished from the nothingness of an absolute—that does not signify the unknowable One but rather the manifold that is the pleromatic abyss at being’s core. Hence, the much-celebrated metaphor of the gift must give way to the more neutral and less theologically charged notion of an unconditional givenness in which the distinction between giver and given collapses. To think givenness in its most elemental, phenomenological sense is to allow the apparent to appear as given without presuming a causal agency that would turn that given into a gift.

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663

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Fordham Univ Press

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ISBN 10

0823255727

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9780823255726

Heidegger and Kabbalah

Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiesis

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Heidegger and Kabbalah

Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiesis

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

While many scholars have noted Martin Heidegger's indebtedness to Christian mystical sources, as well as his affinity with Taoism and Buddhism, Elliot R. Wolfson expands connections between Heidegger's thought and kabbalistic material. By arguing that the Jewish esoteric tradition impacted Heidegger, Wolfson presents an alternative way of understanding the history of Western philosophy. Wolfson's comparison between Heidegger and kabbalah sheds light on key concepts such as hermeneutics, temporality, language, and being and nothingness, while yielding surprising reflections on their common philosophical ground. Given Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism and his use of antisemitic language, these innovative readings are all the more remarkable for their juxtaposition of incongruent fields of discourse. Wolfson's entanglement with Heidegger and kabbalah not only enhances understandings of both but, more profoundly, serves as an ethical corrective to their respective ethnocentrism and essentialism. Wolfson masterfully illustrates the redemptive capacity of thought to illuminate common ground in seemingly disparate philosophical traditions.

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468

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Indiana University Press

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ISBN 10

0253042607

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9780253042606

Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism

By: Alfred L. Ivry,Elliot R. Wolfson,Allan Arkush

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Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism

By: Alfred L. Ivry,Elliot R. Wolfson,Allan Arkush

First Published in 1998. This is the proceedings of the International Conference held by The Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London, 1994, in Celebration of its Fortieth Anniversary. Dedicated to the memory and academic legacy of its Founder Alexander Altmann.

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548

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Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1136650121

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9781136650123

Nocturnal Seeing

Hopelessness of Hope and Philosophical Gnosis in Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Nocturnal Seeing

Hopelessness of Hope and Philosophical Gnosis in Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

In this erudite new work, Elliot R. Wolfson explores philosophical gnosis in the writings of Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod. The juxtaposition of these three extraordinary, albeit relatively neglected, philosophers provides a prism through which Wolfson scrutinizes the interplay of ethics, politics, and theology. The bond that ties together the diverse and multifaceted worldviews promulgated by Taubes, Rose, and Wyschogrod is the mutual recognition of the need to enunciate a response to the calamities of the twentieth century based on an incontrovertible acknowledgment of the decadence and malevolence of human beings, without, however, succumbing to acrimony and despair. The speculation of each of these philosophers on melancholia and the tragicomedy of being is unquestionably intricate, exhibiting subtle variations and idiosyncrasies, but we can nevertheless identify a common denominator in their attempt to find the midpoint positioned between hope and hopelessness. As Wolfson articulates, Taubes, Rose, and Wyschogrod exemplify a philosophical sensibility informed by a nocturnal seeing, which is not merely a seeing in the night but rather a seeing of the night. Ultimately, the book reveals the potential for these thinkers' ideas to enhance our moral sensitivity and to encourage participation in the ongoing struggle for meaning and decency in the present.

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488

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Stanford University Press

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ISBN 10

1503640973

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9781503640979

The Duplicity of Philosophy's Shadow

Heidegger, Nazism, and the Jewish Other

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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The Duplicity of Philosophy's Shadow

Heidegger, Nazism, and the Jewish Other

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is considered one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century in spite of his well-known transgressions—his complicity with National Socialism and his inability to show remorse or compassion for its victims. In The Duplicity of Philosophy’s Shadow, Elliot R. Wolfson intervenes in a debate that has seen much attention in scholarly and popular media from a unique perspective, as a scholar of Jewish mysticism and philosophy who has been profoundly influenced by Heidegger’s work. Wolfson sets out to probe Heidegger’s writings to expose what remains unthought. In spite of Heidegger’s explicit anti-Semitic statements, Wolfson reveals some crucial aspects of his thinking—including criticism of the biological racism and militant apocalypticism of Nazism—that betray an affinity with dimensions of Jewish thought: the triangulation of the concepts of homeland, language, and peoplehood; Jewish messianism and the notion of historical time as the return of the same that is always different; inclusion, exclusion, and the status of the other; the problem of evil in kabbalistic symbolism. Using Heidegger’s own methods, Wolfson reflects on the inextricable link of truth and untruth and investigates the matter of silence and the limits of speech. He challenges the tendency to bifurcate the relationship of the political and the philosophical in Heidegger’s thought, but parts company with those who write off Heidegger as a Nazi ideologue. Ultimately, The Duplicity of Philosophy’s Shadow argues, the greatness and relevance of Heidegger’s work is that he presents us with the opportunity to think the unthinkable as part of our communal destiny as historical beings.

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354

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Columbia University Press

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ISBN 10

0231546246

ISBN 13

9780231546249

Through a Speculum That Shines

Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Through a Speculum That Shines

Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

A comprehensive treatment of visionary experience in some of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, this book reveals the overwhelmingly visual nature of religious experience in Jewish spirituality from antiquity through the late Middle Ages. Using phenomenological and critical historical tools, Wolfson examines Jewish mystical texts from late antiquity, pre-kabbalistic sources from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and twelfth- and thirteenth-century kabbalistic literature. His work demonstrates that the sense of sight assumes an epistemic priority in these writings, reflecting and building upon those scriptural passages that affirm the visual nature of revelatory experience. Moreover, the author reveals an androcentric eroticism in the scopic mentality of Jewish mystics, which placed the externalized and representable form, the phallus, at the center of the visual encounter. In the visionary experience, as Wolfson describes it, imagination serves a primary function, transmuting sensory data and rational concepts into symbols of those things beyond sense and reason. In this view, the experience of a vision is inseparable from the process of interpretation. Fundamentally challenging the conventional distinction between experience and exegesis, revelation and interpretation, Wolfson argues that for the mystics themselves, the study of texts occasioned a visual experience of the divine located in the imagination of the mystical interpreter. Thus he shows how Jewish mystics preserved the invisible transcendence of God without doing away with the visual dimension of belief.

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463

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Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

069121509X

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9780691215099

Language, Eros, Being

Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Language, Eros, Being

Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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1256

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Fordham Univ Press

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ISBN 10

0823224201

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9780823224203

Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

Are mysticism and morality compatible or at odds with one another? If mystical experience embraces a form of non-dual consciousness, then in such a state of mind, the regulative dichotomy so basic to ethical discretion would seemingly be transcended and the very foundation for ethical decisions undermined. Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral as it is expressed in the particular tradition of Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah. The particular themes discussed include the denigration of the non-Jew as the ontic other in kabbalistic anthropology and the eschatological crossing of that boundary anticipated in the instituition of religious conversion; the overcoming of the distinction between good and evil in the mystical experience of the underlying unity of all things; divine suffering and the ideal of spiritual poverty as the foundation for transmoral ethics and hypernomian lawfulness.

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400

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OUP Oxford

Published Date

ISBN 10

019153515X

ISBN 13

9780191535154

Footdreams and Treetales

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Footdreams and Treetales

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

Footdreams and Treetales is a collection of ninety-two poems spanning several decades. Like paintings that attempt to render visible the invisible, the poems reflect Wolfson's interests in philosophy, the history of religions, and, in particular, the mystical dimensions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Although explicit references to the divine are rarely found in the poems, they issue from an encounter with the mystery of transcendence, performatively embodying the dialectic of concealment and disclosure. Seeking to articulate the unsaying that makes possible all saying, a response always on the way, a word as yet unspoken, these poems can be imagined in liturgical terms. They do not utter words of conventional prayer but are a contemplative gaze at what eludes contemplation--a present that comes to be in the future awaiting its past. For Wolfson, the poem is an opening to time, which is, at once, an embrace of life and a preparation for death. friday's hymn pour oil on my head, before the burning ends, let us rise to count the minutes, to dot the hours, let us rise to wake the children who must bury the dead. night approaches day, neither black nor white, her sun is my moon.

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137

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Fordham Univ Press

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ISBN 10

0823228207

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9780823228201

Circle in the Square

Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Circle in the Square

Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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284

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State University of New York Press

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143842437X

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9781438424378

Alef, Mem, Tau

Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Alef, Mem, Tau

Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

Alef, Mem, Tau also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time.

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346

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Univ of California Press

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ISBN 10

0520246195

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9780520246195

Along the Path

Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Along the Path

Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

This book explores the fundamental issues in Jewish mysticism and provides a taxonomy of the deep structures of thought that emerge from the texts.

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302

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State University of New York Press

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1438424361

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9781438424361

Open Secret

Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Open Secret

Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile. While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated--an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation. At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.

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473

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Columbia University Press

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0231146310

ISBN 13

9780231146319

The Duplicity of Philosophy's Shadow

Heidegger, Nazism, and the Jewish Other

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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The Duplicity of Philosophy's Shadow

Heidegger, Nazism, and the Jewish Other

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

Elliot R. Wolfson intervenes in the debate over Martin Heidegger and Nazism from a unique perspective, as a scholar of Jewish mysticism and philosophy who has been profoundly influenced by Heidegger's work. He reveals crucial aspects of Heidegger's thinking that betray an affinity with dimensions of Jewish thought.

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312

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0231185626

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9780231185622

Giving Beyond the Gift

Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Giving Beyond the Gift

Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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663

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Fordham Univ Press

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0823255727

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9780823255726

Along the Path

Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Along the Path

Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

This book demonstrates the complexity of Jewish mysticism in the history of religions. The author provides a morphology of the deep structures of thought that emerge from the basic texts of Jewish mysticism. Combining the most sophisticated philological and phenomenological methods, he explores fundamental issues.

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302

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SUNY Press

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ISBN 10

0791424081

ISBN 13

9780791424087

Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral viewed through the prism of the kabbalistic tradition. Elliot R. Wolfson's analysis focuses in particular on the multi-layered corpus of Zohar, the major sourcebook of theosophic symbolism that has informed the variegated evolution of kabbalastic thought and practice."--BOOK JACKET.

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400

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Oxford University Press

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ISBN 10

0199277796

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9780199277797

Through a Speculum That Shines

Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Through a Speculum That Shines

Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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463

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Princeton University Press

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069121509X

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9780691215099

Alef, Mem, Tau

Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death

By: Elliot Wolfson

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Alef, Mem, Tau

Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death

By: Elliot Wolfson

This highly original, provocative, and poetic work explores the nexus of time, truth, and death in the symbolic world of medieval kabbalah. Demonstrating that the historical and theoretical relationship between kabbalah and western philosophy is far more intimate and extensive than any previous scholar has ever suggested, Elliot R. Wolfson draws an extraordinary range of thinkers such as Frederic Jameson, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, William Blake, Julia Kristeva, Friedrich Schelling, and a host of kabbalistic figures into deep conversation with one another. Alef, Mem, Tau also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time. The framework for Wolfson’s examination is the rabbinic teaching that the word emet, "truth," comprises the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, alef, mem, and tau, which serve, in turn, as semiotic signposts for the three tenses of time—past, present, and future. By heeding the letters of emet we discern the truth of time manifestly concealed in the time of truth, the beginning that cannot begin if it is to be the beginning, the middle that re/marks the place of origin and destiny, and the end that is the figuration of the impossible disclosing the impossibility of figuration, the finitude of death that facilitates the possibility of rebirth. The time of death does not mark the death of time, but time immortal, the moment of truth that bestows on the truth of the moment an endless beginning of a beginningless end, the truth of death encountered incessantly in retracing steps of time yet to be taken—between, before, beyond.

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346

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Univ of California Press

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ISBN 10

0520932315

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9780520932319

Open Secret

Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Open Secret

Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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473

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Columbia University Press

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0231146310

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9780231146319

Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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799

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BRILL

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9004449345

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9789004449343

Heidegger and Kabbalah

Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiesis

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Heidegger and Kabbalah

Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiesis

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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468

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Indiana University Press

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0253042607

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9780253042606

The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes

Between Nihilism and Hope

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes

Between Nihilism and Hope

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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612

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Stanford University Press

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1503635309

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9781503635302

Jews and the Ends of Theory

By: Shai Ginsburg,Martin Land,Jonathan Boyarin

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Jews and the Ends of Theory

By: Shai Ginsburg,Martin Land,Jonathan Boyarin

Theory, as it’s happened across the humanities, has often been coded as “Jewish.” This collection of essays seeks to move past explanations for this understanding that rely on the self-evident (the historical centrality of Jews to the rise of Critical Theory with the Frankfurt School) or stereotypical (psychoanalysis as the “Jewish Science”) in order to show how certain problematics of modern Jewishness enrich theory. In the range of violence and agency that attend the appellation “Jew,” depending on how, where, and by whom it’s uttered, we can see that Jewishness is a rhetorical as much as a sociological fact, and that its rhetorical and sociological aspects, while linked, are not identical. Attention to this disjuncture helps to elucidate the questions of power, subjectivity, identity, figuration, language, and relation that modern theory has grappled with. These questions in turn implicate geopolitical issues such as the relation of a people to a state and the violence done in the name of simplistic identitarian ideologies. Clarifying a situation where “the Jew” is not readily or unproblematically legible, the editors propose what they call “spectral reading,” a way to understand Jewishness as a fluid and rhetorical presence. While not divorced from sociological facts, this spectral reading works in concert with contemporary theory to mediate pessimistic and utopian impulses, experiences, and realities. Contributors: Svetlana Boym, Andrew Bush, Sergey Dolgopolski, Jay Geller, Sarah Hammerschlag, Hannan Hever, Martin Land, Martin Jay, James I. Porter, Yehouda Shenhav, Elliot R. Wolfson

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457

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Fordham Univ Press

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ISBN 10

0823282015

ISBN 13

9780823282012

Open Secret

Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

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Open Secret

Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson

By: Elliot R. Wolfson

Menahem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile. While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated—an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation. At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.

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473

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661362912X

ISBN 13

9786613629128

Book's by Elliot R. Wolfson

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