Toil of the Mind and Heart: A Meditation in Memory of Rabbi Yehoshua Mondshine

by Eli Rubin

Rabbi Eli Rubin is a writer and editor at Chabad.org, and works to further intercommunal and interdisciplinary study of Chassidism. Many of his articles can be viewed online here .

This is his first essay at the Seforim Blog.

A new anthology mines the oral teachings of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi for new insight into the historical development of his leadership and the crystallization of his ideology, and also charts the impact of Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin and Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk on the emergence of Chabad as a distinct Chassidic movement. “HaRav: On the Tanya, Chabad thought, the path, leadership and disciples of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi” ed. Rabbi Nochum Grunwald, Hebrew, 798 pp. (Mechon HaRav, 2015).

In memory of the acclaimed Chabad scholar Rabbi Yehushua Mondshine who passed away one year ago, on the final day of Chanukah, 5775.[1]

Introduction – From Liozna to Liadi

The past few years have seen many new publications shedding light on the life and times of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of the Chabad school of Chassidism, and making his teachings more accessible.[2] For the most part, however, the historical and the ideological domains have been treated in relative isolation from one another. Moreover, while R. Schneur Zalman’s magnum opus, the Tanya, has been a frequent object of study, less work has been done on the vast corpus of his oral teachings, transcriptions of which now fill some thirty published volumes.[3]

HaRav: On the Tanya, Chabad thought, the path, leadership and disciples of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, appeared just a few months ago as a rather belated marker of the 200th year since Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s passing on the 24th of Tevet 5772 (January 1813),[4] and comprises a collection of articles, teachings and commentary, on the topics referred to in the volume’s subtitle. Rabbi Nochum Grunwald, the volume’s editor and primary contributor, is a leading Chabad thinker and historian, and the editor of the Heichal HaBesht journal. Other contributors include Chabad scholars Rabbi DovBer Levine, Rabbi Eliyahu Matusof, Rabbi Aharon Chitrik, and le-havdil bein chaim le-chaim, the late Rabbi Yehushua Mondshine.

Of the volume’s six sections, it is the third—Shaar Ha-Maamarim, focusing on R. Schneur Zalman’s oral teachings—that is the most substantial, in terms of both quantity and content. In a loose series of articles, the volume’s editor, Rabbi Nochum Grunwald, takes several important steps towards the integration of the ideological content of these discourses within a broader historiographical context, giving particular attention to Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s relationship with Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk.

An article by Rabbi Shalom DovBer Levine—in the volume’s penultimate section—traces the impact of Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin on Chabad’s emergence as a distinct school of Chassidism, adding additional dimension to the developing picture.[5]

Grunwald’s overarching thesis pivots on Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s move from Liozna (90km North-West of Smolensk) to Liadi (Lyady, 70km South-West of Smolensk), shortly after being released from his second internment in Petersburg in the summer of 1801.[6] The precise reasons for this move remain unclear, but the distinction between the Liozna and Liadi periods—also referred to as the periods “before Petersburg” and “after Petersburg”—appears in a variety of Chabad historiographic traditions to mark an array of changes in his role as a leader and teacher of Chassidism. As one source has it, “when he dwelt in Liozna the quality of emotion toward G-d radiated from him, whereas afterwards, when he dwelt in Liadi, it was not so; there the quality of intellect radiated from him.”[7]

Grunwald’s discussion of how this shift developed is complicated by Levine’s account. And though their parallel theses are both presented in the present volume, it remains the task of the reader to integrate them.

Transcendence and Interiority

In a 1903 talk delivered by Rabbi Shalom DovBer Schneersohn (Rashab), the fifth rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, he distinguished between the type of teaching that entirely transcends [מקיף] the students/listeners, but overwhelms, encompasses and transforms them instantaneously, and between the type of teaching that is directed to the interiority [פנימיות] of the students/listeners, to permeate their intellects, so that they can then transform themselves from within:

Before he returned from Petersburg the second time his Chassidic teaching would burn the world, for it was of transcendent quality… there was no one who would hear Chassidic teachings from him and remain in their previous condition. But after Petersburg it changed and it wasn’t so, because then… the Chassidic teachings began to be of internal quality… Through the accusations that were in Petersburg the interiority specifically was revealed…

Before this… the Chassidic teachings were specifically of transcendent quality… which causes very intense inspiration, and such examples are also found in Likutei Torah… But the ultimate intention is the quality of interiority specifically, for with the coming of Moshiach specifically the interiority will be revealed… and the quality and advantage of interiority is achieved specifically through great and extremely immense toil… with service of the mind and the heart…[8]

Here and elsewhere it is clear that the Rashab didn’t simply rely on Chassidic traditions alone, but drew philological insight from his own knowledge of the relevant texts.[9] It is this philological project that Grunwald seeks to expand, and following the Rashab, he rejects the suggestion of other scholars that the teachings of these two periods are primarily distinguished by their relative length.[10] Instead he describes six features that, in his opinion, characterize the teachings of the earlier period. It appears that the most central of these features is the almost exclusive focus on the practical challenge of serving G-d at the highest possible level. Theoretical issues are only mentioned and engaged with to the degree that that they are directly relevant to the specifics of divine worship.[11]

Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s preoccupation with this challenge is clear from Tanya, which began circulating in the early 1790s and was published in 1796. This work, as described in the author’s introduction, is comprised of “answers to many questions, asked in search of counsel… in the service of G-d.”[12] As Grunwald notes, the Tanya is a systematic presentation of the solutions and advice that its author provided in private audiences (yechidut) on an individualized and more immediate basis. “During this period,” Grunwald concludes, “the distinction between private audiences and the oral delivery of Torah was almost non-existent.”[13]

The purpose of the oral teachings during the earlier period, accordingly, was to directly inspire religious transformation by providing practical direction and immediately applicable solutions. They therefore do not digress into involved discussion of complex theoretical questions and abstractions,[14] nor do they linger on the stylistic niceties of orderly progression.[15] Instead they drive directly to the point, emphasizing it with sharp language[16] and vivid imagery,[17] and uncompromisingly demanding utter submission to the exclusive reality of divine being (“ain od milvado”). In the earlier period, Grunwald notes, such Chassidic exhortations “are not complicated by a mantle of explanation or justification, but are [delivered] straight… penetrating the gut.”[18]

In the later period, conversely, Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s oral teachings were often devoted to the theoretical explanation of a particular concept or issue, or to several related concepts. Here we find detailed and orderly expositions on the nature and purpose of the Torah and the mitzvot generally, or of particular mitzvot and festivals, as well as on complex Kabbalistic ideas. “In the extant discourses [from before Petersburg],” Grunwald writes, “it is almost impossible to find a delivery that is dedicated entirely to the clarification of an aspect of the cosmic chain of being [seder hishtalshalut], in order for it to be understood in depth and in conceptualized form. As a case in point, after Petersburg Rabbi Schneur Zalman delivered a discourse on the topic of ohr ain sof and tzimtzum nearly every year… but before Petersburg we don’t find anything like this at all.”[19]

Grunwald acknowledges that this distinction is a generalization, that in each period one can find anomalies, and that there is far more to say about the development of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s oral teachings with the passing years. But the distinct and rather rapid change in emphasis is clear enough to demand a broader historiographical explanation. The question is sharpened when we consider that the second part of Tanya, Shaar Ha-yichud Ve-he-emunah, which was circulated and published during the earlier period, does provide a systematic and thorough account of the unity and singularity of divine being, vis-à-vis the created realms. The orderly conceptualization and contemplation of esoteric concepts was already then a fundamental element of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s approach to the service of G-d.[20] (So fundamental, in fact, that—as discussed elsewhere in the present volume—Rabbi Schneur Zalman originally intended Shaar Ha-Yichud to be the first section of Tanya, rather than the second.[21]) Why then do we not find more of this kind of material in the oral teachings dating from this era?

The Making of a Tzaddik[22]

Conventionally, the onset of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s leadership—and the establishment of Chabad as a distinct school of Chassidic thought and practice—is dated to 1783, when he settled in Liozna, or to 1786, when Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk wrote from the Holy Land prevailing upon him “to draw close the hearts of the faithful of Israel, to teach them understanding and knowledge of G-d.”[23] Grunwald, however, argues that throughout the Liozna period Rabbi Schneur Zalman continued to see himself—not as an independent leader of a Chassidic community, nor as a tzaddik in his own right, but rather—as a personal mentor and guide acting as the appointed representative of the Chassidic leaders in the Holy Land.[24]

One source that Grunwald would have done well to cite to strengthen and crystalize this nuanced conception of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s role is a 1786 letter by Rabbi Avraham responding to the complaint of the Chassidic community in the region of Lithuania and Belarus—which, along with Rabbi Menachem Mendel, he continued to lead from afar—that they were unable to hear Torah directly from the mouths of the Tzaddikim in the Holy Land. Rabbi Avraham instructs them to focus less on their desire to hear new wisdom, and more on the practicalities of action:

If only you would place action before hearing, and our sages already said (Avot, Chapter 3) “Anyone whose wisdom is more than their actions etc. [their wisdom will not hold.]” And in my opinion it is tried and tested that too much wisdom is detrimental to action… Commit your eyes and heart to one thing of Chassidic teachings that you have heard, and strengthen it with nails that it should be imprinted and dug into your heart… and due to this you climb and ascend… to exile materiality bit by bit…

And as for action you have a master, our honored friend and beloved, the beloved of G-d, precious light… our teacher the rabbi, Shneur Zalman… filled with the glory of G-d, with spirit, wisdom, understanding and knowledge to show you the path…[25]

Strikingly, Rabbi Avraham encouraged the Chassidic community to turn to Rabbi Schneur Zalman only as a master of “action,” as one who can guide them along the methodological “path” of practical service, but not as an independent tzaddik from whom to “hear” new wisdom.[26] More than a decade later Rabbi Avraham’s opinion “that too much wisdom is detrimental to action” would become a cause of contention between him and Rabbi Schneur Zalman.[27] Yet, even following the passing of Rabbi Menachem Mendel in 1788, and even as the crowds seeking Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s counsel turned Liozna into a bustling Chassidic court, the latter continued to restrict his instruction to the practicalities of actual service of G-d. In his introduction to Tanya too, in the same breath that he emphasizes that its content consists entirely of “answers to many questions, asked in search of advice… in the service of G-d” he continues to emphasize his deference and debt to “our masters in the Holy Land.”[28]

But not all Chassidim in the region were so eager to accept Rabbi Schneur Zalman as their mentor. A strong contingent looked for guidance and inspiration to his contemporary, Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin, who emphasized ecstatic faith and the centrality of the tzaddik, and was famed as a seer and wonderworker. As documented by Levine—following the earlier work of Rabbi Avraham Abish Shor—Karliner loyalists persistently lobbied the tzaddikim in the Holy Land to appoint Rabbi Shlomo in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s place, or to allow them to travel to visit him in Ludmir, Galitzia, where he settled circa 1786. Such agitation was consistently rebuffed, but never entirely quelled.[29] Rabbi Shlomo was shot by marauding cossacks in 1792, and the Karlin legacy was continued by Rabbi Asher of Stolin and Rabbi Mordechai of Lechevitch.[30] Despite the relative peace that reigned during this period, Rabbi Avraham continued to exhort the Chassidim to seek counsel from Rabbi Schneur Zalman alone into the early months of 1797, when he had apparently not yet seen the recently published Tanya.[31]

The period from 1788 to 1797 is described by Grunwald as an intermediate one, in which Rabbi Schneur Zalman came to ever increasing prominence and also crystallized the distinctly systematic approach to the service of G-d presented and published in Tanya. Neither by restricting himself to topics directly related to practical worship, nor by describing himself as a “compiler” (melaket) of a “collection of sayings”—rather than as the author of an independent work of Chassidic thought and instruction—was he able to mask the originality of his approach. No reader of the Tanya can evade the primacy given to intellectual contemplation, to toil of the mind, as the fundamental basis of heartfelt service and actual practice, a primacy that is further underscored by the discussion of divine unity in Shaar Ha-yichud Ve-ha-emunah.[32]

As Levine explains, the crystallization of this systematic methodology to the point of publication was seized by Karliner loyalists as an opportunity to press their case before Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk, eliciting his sharp critique of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s path in a series of letters penned between the latter part of 1797 and the summer of 1798.[33] Paradoxically, it was precisely this critique that led to Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s emergence as a Chassidic leader of a different stripe, and ultimately as an autonomous tzaddik in the fullest sense of the term.

In Grunwald’s words:

Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s two great confrontations, with Rabbi Avraham on the doctrine of Chabad, and with the Lithuanian mitnagdim on the doctrine of Chassidism, transpired and erupted at approximately the same time. The period from 1798 [when he was first arrested and taken to Petersburg on mitnagdic charges of treason] until after the second imprisonment marked the birth pangs that brought forth the shining era of the Chabad doctrine and Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s leadership… It is due to this [difficult] period that we merited the doctrine of Chabad in all its greatness and depth.[34]

According to Grunwald the distinction between the Liozna and Liadi periods is far greater than has previously been understood. Much has been made of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s unwillingness to deal with the worldly concerns (mili de’alma) of his constituents, and of the rules he imposed to regulate the throngs who traveled to Liozna to meet with him and receive spiritual guidance in person (takonat liozna).[35] But according to Grunwald the documentary record attests that these kinds of restrictions were only imposed during the Liozna period, when Rabbi Schneur Zalman insisted that his role was only that of a spiritual guide.[36] In the Liadi period, when he no longer acted as a personal mentor and took on the full responsibility of autonomous leadership, he no longer protested against those who came to him with their worldly concerns, and imposed no regulations on those who wished to come and hear Torah from his lips.[37]

The focus of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s leadership now shifted from the personal to the public, from direct inspiration and methodological instruction, to the coherent formulation, explanation and dissemination of a theoretical edifice accessible enough to be studied, assimilated and acted upon by every aspiring Chassid. It was only after Petersburg that Rabbi Schneur Zalman began delivering oral teachings each and every week, and often several times in a single week. It was in the later period too that new emphasis was placed on the systematic transcription of these teachings not only by Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s brother, Rabbi Yehudah Leib, but also by the former’s sons Rabbi DovBer (the Mitteler Rebbe) and Rabbi Moshe, his grandson Rabbi Menachem Mendel (the Tzemach Tzedek), as well as by noted Chassidim such as Rabbi Pinchas Reitzes. These teachings were not simply instructive or inspirational, each was a new window onto the transcendent philosophy of Chabad, to be carefully preserved, reviewed, studied, assimilated and applied, transforming the Chassid from within.[38]

Cerebral Love

According to Grunwald, the theoretical emphasis that emerged in the Liadi period also constituted a substantial shift in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s approach to prayer, and, more broadly, to the service of G-d with love and awe.[39]

In Tanya, Chapter 16, Rabbi Schneur Zalman distinguishes between love that is revealed openly in one’s heart, “so that one’s heart burns like flaming fire, and desires with heartfelt fervour, longing and yearning,” and love “that is hidden in the mind and concealed in the heart.” Both are the product of mindful contemplation of the greatness of G-d’s infinitude. Both provide the impetus to bind oneself to G-d through the Torah and its commandments. But the former bursts forth as an emotive outpouring of love (hitgalut ha-lev), while the latter remains “enclosed in the mind and the concealment of the heart” (mesuteret be-mocho ve’taalumat libo). Rabbi Schneur Zalman establishes it as “a fundamental rule in the service of ordinary people (beinonim)” that though open love is apparently more ideal, mere mindful animation is “also” acceptable impetus for Torah study and mitzvah performance “since it is this understanding in one’s mind and the concealment of one’s heart that brings you to toil in them.”

In a later teaching Rabbi Schneur Zalman specifically refers to this passage in Tanya, but argues that a more cerebral experience of love is actually preferable, rather than merely acceptable. For one thing, emotional experience is fleeting while cerebral animation achieves a permanently effective transformation. For another, an open experience of ecstatic love may itself be so spiritually satisfying that one will no longer seek to bind oneself to G-d through actual Torah study and practice of the commandments.[40]

Though the text in question bears no date, Grunwald devotes an entire article to a survey of several similar examples, each of which date from the period following the second imprisonment specifically. Yet Grunwald fails to note a fundamental distinction between these two texts: Tanya speaks of an individual whose “intellect and spirit of understanding is insufficient” and consequently suffers from emotional indifference. But the oral teaching he cites clearly addresses an individual who possesses the intellectual and spiritual capacity to experience open love, but is enjoined to use the intellect to exercise emotional discipline in order to cultivate a more pervading experience of submissive subjugation (bitul) before G-d.[41]

Contrary to Grunwald’s suggestion, this later text does not present a complete reversal of priorities when compared to Tanya.[42] It instead introduces a loftier form of service, through which toil of the heart is further refined rather than abandoned. As Grunwald explains elsewhere, emotional enthusiasm—even when directed towards G-d—is essentially a form of self-expression and self-affirmation, whereas the Chabad ideal is to internalize the recognition that nothing exists other than G-d.[43] Ecstatic experience can accordingly be counterproductive, and as already mentioned, may well remain limited to the realm of emotion. A loftier—and more thoroughly transformative—mode of worship uses the mind to exercise emotional self-discipline, subduing self-expression and subjecting the entirety of one’s being to the mindful apprehension of divinity and the practical service of G-d.[44]

The distinctions are perhaps not as sharp as Grunwald portrays them, but the shift is certainly a real one. In the earlier period Rabbi Schneur Zalman instructed his disciples to use their intellectual capacities to inspire emotional expression and exuberance (as reflected in Tanya). In the later period he taught them to cultivate a more contained and constant form of internal animation, channeling mindful enthusiasm directly into the practical service of G-d—Torah study and mitzvah performance—rather than allowing it to overflow into the heart unbridled.[45]

A related point, addressed in a different article, is the debate between Rabbi Schneur Zalman and Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk on the complex relationship between faith and knowledge. In 1805 the former delivered a series of discourses on the topic, elicited by the latter’s renewed critique, and Grunwald’s rich treatment of the sources further underscores the centrality of such theoretical issues in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s later teachings.[46]

As we have seen, the transition between the Liozna and Liadi periods was rooted in the parting of ways that transpired between Rabbi Schneur Zalman and Rabbi Avraham. One result of this transition—Grunwald further argues—was the subsequent parting of ways between Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s oldest son, Rabbi DovBer of Lubavitch, and his foremost disciple, Rabbi Aharon of Strashelye. As has been most extensively described by Naftali Loewenthal, these two personalities clashed precisely over the question of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s approach to emotional enthusiasm, particularly during prayer.[47] Rabbi Aharon first came to Liozna at the age of 17, shortly after Rabbi Schneur Zalman settled there in 1783. Rabbi DovBer would have been less than ten years old at the time, and he did not begin transcribing his father’s teachings until 1798—that is, at the very end of the Liozna period. Grunwald accordingly asserts that the eras in which they each matured as students of Rabbi Schneur Zalman can be broadly distinguished along the lines of their later disagreement.[48] While this claim rings true, it is complicated by the facts that Rabbi Aharon and Rabbi DovBer were close associates for many years, and that by 1798 the later would already have been 25 years old.[49]

Grunwald enriches his analysis of the relevant transcripts with several recollections and comments of the Tzemach Tzedek.[50] One example is a note in the latter’s own hand, appended to a teaching in which Rabbi Schneur Zalman categorically rejects any emotionalism, preferring the cerebral approach “even if it is only superficial and somatic… with very brief contemplation, and coldness…” The Tzemach Tzedek recalls that this extreme formulation was directed towards a particular individual whose enthusiastic conduct needed to be reined in, and was not necessarily intended to be applied more generally. More applicable is the general thrust of this teaching, which gives ultimate primacy to “the quality and substance of internal subjugation (bitul) in the mind and heart, in the aspect of prostration… without any detectable movement.”[51]

Another source records that seeing the Tzemach Tzedek’s note, one of his grandsons asked him if the specific individual referred to was Rabbi Aharon of Strashelye: “And his grandfather answered him… G-d forbid! I was not thinking of him, for he experienced G-dly enthusiasm…”[52] Grunwald relates this remark to a distinction drawn by Rabbi Schneur Zalman himself between the worship of an ordinary individual and that of a tzaddik, who is not susceptible to the pitfalls of ecstatic love and emotional enthusiasm. Regarding the difference between Rabbi DovBer and Rabbi Aharon, he refers to the vivid image provided by the Rebbe Rashab:

Like a burning stick of hay. When it is dry it burns with a flame. It burns through and nothing remains. [Such was the service of Rabbi Aharon] But when it contains moisture its substance is entirely burnt through, and yet [its form] remains standing. Touch it. It is nothing. Yet the form stands. Such was the Mitteler Rebbe [Rabbi DovBer]. This is the love of glowing flame, an all consuming fire, yet the form stands.[53]

Of Angels and Other Things

Notable both for its topical interest and for the broader significance of its central point is an analysis of the treatment of angels in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s teachings by Rabbi Aharon Chitrik. “Chabad teachings… present comprehensive and deep explanations, extending to very specific details of the nature of angels: their creation, their character, their station, their role, their subjugation to G-d, prayer and song, their constant service, their free-will or lack thereof, etc. etc.” But these discussions, Chitrik convincingly demonstrates, do not reflect any intrinsic interest in angels at all. Angels are only the focus of such intense discussion as a counterpoint from which we can achieve a better understanding of the unique nature of the Jewish soul, and its mission on this physical earth.[54] In an 1804 discourse explicating this point, Rabbi Schneur Zalman extends this principle to all Kabbalistic discussions of the cosmic chain of supernal realms: Ultimately all such theoretical investigations are but a stepping stone to achieve direct knowledge of G-d’s essence.[55]

Two additional articles are devoted to the Tzemach Tzedek’s intensive engagement with his grandfather’s discourses, firstly from a theoretical perspective,[56] and secondly as editor and publisher of Torah Ohr and Likutei Torah.[57] In Grunwald’s apt and illuminating formulation, the Tzemach Tzedek is to Rabbi Schneur Zalman as the Tosafists are to the Talmud Bavli: Surveying Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s different treatments of the same or related topics, the Tzemach Tzedek seeks to compare them and combine them, ironing out apparent conflicts through innovative explanation, differentiation, and harmonization, and also to contextualize the former’s teachings within the broader Jewish tradition of philosophical and mystical thought.[58]

For all the rich depth, analysis and insight of Grunwald’s scholarship, his work in this volume tends to suffer from a certain looseness of form. Moving from text to context, from observation and analysis to elaboration and speculation, order and balance is sometimes lost; some points are too often repeated, others scattered in footnotes or hardly developed at all. His article on the Midrashic notion of “a dwelling in the lower realms,” as developed in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s thought, abounds with relevant sources, thoughtful comparisons and observations. Yet it runs to nearly sixty pages and reads more like a voluminous draft than a tightly argued thesis.[59]

At the outset, Grunwald takes stock of the various perspectives within the Jewish tradition from which the purpose of the Torah and its commandments can be viewed—the Halachic, the philosophic and the kabbalistic—before proceeding to the unique contribution of Chassidism. Self admittedly his analysis is too sweeping. But it could also be better grounded in the relevant texts.[60] His conclusion that the Chassidic object of “a dwelling in the lower realms” is tied to the revelation of divine unity is in particular need of justification and elaboration. His initial discussion of the philosophical purpose of the Torah and its commandments similarly highlighted divine unity, a point that will further confuse many readers. The Rebbe Rashab explicitly discussed the Chassidic renewal of this midrashic conception in terms of its relationship with philosophical and kabbalistic approaches, and Grunwald is as familiar as anyone with the relevant sources. But it is not till footnote 99 that the first discourse of Yom Tov Shel Rosh Hashanah 5666 (“Samach Vav”) makes an appearance.[61]

Given the immensity of Grunwald’s project, as editor of this volume and its chief contributor, he is to be applauded for his successful effort to share such a great wealth of information and insight. Nevertheless, in several instances Grunwald’s arguments would have been substantively enhanced if he had the time and resources to ensure that they were composed and constructed with more orderliness and concision. In fact, the more one delves into his work, the more one can envision all that remains to be written. Many a brief note, expanded into a fully developed thesis, could be the topic of an independent article.[62]

Moving beyond the direct transcripts of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s oral teachings, the volume includes a substantial collection of short sayings and teachings attributed to R. Schneur Zalman in a wide variety of secondary sources.[63] A second collection draws exclusively on the oeuvre of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of Lubavitch (1880-1950), whose journals, letters and private talks preserve a rich reservoir of anecdotes and historiographical data passed down from the first generation of Chabad.[64] Both of these rich collections were compiled by Grunwald and benefit greatly from his critical notes, comments and citations.

Also included in this volume is a newly edited edition of the seminal commentary to the Tanya by one of the principal educators in the original Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim, Lubavitch—Rabbi Shmuel Groinem Estherman (d. 1921).[65] Even in its as yet incomplete form this is a substantial text, which bears study and review in its own right. Another article gathers information on the period spent by Rabbi Schneur Zalman in Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyi on the River Dniester, following Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk’s ascent to the Holy Land.[66] Similar articles are devoted to some of the former’s Chassidim, including, but not limited to, the well known Rabbi Binyamin of Kletzk[67] and the lesser known —but perhaps equally influential, and certainly more intriguingly named—Rabbi Dovid Shvartz-Tuma.[68]

Subjective Transformation

Although the importance of Halacha for Rabbi Schneur Zalman and his work as a legal authority receives little attention in this volume, there are two notable exceptions. The first is Grunwald’s discussion of the relationship between the legal focus on physical activity and the mystical/Midrashic notion that G-d desired a dwelling in the physical realms specifically.[69] The second is a discussion by Rabbi Noach Green juxtaposing the objective rule of law in cases of monetary disputation with a more subjective process of arbitration and compromise. Rabbi Schneur Zalman prefered the subjective approach in practice, and also devoted several discourses to the mystical basis of that preference, explaining that this was the surer way of transforming our lowly environment into a “dwelling” for G-d.[70] As Green puts it: “The truth of Torah is imposed objectively, without actually refining the lowly material. Whereas the kindness of Torah is in accord with the nature of creation, and comes to refine the material as it is.”[71]

This preference—for subjective transformation rather than submissive acceptance of objective law—correlates with the ultimate focus of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s broader educational project. As we have seen, during the Liadi period his teachings delved deeply into the most esoteric of kabbalistic doctrines. But their purpose was ultimately focused on the conjunction of the highest highs and the lowest lows: direct knowledge of G-d’s essence and the physical practice of the commandments. As is often noted in Chabad teachings, this overcoming of the cosmic hierarchy will only be accomplished fully with the advent of the messianic era. But the period of the exile is not merely a ceaseless struggle between our reality and our ideals, and messianic revelation is not simply bestowed from above. As Rabbi Schneur Zalman asserts in Tanya, it is achieved through our subjective toil throughout the era of exile.[72]

But the question remains to be asked: Why did Rabbi Schneur Zalman place such an emphasis on the assimilation and contemplation of theoretical ideals, which most of us cannot yet adequately replicate in practice? Why did he not restrict his instruction to the more directly attainable elements of divine service, as he had in the Liozna period?

A fascinating array of sources related to these questions are collected in another article by Grunwald.[73] One example attributes the following distinction between toil of the heart and toil of the mind to Rabbi Schneur Zalman: G-d promises that with the messianic advent “I shall remove the heart of stone… and give you a heart of flesh,” but nothing similar is said of the mind. In the realm of the heart, of emotional inspiration and refinement, we may ultimately rely on divine intervention. But we must first ready ourselves for such revelation intellectually, independently toiling to “subjectively assimilate, and affix in our minds, all the stations that will be achieved with the messianic advent.”[74]

Grunwald argues that for Rabbi Schnuer Zalman this kind of intellectual work isn’t simply a technical condition to the messianic revelation. It is actually central to his vision of such revelation as something achieved through human toil, through the subjective transformation of our lowly reality into a lofty messianic state. It is only if we have internally readied ourselves that the messianic advent can be complete, with the mindful quality of interiority openly spilling over into our hearts.[75] In the words of the Rashab, cited earlier in this article: “The ultimate intention is the quality of interiority specifically, for with the coming of Moshiach specifically the interiority will be revealed…”[76]

Notes:

[1] On Mondshine’s life and work see Eli Rubin, “Rabbi Yehoshua Mondshine, 67, Acclaimed Scholar and Author, Passes Away in Jerusalem,” Chabad.org (25 December 2014), available here. See also David Assaf, “Avad Chassid Min Ha-aretz,” Oneg Shabbat blog (26 December 2014), available here.
[2] Notably, the new and improved edition of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s Igrot Kodesh (Kehot Publication Society, 2012), edited by Rabbi Shalom DovBer Levine, and the still ongoing publication of all extant transcripts of Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s oral discourses in the multi volume series Maamarei Admur Ha-zaken. See also Rabbi Shalom DovBer Levine, Toldot Chabad Be-russia Ha-tzaarit (Kehot Publication Society, 2010), and Rabbi Yehushua Mondshine, Masa Barditchev (2010), Ha-maasar Ha-rishon (2012) and Ha-masa Ha-acharon (2012), among other works. In English see, most recently, Immanuel Etkes, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady: The Origins of the Chabad School (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2015). While this is a valuable introductory work that takes advantage of first-hand documentary sources, I have noted elsewhere that its scope is rather limited. See Eli Rubin, “Making Chasidism Accessible: How Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi Successfully Preserved and Perpetuated the Teachings of The Baal Shem Tov,” Chabad.org (10 September 2012), available here. The shortcoming of that work are further highlighted when compared with the insights offered of the present volume. See my related comment below, note three. For an earlier, but in many ways broader, more complex and more insightful work see Naftali Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite: The Emergence of the Chabad School (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990). For a partial review of recent publications see Eli Rubin, The Rabbi Who Defied Napoleon and Made Mysticism Accessible: New publications illuminate the life and legacy of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi,” Chabad.org (11 January 2013), available here.
[3] For an important exception see Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite, 66-76 and 117-119. Though relatively brief, Loewenthal’s discussion is well grounded in the primary sources, and in several ways prefigures insights that are presented with far more elaboration in the present work. Another important work is Roman A. Foxbrunner, Habad: The Hasidism of R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady (University of Albama Press, 1992), which takes stock of some important aspects of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s teachings through a particularly wide analysis of the oral, as well as written, teachings. In certain respects this work similarly prefigures the present volume, but without the diachronic dimensions that will here be highlighted. For further treatments see Eli Rubin, “The Future is Now: Assorted reflections on the oral teachings of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi,” Chabad-Revisited (30 November 2015), available here, and Jonathan Garb, “The Early Writings of Rashaz,” delivered at Johns Hopkins University, April 2015, and available online here. Etkes’ fleeting discussion of the oral teachings (Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, 50-54) relies on secondary sources, and at one point (note 93) confuses Rabbi Schneur Zalman with his great grandson, Rabbi Chaim Schneur Zalman of Liadi. It should be noted that none of these sources, including the present volume, address the two volumes of discourses published by Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s son, Rabbi DovBer: Siddur Tefilot Mi-kol Ha-shana Im Pirush Hamilot Al Pi Dach (Kopust, 1816), online here, and Bi’urei Ha-zohar (Kopust, 1816), online here. See also Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), where many texts by Rabbi Schneur Zalman are contextualized within a discussion of the thought of Chabad’s seventh Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson; Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: A Dream Interpreted within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Zone Books, 2011), 197-217. For more on Wolfson’s oeuvre, see Joey Rosenfeld, “Dorshei Yichudcha: A Portrait of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson,” the Seforim blog (21 July 2015), available here.
[4] Such belatedness seems to be something of a custom with such publications. In the introduction to the present volume (p. 15) reference is made to Sefer HaKan, a collection of articles on Rabbi Schneur Zalman that was intended to mark the 150th year since his passing in 1962, but which did not appear till the beginning of 1970, and is available online here.
[5] For the relationship with Rabbi Avraham see Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite, 51-54 and 77-90; Nehemia Polen, “Charismatic Leader, Charismatic Book: Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s Tanya and His Leadership,” in Suzanne Last Stone, ed., Rabbinic and Lay Communal Authority (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2006), 60-61; Immanuel Etkes, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady: The Origins of the Chabad School (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2015), 209-258. On the relationship with Rabbi Shlomo see the articles of Rabbi Avraham Abish Shor, as cited specifically below.
[6] See Rabbi Meir Chaim Hillman, Beis Rebbi (Berditchev, 1902), Part 1, Chapter 20, note 5. See also the account in Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, Igrot Kodesh Vol. 3 (Kehot Publication Society, 1983), 444-445.
[7] Cited in HaRav, 401, and attributed to Rabbi Shlomo Zalman of Kopust in the name of his grandfather, the Tzemach Tzedek.
[8] Rabbi Shalom DovBer Schneersohn, Torat Shalom (Kehot Publication Society, 1970), 26.
[9] See Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite, 72-73. Grunwald, HaRav, 402-406.
[10] Torat Shalom, 114. Grunwald, HaRav, 412-413.
[11] This is the second of the six features described by Grunwald, HaRav, 415-416.
[12] Another article in this volume, by the late Rabbi Yehoshua Mondshine (HaRav, 609-650), collects extant accounts of such audiences, providing illuminating glimpses of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s interactions as a personal mentor.
[13] HaRav, 415, and at greater length, Ibid., 394-396. See, however, the discussion of Tanya as exoteric in relation to the esoteric aspect expressed in the oral teachings, as cited by Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite, p. 235-236, note 67.
[14] HaRav, 416.
[15] HaRav, 415.
[16] HaRav, 420-421.
[17] HaRav, 416-418. See also Jonathan Garb, “The Early Writings of Rashaz,” delivered at Johns Hopkins University, April 2015, and available online here.
[18] HaRav, 413. On this last point see also Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite, 68. On the stringent demands Rabbi Schneur Zalman attaches to worship of G-d see Foxbrunner, Habad, 116.
[19] HaRav, 415. For an ongoing exploration of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s discussion of ohr ain sof and tzimtzum, on the part of the present writer, see my series here.
[20] See HaRav, 430-431.
[21] See the extended discussion in HaRav, 361-375.
[22] A formulation borrowed from Jonathan Garb, “The Early Writings of Rashaz,” delivered at Johns Hopkins University, April 2015, and available online here.
[23] See the introduction to Igrot Kodesh Admur Ha-zaken (Kehot Publication Society, new and improved edition, 2012), 42-43, and sources cited there; Levine, Toldot Chabad Be-russia Ha-tzaarit, 29-31; Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite, 42; Etkes, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, 9-19.
[24] HaRav, 391-396. See also pages 421-423 where Grunwald argues that Rabbi Schneur Zalman sought to deemphasize the role of the tzaddik in chassidim altogether. In my view the picture he paints is overly simplistic, and he himself notes that more research is required. As I have argued elsewhere, while Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s understanding of the tzaddik’s role was different to that of other Chassidic leaders, he understood it to be no less central than they; see Eli Rubin, “The Second Refinement and the Role of the Tzaddik: How Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi discovered a new way to serve G-d,” Chabad.org, available online here. For further comments on the role of the tzadik in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s teachings see below note 28.
[25] As published in Rabbi Aharon Surasky, Yesod Ha-maalah Vol. 2 (Bnei Brak, 2000), 85-86.
[26] In a similar vein see Rabbi Avraham Abish Shor, Kovetz Beit Aharon Ve-yisra’el, Issue 167, 137.
[27] See the related discussion of this source in Rabbi Avraham Abish Shor, Kovetz Beit Aharon Ve-yisra’el, Issue 157, p. 187).
[28] Elsewhere in the present volume, Rabbi Eliyahu Matusof points out that when, in 1806—that is, in the Liadi period—Rabbi Schneur Zalman published a new edition of the Tanya, this reference to “our masters in the Holy Land” was omitted. Both Matusof (HaRav, 344-380) and Grunwald (HaRav, 398, note 30) see this as evidence that the distinction between the earlier and later periods of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s leadership (as described in more detail below) is to be extended to Tanya as well. In the earlier period it served as a proxy for one-on-one mentorship (yechidut). In the later period (when references to yechidut were also omitted from the 1806 edition of Tanya) it was transformed into the foundation of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s broader project to formulate, explain and disseminate the unique theoretical edifice of Chabad in terms that were accessible enough to be studied, assimilated and acted upon by any aspiring Chassid for perpetuity.

Grunwald’s general thrust also provides an important counterbalance to the argument advanced by Nehemia Polen (Charismatic Leader, Charismatic Book, 53-64) that the Tanya was designed to craft a balance between control and empowerment, enforcing a rigid structure of social stratification, in which the tzadik is placed on a spiritual plain that the average man (benoni) can never hope to reach. Grunwald’s work complicates this sociological interpretation by demonstrating that during the period of Tanya’s composition the sociological structure of the Chassidic community had not yet been crystallized into distinct hierarchies led by individual tzaddikim, but was rather a complex network with a spectrum of different kinds of authorities and leaders, whose homogeneity Rabbi Schneur Zalman did not seek to break. It is my belief that Tanya’s portrait of the tzaddik in contrast to the average man is primarily to be read theoretically and psychologically rather than sociologically. That is, it relates to the inner world of man, rather than to the external world of the community. As Polen acknowledges, the entire distinction between the tzaddik and the beinoni is such that outwardly the latter may be mistaken for the former. Tanya does discuss the role of the tzadik within the community, but it primarily does so using the terms “wise men” (chachamim), “Torah scholars” (talmidei chachamim), “wise men of the generation” (chachmei ha-dor), and “visionaries of the community” (enei ha-edah), which carry more obvious degrees of social implication. This claim, I believe, is born out by the sources discussed in my article, as cited above, note 24. Moreover, the plural tense of these terms better reflects the less stratified sociological reality of the time.
[29] Levine, HaRav, 661-684; See also the important series of articles by Rabbi Avraham Abish Shor, Karlin Be-tekufat Galut, in Kovetz Beit Aharon Ve-yisra’el, as cited by Levine, Ibid., 662, note 9.
[30] See Rabbi Avraham Abish Shor, Al Harigato Shel Moshiach Hashem, in Kovetz Beit Aharon Ve-yisra’el, Issues 39, 39 and 40.
[31] Levine, HaRav, 668-669. During this more peaceful period a match was arranged between Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s widowed son-in-law—Rabbi Shalom Shachne, father of the Tzemach Tzedek of Lubavitch—and Rivka Rivla, the sister of Rabbi Asher of Stolin. See Shor, Kovetz Beit Aharon Ve-yisra’el, Issue 162, p. 139-140.
[32] See the relevant discussions in HaRav, 426-431; Immanuel Etkes, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, 98-100; Jonathan Garb, Yearnings of the Soul (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 50-57. This last source is particularly notable for its emphasis on the respective roles of the mind and the heart in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s teachings, which is also the broader theme of the present essay.
[33] Levine, HaRav, 670-672. See the excerpts appended to Igrot Kodesh Admur Ha-zaken (Kehot Publication Society, new and improved edition, 2012), 496, 498-500.
[34] HaRav, 400. The coincidence of these two ruptures is underscored in a letter by Rabbi Schneur Zalman noting his inability to respond to Rabbi Avraham’s critique until circa 1799-1800, due “to the distress of the times,” referring to his arrest. See Igrot Kodesh Admur Ha-zaken, 341; HaRav, 672.
[35] See the editor’s Introduction to Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (ed. Rabbi DovBer Levine), Igrot Kodesh (Kehot Publication Society, new and improved edition, 2012), 35-37.
[36] With regard to mili de’alma see HaRav, 391, note 13; 409-410. With regard to takonat liozna see HaRav, 398, note 29; 408, note 65. See also Levine, Toldot Chabad Be-russia Ha-tzaarit, 36.
[37] In one of the very last texts penned by Rabbi Schneur Zalman before his passing he even went so far as to justify and explain this central link between material concerns and the spiritual service of G-d. See sources cited and discussed in the editor’s Introduction to Igrot Kodesh, 39. See also Yanki Tauber, “The Physical World According to Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi,” Chabad.org, available here.
[38] HaRav, 396-398; 388-389, note 6. See also the discussion by Shor, Kovetz Beit Aharon Ve-yisra’el, Issue 172, 151-152. Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite, 71-77. For a similar shift in the role that Tanya came to play in this period see above, note 28.
[39] For Grunwald’s extended discussion see HaRav, 432-461. See also Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite, 75-77 and 117-119. For a particularly extensive discussion of the nature and role of love and awe in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s teachings see Foxbrunner, Habad, 178-194.
[40] Maamarei Admur Ha-zaken Al Maamarei Chazal, 94. HaRav, 453-454. See also Foxbrunner, Habad, 186.
[41] My thanks goes to Rabbi Avraham Altein for bringing this distinction to my attention, and for providing other important comments and citations.
[42] HaRav, 438-552.
[43] HaRav, 433-434. See also Foxbrunner, Habad, 185.
[44] In a discourse delivered in the autumn of 1799 (Maamarei Admur Ha-zaken Ketuvim Vol. 1, 67 [96]), in between the first and second imprisonments (and misleadingly described by Grunwald as “the very beginning of the period following Petersburg”), Rabbi Schneur Zalman describes how to cultivate this cerebral form of love. It is noteworthy that this contemplation is explicitly directed from the mind to the heart:

“Speak to your heart quietly and coolly, which is the opposite of the heated movement of the heart… Settled mindfulness (yishuv ha-daat) is cool, without any movement, and you shall delve deeply into settled mindfulness with ease and calm (be-nachat), and say to your heart: ‘The infinite revelation of G-d creates [existence], something from nothing, at every moment, it is clear in my intellect that this is so… If so how can I be separate [from G-d]? And [how can] all my thoughts and the capacities of my soul not constantly be cleaving to G-d… ?”
[45] See also Loewenthal, Ibid., where similar argument are made drawing on additional textual examples. Loewenthal also demonstrates an increased focus on abnegation (bitul) in contrast to emotionalism.
[46] HaRav, 473-505. See also Levine, HaRav, 675-684. Levine, Introduction to Igrot Kodesh, 49, points out that the year 1805 is when the term “Chabad” comes into use as a way of expressly distinguishing the followers of Rabbi Schneur Zalman from those of other Chassidic leaders.
[47] Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite, 100-138, and 167-174 and 195. See also Hillman, Beis Rebbi, Part 1, Chapter 26, and Louis Jacobs, Tract on Ecstasy (Vallentine Mitchell, 1963); Louis Jacobs, Seeker of Unity: The Life and Works of Aharon of Starosselje (Vallentine Mitchell, 1966). For more recent comments on Rabbi DovBer, Rabbi Aaron and the interrelationship of their thought see Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream, 210-214, and Garb, Yearnings of the Soul, 56-57.
[48] HaRav, 432-438.
[49] See also the accounts transmitted by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn in Igrot Kodesh Vol. 3 (Kehot Publication Society, 1983), 477; and in Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Reshimot Ha-yoman (Kehot Publication Society, 2006), 367.
[50] HaRav, 448-449.
[51] Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, Ohr Ha-torah, Bereishit Vol. 3, 603-604 (Hebrew pagination). This last quote—as well as the source quoted above, note 44—further emphasizes the central role that the heart continued to play in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s thought, even in the later period. See Maamarei Admur Ha-zaken 5570, 207-210 for a discourse delivered by Rabbi DovBer in the lifetime of Rabbi Schneur Zalman, which similarly emphasizes this point, contrasting between the exteriority of the heart and the interiority of the heart (pnimiyut ha-lev). As Loewenthal puts it (Ibid., 122) Rabbi DovBer too demanded ecstasy: “not ecstasy of the self, but of the nonself…”
[52] Hillman, Beis Rebbi, Part 1, Chapter 26, note 4.
[53] Torat Shalom, 213.
[54] HaRav, 563-572.
[55] Maamarei Admur Ha-zaken 5565, 4.
[56] Rabbi Nochum Grunwald, HaRav, 573-586.
[57] Rabbi Nechemia Teichman, HaRav, 587-606.
[58] Grunwald’s description here is inspired by the comment of the Maharshal regarding the achievement of the Tosafists. See Yam Shel Shlomo, introduction to Chulin.
[59] HaRav, 506-562.
[60] For one relevant text that Grunwald does not discuss see Ma’amarei Admur ha-Zaken 5565, Volume 1, 489–90. For my own discussion of this text, as well as a contextualization of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s approach within the broader streams of Jewish rationalist and mystical thought that differs somewhat from Grunwald’s approach see Eli Rubin, “Intimacy in the Place of Otherness: How rationalism and mysticism collaboratively communicate the Midrashic core of cosmic purpose,” Chabad.org, available here.
[61] HaRav, 544-545. Footnote 99, incidentally, is well worth reading. Among other points there, Grunwald makes explicit reference to Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man. Indeed, hints to the similarities and differences between the latter’s approach and that of Rabbi Schneur Zalman are already apparent from the onset of Grunwald’s article. For more on this general topic See Elliot R. Wolfson, “Eternal Duration and Temporal Compresence: The Influence of Habad on Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” in Michael Zank and Ingrid Anderson, eds., The Value of the Particular: Lessons from Judaism and the Modern Jewish Experience – Festschrift for Steven T. Katz on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 196-238.
[62] Take for example page 562, footnote 145, where Grunwald gestures to the question of Jewish chosenness as developed in Chabad thought through the generations. For a lengthy treatment of this topic see Wolfson, Open Secret, Chapter 6. See also Eli Rubin, “Divine Zeitgeist—The Rebbe’s Appreciative Critique of Modernity,” Chabad.org, available here, and Wojciech Tworek, Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University College London, 2014), 126-136. None of these treatments deal with the diburificating statement Grunwald points to Likutei Sichot Vol. 16 (Kehot Publication Society, 2006), 477-478: “When will it be achieved in a revealed sense that the Jews are a dwelling for G-d? …Specifically… when, through the Jews, the lower realms themselves become a place that is fit for G-d’s dwelling… Since the intention of a dwelling in the lower realms is [rooted] in G-d’s essence, it is impossible to say that this intention should be compounded of two things…”
[63] HaRav, 3-124.
[64] HaRav, 125-211.
[65] HaRav, 215-343.
[66] HaRav, 653-658.
[67] HaRav, 701-740.
[68] HaRav, 765-770.
[69] HaRav, 516-528.
[70] HaRav, 693.
[71] HaRav, 698. On Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s Halachik work and method Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, “Shulchan Aruch Admur” in Sofrim Ve-seforim Vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Hotza’at Sefarim Avraham Tziyoni, 1959), 9-21 [Hebrew], translated and adapted by the present writer as, ‘Systematization, Explanation and Arbitration: Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi’s Unique Legislative Style,” Chabad.org, available here. For an overview of the current state of scholarship on this topic see Levi Cooper, “Towards A Judicial Biography of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady,” Journal of Law and Religion 30, no. 1 (2015), 107-135. On the need to address the relationship between Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s Halachik and Kabbalistic work see Garb, Yearnings of the Soul, 155-157.
[72] Likutei Amarim, Chapter 37. For an extended discussion of the prominent place of the messianic idea in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s thought, correcting a major gap in previous scholarship, see Wojciech Tworek, Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University College London, 2014), especially Chapters 2 and 3. See the related discussion in Foxbrunner, Habad, 85-93, and also Eli Rubin, “The Idealistic Realism of Jewish Messianism: On Chabad’s apocalyptic calculations, and why Jews have always predicted elusive ends,” Chabad.org, available here.
[73] HaRav, 462-472.
[74] HaRav, 469.
[75] HaRav, 470-472.
[76] Torat Shalom, 26.

Hot Tears For A Close Friend: Rabbi Eitam Henkin HY”D

by
Rabbi Yechiel Goldhaber

translated by Daniel Tabak

I shall never forget when I first met Rabbi Eitam Henkin HY”D three years ago. At the time I had begun preparing a study on the parting of minds in the kollels of the Old Yishuv in Jerusalem 150 years ago. I managed to get my hands on a lot of rare sources, but the morass of material only beclouded the depths of the goings-on in the city at the time. The main purpose of my study was to ascertain the causes of dispute between the various ethnic groups and kollels, but the facts grew ever larger and more ramified, and soon obscurity overtook clarity. As the saying goes, I could not see the forest for the trees.

One key element in the conflict centered upon Rabbi Yechiel Michel Pines. On the one hand, Rabbi Shmuel Salant viewed him as an ally, but on the other, Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin, head of the rabbinical court of Brisk, loathed him. My study successfully identified this dispute as one of the main points of contention that whipped everyone in the city into a frenzy, a flashpoint whose consequences lasted decades.

Needless to say, I had the articles by Eitam Henkin about Rabbi Pines in front of me. I read them multiple times, and felt as if he had lived and breathed the alleyways of the Old City in those times. I struck up a connection with him,and he shared with me his textured perspective of the city with all its troubles. From then one, not two weeks passed when we did not speak by telephone about it.

About a year ago I needed to finish an article on Rabbi Shmuel Salant’s search for a rabbi who would support him as he entered his twilight years. I uncovered some rare documentation that shed new light on this episode, but to my dismay, I could not find anyone with whom to speak in order to clarify this complicated issue. Only Eitam Henkin lent me his ear.

In the meantime, we continued to speak about his great-grandfather Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin zt”l. I would contribute some of what I knew, and he would include me in his work on collecting and compiling material about his great-grandfather. Our discussions took us from Lithuania all the way to the United States, and everything in between.

We wrote each other a lot, and we had many conversations. He would begin each conversation by saying that he was very busy with his studies and editing articles, yet he still devoted many minutes to me.

I tried to get a hold of Eitam Henkin many times on the phone to obtain some point of clarification, but he was not always available. Quite often his wife Na’ama HY”D picked up the phone and I would“complain” that I was having trouble “catching” him on the phone. When I explained to her the urgency of the matter, because I had to publish the article in two weeks’ time, her answer was characteristic of a Torah scholar’s wife! She would respond very simply: “my husband is soaring in Torah study. I too take care not to disturb him.” When I heard sentences like those, I felt deep embarrassment.

His textual analysis was razor-sharp; he took pains with every word and letter. More than he questioned the written letter he investigated and interrogated the unwritten word or sentence absent from the document — “why was it missing?” he would ask, along with a barrage of similar questions.

His answers and conclusions were honest and artless; one never found him resolving a perplexity with a forced answer. How rare is that! His level of understanding in any given topic was very advanced, as someone who had completed many tractates of the Talmud along with their commentaries.

His modesty far exceeded what one could guess. He never boasted. His honesty was ever-present, in every field and topic, be it in Torah study, academic research, or this-worldly life.

Our final conversation took place between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I called him to wish him a Shana Tova. I mentioned the well-known bafflement about the statement of the Rabbis that there were never such good days for the Jewish people as Yom Kippur, when Jewish girls would involve themselves in happy matters…but is it not the most frightening day of the entire year? He responded on the spot:

“If every positive thing leads to happiness, then isn’t it logical that something negative that becomes positive should generate even greater joy? Within the darkness light can be seen. That is the deeper truth of repentance done out of love, from which willful sins are treated as merits; the negative causes an outburst of happiness. The Jewish girls chose this day specifically to concern themselves with matters of love, for there is no love quite like God’s love for his wayward servants who have reconciled themselves with him.”

Such words befit the one who uttered them…

Few are comparable to this wise young man, whose comings and goings were marked by humility, who was as familiar with the paths of the Heavenly Jerusalem as he was with the roads of Mateh Binyamin.

May Eitam and Na’ama’s memory be blessed.

Joey Rosenfeld is a
psychotherapist in St. Louis where he recently moved with his family. He
recently published his first sefer, sc’hok
d’yitzchak on the Kabbalistic theme butzina d’kardinusa, or darkened light.
More of his writing can be found online at Residual Speech.

לאו כל
מוחא סביל דא[2]

Tasked with the formidable project of recounting Franz Rosenzweig’s life, Emmanuel Levinas apologized in advance
for speaking, as well, about Rosenzweig’s opus, The Star of Redemption. The reason for this, Levinas wrote, was not due to lack of distinction, rather it would be nearly impossible to separate the man from his work.[3] This sentiment can be applied equally to Elliot R. Wolfson and his vast oeuvre. Professor Wolfson’s breathtaking breadth of scholarship – starting from his Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism[4] to his recent Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania[5] – can be said to touch upon every field within the Humanities, as well as significant areas within the Sciences. Trained in Philosophy and the field of Jewish Studies, with a focus on Jewish Mysticism, Wolfson’s erudition, astonishing at times, covers diverse fields such as Hermeneutics, Anthropology, Sociology, Bible, Literary
Criticism, Gender Theory, Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Poetics, Neuroscience, and Comparative Religious studies.[6] While many authors share a similar output as that of Wolfson; ten books, four edited volumes, and tens of essays; few share the unique and apparent unity-of-thought that flows through his body of work. Whether it is an in-depth analysis of occularcentrism within Medieval Jewish mysticism, the dynamics of truth as refracted through the temporal presence of beginning-middle-end, or the Eros of poesies and the poesies of Eros in Jewish Mysticism and Philosophical hermeneutics, Wolfson’s presence as an author, delicately weaving together a tapestry of sources is felt through his texts. This presence, however, is present through its absence. Wolfson occludes himself through and within his texts, thus coloring each of his works with the dialectical dance of concealment and disclosure. Through a speculum of sources, culled from all arenas of thought – ranging from the thirteenth-century masters of Ecstatic Kabbalah to the current leaders of Haredi-Mysticism; from the annals of Greek Philosophy to the most current Hermeneutic- Phenomenologists – Wolfson speaks through and beyond the language of his sources.

Born on the 19th of Kislev,[7] a day pregnant with mystical significance within the Hasidic community of Chabad,[8] Elliot R. Wolfson was raised in a traditional Orthodox Jewish home. With an Orthodox rabbi as his father who was both a pulpit rabbi and a Rosh Yeshiva,[9] young Elliot Wolfson “was surrounded by Jewish textuality” and “was exposed as a teenager to the Hasidic works of Nachman of Bratslav and Chabad. And both of those sects were quite present physically in my environment, so it wasn’t just book study, but I interacted with Hasidim from both of these groups. And that was really my initial entry into kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism,” as he explained in a 2012 interview.[10] Beginning with the Tanya at age thirteen, Wolfson recalls his first experience with the texts of Breslov at a Tikkun Leil Shavuot at the age of fifteen. After that, he began attending classes of the well-known mashpiah of Breslov, Rabbi Zvi Aryeh Rosenfeld.[11] At sixteen, Wolfson began studying Rav Kook’s Orot ha-Kodesh, along with the various works of The Ramchal, including Kelach Pitchei Hokhmah, Derekh ha-Shem, and Da’at Tevunot, etc., and a year later, at age seventeen, he began studying the works of The Maharal.[12]

Wolfson spent three semesters at Yeshiva University, where he had the privilege of hearing Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, at his “public lectures, which were masterful in their philosophical exegesis of Jewish texts. Indeed, I would have to say that it was from Soloveitchik that I drew inspiration for the possibility of rendering traditional sources in a philosophical key,” remembered Wolfson.[13] After his time at Yeshiva University, Wolfson transferred to a program at the CUNY Graduate Center in conjunction with Queens College. It was there, under the tutelage of Professors Henry Wolz and Edith Wyschogrod that he first immersed himself in philosophical study. The relationship with Wyschogrod, whom Wolfson considers to be “one of my most important teachers,” opened up new vistas in the world of continental philosophy, and continued to bear fruits, even after her passing in 2009.[14] It was at CUNY Queens that Wolfson focused his studies to the fields of hermeneutics, phenomenology and existentialism; three registers of thought that would influence his subsequent foray into the field of Jewish mysticism.

After finishing his studies at CUNY Queens, Wolfson made the decision to pursue graduate studies at Brandeis University in the field of Jewish studies with a focus on Jewish mysticism. It was there, under the tutelage of Professors Alexander Altmann, Marvin Fox, and Michael Fishbane, that Wolfson completed his dissertation work on the thirteenth-century Spanish kabbalist Moses de Leon.[15] Regarding Wolfson’s dissertation, one can glean from the following anecdote the deep sense of hermeneutical secrecy already stirring. Wolfson recounts, “an episode that occurred in one of the doctoral qualifying exams. The topic was Perushei Ma’aseh Bere’shit and Perushei Ma’aseh Merkavah in twelfth- and thirteenth-century philosophic and kabbalistic literature. At the end of the exam Professor [Alexander] Altmann asked, “So Mr. Wolfson, what is the secret of the chariot according to Maimonides?” And I said, “The secret is that there is no secret,” and he clapped his hands as a sign of approval.”[16] His dissertation became his first published work, The Book of the Pomegranate: Moses de Leon’s Sefer ha-rimmon.[17] Upon the completion of his graduate work, Wolfson eventually joined the faculty at New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies in 1987, and was awarded the Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew Studies at New York University in 1993, where he served until early 2014, when he moved to California and currently serves as the Marsha and Jay Glazer professor of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

On a more personal note, I have been gifted the opportunity to form a close relationship with Professor Wolfson over the past few years. While he was still in New York, I had the chance to sit and learn on two separate occasions of which I would like to recall. Through the help of my dear friend, Menachem Butler, a meeting was set up in Professor Wolfson’s NYU office.[18] Having previously read numerous works of his, I was prepared to meet a removed and rightfully proud scholar. Entering into Professor Wolfson’s cramped office, I was immediately taken-aback by the sheer amount of books and seforim that lined the shelves, desk and window sills. What was most wonderful, however, was not the quantity of books, but the quality, the difference and the scope of the works scattering his office. On Wolfson’s desk one could find the most current in haredi kabbalah, Heideggerian studies, gender theory as well as recently published works of Hasidut and the students of The Vilna Gaon. These contradictory volumes were not organized by topic, rather they sat, interspersed, erasing the imaginary demarcations separating one stream of thought from its other.

Having prepared a ma’amar from Rav Yitzchak Hutner’s Pachad Yitzhak (Pesach 74) to study, we quickly descended into the textual landscape wherein I experienced, for the first time, the embodiment of what Rosenzweig called sprachdenken, or speech-thinking.[19] The text, in which Rav Hutner describes the constitutive lack within language, opened the door to the inherent gap between what Levinas refers to as the ‘saying’ and the ‘said’. The evasiveness of the perfect word, the impossibility of speech to say what it truly means to be saying, opened the conversation to various overlaps and influences that jumped out from the text before us. Unbeknownst to me, we had encountered one of the fundamental issues at play in Wolfson’s hermeneutics. What stands out most in my memory, however, is not the depth and fluidity of his thinking, but rather a seemingly insignificant incident that occurred during our learning. Having been asked to read the text, I stumbled with the reading of various words. These were not mistakes, in which the word could be misconstrued for a different out-of-context word; these were slight mispronunciations which in no way affected the meaning of the text. While reading, Wolfson, in his quiet and humble voice corrected my pronunciation to ensure that the word be read carefully and correctly. Only afterwards did I recognize the hyper-focus to detail that Professor Wolfson highlighted in his corrections. It is this insistence on the truth, the guardedness with which he approaches each and every text, which marks Wolfson’s works through and through. This attention, what Benjamin (quoting Malebranche) called “the natural prayer of the soul,” has enabled Wolfson to truly-read as he reads-truly.[20]

On another occasion, shortly before he left for the West Coast, I had the merit of accompanying Wolfson on his last pilgrimage to the gravesite of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the ohel. Arriving at the ohel wherein lay the graves of the Rebbe and his predecessor Rav Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson, in what appeared to be a preparatory pause, Wolfson turned around and gazed at the graves of the holy women of Habad, Rebetzeins Chaya Mushka and  Shterna Sarah. Mid-gaze, Wolfson whispered, “She was the wife of the RaShab.” Those words are what I remember most. Uttered with a sense of melancholic yearning, I believe Wolfson was taken back to a space beyond memory, to a place where thinkers like Shalom Dov-Baer Schneerson walked the earth. After spending some time inside the ohel itself, Menachem and I left to give Professor Wolfson privacy with the giants who so deeply impacted his life’s work. Afterwards we sat down to learn a ma’amar from the RaShab,[21] chosen at random. Learning the text – which was written by the RaShab himself – we continuously came across the notation ve’chu, similar to “etc.,” signifying the absence of some extended textual statement. What bothered Professor Wolfson was that seemingly, everything that needed to be expressed was already written. There was no apparent reason for the text to end in the open-ended manner of ve’chu. As Wolfson later explained to me, “Usually this notation is used as an abbreviation so that one does not have to repeat the conclusion of a biblical verse or a rabbinic dictum. The author assumes that the reader can fill in the unstated text. But in the Habad context this notation refers to the inference that the reader must make from what is stated, not a marker of something previously stated.”[22]

Professor Wolfson’s impact on the field on Jewish studies cannot be overstated. In a practical sense, Wolfson has taught and mentored numerous students who have subsequently become significant scholars in the field of Jewish Mysticism.[23] Professor Daniel Abrams, an early Wolfson student, has noted the multifaceted significance of Wolfson’s scholarship as an, “approach to mythopoesis (that) explores such major topics as gender and ontology, entering into dialogue with studies and concepts from philosophy, religious studies (and comparative religions), theology and feminist theory… This history and the various text editions and major studies Wolfson has published in recent years have unfolded into a very complex matrix of methodologies which are unique to his writing and which build upon various disciplines to which few have sufficient access. From rabbinic and kabbalistic anthropology to the ontological and symbolic status of the feminine, Wolfson has shown the tacit assumptions that define the hermeneutic horizons of kabbalistic literature.”[24]

In addition, the various themes that mark Wolfson’s scholarship reverberate throughout much of the current literature and scholarship on Jewish mysticism. His constant presence at conferences and various publications testifies to the massive impact he has had in the field. On a more personal level, his vast contribution to the study of Jewish mysticism is twofold. On the one hand, Wolfson has consistently shown a continuous flow of thought, uninterrupted by the temporal fissures between one publication to the next. Indeed, as it will be shown below, one could posit certain ideas that seem to serve as the foundational stone, the even ha-shisiya, throughout all of Professor Wolfson’s scholarship. On the other hand, Wolfson manifests the true rabbinic ideal of creativity, or hiddush within each work, thus creating a stream-of-thought that is coincidental in its opposition as it is oppositional in its coincidence. Regarding the latter aspect of Wolfson’s thought, Professor Jonathan Garb makes note of “[t]he sheer scope of hiddush, of innovation, in theory, in comparative study and in textual analysis, eclipses any sense of continuity. One may say that there are two ideal types of scholars: One who unfold their earlier conceptions, even if in interesting and deep ways, and those who constantly create new domains, thus becoming one of the founders of discourse that Michel Foucault has both described and personified.”[25] In agreement with Garb’s perception of Wolfson’s capacity to unfold new creases within Jewish studies and beyond, I respectfully disagree with the notion that “the sheer scope of hiddush” diminishes, or “eclipses any sense of continuity.” Wolfson’s scholarship is marked by a unique form of radical hermeneutics which creates a repetition that is interrupted by the incessant sense of re-creation.[26]

This radical creativity, which includes the grafting together of disciplines ordinarily assumed to be separate and distinct, has- at times- been met with a sense of resistance from others in Wolfson’s field. In a more insidious sense, Professor Wolfson’s work in the field of Jewish mysticism has been met through non-meeting, or what seems to be a conscious repression of the often uncomfortable themes that Wolfson textually uncovers. Recognizing this phenomenon early on in Wolfson’s career, Professor Pinchas Giller wrote: “[t]he focus of Wolfson’s work presents challenges to the status qua of the field, and these challenges have not gone unremarked. In addition to challenging scholarly peers, Wolfson has also consistently rejected the glib, platitudinous understandings of Jewish mythology and symbolism prevalent in work written for popular audiences. This eschewing of cant and easy cliché is consistent with the restless searching spirit evident in his scholarship.”[27]

In addition to the challenges Wolfson has engaged other scholars in; his erudition in all areas of Jewish thought has also impacted the reception and engagement with his scholarship. As opposed to the static status many thinkers hold within their area of expertise, Wolfson has consistently crossed the artificial demarcations separating one area from another. Professor Wolfson is equally erudite in modern Hasidic thought – evidenced by his work Open Secret on Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson[28] – as he is in Zoharic scholarship as seen in his numerous articles devoted to questions of origin and the Zohar’s evocative mystical hermeneutics.[29] The dynamic ability to live, simultaneously, in the worlds of Maimonides[30] and Abraham Abulafia,[31] for example, has both elevated and alienated Wolfson from within the static walls of the academy, particularly in Israel. In this regard, Giller wrote: “Few scholars are so brazen as to speak authoritatively about more than one genre or time period. Wolfson seems to have violated the spirit of this social compact. The scope and volume of his writings have been viewed as evidence of a certain presumption, an ambition to rise to eminence without the sanction of Jerusalem.”[32]

Although the claim is authentic, namely, that Wolfson’s erudition stretches beyond the temporal limits of one time period or genre, the sense of “presumption” or academic arrogance is unfounded. Both in his scholarship and personal life, Wolfson exudes a certain lived-sense of humility.[33] The nullification of authorial-sense that allows Wolfson to speak through his sources as his sources speak through him is rooted in the modesty that marks both his life and his scholarship. As will be explained below, this modesty is deeply connected to Wolfson’s primary treatment of Jewish mysticism. The dialectic of concealment and disclosure, modesty and expression, reveals the chiasmic[34] sense of concealment as disclosure and disclosure as concealment. To reveal is to occlude that which cannot be disclosed, as concealment is to disclose that which must remain concealed. Wolfson’s work, far from being a “presumptuous” or arrogant expression of erudition, operates as a manifestation of modesty, secrecy and concealment that marks the nature of Jewish mysticism.

            Another critique aimed at Wolfson’s scholarship is the accusation of philosophical anachronism. The engagement of thinkers temporally removed from the time and space of early kabbalists has led some to claim that Wolfson’s work operates under a certain “obvious charge of anachronism.” In this regard, Wolfson notes that the vast body of his work is contained in “The field of my vision, so to speak, has been leveled, to the degree that is possible, by a focus on kabbalistic sources ranging from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries, a large temporal swatch by anyone’s account. The use of German and French philosophers primarily from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to interpret texts of traditional kabbalah, whose ideas may be ancient but whose incipient articulation in a Hebrew idiom is to be traced to a rich creative period from the twelfth to fourteenth century, demands a defense against the obvious charge of anachronism.”[35]

Regarding this claim, it is appropriate to paraphrase a notion depicted by Reb Zadok HaKohen of Lublin, a nineteenth century Hasidic thinker, regarding the nature of the accusatory gaze.[36] Often when an accusation is leveled against a particular individual, it is assumed that the accusatory claim points to a character defect. Through an act of psychological inversion, however, R. Zadok posits that the accusation- far from pointing to a defect in character- points towards the uniqueness of that individual.[37] This may be applied to Professor Wolfson’s creative capacity of posing thinkers, vastly removed by time and space, in dialogue with one another. The weaving of new constellations between thinkers hitherto unassociated marks Wolfson’s work with polyphonic sprachdenken, or speech-thinking.[38]  In this sense, Wolfson has paved new clearings along the path of Jewish mysticism. The utilization of philosophers, poets and religious thinkers from separate domains has given Wolfson the opportunity of translating[39] ancient kabbalistic ideas into a modern academic idiom. Far from the self-serving act of philosophical name-dropping, Wolfson’s engagement with these thinkers is an essential aspect of his thought’s unfolding. Equally erudite in the fields of continental philosophy as he is in Jewish mysticism, the often astonishing ease with which Wolfson weaves through the intertextual landscapes creates a vortex in which the kabbalists speak through the philosophers as the philosophers speak through the kabbalists.

Among the various thinkers with whom Wolfson has engaged in the infinite conversation, a select few stand out as constant presences in his scholarship.

First and foremost, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and poetics have served as a speculum through which Wolfson has peered, moving through and beyond the Heideggerian notions of ontology, temporality, language, poetics, eschatology and dialectics of concealment and disclosure. Deeply aware of the controversies surrounding Heidegger’s dishonorable past; Wolfson has engaged the German philosopher’s thought while simultaneously recognizing his personal, political and even philosophical failures.[40] Wolfson has even hinted to the possibility of Heidegger manifesting certain traits of the biblical nemesis of the Jewish people, Balaam.[41] Much like Balaam who blessed the Jewish people through his attempt to curse them, Heidegger’s thought has provided fertile ground for Jewish thinkers, even as he was engaged in an insidious form of anti-Semitism.[42]

 Emmanuel Levinas is another thinker with whom Wolfson engages in philosophical dialogue, often resulting in the appreciation and acceptance of certain Levinasian notions while concurrently moving beyond the limit of his ethical and ontological premises. Critical of Levinas’s rhetorical and absolute renunciation of Heidegger’s thought, Wolfson clears a middle path through which the demarcations separating Levinas and Heidegger are written under erasure.[43]

 Another philosophical muse of Wolfson’s is Jacques Derrida. The Jewish father of deconstruction marks the pages of Wolfson’s scholarship, as well as his personal philosophical stance. Derrida’s utilization of James Joyce’s enigmatic statement, “Jewgreek is Greekjew, extremes meet?”[44] has given Wolfson a predecessor in his chiasmic dance of exclusion as inclusion and distance as closeness.[45] Derrida’s discussions on language, writing, absence, and negative theology have deeply influenced Wolfson’s scholarship.[46] In particular, the notion of the Derridian differance, or trace – a presence that is present through absence as it is absent through presence- has played a significant role in Wolfson’s development of such topics as zimzum and secrecy that play a central role in the Jewish mystical tradition. Professor Wolfson has stated that the Derridian trace plays a key and central role throughout most of his philosophical hermeneutics.[47] In addition to the philosophical themes wherein these thinkers overlap, the sociopolitical critiques that Derrida has leveled against Western ontotheology have impacted Wolfson’s approach to the Jewish mystical tradition.

The area in which this is most apparent is Wolfson’s claim that Jewish mystical texts and traditions operate within a closed, phallocentric system.[48] Echoing Derrida’s claim that Western thought has consistently worked within the economy of binary oppositions, while simultaneously privileging the masculine sense of presence and speech over the more feminized forms of absence and writing, Wolfson sees the Jewish mystical tradition as being a phallocentric discourse spoken through the mouths of male mystics. Wolfson has received much attention, not always positive, as a result of his stance.[49] Numerous scholars have attempted to take Wolfson to task, claiming that Jewish mysticism gives precedence to the feminine aspect of the Godhead, namely the shkina, and thus manifests a certain mystical feminism in which the patriarchal sense of privileging the masculine is overturned.[50] As Wolfson points out, the masculine in Jewish mystical texts represents the capacity to overflow, while the feminine reflects the passive capacity to receive. In this regard, Wolfson utilizes various thinkers within the French feminist movement, first and foremost the thought of the psychoanalyst and philosopher, Luce Irigaray, to elucidate his stance on gender-valence. Quite aware of the source material in which Jewish mystical texts apply an elevated, eschatological notion to the feminine, Wolfson has consistently pointed out that the inversion of hierarchal status is not equivalent to the undoing of essentialist and binary views of gender.  While the feminine may be elevated to its initial space of origin, in the spirit of the rabbinic dictum, “a woman of valor is the crown of her husband,” implying an overcoming of the diminution of the feminine vis-à-vis the masculine, the feminine is still endowed with masculine traits, thus maintaining the hierarchal status of gender even in its collapsing. While Wolfson is aware of the difficulty in accepting such an essentialist approach to gender performativity in the Jewish mystical tradition, he has stressed the need of critically analyzing texts through their anthropological and philological counterparts.[51] It is important to note, however, that while affirming the masculine-oriented nature of the tradition, Wolfson is by no means closing the text off beyond any redemptive stance.  In his later work,[52] Wolfson has shown that certain Jewish texts do clear a path through which the patriarchal, male-dominant notions inherent within the Jewish mystical tradition can be overcome. This eschatological advent of an undifferentiated state of non-duality, in which the feminine is no longer considered other, due to the fact that the masculine loses its privileged stance as the same, is rooted in the highest manifestation of the Divine-Plemora, namely Reisha-d’lo-ityada, or the unknown, or unknowable head. It is here, in this yet undefined state, not due to lack of definition, but rather inherently tied up in its own indefinability, that the promise of redemption lays.

In order to understand Wolfson’s concentration on the nature of the feminine, and the totalized system of Jewish mystical thought which appears to operate within a patriarchal framework, one needs to view his scholarly contributions through the lens of his personal and philosophical attitudes.  In this sense it is important to note the comments of Professor David Novak, in which he stated: “I have been trying to goad Elliot Wolfson, whom I consider to be the most philosophically interesting of today’s kabbalah scholars, into explicating kabbalah philosophically, that is, doing when speaking in the first person, because a philosopher has to speak in the first person. A philosopher has to say, “‘This is what I think is true.’ Wolfson’s explication of kabbalah is philosophical, but it has to be stated more clearly in his own voice, rather than in the voice or voices of his sources.”[53]

Although I categorically disagree with Novak’s claim that “a philosopher has to speak in the first person,” or that Wolfson’s thought need be “stated more clearly in his own voice,” the notion that Wolfson renders kabbalah in a philosophical key, as well as philosophy through a kabbalistic key is noteworthy. Throughout Wolfson’s writings, one senses a personal journey- perhaps even a wandering – through the labyrinthine pathways of text, context and pretext.[54]  Grafting together thinkers, divided by the fissures of temporal sway, Wolfson allows his “still small voice” to murmur beneath the magnificent edifices he erects. This voice, pregnant with a suffering unique to the mystical-hermeneutical quest, dances between the black and white fires that have become Wolfson’s plaything. The delicate balance between Wolfson’s personal, philosophical outlook and the scholarly body-of-text creates a third, wholly new path within the field of Jewish mysticism. Returning to the emphasis on the role of the feminine in Jewish mysticism, one theme- erupting from the silent voice- marks the pages of Wolfson’s scholarship, namely- an ethically and ontologically driven concern for the other.

In Wolfson’s own words: “If I were to isolate a current running through the different studies, it would be the search to resolve the ontological problem of identity and difference, a philosophic matter that has demanded much attention in various contemporary intellectual currents, to wit, literary criticism, gender studies, post-colonial theory, social anthropology, just to name a few examples. Indeed, it is possible to say, with no exaggeration intended, that there has been a quest at the heart of my work to understand the other, to heed and discern the alterity of alterity…What has inspired the quest for me has been the discernment on the part of the kabbalists that the ultimate being-becoming becoming being- nameless one known through the ineffable name, yhwh- transcends oppositional binaries, for, in the one that is beyond the difference of being one or the other, light is dark, black is white, night is day, male is female, Adam is Edom.”[55]

Wolfson’s concern for the other, the subject removed from the philosopher’s gaze, transcends the everyday concern for the sociopolitical standing of various groups. Disquieted by the hierarchies of power on a practical level,[56] Wolfson sees the othering of the other as a symptom of a more fundamental, philosophical issue. The feminine, for Wolfson, speaks for all that which has been relegated to the margins of alterity. These specters of presence, repressed by Western ontotheological discourse, have engaged Wolfson in a lifelong quest to disclose that which has been concealed from sight. Operating from within the position of kabbalistic texts, Wolfson has shown that “the ontological problem of identity and difference” rests at the center of the Jewish mystical tradition. Whether it is the dialectic of zimzum which discloses through concealment as it conceals through disclosure; the contradictory essence of the sefirot that operate concurrently as the finitude-of-infinity and the infinity-of-finitude; the eschatological hope for the advent of the messiah that is disclosed-through-its-foreclosure as it is foreclosed-through-its-disclosure; the speaking of the Name that is no-Name that may only be spoken through non-speaking; or the duality of secrecy that is secret-in-exposure as it is exposed-in-secret; Wolfson clears a path in which the identity of the same can only take root through the difference of the other, and vice versa.

 It is important to note, that although Wolfson employs a certain dialectical logic to highlight the oppositional relation between one thing and its other, by no means does he allow the dialectical pressure to find relief in a totalized synthesis. Like many philosophers engaged with continental or post-modernist thought, Wolfson is no longer comfortable relying on transcendentally prescribed truths, or “meta-narratives” to enclose the open-endedness of thought in the post-Hegelian epoch.[57] In contradistinction to many self-proclaimed post-Hegelian’s, however, Wolfson’s disavowal of the “synthesis which reconciles the two” does not stem simply from an external adherence to the populist philosophical zeitgeist. Rather, Wolfson’s insistence on keeping the dialectical movement in play stems from uncovering the limit of thought in which the identity-of-difference can only be expressed through the difference-of-identity. In other words, the divergent paths of separation may only unite through the separateness of their divergence. In this space of the excluded middle, each thing and its other remain distinct, with neither pole swallowing its other in an act of metaphysical violence. This limit of thought as Wolfson notes,[58] is representative of, “‘the mystery of the light of infinity’- which is predicated on the supposition that A and not-A are the same in virtue of their difference, or…shnei hafakhim be-nose ehad, ‘two opposites in one subject’.” Viewed in this light, Wolfson enters into, “the scandal of the coicidentia oppositourm such that the Yes can become a No and the No, a Yes, not by way of conflation but by juxtaposition, the disappearance of the very possibility of difference in the nonidentity of the identity of opposites; that is, opposites are identical by virtue of their opposition.”[59] It is at this limit-of-thought which is simultaneously the thought-of-limit where Wolfson sees the root of the mystical experience, or in the language of Maurice Blanchot, ‘the limit experience’.[60]

To enter into this paradoxical ‘place that is no place’[61] where opposites coincide in their opposition, Wolfson travels ‘a path from the side’ in which the necessary delimitations of logic are necessarily circumvented. In this sense, one may locate Wolfson’s thought within the sefirotic-space of keter, the super-rational will, or desire in which limits collapse while paradoxically upholding their limitations. Seen through the (dark)light of keter, Wolfson’s feverish[62] obsession with Nothingness becomes an essential aspect of his thinking, as well as lived-experience.[63]

 In the space of a Nothing that is a something that is no-thing, the normative, restrictive nature of language and thought must be transgressed. This transgression, however, is not a simple disavowal of language and thought, rather- it is the movement through and beyond the limit of these phenomenological modes-of-being. The dialectical play of keter – in which Nothing and Something, Ayin and Yesh, coincide so that the something-of-nothing, Atik Yomin, becomes the nothing-of-something, Arich Anpin – enables Wolfson to speak through the nothingness-of-language which is concurrently the language-of-nothingness, as he thinks imaginatively through imaginative-thinking. In other words, as opposed to the normative response to that which transcends identification, namely the Wittgensteinian ‘not-speaking’, Wolfson engages in a hermeneutics of ‘speaking-not’.[64] Deeply aware of language’s limit, Wolfson speaks through language towards its (n)ever receding horizon, thus transforming the nihilistic tendency of language’s shattering into an affirmation of that that which can never be affirmed.[65] The same can be said regarding Wolfson’s approach to rational thinking. Operating within the Aristotelian laws-of-logic, the Western ontotheological tradition has engraved a deep boundary separating that which can be thought and that which transcends the human capacity of thought. Wolfson, however, reaching the limit of thoughts interiority, “breaks on through to the other side,” wandering into the recesses of exteriorities (un)thought space. At the threshold, Wolfson relinquishes the bonds of ‘mental slavery’ and enters the luminous space of imaginal thinking.[66] Wolfson’s imaginative faculty enables him to think otherwise, beyond positivistic and perceivable reality. However, Wolfson’s approach to imagination – much like his approach to language – is far more complex than the mere denial of rational thought’s efficacy. Rigorously avoiding the fantastical flight into irrationality, Wolfson’s imaginal gleanings are marked by a strict set of laws, thus enabling the paradoxical play of imaginative-thinking and thinking-imaginatively. Similar to a dream in which the imaginary is grounded by the factual as the factual is grounded by the imaginary, Wolfson’s hermeneutics transform the black and white texts into a polyphonic expression of all that remains inexpressible.

Arriving again at the beginning, we can now comment on an essential aspect of Wolfson’s life-work, that is, the two forms of expression that walk along the path of his scholarship. The poetic hermeneutics that mark Wolfson’s theoretical work manifest, suddenly “with the turn of a breath” in his personal poetry.[67] In the ruins of language, Wolfson finds the openings through which his poetic breath may enter. Following in the trace of the poet Paul Celan, Wolfson speaks ‘every word through destruction’. The poems, often times difficult to read- not due to their opacity, but rather, due to the imaginal stirrings that are evoked- are an embodiment of the rabbinic idiom, “miut ha-machazik et ha-meruba,” the diminutive that encompasses the enormous.  The exilic nature of the poems leads the reader down the path that is no path, into the silent and lonely clearing where presence and absence dance. Reading Wolfson’s poetics along the furrows of his scholarship enables the reader to behold the embodied nature of Wolfson’s lived-thought. Along with his poetry, Wolfson is a seasoned artist whose paintings have been featured at various showings.[68] If poetry is the response to language’s limit, art is born from within rationalities foreclosure. Wolfson’s paintings depict the evanescence of color, the fleetingness of forms that get caught in the horizon of the frame. The kol of Wolfson’s poetics and the ohr of his aesthetics escort his philosophical hermeneutics into the space of the mystical experience.

Much like Wolfson’s triadic expression of scholarship, poetics and aesthetics, the written or marked space can only take the reader so far. The reader must engage with the texts through an act of hermeneutical inquisitiveness, opening themselves to what murmurs beneath the surface of the text. In this sense Elliot R. Wolfsons’s work not only opens upon a new path, but beckons the reader to join him.

Notes:

[1] The title of this essay, “Dorshei Yichudcha,” is taken
from the Ana BeKoach prayer attributed to R. Nechunya ben HaKanah. Translated
by Louis Jacobs as “Seeker of Unity,” this appellation is easily applied to
Professor Elliot R. Wolfson. The full context of this phrase in the prayer is
as follows, “nah gibor dorshei yichudcha ki-vavat shamrem” (“please protect the
seekers of Your unity like the apple of Your eye”). In his monograph on the
Hasidic mystic R. Aaron haLevi Horowitz of Starosselje, “The Seeker of Unity,”
Louis Jacobs records from R. Chaim Meir Hillman’s Beis Rebbe (1:26 fn.1) that when R. Dov Ber Schneerson, the
Mitteler Rebbe of Habad would repeat this verse, he would have his dear friend
and study partner, R. Aaron haLevi in mind. The reason, explained R. Dov Ber
was because R. Aaron delves so deeply into the secret of faith, “the raza
di-meheimanusa,” to the point where the demarcations of reality and Godliness
dissolve. See Louis Jacobs, Seeker of
Unity: The Life and Works of Aaron of Starosselje (London: Vallentine
Mitchell, 1966), 7. See also Immanuel Etkes, “The War of Lyady Succession: R.
Aaron Halevi versus R. Dov Baer,” Polin
25 (2013): 93-133.

“Dorshei,” from the root darash, represents the
hermeneutical quest, the textual journey into that which lay within the words
themselves. “Yichudcha,” from the root yichud, represents the unity of all, the
source beneath the fragmentation of things that unites all that is different
within the difference-of-unity. The hermeneutical path that seeks to uncover
the unity of all is a proper description of Elliot R. Wolfson’s life and work.

[2]
Tanya, Chapter Twenty-Three.

[3] Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult
Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. Seán Hand (London: The Athlone Press,
1990),  181.

[4] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

[5] (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014).

[6] A complete listing of his articles and book chapters are
available on his personal website here, as well as here.

[7] See Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of
Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009),
xii-xiii, where Wolfson recounts a conversation held between himself and an
older Lubavitcher Hasid at 770 Eastern Parkway regarding the significance of
this birthdate. Wolfson quotes the Hasid as ending the conversation with, “Pay
attention, this day bears your destiny.”

[8] Amongst all streams of Jewish thought, it is possible to
say that Habad Hasidus has played one of the most significant roles in Wolfson’s
thought. His Elliot R. Wolfson, Open
Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel
Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009)  is considered by many the authoritative and
definitive work on the role of kabbalah in the late Lubavitcher Rebbe’s thought
and political/theological weichenstellung. See as well Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Revisioning the Body Apophatically: Incarnation and the Acosmic Naturalism of
Habad Hasidism,” in Chris Boesel, and Catherine Keller, eds., Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology,
Incarnation, and Relationality (Fordham: Fordham University Press, 2010),
147-199. For his in-depth discussion on the fifth rebbe of Habad, R. Sholom Dov
Ber Schneerson’s thought, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Nequddat ha-Reshimu-The Trace
of Transcendence and Transcendence of the Trace: The Paradox of Simsum in the
RaShaB’s Hemshekh Ayin Beit,” Kabbalah
30 (2013): 75-120.

[9] Rabbi Wilfred Wolfson was an early student of Rabbi
Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman at Yeshivas Ner Yisrael ( (Ner Israel Rabbinical
College), Baltimore, in the 1940’s. According to his son, Rabbi Wolfson was the
first rabbinic student from Ner Israel to be given permission to attend Johns
Hopkins University, where he studied with Professor William Foxwell Albright.
See Wilfred Wolfson, “Review of William Foxwell Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine,” The
Jewish Horizon (March 1950): 18.

Rabbi Wilfred Wolfson served as the longtime rabbi of
Congregation Sha’arei Tefillah in Brooklyn and was a popular Rosh Yeshivah at
Yeshiva University/BTA in Brooklyn. Upon his death, Rabbi Wilfred Wolfson’s
collection of seforim was sent to the library at Ner Israel.

[10] Interview With Elliot R. Wolfson, July 25, 2012, in
Hava Tirosh Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Elliot R. Wolfson: Poetic Thinking (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 195.

[11] Rabbi Zvi Aryeh Rosenfeld is the one who is
single-handedly responsible for introducing the teachings of Breslov on the
American scene from the 1950s until his death in 1978.

[12] Email correspondence with Elliot R. Wolfson (16 July
2015). Teachings from Rav Kook, Ramchal, and Maharal are to be found throughout
Wolfson’s work.

[13] Interview With Elliot R. Wolfson, July 25, 2012, in
Hava Tirosh Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Elliot R. Wolfson: Poetic Thinking (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 196. For
his recent (and extensive) treatment of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s thought,
see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Eternal Duration and Temporal Compresence: The
Influence of Habad on Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” in Michael Zank and Ingrid
Anderson, eds., The Value of the
Particular: Lessons from Judaism and the Modern Jewish Experience – Festschrift
for Steven T. Katz on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (Leiden:
Brill, 2015), 196-238.

[14] See Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of
Imagination (New York: Zone Books, 2011), in which he dedicates the work,
“To the memory of Edith Wyschogrod, for showing me the way to the way of
nonshowing.” Wolfson adds the evocative Latin phrase, “somnium somnia quasi semper vives. Vive
quasi hodie moriebar – ‎Dream as if
you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”

For his extensive treatment of Wyschogrod’s thought, see Elliot
R. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift:
Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (New York: Fordham University Press,
2014), 201-227. For Wolfson’s earlier work on Wyschogrod, see Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Apophasis and the Trace of Transcendence: Wyschogrod’s Contribution to a Postmodern
Jewish Immanent A/theology,” Philosophy
Today 55:4 (Winter 2011): 328-347; and for his article published in a
memorial festschrift for Wyschogrod, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow
and Temporal Transcendence: Angelic Embodiment and the Alterity of Time in
Abraham Abulafia,” in Eric Boynton and Martin Kavka, eds., Saintly Influence: Edith Wyschogrod and the Possibilities of Philosophy
of Religion (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 113-149.

[15] Wolfson published the following essays in honor of his
doctoral advisors, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Mystical Rationalization of the
Commandments in the Prophetic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia,” in Alfred L. Ivry,
Elliot R. Wolfson & Allan Arkush, eds., Perspectives
on Jewish Thought and Mysticism [=Alexander Altmann Memorial Volume]
(Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998), 311-360; Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Female Imaging of the Torah: From Literary Metaphor to Religious Symbol,” in
Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Nahum M. Sarna, eds., From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism,
Intellect In Quest of Understanding: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, vol. 2
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 271-307; Elliot R. Wolfson, “‘Sage Is
Preferable to Prophet’: Revisioning Midrashic Imagination,” in Deborah A. Green
and Laura S. Lieber, eds., Scriptural
Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination: A Festschrift in
Honor of Michael Fishbane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 186-210.

[16] Email correspondence with Elliot R. Wolfson (16 July
2015). Wolfson’s response confirmed the approached first taken by Professor
Altmann in his earliest essay, in Alexander Altmann, “Das Verhältnis Maimunis
zur jüdischen Mystik,” Monatsschrift für
Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, 80 Jahrgang (1936): 305-330
(German), which appeared in English translation in Alexander Altmann,
“Maimonides’ Attitude toward Jewish Mysticism,” Alfred Jospe, ed., Studies in Jewish Thought: An Anthology of
German Jewish Scholarship (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981),
200-219. See Lawrence Fine, “Alexander Altmann’s Contribution to the Study of
Jewish Mysticism,” Leo Baeck Institute
Yearbook 34:1 (1989): 421-431, as well as Wolfson’s extensive discussion on
the Maimonidean secret in Elliot R. Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia — Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy and
Theurgy (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2000).

[17] Elliot R. Wolfson, The
Book of the Pomegranate: Moses de Leon’s Sefer ha-Rimmon (Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1988). About this edition, Daniel Abrams has written: “No Hebrew word
processing paragraph today can link the base-text to the line numbers of the
edition, to the variant readings and to the editor’s notes. Such linkage has to
be done manually. See the most complex page layout of any camera-ready edition
prepared by a single scholar in the field of Jewish mysticism: Elliot Wolfson’s
The Book of the Pomegranate.” See Daniel Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual
Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism
(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2010), 69n169.

[18] I would like to thank yedidi Reb Menachem Butler for
his help in preparing this essay. More importantly, Menachem has played a
uniquely important role in my life, opening space for relationships otherwise
inaccessible. Echoing the sentiment expressed to me by Professor Michael
Fishbane shlita, Menachem is a shadchan in the truest sense of the word,
uniting worlds otherwise disparate. The indelible mark Menachem has imparted
onto and into the world of Torah and Jewish studies is unparalleled. It is
through Menachem that I came to meet Professor Wolfson, and through Menachem is
this essay possible.

[19] See below for Wolfson’s usage of Rosenzweigian sprachdenken.

[20] See Walter Benjamin, “Franz Kafka,” trans. Harry Zohn,
in Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, eds., Selected Writings, vol. 2, 1927-1934
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 812.

[21] I do not recall the exact ma’amar studied, but the topic was the paradoxical nature of simsum
in which concealment is disclosed through the disclosure of concealment.

[22] Email correspondence with Elliot R. Wolfson (17 July
2015).

[23] Among the numerous students Wolfson has supervised,
Professors Daniel Abrams, Jonathan Dauber and Hartley Lachter have become
scholars of Jewish Mysticism, often building upon the themes in Wolfson’s work.
See, for example, Daniel Abrams, The
Female Body of God in Kabbalistic Literature: Embodied Forms of Love and
Sexuality in the Divine Feminine (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2004); Jonathan
Dauber, Knowledge of God and the
Development of Early Kabbalah (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Hartley Lachter, Kabbalistic Revolution: Reimagining Judaism
in Medieval Spain (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015), and
others. Aside from his official students, Wolfson has mentored various scholars
in the field as well.

[24] Daniel Abrams, Kabbalistic
Manuscripts and Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and
Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Magnes
Press, 2010), 13-14.

[25] Jonathan Garb, “In Honor of Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream,” NYU-Humanities Initiative (28 February
2012), available online here.

[26] This sense of radical hermeneutics is borrowed from
John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics:
Repetition, Deconstruction and The Hermeneutic Project (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987) and on his usage of this terminology, see Elliot R.
Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being:
Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2005), 473fn27.

[27] See Pinchas Giller, “Elliot Wolfson and the Study of
Kabbalah in the Wake of Scholem,” Religious
Studies Review 25:1 (January 1999): 23-28.

[28] Elliot R. Wolfson, Open
Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel
Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

[29] For a compilation of Wolfson’s work on the Zohar, see
Elliot R. Wolfson, Luminal Darkness:
Imaginal Gleanings from Zoharic Literature (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007).
Regarding the importance of Wolfson’s Zoharic scholarship see, Daniel Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts and
Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in
the Study of Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2010): 132-133,
353-359.

[30] On Maimonides, see, Elliot R. Wolfson, “Beneath the
Wings of the Great Eagle: Maimonides and Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” in Görge
K. Hasselhoff and Otfried Fraisse, eds., Moses
Maimonides (1138-1204): His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical
Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag,
2004), 209-237; and regarding the impact of Maimonidean negative theology on
early Jewish mysticism, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Negative Theology and Positive
Assertion in the Early Kabbalah,” Da’at
32-33 (1994): V-XXII (English); Elliot R. Wolfson, “Via Negativa in Maimonides
and Its Impact on Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” Maimonidean Studies 5 (2008): 363-412. For a recent discussion on
the Maimonidean influence on the Neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen, see Elliot R.
Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift:
Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (New York: Fordham University Press,
2014), 14-33.

[31]  On Abraham
Abulafia, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Abraham
Abulafia—Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy (Los
Angeles: Cherub Press. 2000).

[32] See Pinchas Giller, “Elliot Wolfson and the Study of
Kabbalah in the Wake of Scholem,” Religious
Studies Review 25:1 (January 1999): 23-28.

[33] For an extensive treatment of humility in Jewish
thought, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Venturing
Beyond: Morality and Law in Kabbalistic Mysticism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 286-316. See also the brief letter by Rav Aryeh
Kaplan, “The Humility of God,” The Jewish
Press (27 January 1967): 45, called to my attention by Menachem Butler.

Regarding modesty as the prerequisite for truly engaging
Jewish mystical texts, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “From Sealed Book to Open Text:
Time, Memory, and Narrativity in Kabbalistic Hermeneutics,” in Steven Kepnes,
ed., Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern
Age (New York University Press, 1995), 145-178; and Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Secrecy, Modesty, and the Feminine: Kabbalistic Traces in the Thought of
Levinas,” in Kevin Hart and Michael
A. Signer, eds., The Exorbitant: Emmanuel
Levinas Between Jews and Christians (New York: Fordham University Press,
2010), 52-73.

[34] On the usage of poetic-chiasmus in Wolfson’s work, a
motif that can be found countless times throughout his oeuvre, see Aaron W. Hughes, “Elliot R. Wolfson: An Intellectual
Portrait,” in Hava Tirosh Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Elliot R. Wolfson: Poetic Thinking
(Leiden: Brill, 2015), 1-33.

[35] See the prologue “Timeswerve/Hermeneutic
Reversibility,” in Elliot R. Wolfson, Language,
Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2005), xv-xxxi, where he combats the claim of
anachronism through an in-depth depiction of hermeneutical temporality; Elliot
R. Wolfson, Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau:
Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth and Death (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2006), 1-55. For a similar approach to this issue, see Elliot
R. Wolfson, “Structure, Innovation, and Diremptive Temporality: The Use of
Models to Study Continuity and Discontinuity in Kabbalistic Tradition,” Journal for the Study of Religions and
Ideologies 6:18 (2007): 143-167. See the comments of Sergey Dolgopolski, The Open Past: Subjectivity and Remembering
in the Talmud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 342fn6.

[36] On Reb Zadok ha-Kohen of Lublin, see the various
scholarly studies by Professor Yaakov Elman, which are all noted in Dovid
Bashevkin, “In Your Anger, Please Mercifully Publish My Work: An Honest Account
of a Contemporary Jewish Publishing Odyssey” the Seforim blog (26 June 2015), available here, and earlier in Dovid Bashevkin, “Perpetual Prophecy: An
Intellectual Tribute to Reb Zadok ha-Kohen of Lublin on his 110th Yahrzeit,”
(with an appendix entitled: “The World as a Book: Religious Polemic, Hasidei
Ashkenaz, and the Thought of Reb Zadok,”), the
Seforim blog (18 August 2010), available here.

[37] See Tzidkat ha-Tzadik, no. 70.

[38] Regarding Wolfson’s usage of Rosenzweigian sprachdenken, see Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Introduction,” to Franz Rosenzweig, The
Star of Redemption, trans. Barbara E. Galli (Wisconsin: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2005), xvii-xx. See as well, Elliot R. Wolfson, “Foreword,” to
Yudit Kornberg Greenberg, Better Than
Wine: Love, Poetry, and Prayer in the Thought of Franz Rosenzweig (Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1996),  xi-xii.

For an extensive treatment on Rosenzweig’s thought, see
Elliot R. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the
Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2014), 34-89. For an earlier approach see, Elliot R. Wolfson, “Facing
the Effaced: Mystical Eschatology and the Idealistic Orientation in the Thought
of Franz Rosenzweig,” Zeitschrift für
Neure Theologiegeschichte 4 (1997): 39-81. See, as well, Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Light Does Not Talk but Shines: Apophasis and Vision in Rosenzweig’s
Theopoetic Temporality,” in Aaron W. Hughes and Elliot R. Wolfson, eds., New Directions in Jewish Philosophy
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 87-148.

[39] Regarding the central role translation as a hermeneutic
form of interpretation, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 1-45. For an earlier approach, see
Elliot R. Wolfson, “Lying on the Path: Translation and the Transport of Sacred
Texts,” AJS Perspectives 3 (2001):
8-13. For the influence of Hans Georg-Gademer’s interpretation theory on
Wolfson’s thought, see, Elliot R. Wolfson, Pathwings:
Philosophic and Poetic Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Time and Language (Barrytown,
NY: Barrytown/Station Hill Press, 2004), 227-233.

[40] Regarding Heidegger’s Nazism, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic
Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press,
2005), 420fn241 and for a recent approach to the publications of Heidegger’s
infamous “Black Notebooks,” see the interview with Elliot R. Wolfson by Aubrey
Glazer, “What does Heidegger’s Anti-Semitism mean for Jewish Philosophy?” Religion Dispatches (3 April 2014),
online here. For a similar approach deeply influenced by Wolfson’s
thought, see Michael Fagenblat, “The Thing that Scares Me Most: Heidegger’s
anti-Semitism and the Return to Zion,” Journal
for Cultural and Religious Theory 14:1 (Fall 2014), 8-24. For an earlier
attempt to reconcile Heidegger’s thought with Jewish thought, see, Marlène Zarader, The Unthought Debt: Heidegger and the Hebraic Heritage (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2006) and Jean-Francois Lyotard, Heidegger and ‘the Jews’, trans. Andreas
Michel and Mark Roberts (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990).

Regarding Wolfson’s engagement with Heidegger, see Aaron W.
Hughes, “Elliot R. Wolfson: An Intellectual Portrait,” in Hava Tirosh Samuelson
and Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Elliot R. Wolfson:
Poetic Thinking (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 1-33. See also the
multi-page-footnote in Elliot R. Wolfson, “Eternal Duration and Temporal
Compresence: The Influence of Habad on Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” in Michael Zank
and Ingrid Anderson, eds., The Value of
the Particular: Lessons from Judaism and the Modern Jewish Experience –
Festschrift for Steven T. Katz on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (Leiden:
Brill, 2015), 208-212fn37.

It would be difficult to speak of all the places in which
Wolfson engages Heidegger’s thought, however see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Not Yet
Now: Speaking of the End and the End of Speaking,” in Hava Tirosh Samuelson and
Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Elliot R. Wolfson:
Poetic Thinking (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 127-193; and Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Undoing the (K)not of Apophaticism: A Heideggerian Afterthought,” in Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and
Overcoming Theomania (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 227-260.
The specific impact Heidegger’s thought has had on Wolfson will be discussed in
a future essay.

[41] Elliot R. Wolfson, “Achronic Time, Messianic
Expectation, and the Secret of the Leap in Ḥabad,” in  Jonatan Meir and Gadi Sagiv, eds., Habad Hasidisim: History, Theology and Image
(Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, forthcoming in 2016), 27fn28.

[42] On Heidegger’s impact on Jewish thinkers, see Richard
Wolin, Heidegger’s Children: Hannah
Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2003).

[43] See Elliot R. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 90-154; Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream:
Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York: Zone Books, 2011),
32-38, 297-302fn59-74; and Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of
Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009),
251-252.

For an earlier approach to the influence of Jewish mysticism
on the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Secrecy, Modesty,
and the Feminine: Kabbalistic Traces in the Thought of Levinas,” in Kevin Hart
and Michael A. Signer, eds., The
Exorbitant: Emmanuel Levinas Between Jews and Christians (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2010), 52-73. See also Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic
Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press,
2005), 432fn362. The specific impact that Levinas’s thought has had on
Wolfson’s will be discussed in a future essay.

[44] On Derrida’s Jewishness and the Jewishness of Derrida,
see John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears
of Jacques Derrida (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 230-263;
see Bettina Bergo, Joseph Cohen, and Raphael Zagury-Orly, eds., Judeities: Questions for Jacques Derrida
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2007); Gideon Ofrat, The Jewish Derrida, trans. Peretz Kidron (Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 2001); Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993), 292-297. For Derrida’s own treatment of the Jewishness of
his thought, see Jacques Derrida, Archive
Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1996); and Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993).

[45] Wolfson utilizes the Derridian notion of
inclusion-through-exclusion to describe his relationship with the organized
aspect of Jewish religion. While this dialectic of presence/absence demands a
more significant treatment, see Wolfson’s autobiographical comments in Elliot
R. Wolfson by Aubrey Glazer, “What does Heidegger’s Anti-Semitism mean for
Jewish Philosophy?” Religion Dispatches (3
April 2014), online here; and Interview With Elliot R. Wolfson, July 25, 2012, in
Hava Tirosh Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Elliot R. Wolfson: Poetic Thinking (Leiden: Brill, 2015). For an
exhaustive treatment of antinomianism and hypernomianism as it relates to the
Jewish mystical tradition see, Elliot R. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond: Morality and Law in Kabbalistic Mysticism (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

[46] On Derrida, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 155-200. For an earlier approach on the
influence of kabbalah on Derrida’s thought, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Assaulting
the Border: Kabbalistic Traces in the Margins of Derrida,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70:3 (September 2002):
475-514. For an analysis of Derrida’s famous phrase, “there is nothing outside
of the text,” see Elliot R. Wolfson, “From Sealed Book to Open Text: Time,
Memory, and Narrativity in Kabbalistic Hermeneutics,” in Steven Kepnes, ed., Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age
(New York University Press, 1995), 145-178.

[47] In private discussion with the author.

[48] Regarding the role of gender in Jewish mysticism, see
Elliot R. Wolfson, Circle in the Square:
Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1995). Aside from the essays compiled in this
volume, Wolfson has continued to devote much time and effort to this aspect of
his scholarship, see for example, Elliot R. Wolfson,  “Woman—The Feminine As Other in Theosophic
Kabbalah: Some Philosophical Observations on the Divine Androgyne,” in Lawrence
J. Silberstein and Robert L. Cohn, eds.,
The Other in Jewish Thought and
History: Constructions of Jewish Culture and Identity (New York: New York
University Press, 1994), 166-204; Elliot R. Wolfson, “Crossing Gender
Boundaries in Kabbalistic Ritual and Myth,” in Mortimer Ostow, Ultimate Intimacy: The Psychodynamics of
Jewish Mysticism (London: Karnac Books, 1995), 255-337; and Elliot R.
Wolfson, “Occultation of the Feminine and the Body of Secrecy in Medieval
Kabbalah,” in Elliot R. Wolfson, ed., Rending
the Veil: Concealment and Revelation of Secrets in the History of Religions (New
York and London: Seven Bridges Press, 1999), 113-154. Many more sources could
be cited.

[49] Wolfson has responded to the various critics of his
stance in numerous places within his scholarship. See for example, Elliot R.
Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a
Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York: Zone Books,
2011), 439fn65; Elliot R. Wolfson, Luminal
Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings from Zoharic Literature (Oxford: Oneworld,
2007), 254fn26; Elliot R. Wolfson, Language,
Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2005), 136, 486fn191; Elliot R. Wolfson, Pathwings: Philosophic and Poetic
Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Time and Language (Barrytown, NY:
Barrytown/Station Hill Press, 2004), 248fn53; and most recently in Elliot R.
Wolfson, “Patriarchy and the Motherhood of God in Zoharic Kabbalah and Meister
Eckhart,” in Ra’anan S. Boustan, et al., eds., Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion
of his Seventieth Birthday, vol. 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013),
1049-1088, esp. 1058-1059fn30.

[50] See for example, Arthur Green, “Kabbalistic Re-Vision:
A Review Article of Elliot Wolfson’s Through
a Speculum That Shines,” History of
Religions 36:3 (February 1997): 265-274; Melila Hellner-Eshed, A River Flows from Eden: The Language of
Mystical Experience in the Zohar (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2009), 347-356.

[51] See Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 1-45.

[52]  See Elliot R.
Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic
Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 200-223; for the most recent
explication of Wolfson’s stance on this issue, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Phallic
Jewissance and the Pleasure of No Pleasure” (forthcoming in 2015). It is
important to note that this is a rudimentary treatment of one of the more
complex areas in Wolfson’s thought. The potential capacity of undoing the gender-valence
inherent within the mystical tradition has yet to be fully unfolded. This will
be addressed in a future essay.

[53] Interview with David Novak, in Hava Tirosh Samuelson
and Aaron W. Hughes, David Novak: Natural
Law and Revealed Torah (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 118-119.

[54] On the significance of walking/wandering in Jewish
mystical thought, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Walking as a Sacred Duty: Theological
Transformation of Social Reality in Early Hasidism,” in Ada Rapoport-Albert,
ed., Hasidism Reappraised (London:
Littman Library, 1997), 180-207.

[55]  Elliot R.
Wolfson, Luminal Darkness: Imaginal
Gleanings from Zoharic Literature (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), xvi. For an
extended treatment of this theme, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 46-111. See also Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Ontology, Alterity, and Ethics in Kabbalistic Anthropology,” Exemplaria 12:1 (January 2000): 129-155.

[56] Wolfson has consistently avoided engaging current
sociopolitical issues in his scholarship. This stems from a focus on the
subterranean themes of the dynamic as opposed to the symptomatic expression of
current events.

[57] See Elliot R. Wolfson, “Not Yet Now: Speaking of the End
and the End of Speaking,” in Hava Tirosh Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Elliot R. Wolfson: Poetic Thinking (Leiden:
Brill, 2015), 182.

[58] Elliot R. Wolfson, “Nequddat
ha-Reshimu-The Trace of Transcendence and Transcendence of the Trace: The
Paradox of Simsum in the RaShaB’s Hemshekh Ayin Beit,” Kabbalah 30 (2013): 92, and for an
in-depth analysis of this (non)logic, see 92-98.

It is possible to say that this form of logic that is not
one, the middle excluded by the formal laws of logic, rests at the center of
Wolfson’s thinking. This logic inherent to Wolfson’s treatment of Jewish
Mysticism – in which the identity of opposites is affirmed by the opposite of
identity- is inspired in part by the logic of the Middle Path, or ‘the logic of
not’ expressed in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. See Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and
the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2009), 109-114, 247-250; Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream:
Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York: Zone Books, 2011),
179-219; Elliot R. Wolfson, Wolfson, Alef,
Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth and Death (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2006), 158-170; Elliot R. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond: Morality and Law in
Kabbalistic Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 170-176,
232-247.

[59] Elliot R. Wolfson, Giving
Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2014), xxiii.

[60]  Wolfson expands
on this notion in a lecture at the historic Rothko Chapel in Houston, “The Path
Beyond the Path: Mysticism and the Spiritual Quest for Universal Singularity,”
delivered on 7 April 2011), available online here.
See as well, Elliot R. Wolfson, Language,
Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2005), 288-289.

[61]  See Elliot R.
Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being:
Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2005), 233-234.

[62]  The usage of the
word ‘feverish’ is inspired by the Derridian notion of fever as unending memory
of the immemorial futurity; see Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

[63]  The topic of
Nothingness is found too frequently throughout Wolfson’s scholarship to source
exhaustively; for example, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Nihilating Nonground and the
Temporal Sway of Becoming: kabbalisticly envisioning nothing beyond nothing,” Angelaki 17:3 (2012): 31-45; Elliot R.
Wolfson, “Negative Theology and Positive Assertion in the Early Kabbalah,” Da’at 32-33 (1994): V-XXII (English);
Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret:
Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 75-82, 113-115; Elliot R.
Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift:
Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (New York: Fordham University Press,
2014), 75-87; Elliot R. Wolfson, Language,
Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2005), 173-186; Elliot R. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond: Morality and Law in
Kabbalistic Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 212-215;
Elliot R. Wolfson, Wolfson, Alef, Mem,
Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth and Death (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2006), 36-39, 167-168, 234fn12; and Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream:
Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York: Zone Books, 2011),
229-239.

[64]  See Elliot R.
Wolfson, “Nihilating Nonground and the Temporal Sway of Becoming: kabbalisticly
envisioning nothing beyond nothing,” Angelaki
17:3 (2012): 31-45.

[65]
To condense Wolfson’s thought on language into a paragraph, or even a
footnote is as impossible as it is improper. Few thinkers have engaged in the
linguistic path of (un)showing the limit of language while simultaneously
utilizing language in its own disavowal, as Wolfson has. Speaking from within
and beyond the philosophers of language, including but not limited to
Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Levinas, Blanchot, Celan, Buber, Foucault,
Jabes, Kristeva, and Lacan; Wolfson has uncovered new, impossible vistas in
which the hermeneutics of language may be thought anew. To attempt a listing of
Wolfson’s thought on language would be to miss the liminal nature of what can
properly be called “Wolfsonian Language.” For an introduction, see Elliot R.
Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being:
Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2005), 1-44.

[66]  The primacy of
imagination in Wolfson’s scholarship has already been noted in Aaron W. Hughes,
“Elliot R. Wolfson: An Intellectual Portrait,”
in Hava Tirosh Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Elliot R. Wolfson: Poetic Thinking (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 1-33. See
as well Jeffrey J. Kripal, “The Mystical Mirror of Hermeneutics: Gazing into
Elliot Wolfson’s Speculum,” in Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom:
Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001), 258-298. This is testified by the fact that nearly all of
Wolfson’s published books contain some reference to the imaginative faculty.
For example, Elliot R. Wolfson, Language,
Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2005); Elliot R. Wolfson, Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings from Zoharic Literature (Oxford:
Oneworld, 2007); Elliot R. Wolfson, A
Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New
York: Zone Books, 2011). For an overview of Wolfson’s thoughts on imagination,
see Elliot R. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the
Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2014), 1-14. The primary treatment of imagination can be found in Elliot
R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a
Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York: Zone Books,
2011).

[67] Elliot R. Wolfson has published two poetry collections
thus far. Elliot R. Wolfson, Pathwings:
Philosophic and Poetic Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Time and Language (Barrytown,
NY: Barrytown/Station Hill Press, 2004), and Elliot R. Wolfson, Footdreams & Treetales: Ninety-Two Poems
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2007). Wolfson’s third collection of
poetry, On One Foot Dancing, can be
found online here. For an in-depth analysis of Wolfson’s poetics, see
Barbara Ellen Galli, On the Wings of
Moonlight: Elliot R. Wolfson’s Poetry in the Path of Rosenzweig and Celan (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007). For the sake of space, a discussion on
Wolfson’s poetry will be treated in a future essay.

[68] For an in-depth treatment of Wolfson’s aesthetics seen
through his scholarship, and vice versa, see, Marcia Brennan, Flowering Light: Kabbalistic Mysticism and
the Art of Elliot R. Wolfson (Houston: Rice University Press, 2009). A
selection of Wolfson’s art are online here, which is prefaced with: “elliot wolfson has long been
preoccupied with the insights of jewish mystical traditions that approach an
imageless god through the mediation of an intensely visual symbolic imaginary.
his painted canvases communicate a corresponding sense that vision hovers ever
on the borders of appearing and disappearing, disclosure and hiddenness. as the
imagination seeks to give form to what remains nonetheless formless, the
quintessentially human endeavor of hermeneutics is already caught up in the
transcending eros of a divine creativity.”