Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

«All in all, it may be said that the purpose of this book is not to give a complete historical account of Jewish mysticism but an outline of its principal features in the form of an analysis of some of its most important phases. A comprehensive critical history of Jewish mysticism, with special reference to all the various currents and cross-currents of Kabbalism, would require several volumes. Since these lectures were not intended exclusively for research students in this field but for the much wider circle of those who take an interest in questions of Jewish history and religion, I have laid greater stress on the analysis and interpretation of mystical thought than on the historical links between the various systems. Where it was possible without introducing too much philological detail I have nevertheless sketched the historical connections at least in outline. Only in the lecture on the Book Zohar and its author have I departed from this rule and attempted a more thorough philological analysis.» — declara el alcance del libro y de qué depende: no es un relato histórico completo del misticismo judío sino un esquema de sus rasgos principales bajo forma de análisis de algunas fases. Deriva el énfasis del destinatario —las conferencias no iban solo a investigadores— y por eso carga sobre el análisis del pensamiento místico antes que sobre los eslabones históricos. Con su excepción declarada: la conferencia sobre el Zóhar y su autor, donde sí emprende análisis filológico a fondo

«I should have preferred very much to give an account of the beginnings of Kabbalism as from 1150 to 1250, all the more as it regards a problem having an extraordinary bearing on the history of Judaism. But it appeared in the course of the work that the subject needs a more thorough treatment than could possibly have been given within the framework of these lectures; I propose, therefore, to present the results of my studies in a special publication.» — el límite de cobertura, dicho por él: los comienzos del kabalismo entre 1150 y 1250 —problema que califica de importancia extraordinaria para la historia del judaísmo— quedan fuera porque exigen más de lo que cabe en estas conferencias, y anuncia publicación aparte

«Jewish scholars was that, since the authorized guardians neglected this field, all manner of charlatans and dreamers came and treated it as their own property. From the brilliant misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Alphonse Louis Constant, who has won fame under the pseudonym of Eliphas Lévi, to the highly coloured humbug of Aleister Crowley and his followers, the most eccentric and fantastic statements have been produced purporting to be legitimate interpretations of Kabbalism. The time has come to reclaim this derelict area and to apply to it the strict standards of historical research.» — deriva el estado del campo de un hecho institucional y no de la calidad de los charlatanes: al desatender la Cábala los grandes eruditos judíos del XIX, el terreno quedó como propiedad de soñadores, y de ahí bajan las incomprensiones de Éliphas Lévi y el «highly coloured humbug» de Crowley. De ese diagnóstico saca la tarea que el libro se fija. En la página anterior acota que no descarta a los críticos hostiles del XIX: les reconoce haber visto ciertos factores con nitidez, aunque no —dice— por las razones que ellos mismos daban

«For in its classical form, religion signifies the creation of a vast abyss, conceived as absolute, between God, the infinite and transcendental Being, and Man, the finite creature. For this reason alone, the rise of institutional religion, which is also the classical stage in the history of religion, is more widely removed than any other period from mysticism and all it implies. Man becomes aware of a fundamental duality, of a vast gulf which can be crossed by nothing but the voice; the voice of God, directing and law-giving in His revelation, and the voice of man in prayer. The great monotheistic religions live and unfold in the ever-present consciousness of this bipolarity, of the existence of an abyss which can never be bridged. To them the scene of religion is no longer Nature, but the moral and religious action of man and the community of men, whose interplay brings about history as, in a sense, the stage on which the drama of man’s relation to God unfolds. And only now that religion has received, in history, its classical expression in a certain communal way of living and believing, only now do we witness the phenomenon called mysticism; its rise coincides with what may be called the romantic period of religion. Mysticism does not deny or overlook the abyss; on the contrary, it begins by realizing its existence, but from there it proceeds to a quest for the secret that will close it in, the hidden path that will span it. It strives to piece together the fragments broken by the religious cataclysm, to bring back the old unity which religion has destroyed, but on a new plane, where the world of mythology and that of revelation meet in the soul of man.» — sitúa el misticismo como etapa del desarrollo histórico de la religión y no como categoría intemporal: la etapa clásica abre un abismo tenido por absoluto entre el Dios infinito y la criatura, y el misticismo aparece solo cuando esa forma ya cuajó, en lo que llama el periodo romántico de la religión — no niega el abismo, arranca de reconocerlo. El límite va en la línea siguiente: esa unidad reconquistada no se confunde con la unidad mítica anterior a la dualidad

«The attributes of the living God are conceived differently and undergo a peculiar transformation when compared with the meaning given to them by the philosophers of Judaism. Among the latter, Maimonides, in his “Guide of the Perplexed”, felt bound to ask: How is it possible to say of God that He is living? Does that not imply a limitation of the infinite Being? The words “God is living”, he argues, can only mean that he is not dead, that is to say, that he is the opposite of all that is negative. He is the negation of negation. A quite different reply is given by the Kabbalist, for whom the distinction, nay the conflict, between the known and the unknown God has a significance denied to it by the philosophers of Judaism.» — lee el desacuerdo sobre los atributos divinos como divergencia de método: Maimónides responde que decir de Dios que es viviente solo puede significar que no está muerto, negación de la negación; el cabalista responde de otro modo porque para él la distinción entre el Dios conocido y el desconocido pesa lo que la filosofía judía le niega. El límite es que la afirmación es sobre el VALOR que cada lado asigna a la distinción, no sobre su presencia: en la página siguiente rechaza como mala interpretación de los hechos la tesis de que el kabalismo desconozca la diferencia entre el deus absconditus y Dios en su aparición

«The Kabbalists, however, are no friends of mystical autobiography. They aim at describing the realm of Divinity and the other objects of the contemplation in an impersonal way, by burning, as it were, their ships behind them. They glory in objective description and are deeply averse to letting their own personalities intrude into the picture. The wealth of expression at their disposal is not inferior to that of their autobiographical confrères. It is as though they were hampered by a sense of shame. Documents of an intimate and personal nature are not entirely lacking, but it is characteristic that they are to be found almost wholly in manuscripts which the Kabbalists themselves would hardly have allowed to be printed. There has even been a kind of voluntary censorship which the Kabbalists themselves exercised by deleting certain passages of a too intimate nature from the manuscripts, or at least by seeing to it that they were not printed.» — explica una laguna documental por decisión de los propios autores y no por pérdida: los cabalistas rehúyen la autobiografía mística y describen la Divinidad de modo impersonal, quemando sus naves detrás de sí; hubo censura voluntaria de los pasajes íntimos. Propone la causa como conjetura —«I am inclined to believe»— y consigna el costo: la ausencia del elemento autobiográfico es obstáculo serio para cualquier comprensión psicológica del misticismo judío

«My second point was that Kabbalism is distinguished by an attitude towards language which is quite unusually positive. Kabbalists who differ in almost everything else are at one in regarding language as something more precious than an inadequate instrument for contact between human beings. To them Hebrew, the holy tongue, is not simply a means of expressing certain thoughts, born out of a certain convention and having a purely conventional character, in accordance with the theory of language dominant in the Middle Ages. Language in its purest form, that is, Hebrew, according to the Kabbalists, reflects the fundamental spiritual nature of the world; in other words, it has a mystical value. Speech reaches God because it comes from God. Man’s common language, whose prima facie function, indeed, is only of an intellectual nature, reflects the creative language of God. All creation—and this is an important principle of most Kabbalists—is, from the point of view of God, nothing but an expression of His hidden self that begins and ends by giving itself a name, the holy name of God, the perpetual act of creation.» — la otra mitad de la misma idea: para los cabalistas el hebreo no es convención sino reflejo de la naturaleza espiritual del mundo, y la creación entera es, desde el punto de vista de Dios, expresión de su ser oculto que empieza y acaba dándose un nombre

«It is a remarkable fact that the very term Kabbalah under which it has become best known, is derived from an historical concept. Kabbalah means literally “tradition”, in itself an excellent example of the paradoxical nature of mysticism to which I have referred before. The very doctrine which centres about the immediate personal contact with the Divine, that is to say, a highly personal and intimate form of knowledge, is conceived as traditional wisdom. The fact is, however, that the idea of Jewish mysticism from the start combined the conception of a knowledge which by its very nature is difficult to impart and therefore secret, with that of a knowledge which is the secret tradition of chosen spirits or adepts. Jewish mysticism, therefore, is a secret doctrine in a double sense, a characteristic which cannot be said to apply to all forms of mysticism. It is a secret doctrine because it treats of the most deeply hidden and fundamental matters of human life; but it is secret also because it is confined to a small élite of the chosen who impart the knowledge to their disciples.» — saca del propio nombre la paradoja de la cosa: Kabbalah significa «tradición», de modo que una doctrina centrada en el contacto inmediato con lo Divino se concibe a sí misma como sabiduría heredada. De ahí distingue dos secrecías, la del contenido y la de la transmisión. El límite viene inmediatamente después: ese cuadro nunca correspondió del todo a la vida, porque en ciertos periodos los propios cabalistas trataron de atraer a círculos mucho más amplios

«as a reversal of the procession by which we have emanated from God. To know the stages of the creative process is also to know the stages of one’s own return to the root of all existence. In this sense, the interpretation of Maaseh Bereshith, the esoteric doctrine of creation, has always formed one of the main preoccupations of Kabbalism. It is here that Kabbalism comes nearest to Neoplatonic thought, of which it has been said with truth that “procession and reversion together constitute a single movement, the diastole-systole, which is the life of the universe.”20 Precisely this is also the belief of the Kabbalist.» — el camino místico hacia Dios como inversión de la procesión por la que emanamos de Él: conocer las etapas del proceso creador es conocer las del propio retorno, y por eso la interpretación del Maaseh Bereshith es ocupación central del kabalismo. Es donde más se acerca al neoplatonismo

«This Nothing from which everything has sprung is by no means a mere negation; only to us does it present no attributes because it is beyond the reach of intellectual knowledge. In truth, however, this Nothing—to quote one of the Kabbalists—is infinitely more real than all other reality.24 Only when the soul has stripped itself of all limitation and, in mystical language, has descended into the depths of Nothing does it encounter the Divine. For this Nothing comprises a wealth of mystical reality although it cannot be defined. “Un Dieu défini serait un Dieu fini.” In a word, it signifies the Divine itself, in its most impenetrable guise. And, in fact, creation out of nothing means to many mystics just creation out of God.» — muestra cómo la ortodoxia de un término tapa un sentido distinto del original: la Nada de los místicos no es negación —carece de atributos solo para nosotros— y es, dice, infinitamente más real que toda otra realidad, de modo que la creación a partir de la nada pasa a significar creación a partir de Dios, y el dogma se vuelve símbolo de la emanación. Lo encuadra en su tesis previa: lo que al filósofo le parece un malentendido puede ser la abreviatura paradójica de una línea de pensamiento original

«By contrast, the mystic refrains from destroying the living texture of religious narrative by allegorizing it, although allegory plays an important part in the writings of a great many Kabbalists. His essential mode of thinking is what I should like to call symbolical in the strictest sense. This point requires a little further explanation. Allegory consists of an infinite network of meanings and correlations in which everything can become a representation of everything else, but all within the limits of language and expression. To that extent it is possible to speak of allegorical immanence. That which is expressed by and in the allegorical sign is in the first instance something which has its own meaningful context, but by becoming allegorical this something loses its own meaning and becomes the vehicle of something else. Indeed the allegory arises, as it were, from the gap which at this point opens between the form and its meaning. The two are no longer indissolubly welded together; the meaning is no longer restricted to that particular form, nor the form any longer to that particular meaningful content. What appears in the allegory, in short, is the infinity of meaning which attaches to every representation.» — la alegoría como red infinita donde todo puede representar a todo y lo alegorizado pierde su sentido propio para volverse vehículo de otro — frente al símbolo, que conserva su forma y su contenido originales y hace transparente una realidad que no puede aparecer de otro modo

«The danger of theosophical schematism or, as S. R. Hirsch put it,29 of “magical mechanism” is, of course, inherent in such an interpretation of the Torah, and it has more than once raised its head in the development of Kabbalism. There is danger of imagining a magical mechanism to be operative in every sacramental action, and this imagination is attended by a decline in the essential spontaneity of religious action. But then this conflict is inseparable from any and every fulfilment of a religious command, since every prescribed duty is also conceived as assumed willingly and spontaneously. The antinomy is, in fact, inescapable, and can only be overcome by religious feeling so long as it is strong and unbroken. When it begins to flag, the contradiction between command and free-will increases in proportion and eventually gathers sufficient force to become destructive.» — nombra el precio de convertir cada precepto en rito secreto: el esquematismo teosófico que S. R. Hirsch llamó «magical mechanism», donde decae la espontaneidad del acto religioso. Y rehúsa cargárselo a la Cábala como defecto propio: la antinomia es inseparable de cualquier cumplimiento de un mandamiento, y solo el sentimiento religioso la sostiene mientras esté intacto

«This transformation, which has meant a great deal for the true life of the Kabbalist, has become crystallized in the conception of Kawwanah, i.e. mystical intention or concentration, which is its instrument.34 In the words of the liturgy as in the old Aggadahs, the Kabbalists found a way to hidden worlds and the first causes of all existence. They developed a technique of meditation which enabled them to extract, as it were, the mystical prayer from the exoteric prayer of the community the text of which followed a fixed pattern. The fact that this form of prayer was conceived not as a free effusion of the soul but as a mystical act in the strict sense of the term, as an act, that is to say, which is directly linked with the inner cosmic process, invests this conception of Kawwanah with a solemnity which not only approaches but also passes the border of the magical.» — la reinterpretación mística de la liturgia cristaliza en la Kawwanah, intención o concentración, y con ella una técnica de meditación; y porque esa oración se concibe ligada al proceso cósmico interno y no como efusión libre del alma, adquiere una solemnidad que no solo se acerca a la frontera de lo mágico, sino que la pasa

«The fact of the existence of evil in the world is the main touchstone of this difference between the philosophic and the Kabbalistic outlook. On the whole, the philosophers of Judaism treat the existence of evil as something meaningless in itself. Some of them have shown themselves only too proud of this negation of evil as one of the fundamentals of what they call rational Judaism. Hermann Cohen has said with great clarity and much conviction: “Evil is non-existent. It is nothing but a concept derived from the concept of freedom. A power of evil exists only in myth.”36 One may doubt the philosophical truth of this statement, but assuming its truth it is obvious that something can be said for ‘myth’ in its struggle with ‘philosophy’. To most Kabbalists, as true seal-bearers of the world of myth, the existence of evil is, at any rate, one of the most pressing problems, and one which keeps them continuously occupied with attempts to solve it. They have a strong sense of the reality of evil and the dark horror that is about everything living. They do not, like the philosophers, seek to evade its existence with the aid of a convenient formula; rather do they try to penetrate into its depth.» — pone la existencia del mal como la piedra de toque que separa la mirada filosófica de la cabalística, y aquí la confrontación es la afirmación: los filósofos lo tratan como carente de sentido en sí —Hermann Cohen, «Evil is non-existent»—, y los cabalistas, «true seal-bearers of the world of myth», sienten su realidad y en vez de esquivarlo intentan penetrar en su hondura. Concede que puede dudarse de la verdad filosófica del enunciado de Cohen y sostiene que aun concediéndola algo puede decirse a favor del mito

«Philosophy came dangerously near to losing the living God; Kabbalism, which set out to preserve Him, to blaze a new and glorious trail to Him, encountered mythology on its way and was tempted to lose itself in its labyrinth.» — cobra el precio de las dos vías sin absolver a ninguna: la filosofía estuvo peligrosamente cerca de perder al Dios viviente, y el kabalismo, que salió a preservarlo, se topó en el camino con la mitología

«This exclusively masculine character of Kabbalism was by no means the result of the social position of Jewish women or their exclusion from Talmudic learning. Scholasticism was as much exclusively a domain of men as Talmudism, and yet the social position of women in Islam and in Mediaeval Christianity did not prevent their playing a highly important part among the representatives—though not the theoreticians—of Islamic and Christian mysticism. It is hardly possible to conceive Catholic mysticism without them.» — niega que la ausencia de mujeres cabalistas se explique por la posición social de la mujer judía o por su exclusión del estudio talmúdico: la escolástica fue tan masculina como el talmudismo y aun así hubo mujeres decisivas entre los representantes del misticismo islámico y cristiano

«It is of the essence of Kabbalistic symbolism that woman represents not, as one might be tempted to expect, the quality of tenderness but that of stern judgment. This symbolism was unknown to the old mystics of the Merkabah period, and even to the Hasidim in Germany, but it dominates Kabbalistic literature from the very beginning and undoubtedly represents a constituent element of Kabbalistic theology. The demonic, according to the Kabbalists, is an off-spring of the feminine sphere. This view does not entail a negation or repudiation of womanhood—after all the Kabbalistic conception of the Shekhinah has room for the, to orthodox Jewish thought, highly paradoxical idea of a feminine element in God Himself» — en el simbolismo cabalístico la mujer representa no la ternura sino el juicio severo, y lo demónico es descendencia de la esfera femenina — simbolismo desconocido para los místicos de la Merkabah y dominante desde el comienzo de la literatura cabalística. El límite va en la misma frase y es lo que impide leerlo como repudio: la concepción de la Shekhinah da lugar a la idea, altamente paradójica para el pensamiento judío ortodoxo, de un elemento femenino en Dios mismo

«Its essence is not absorbed contemplation of God’s true nature, but perception of His appearance on the throne, as described by Ezekiel, and cognition of the mysteries of the celestial throne-world. The throne-world is to the Jewish mystic what the pleroma, the “fullness”, the bright sphere of divinity with its potencies, aeons, archons and dominions is to the Hellenistic and early Christian mystics of the period who appear in the history of religion under the names of Gnostics and Hermetics.» — fija qué se busca en la primera fase, y lo fija por contraste: el misticismo judío más antiguo es misticismo del trono, y su esencia no es la contemplación de la naturaleza de Dios sino la percepción de su aparición sobre el trono. De ahí la equivalencia funcional que ordena el capítulo: el mundo-trono es para el místico judío lo que el pleroma para los místicos helenísticos que la historia de las religiones conoce como gnósticos y herméticos

«In the early literature, the writers always speak of an “ascent to the Merkabah,” a pictorial analogy which has come to seem natural to us. The “Lesser Hekhaloth”21 emphasize this “ascent”, and the same term recurs in a few out-of-the-way passages of the “Greater Hekhaloth,”22 and in the introduction to the “Book of Enoch”. But for reasons which have become obscure, the whole terminology had in the meantime undergone a change—it is difficult to say exactly when, probably around 500. In the “Greater Hekhaloth,” which are of such importance for our analysis, and from then on in almost all the later writings, the visionary journey of the soul to heaven is always referred to as the “descent to the Merkabah.” The paradoxical character of this term is all the more remarkable because the detailed description of the mystical process nonetheless consistently employs the metaphor of ascent and not of descent. The mystics of this group call themselves Yorde Merkabah, i.e. “descenders to the Merkabah” (and not “Riders in the Chariot,” as some translators would have it),23 and this name is also given to them by others throughout the whole literature down to a late period.» — registra un cambio de terminología que declara no poder explicar: en la literatura temprana el viaje se llama siempre ASCENSO a la Merkabah y después siempre DESCENSO, cambio que fecha en torno al año 500, con su propio «probably», y cuyas razones dice que se han vuelto oscuras. Subraya lo paradójico del término porque la descripción del proceso sigue empleando la metáfora del ascenso — de ahí el nombre del grupo, Yorde Merkabah, descensores a la Merkabah

«It is the soul’s need for protection on its journey which has produced these seals with their twin function as a protective armour and as a magical weapon. At first the magical protection of a single seal may be sufficient, but as time goes on the difficulties experienced by the adept tend to become greater. A brief and simple formula is no longer enough. Sunk in his ecstatic trance, the mystic at the same time experiences a sense of frustration which he tries to overcome by using longer and more complicated magical formulae, symbols of a longer and harder struggle to pass the closed entrance gates which block his progress. As his psychical energy wanes the magical strain grows and the conjuring gesture becomes progressively more strained, until in the end whole pages are filled with an apparently meaningless recital of magical key-words with which he tries to unlock the closed door.» — lee la hinchazón de las fórmulas mágicas como curva de agotamiento y no como ornamento: al principio basta un sello, pero a medida que la energía psíquica mengua la tensión mágica aumenta, hasta que páginas enteras se llenan de palabras-clave con las que el místico intenta abrir la puerta

«Already the oldest documents of all, the “Lesser Hekhaloth”, are full of them; nor is this surprising, for shadowy elements of this kind, so far from being later additions or signs of spiritual decadence—a prejudice dear to the modern mind—belong to the very core of their particular religious system.» — el límite que impone expresamente contra la lectura fácil: los elementos mágicos no son añadidos tardíos ni señales de decadencia espiritual —«a prejudice dear to the modern mind»— sino que pertenecen al núcleo mismo del sistema religioso

«Not only is there for the mystic no divine immanence, there is also almost no love of God. What there is of love in the relationship between the Jewish mystic and his God belongs to a much later period and has nothing to do with our present subject. Ecstasy there was, and this fundamental experience must have been a source of religious inspiration, but we find no trace of a mystical union between the soul and God. Throughout there remained an almost exaggerated consciousness of God’s otherness, nor does the identity and individuality of the mystic become blurred even at the height of ecstatic passion. The Creator and His creature remain apart, and nowhere is an attempt made to bridge the gulf between them or to blur the distinction. The mystic who in his ecstasy has passed through all the gates, braved all the dangers, now stands before the throne; he sees and hears— but that is all.» — marca dónde NO llega esta mística, y con eso la define: no hay inmanencia divina ni casi amor de Dios, y no se halla rastro de unión mística entre el alma y Dios. Persiste una conciencia casi exagerada de la otredad; el que ha cruzado todas las puertas está por fin ante el trono: ve y oye, y eso es todo. Acota que el amor en la relación del místico judío con su Dios pertenece a un periodo muy posterior

«But this resistance to an enthusiasm and a verbiage so different from the classical simplicity and rationality of the fundamental prayers of Jewish liturgy was of no avail. That much is clear not only from the prayers and hymns of the Merkabah mystics, but also from certain important parts of the liturgy proper whose spirit reflects the influence of the Yorde Merkabah. Bloch was the first to point out that the community prayer in its final form, which it received in late Talmudic and post-Talmudic times, represents a compromise between these two opposing tendencies.» — sostiene que la resistencia talmúdica al entusiasmo fue en vano, y lo deriva no solo de los himnos de los místicos sino de partes de la liturgia: siguiendo a Bloch, la oración comunitaria en su forma final es un compromiso entre las dos tendencias opuestas. Y corrige a Bloch en la misma página — algunas de esas oraciones son más antiguas de lo que él creyó

«From the very beginning, the frank and almost provocative anthropomorphism of the Shiur Komah aroused the bitterest antagonism among all Jewish circles which held aloof from mysticism.82 Conversely, all the later mystics and Kabbalists came to regard its dark and obscure language as a symbol of profound and penetrating spiritual vision. The antagonism was mutual, for it is in this attitude towards anthropomorphism that Jewish rational theology and Jewish mysticism have parted company.» — el antropomorfismo del Shiur Komah despertó desde el principio la hostilidad de los círculos judíos ajenos al misticismo, mientras los cabalistas posteriores tomaron su lenguaje oscuro por símbolo de visión profunda; y sostiene que el antagonismo fue mutuo, porque es en la actitud hacia el antropomorfismo donde la teología racional judía y el misticismo judío se separaron

«As is well known, the anti-Jewish gnostics of the second and third centuries drew a sharp distinction between the unknown, “strange,” good God, and the Creator, whom they identified with the God of Israel. It may be that the Shiur Komah reflects an attempt to give a new turn to this trend of thought, which had become widespread throughout the Near East, by postulating something like a harmony between the Creator and the “true” God. A dualism of the Gnostic kind would of course have been unthinkable for Jews; instead, the Demiurge becomes, by an exercise of mystical anthropomorphism, the appearance of God on the “throne of Glory,” at once visible and yet, by virtue of His transcendent nature, incapable of being really visualized.» — propone que el Shiur Komah responde desde dentro del judaísmo al reparto gnóstico entre el Dios bueno desconocido y el Creador: como un dualismo gnóstico era impensable para judíos, el Demiurgo se vuelve la aparición de Dios sobre el trono, a la vez visible y no visualizable de veras. Lo enuncia en condicional —«It may be that…», «If this interpretation is correct»— y de ahí deriva su lectura de las medidas: no serían las dimensiones de la divinidad sino las de su apariencia corporal

«Shiur Komah speculation is already to be found in the earliest Hekhaloth texts and must be counted among the older possessions of Jewish gnosticism. Graetz’ theory that it came into being at a late date under the influence of Moslem anthropomorphic tendencies is entirely fallacious and has confused matters down to our own day.95 If there can be any question of external influence, it was certainly the other way round.» — la especulación del Shiur Komah pertenece al acervo viejo del gnosticismo judío, y objeta la tesis de Graetz de que naciera tarde bajo influencia antropomórfica musulmana: si hay influencia externa, corre al revés. Pone además el límite sobre su propio apoyo, porque el doxógrafo árabe Shahrastani, a quien cita para el paso de esas ideas a círculos musulmanes, le parece testigo no del todo fiable

«There is no such word as Metathronios in Greek and it is extremely unlikely that Jews should have produced or invented such Greek phrase. In Talmudic literature the word is never used in the place of its Hebrew equivalent. On the other hand, the reduplication of the t and the ending ron follow a pattern which runs through all these texts. Both the ending and the repetition of the consonant are observable, for instance, in names like Zoharariel and Adiriron. It must also be borne in mind that on and ron may have been fixed and typical constituents of secret names rather than meaningful syllables. It is quite possible that the word Metatron was chosen on strictly symbolical grounds and represents one of the innumerable secret names which abound in the Hekhaloth texts no less than in the gnostical writings or in the magical papyri.» — retira la etimología corriente de Metatrón sin poner otra en su lugar, y ese es el punto: no existe «Metathronios» en griego. Deriva la forma del hábito onomástico de estos textos —la terminación *-ron* atraviesa toda la literatura, Zoharariel, Adiriron— de modo que el nombre pudo elegirse por razones simbólicas, como vox mystica que reemplaza a Yahoel. Dice de entrada que el sentido «is completely obscure» y llama conjetura a todas las etimologías propuestas

«Here we have one of the most important points of difference between Merkabah mysticism and Kabbalism; the latter is distinguished by renewed interest in purely cosmogonic speculation, whose spirit often enough is entirely Gnostic. In the earlier literature—certainly during the phase represented by the Hekhaloth—theoretical questions have no place; its spirit is descriptive, not speculative» — una de las diferencias más importantes entre la mística de la Merkabah y el kabalismo: éste se distingue por un interés renovado en la especulación cosmogónica, mientras en la fase de los Hekhaloth las cuestiones teóricas no tienen lugar y el espíritu es descriptivo, no especulativo

«Its chief subjectmatters are the elements of the world, which are sought in the ten elementary and primordial numbers—Sefiroth, as the book calls them—and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. These together represent the mysterious forces whose convergence has produced the various combinations observable throughout the whole of creation; they are the “thirty-two secret paths of wisdom,” through which God has created all that exists.» — expone de qué está hecho el Sefer Yetsirah: los diez números elementales que el libro llama Sefiroth y las 22 letras del alfabeto hebreo, juntos las fuerzas cuya convergencia produce las combinaciones de toda la creación. Fecha el texto entre los siglos III y VI «probably», advierte que probablemente incluye interpolaciones y deja abierto el sentido de *Sefiroth belimah*, rematando que si el autor quiso ser oscuro lo consiguió más allá de sus deseos. Lectura restituida: la fuente imprime «subject-matters» con guion de corte que la herramienta une

«It can be taken as certain that in addition to the Raza Rabba, which appears to have been a cross between a mystical Midrash and a Hekhaloth text, with a strong magical element thrown in, other similar fragments of ancient writings, with Gnostic excerpts written in Hebrew, made their way from the East to Provence. It was thus that remainders of Gnostic ideas transmitted in this fashion entered the main stream of mystical thought via the Book Bahir, to become one of the chief influences which shaped the theosophy of the thirteenth century Kabbalists.» — traza la vía de transmisión: junto al Raza Rabba pasaron de Oriente a Provenza fragmentos antiguos con excerpta gnósticos en hebreo, y por esa vía los restos de ideas gnósticas entraron en la corriente principal a través del libro Bahir. La identificación del Raza Rabba como fuente del Bahir la presenta como hallazgo propio, apoyado en citas conservadas por místicos del siglo XIII en el sur de Alemania

«It must be emphasized that these tendencies are alien to the spirit of Hekhaloth literature; we find in it none of that symbolic interpretation of the Merkabah which was later revived and perfected by the Kabbalists. Its subject is never man, be he even a saint. The form of mysticism which it represents takes no particular interest in man as such; its gaze is fixed on God and his aura, the radiant sphere of the Merkabah, to the exclusion of everything else. For the same reason it made no contribution to the development of a new moral ideal of the truly pious Jew. All its originality is on the ecstatical side, while the moral aspect is starved, so to speak, of life.» — niega a la literatura Hekhalot lo que se le suele suponer, y de eso deriva su lugar histórico: las tendencias moralizantes le son ajenas, y no se halla en ella nada de la interpretación simbólica de la Merkabah que los cabalistas revivirían después. Su tema no es nunca el hombre, ni siquiera el santo: toda su originalidad está del lado extático y el aspecto moral queda famélico de vida

«the ideal to which the Hekhaloth mystic is devoted is that of the visionary who holds the keys to the secrets of the divine realm and who reveals these visions in Israel. Vision and knowledge, in a word, Gnosis of this kind, represents for him the essence of the Torah and of all possible human and cosmic wisdom.» — el ideal que sí tiene: el visionario que posee las llaves de los secretos del reino divino y revela esas visiones en Israel, para quien la visión y el conocimiento son la esencia de la Torá y de toda sabiduría posible

«The rise of Hasidism was the decisive event in the religious development of German Jewry. Of all the factors determining the deeper religion of that community it was the greatest until the change which took place in the seventeenth century under the influence of the later Kabbalism, which originated at Safed in Palestine. Strictly speaking, it was the only considerable religious event in the history of German Judaism.» — da al jasidismo alemán el rango de acontecimiento decisivo —y en rigor el único considerable— de la historia religiosa del judaísmo alemán. Lo deriva de dos hechos que expone antes: esa judería ignoró casi por completo la disputa entre Platón y Aristóteles por la herencia bíblica, y sobre ese fondo la conmoción de las Cruzadas dejó una impronta que nunca halló expresión filosófica adecuada

«Jehudah the Hasid, whose historical position, according to Baer, is akin to that of his Christian contemporary, St. Francis of Assisi. Baer has also raised anew the problem of the relationship between the social philosophy of Hasidism and its Monkish-Christian environment.8 It is in fact undeniable that certain popular religious and social ideas common to the Roman Catholic West after the Cluniacensian reform also filtered into the religious philosophy of some Jewish groups. According to Baer, this was possible only in Germany, while in Italy and Spain the spread of philosophical enlightenment among the Jews either prevented this infiltration or at least limited its scope by conducting an incessant fight against it. Although Baer describes these tendencies as “stimulants which merely served to hasten a spontaneous development” he goes further than Guedemann who also believed in a connection between the popular Christian mysticism of the period and the Hasidic movement, but makes a reservation in respect of their interdependence by arguing that “there is no need to speak of derivations; similar causes produce similar effects. Mysticism was in the air and its seeds fell on fertile soil both among Jews and Christians.» — consigna las dos posiciones sobre el origen cristiano sin armonizarlas: Baer sitúa a Jehudah el Hasid en posición afín a la de San Francisco y sostiene que ideas del Occidente católico se filtraron en algunos grupos judíos; y frente a él Guedemann, que creía también en la conexión pero hacía reserva sobre la interdependencia — «Mysticism was in the air and its seeds fell on fertile soil both among Jews and Christians»

«It is equally obvious, though less generally realized, that the writings of many Talmudists and Tosafists—the name generally given to the school of Talmudic casuists in Germany and Northern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—in so far as they deal at all with religious subjects, are steeped in the same kind of mystical thought. The tradition which ascribes to some of the most famous Tosafists a preference for the study of old mystical tracts, if not the actual practice of mystical rites, is by no means simply a legend. The various testimonies to this effect are quite independent of each other, and for the rest a careful study of their occasional ventures into theology leaves no doubt that they draw their inspiration from mystical ideas on the subject of creation, the Merkabah, and even the Shiur Komah. One of the greatest masters of this school of casuists, Isaac of Dampierre, whom one would be the last to suspect of mystical leanings, was said to be a visionary» — sostiene que el pensamiento místico no fue patrimonio de un partido aparte: los escritos de muchos tosafistas están empapados del mismo pensamiento, y de ahí concluye que la tradición que atribuye a tosafistas famosos predilección por los tratados místicos no es simple leyenda. Lo apoya en un criterio verificable, que los testimonios son independientes unos de otros, y da el caso extremo: Isaac de Dampierre, a quien uno sería el último en sospechar de inclinaciones místicas, pasaba por visionario

«But is it possible to accept this fundamentally antieschatological interpretation of Hasidism? It is not borne out even by the “Book of the Devout,” far less by the other documents of this group, such as, for example, the writings of Eleazar of Worms. If it is true that their religious interest does not center on the Messianic promise in the strict sense, it is no less true that the imagination of these writers is powerfully affected by everything which concerns the eschatology of the soul.» — objeta la lectura de J. N. Simhoni que hace del jasidismo una devoción anti-escatológica aferrada al presente: concede que el interés religioso no se centra en la promesa mesiánica en sentido estricto, pero afirma que la imaginación de estos autores está poderosamente tocada por todo lo que atañe a la escatología del alma. El límite colindante, que él mismo consigna, es que no se escribió ni una apocalipsis en Alemania durante las Cruzadas. Lectura restituida: la fuente imprime «anti-eschatological» con guion de corte que la herramienta une

«Three things above all others go to make the true Hasid as he appears before us in the “Book of the Devout”: Ascetic renunciation of the things of this world; complete serenity of mind; and an altruism grounded in principle and driven to extremes.» — fija el contenido del término y lo separa de su uso talmúdico, mucho más vago: renuncia ascética, completa serenidad de ánimo y altruismo fundado en principio y llevado al extremo. De ahí deriva lo que da carácter al movimiento — ser Hasid es ajustarse a estándares puramente religiosos, independientes del intelectualismo y del saber, de modo que se podía ser Hasid sin entender más que el texto de la Biblia

«According to Eleazar of Worms, there have been since the days of Creation historical forces of opposition, “weeds” as he calls them, which counteract the divine purpose. The verse Gen. III, 18 “thorns and thistles shall the earth bring forth to thee” is to be understood not only in a natural but also in a historical sense, the earth signifying in this context the stage on which man’s history is enacted. “Thorns and thistles” are interpreted, by a process of reasoning based on numerological mysticism, as representations of the profane history which in every generation stands in opposition to the inner sacred historical process.» — la teología de la historia de Eleazar de Worms: desde la Creación hay fuerzas de oposición, «weeds», que contrarrestan el propósito divino, y los cardos y espinas del Génesis se leen en sentido histórico como la historia profana que en cada generación se opone al proceso sagrado interior

«The “heavenly law,” din shamayim, as conceived by the Hasid, i.e. the call to self-abnegation and altruism, in many instances goes far beyond the common law of the Torah as interpreted by the Halakhah. It is not difficult to perceive the latent antagonism between the two conceptions.» — el din shamayim tal como lo concibe el Hasid rebasa con mucho la ley común de la Torá según la interpreta la Halajá, y dice que no es difícil percibir el antagonismo latente entre ambas concepciones: hay cosas permitidas por la ley rabínica y sin embargo castigadas por el cielo

«On the other hand, the element of indifference to praise or blame, the ideal of ataraxy which stands in such striking contrast to this religious radicalism, is nowhere referred to in the theological sources of Hasidism and must have come from outside, that is to say, probably from the Christian environment. Both are equally essential, for it is the paradoxical combination of these two spiritual qualities which makes the Cynic, and it is the ideal of the monkish Cynic which appears before us in a Jewish guise under the name of Hasidism.» — explica el ideal jasídico por la combinación de dos rasgos que no vienen del mismo sitio: el radicalismo está ya en la definición del término dentro de las fuentes propias, y la ataraxia no se menciona en ninguna parte de sus fuentes teológicas y tuvo que venir de fuera. Es la combinación paradójica de las dos la que hace al Cínico. La procedencia externa va enunciada como inferencia —«must have come from outside», «probably»—, no como filiación probada

«The first crucial step is philological analysis, though his method is by no means restricted to philology, contrary to the recent claim of one vocal critic. Sifting through the Aramaic of the Zohar, with minute attention to syntax, grammar, idioms, and vocabulary, he shows how the language consistently reflects late medieval Hebrew, along with Spanish and Arabic, and manifests certain systematic errors of usage that have precise, recurrent analogues in the signed Hebrew writings of Moses de Leon. (As a lover of Hebrew and Aramaic, Scholem comments, with the touching disdain of a true purist, that Moses de Leon’s “use of prepositions and conjunctions is often quite preposterous.”) Having demonstrated that the language must derive from the late Middle Ages, from Spain, and almost certainly from the pen of Moses de Leon, Scholem goes on to examine the geographical references, the characteristic patterns of literary organization, the internal allusions, and the exploitation of specific philosophic ideas and antecedent mystical doctrine in the Zohar. After all this, he is able to conclude persuasively that the core component of the Zohar was composed by Moses de Leon between 1275 and 1280, and that the bulk of the work was completed by the same writer during the six years following this initial period.» — el prólogo de Robert Alter (1995), encuadernado en esta edición, sostiene que la adjudicación del Zóhar no descansa en la filología sino que empieza ahí: el arameo refleja hebreo tardomedieval con español y árabe y comete errores sistemáticos cuyos análogos están en los escritos firmados por Moses de Leon; después vienen las referencias geográficas y las alusiones internas. El límite es doble y explícito — la aclaración de que el método no se restringe a la filología va dicha contra «the recent claim of one vocal critic», y el propio prólogo separa esta demostración de otras tesis de Scholem que dice seriamente disputadas

«But whereas the notion of paradox affirms that an entity or condition is simultaneously a thing and its contradictory opposite—say, God is at once transcendent and immanent—the dialectic implies, as Hegel in fact stressed, restless process, things being transformed into their opposites in a constant dynamic movement. Thus, Scholem explains the cosmogony of the Zohar, whereby out of the primordial Nothing (ain) the divine I (ani) comes into being, as “a dialectical process whose thesis and antithesis begin and end in God: surely a remarkable instance of dialectical thought.”» — el prólogo de Robert Alter separa dos cosas que suelen confundirse al leer una tradición mística: la paradoja afirma que algo es a la vez una cosa y su contraria, mientras la dialéctica implica proceso inquieto, cosas que se transforman en sus opuestas. Con esa distinción explica por qué «dialectical» es el término que Scholem aplica una y otra vez al misticismo judío, y acota que Scholem jamás lo enlazó con «materialism», a diferencia de Benjamin

«There are clearly nuances of difference in how Scholem describes the balance of dialectical relation to tradition from one mystic movement to the next. Hasidism is the most conservative; the classical Kabbalah fills the framework of tradition with new spiritual content; Sabbatianism ends up breaking the frame.» — el prólogo de Robert Alter gradúa la relación con la tradición en vez de tratar la ruptura como una sola cosa: el jasidismo es el más conservador, la Cábala clásica llena el marco heredado de contenido nuevo, y el sabbatianismo termina rompiendo el marco. Lo apoya en fórmulas del propio Scholem citadas ahí — la Cábala temprana como «deeply conservative and intensely revolutionary»

«Every line we succeed in publishing today—no matter how uncertain the future to which we entrust it —is a victory wrenched from the powers of darkness» — de Scholem, citado por Robert Alter en el prólogo de esta edición; está escrito en Jerusalén durante la guerra.

«the violation of the Torah is its fulfillment» — la fórmula del antinomismo sabatiano, tal como la resume Alter en el prólogo.