Time and Eternity in Jewish Mysticism: That Which Is Before and That Which Is After

241 Pages·2015·1.339 MB·English

by  Brian Ogren

Time and Eternity in Jewish Mysticism
Studies in Jewish
History and Culture
Edited by
Giuseppe Veltri
Editorial Board
Gad Freudenthal
Alessandro Guetta
Hanna Liss
Ronit Meroz
Reimund Leicht
Judith Olszowy-Schlanger
David Ruderman
Diana Matut
volume 48
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sjhc
Time and Eternity in
Jewish Mysticism
That Which is Before and That Which is After
Edited by
Brian Ogren
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Time and eternity in Jewish mysticism : that which is before and that which is after / edited by Brian Ogren.
  pages cm. — (Studies in Jewish history and culture, ISSN 1568-5004 ; volume 48)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-29030-3 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-29031-0 (e-book) 1. Time—Religious
aspects—Judaism. 2. Future life. 3. Eternity. 4. Mysticism—Judaism. 5. Cabala. I. Ogren, Brian, editor.
 BM729.T55T56 2015
 296.7’12—dc23
2014045863
ISSN 1568-5004
ISBN 978-90-04-29030-3 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-29031-0 (e-book)
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff and Hotei Publishing.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Contents
Acknowledgements  vii
List of Contributors  viii
1 Introduction: That Which is Before [And That Which is After]  1
Brian Ogren
Part 1
Setting the Theoretical Stage
2 Retroactive Not Yet: Linear Circularity and Kabbalistic
Temporality  15
Elliot R. Wolfson
Part 2
Philosophical Defijinitions of Mystical Time
3 Neoplatonic Time in Isaac Israeli: On the Beginning of the End of Love
[As the Beginning of the Beginning of Love]   53
Sarah Pessin
4 Solomon Maimon’s Philosophical Exegesis of Mystical Representations
of Time and Temporal Consciousness  66
Dustin N. Atlas
Part 3
On Time and Pre-existence
5 Chaotic Beginnings: Yohanan Alemanno on the Time of Creation  83
Brian Ogren
6 The Case of Jewish Arianism: The Pre-existence of the Zaddik in Early
Hasidism  97
Shaul Magid
vi Contents
Part 4

Historical Time
7 The Ritualization of Messianic Time in Early Jewish Mysticism:
The Apocalypse of Abraham as a Test Case  113
Andrei A. Orlov
8 The Notion of Time as History in Kabbalistic Treatises from
Renaissance Italy  125
Fabrizio Lelli
9 The Mitnagdim and the Rabbinic Era as the Age of Reason  136
Eliyahu Stern
Part 5
Experiential Soul Time  
10 Soul Time in Modern Kabbalah  151
Jonathan Garb
11 Time, Eternity and Mystical Experience in Kabbalah  162
Adam Afterman
Part 6
Conclusion Beyond Time  
12 “Higher than Time”: Observations on Some Concepts of Time in
Kabbalah and Hasidism  179
Moshe Idel
Bibliography  211
Index  223
Acknowledgements
This present volume had its origins in papers presented at the annual Rockwell
Symposium of the Department of Religion at Rice University, which convened
on November 4–5, 2013. I would like to thank the Rockwell Fund for its gener-
ous support, as well as the Humanities Research Center at Rice, which kindly
contributed and allowed for the involvement of an international array of schol-
ars at the symposium. I thank the members of my department at Rice for all of
their help and encouragement. I am truly privileged to call the Department of
Religion at Rice my home. Special thanks are due to Jeffrey Kripal, to April
DeConick, and to Sylvia Louie. Without their help and assurance, neither the
symposium nor this volume would have ever come to fruition. I thank my wife
Sharon, who not only continually inspires me to excel, but who also meticu-
lously organized the meals and many of the logistics of the symposium out of
which this volume sprang. I thank my daughter Danielle for constantly remind-
ing me that between the times of editing and writing about time, it is also
important to take the time to play, and to laugh. I thank Giuseppe Veltri who
showed enthusiasm concerning the publication of this volume with Brill and
who took the time to meet with me in New York to give me sound editing
advice, and I thank the anonymous reviewers who provided important con-
structive feedback. Finally, I thank the contributors to this volume for their
time, for their patience, for their cooperation, and for their fine contributions.
A work is only as good as its parts, and in this case, I am grateful for the collab-
orative efforts of the remarkable scholars whose work constitutes the present
volume.
Brian Ogren
Houston, Texas
October 10, 2014
List of Contributors
Adam Afterman
is a Senior Lecturer in Kabbalah and Medieval Jewish Thought in the
Department of Hebrew Culture Studies at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Afterman
serves as a fellow at the Shalom Hartman institute in Jerusalem and at the
Pope John Paul ii Center for Interreligious Dialogue in Rome. His recent book
on Mystical Intimacy in Medieval Jewish Thought was published in 2011 with
Cherub Press.
Dustin N. Atlas
is a recent graduate of the Ph.D. program in Religion at Rice University.
He is currently a Golda Meir Post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. His work concerns Germanic Jewish thought, in particular:
metaphysics and aesthetics.
Jonathan Garb
is the Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah in the department of Jewish
Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his doctorate in
2000, and in 2010, he was awarded the Hebrew University President’s Prize for
Outstanding Researcher. His latest books are: “The Chosen will Become Herds”:
Studies in Twentieth Century Kabbalah (Yale University Press, 2009); Shamanic
Trance in Modern Kabbalah (The University of Chicago Press, 2011), Kabbalist
in the Heart of the Storm: Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (Tel Aviv University
Press, 2014).
Moshe Idel
is the Max Cooper Professor Emeritus from the Department of Jewish
Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also a Senior Research
Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jerusalem, is the current President
of the World Union of Jewish Studies, and has been a member of the Israeli
Academy of Sciences since 2006. Among his awards are the Bialik Prize for
Jewish Studies (1993), the Gershom Scholem Prize (1995), the Israel Prize for
Jewish Thought (1999), the Emmet Prize (2002), and the Rothschild Prize
(2012). Among his many publications are Saturn’s Jews (Continuum, 2011),
Kabbalah in Italy: 1280–1510 (Yale University Press, 2011), Old Worlds, New
Mirrors, On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought, (University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2010), Kabbalah: New Perspectives (Yale University Press,
List Of Contributors ix
1988), Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (Yale University
Press 2002), and Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (Continuum, 2007),
Kabbalah and Eros (Yale University Press 2005), The Mystical Experience in
Abraham Abulafia (suny Press, 1987), Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (suny
Press, 1988), and most recently Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth (Peter Lang,
2014), Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (suny Press, 1995), Messianic
Mystics (Yale University Press, 2000), Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical
Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (suny Press, 1989)
Fabrizio Lelli
is Associate Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at the University of
Salento in Lecce, Italy. His research activity focuses mainly on the philosophical
and mystical literature of late Medieval and Early Modern Italian Jewish
authors and on the intellectual relations between Jewish and Christian
scholars in the Italian Renaissance. He has extensively published on the
cultural relations between Southern Italian Jewish communities and the
Balkans. He is currently collecting written and oral testimonies of Jewish
refugees in dp camps operated by the United Nations in post-wwii
Southern Italy.
Shaul Magid
is the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Professor of Jewish Studies at Indiana
University/Bloomington. His most recent book is American Post-Judaism:
identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Indiana University Press, 2013).
His forthcoming book Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the
Construction of Modern Judaism, will be published with Stanford
University Press.
Brian Ogren
is the Anna Smith Fine Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies in the
Department of Religion at Rice University. He specializes in early modern
Jewish thought, with a research emphasis on philosophy and kabbalah
during the Italian Renaissance. His first book, entitled Renaissance and
Rebirth: Reincarnation in Early Modern Italian Kabbalah appeared in 2009
(Brill), and he is currently working on a new book concerning mystical and
philosophical treatments of creation.