Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [102]
41. That Creation is a form of divine self-disclosure or revelation is taken for granted in Zohar. It is the implied meaning of the grand opening phrase of the Zohar on bereshit: be-resh hurmenuta de-malka (Zohar 1:15a), “As the King began to ‘reveal’ or ‘authorize’ Himself,” referring to the self-manifestation of the hidden Godhead in the sefirot, preceding Creation.
42. T. B. Pesahim 61a.
43. Shemot Rabbah 41:7, playing on harut (“carved”) and herut (“freedom”).
44. Mishnah Avot 6:1 (Perek Kinyan Torah). That source mentions only a voice of warning, but later tradition weaves it into a web of sources that indicate an ongoing revelation. See sources and discussion in Scholem's “Revelation and Traditions as Religious Categories in Judaism,” in his The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays (New York: Schocken, 1971), pp. 282ff.
45. See Zohar 1:3a and note carefully its reading of Ex. 32:8 (“These are your gods, O Israel”), one that would dismiss much of Western religion as idolatry.
46. Tzava'at RiYVaSH (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1975) p. 24, #76.
47. The Hebrew term for Egypt, mitzrayim, is taken supraliterally by Midrashic and Hasidic readers to mean “straits,” any inner “place” that narrows one's perspective.
48. Meir Simhah Kahan of Dvinsk, Meshekh Hokhmah (ed. Yehudah Kooperman, Jerusalem, n.d.), pp. 293ff. My thanks to my student and now colleague Sharon Cohen Anisfeld for pointing me to this source.
49. Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5. This text and subject will be treated at greater length in chapter 4.
50. T. B. Nedarim 8a, Yoma 73b.
51. If you see me poised midpoint between Rosenzweig and Kaplan in that sentence, you've got me right.
52. See the comment by R. Nahman of Bratslav: “I am a ‘know what to answer the heretic.’” Hayyey MoHaRaN II, 7:13. Cited in my Tormented Master (University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1979), p. 317.
53. T. B. Shabbat 88b.
54. I am delighted to see that the new Reform prayer book Mishkan Tefillah has inserted the ten commandments alongside the morning shema’. This is a very worthwhile liturgical innovation, rectifying an ancient loss.
55. T. B. ‘Eruvin 13a.
56. I am grateful to James Carroll for that formulation. He originally offered it with regard to anti-Jewish passages in the New Testament.
57. This is said quite openly in the mystical tradition, where Torah is understood to be the mysterious name of God: “He is His name and His name is He.” R. Azriel of Gerona, Perush ha-Aggadot (Jerusalem: Meqitsey Nirdamim, 1945), p. 37.
58. The “seventy faces of Torah” are widely referred to in later Jewish literature as early rabbinic teaching, but their first mention is in Numbers Rabbah 13:15.
59. For one of many examples see Degel Mahaneh Ephraim, bereshit s.v. zeh sefer toledot adam #2 (Jerusalem, 1963), 6a.
60. See the discussion by Simon Rawidowicz in his “On Interpretation,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 26 (1957): 83-126.
61. I refer to Bialik's famous essay “Halakhah and Aggadah.” I discuss it in “Confessions of an Aggadic Jew” in the forthcoming Festschrift for Neil Gillman.
62. R. Shelomo of Radomsk, Tif'eret Shelomo, Rosh Hashanah (Jerusalem, 1992) 74b.
63. Zohar 2:99a.
64. T. B. Shabbat 105a.
65. Sefat Emet, parashat ki tavo’. The Language of Truth, pp. 327f. For earlier Hasidic treatment, see the BeShT as quoted in Degel Mahaneh Ephraim, ha'azinu s.v. Ki lo’ davar (Jerusalem, 1963) 266a. See also R. Nahman of Bratslav, Liqqutey MoHaRaN I, 19:9, and his reading of ‘Osey devaro. He also seems to understand that only we humans (speakers, medabberim) can bring God out of His silence and into speech.
Chapter 4. Israel
1. Liqqutey MoHaRaN II:63.
2. The classical triad of “God, Torah, and Israel” was already universalized by Franz Rosenzweig to refer instead to “mankind.” While I am similarly a universalist, and this book, as has been made clear, aims to reach beyond Jewry, the place of “Israel” in a Judaic theology cannot be avoided. We need to struggle with