Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [93]
3. I am currently preparing a collection of Zeitlin's writings, including this essay, for publication in the Classics of Western Spirituality series of Paulist Press. On Zeitlin, including my claim of his influence on Heschel, see my essay “Three Warsaw Mystics” in Kolot Rabbim: The Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 1996), English section, pp. 1-58.
4. The Language of Truth: The Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998), pp. ixf.
5. Heschel actually referred to two specific Hasidic authors, the Sefat Emet (R. Judah Leib Alter of Ger, 1847-1905) and R. Zadok Ha-Kohen of Lublin (1823-1900).
Chapter 1. Y-H-W-H
1. In the background here are such works as Thomas Berry's The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1988); Berry and Brian Swimme's The Universe Story (San Francisco: Harper, 1992); and E. O. Wilson's The Creation (New York: Norton, 2006).
2. I have discussed this nontemporal sense of priority briefly in Seek My Face: A Jewish Mystical Theology (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2003), pp. 55f. The point is that the One underlies the many then, now, and forever. This underlying is the true nature of its priority in the mystical context, one which is converted into temporality as mystical insight comes to be expressed in mythic narrative (since stories require a “before” and “after”). The contemporary Midrashist might see this hinted at in the syntactical awkwardness of bereshit bara’.
3. The relationship of “being” and “Being” in English is roughly comparable to that of HaWaYaH (“existence”) and Y-H-W-H (its consonantal equivalent, rearranged) in Hebrew.
4. This puts me in the camp, as Hillel Zeitlin would have said, of the Ba'al Shem Tov's pantheism, as distinguished from Spinoza's. The distinction between these was key to Zeitlin's return to Judaism and the starting point of his neo-Hasidic philosophy. See his remarks in Barukh Spinoza (Warsaw: Tushiya, 1914), pp. 135ff., as well as in Di Benkshaft nokh Sheynheyt (Warsaw: Velt-Bibliotek, 1910), pp. 34f.
5. I intentionally quote the verse around which Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi wove his essential mystical treatise Sha'ar ha-Yihud veha-Emunah (the second part of Tanya), to indicate the strong Hasidic roots of the theology I am articulating here.
6. Love and awe (ahavah ve-yir'ah, dehilo u-rehimo) are taken by the Jewish ethical literature to be the twin pillars of religious emotion, ever to be kept in balance with one another. For the Kabbalist they represent the proper human embodiments of hesed and din, the right and left hands of the cosmic Self. Classic treatments include Meir Ibn Gabbai's ‘Avodat ha-Qodesh (Venice, 1567), 1:25-28, and (much expanded) Elijah Da Vidas, Reshit Hokhmah (Venice, 1579). In this matter I find myself wholly within the classical tradition.
7. In the idiom of Midrash, the hidden aleph of ‘anokhi lies behind the dualizing bet of bereshit. See my discussion in “The Aleph-Bet of Creation: Jewish Mysticism for Beginners,” Tikkun 7:4 (1992).
8. The reader may properly hear an echo of Martin Buber's words in Eclipse of God (New York: Harper and Row, 1952), pp. 7ff. I too recognize the difficulty in continuing to use this word, alongside the impossibility of doing without it.
9. My discussion of this theological viewpoint, including its roots in an understanding of the divine name, begins in my book Seek My Face.
10. Among the rabbinic phrases that leap to mind here are ke-haden qumtsa’ di-levushey minney u-veyh (“like the locust, whose garbing comes forth from his own self” [Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 21:5]) and hu meqomo shel Olam ve-eyn ha-’olam meqomo (“He is the ‘place’ of the world;