The Politics of Mysticism: Some Jewish Examples

Claims to esoteric knowledge are inescapably political. To assert control over a body of knowledge that derives from a source other than human reason is a gesture of power and authority vis-à-vis those who are not part of the privileged chain of transmission. Mysticism and esotericism are often found together. This is certainly the case for Jewish mystics for whom Kabbalah is literally “that which is received.” Kabbalists regard their doctrine as one that originates with revelation, often associated with the theophany at Sinai, or with supernatural pronouncements from the prophet Elijah to select rabbis through the ages. Whatever the source, kabbalistic discourse is built on the claim that Jews have a secretly guarded doctrine that enables them(kabbalists in particular) to control the secrets of the cosmos and wield divine power.

The political dimensions of such claims cannot be understated. By claiming exclusive secret knowledge regarding the nature of the functioning of the cosmos, kabbalists sought to establish a bulwark against critiques of Judaism. In many respects, Kabbalah developed in the thirteenth century as a counter-theology to Christian polemics. While Jews were represented in medieval Christian discourse and art as blind to the true meaning of their own scriptures, overly carnal in their religious practices, and fruitlessly waiting for a messiah who would never come, Kabbalists constructed an inversion of such claims. In the kabbalistic imagination, Jews have been handed a secret revelation that describes the inner workings of the divine realm known as the ten sefirot, or “luminosities,” and asserts the power that Jews have to bind with that realm, drawing divine blessing into the world through the practice of Jewish law. According to the kabbalists, Jews heroically sustain the cosmic order by means of their divine souls, and they unite the Godhead through their fidelity to a religion openly derided by those outside the esoteric chain of transmission. Since the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic texts were already well known to Christian scholars and often employed in anti-Jewish polemical tracts, Kabbalistic texts provided a needed refuge from anti-Jewish critique. By claiming to reveal the divinely incarnate status of the Jewish people and the true, inner meaning of Jewish texts and ritual practices that have always been present since Sinai but have never been discussed in writing owing to their secrecy, Kabbalists enabled the creation of an irreducible domain of Jewish knowledge that sought to be immune to both scholastic and philosophical critique.

The medieval kabbalistic notion of Jewish superiority was generally not employed as a justification for inflicting harm on non-Jews. That is not to say that kabbalistic pronouncements of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews were in any way subtle or muted. To take one exemplary formulation found in the Zohar: “Rabbi Abba said, ‘Soul of every living being’ [Gen. 1:20], this refers to Israel, for they are the children of the blessed Holy One and their souls derive from Him. The souls of the rest of the nations; whence do they derive? Rabbi El’azar said, ‘from those impure aspects of the left, defiling them and anyone who approaches them.’”¹ Given their minority status, Jews generally lacked the capacity and the ability to benefit from the oppression of Gentiles. The polemical, anti-Christian and anti-Muslim dimensions of Kabbalah were part of a strategy for reinforcing notions of the meaning, power, and relevance of Judaism for Jews. Consider, for example, the comment by Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi, a kabbalist from the generation of the expulsion from Spain living in Jerusalem. In one of his texts he outlines eight benefits of studying Kabbalah. He is critical of those Jews who do not embrace the legitimacy of the kabbalistic tradition (intracommunal politics), and he derides non-Jews for their lack of understanding due to their ignorance of the Jewish esoteric tradition. In ha-Levi’s words:

One will come to perceive, through the opening of the portals of this wisdom, that he shall go forth from darkness to light, and that before he was like one who was blind, “for this is not the city, and...