Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and its Philosophical Implications (review)

Moshe Halbertal, in this groundbreaking study, explores the very idea of esotericism, primarily in medieval Jewish thought but also as a general historical-philosophical category. In so doing he provides valuable insights into both the historical meaning of esotericism as well as into the very structure and nature of that esotericism, and its implications for modern thought and politics.

Historically, Halbertal traces esotericism’s evolution in Jewish thought from the rabbinic restriction on the study of certain “mystical” biblical passages to a broader medieval notion which understands sacred texts in general to have a secret layer of meaning. While the earlier notion of esotericism is quite limited in scope, the later notion became a pervasive element in medieval Jewish thought, potentially imbuing all texts with multiple layers of meaning. This new conception of esotericism revolutionized Jewish thought, uncovering a multiplicity of hidden meanings within sacred texts. Halbertal argues that the idea of esotericism has died out in modern Jewish thought, undermined by both the rise of printing and the enlightenment ideals of transparency and universal knowledge.

Halbertal paints a fascinating picture of medieval Jewish thought as an age of esotericism including astrologers such as Ibn Ezra, philosophers such as Maimonides, and the kabbalists of Provence and Gerona. Halbertal argues (contra Leo Strauss) that the rise of esotericism was not primarily due to the philosopher’s desire to protect himself and society from the consequences of the exposure to philosophy, but rather was a more general response to a crisis in which medieval Jews were no longer convinced by rabbinic theology and cosmology, particularly as concerns the personal notion of God found in those classical texts. Esotericism allowed medieval Jewish thinkers to incorporate worldviews they found more compelling by claiming that these worldviews were in fact the secret heart of Judaism. Esotericism’s particular power was that the notion of secrecy helped forestall objections that these elements were new and foreign to Judaism. The proponent of these worldviews needed simply to point to their esoteric nature to explain their apparent absence from the tradition. In this way, Halbertal demonstrates that esotericism, far from being restrictive, in fact made possible the tremendous variety and diversity of Jewish thought in the Middle Ages. Modern Jewish thought then lacks the radical diversity of medieval thought due precisely to its abandonment of the notion of esotericism.

Halbertal constructs a taxonomy of esotericism, examining in turn internal, instrumental, and essential esotericism and the tensions and paradoxes they contain. Internal esotericism is not concerned with the consequences of exposure but rather sees exposure itself as a kind of violation that diminishes the exposed. Internal esotericism sees the esoteric not as knowledge which cannot be revealed but as a realm which, like our naked bodies or most intimate spaces, are violated by their very revelation. Yet there exists in this esotericism a paradox in that the Divine both hides and wishes to reveal itself. The proper breaching of the boundaries then provides a display of intimacy (in the erotic model) or power (in the political model), which is made possible by the very structure of internal esotericism.

Instrumental esotericism is probably the most straightforward and familiar of the categories. Here, knowledge is kept secret to protect the author of the knowledge from persecution and/or to protect its students from the dangerous and corrosive effects of that knowledge. This approach too contains its own internal tensions and paradoxes. One is the inherent instability of the “hint,” the medium used to reveal esoteric knowledge to the initiated. If the hint is too obvious, it fails to fulfill its purpose of hiding the secret from the general public or censors; yet if the hint it too opaque, it fails to teach and inform the initiated. Halbertal suggests that it is the instability of the hint and its inevitable production of improper interpretations that leads to the breaking of the esoteric. That is...