Lately, I have been reading Moshe Idel’s Kabbalah: New Perspectives.

While I’ve been reading his writing, I haven’t gotten a sense of who is is as a person. Mainly I just knew his reputation as the successor of Scholem.

So I started digging around and found an inspiring video about him.

It is filled with amazing quotes, and I want to excerpt some of them here, to share them and to have them for later, when I need to quote Idel.

And if someone looks for only the constant, like theology, he doesn’t see the change, and doesn’t see what, in my opinion, people who live Judaism are thinking about.

And Kabbalah is the same.

They have a process, and this process is going on all the time. You don’t have a static topic. That’s a lesson that I learned. Yeah I’m studying the text, time and again, but I cannot study exactly the same because there are new texts coming. And new interpretations.

Can you imagine someone would say, I know science. I know literature. You will laugh. You’ll say, what is the meaning? What do you know? You know something.

With Kabbalah it is exactly the same. … I know better some forms of Kabbalah, less other forms of Kabbalah. And they are different. And I don’t attempt to … offer an answer which unifies.

Same thing happens today a lot in the popular Kabbalah. People are teaching and making millions by telling people what is Kabbalah, that we know. I am very far away from it. Meaning, I don’t attempt to simplify. Because that would be a betrayal of what I know.

What I am saying is, I don’t know Kabbalah.

There is no Kabbalah.

My experience of reading texts is that you should come with less questions to the text, and allow the text to speak to you. That’s what I call “freeing the text from the agenda of scholarship.”

I was in Romania all the time up to ’63. ’63 August I arrived here. When I came to Israel I didn’t know anything about Israel. I knew French. I couldn’t read Hebrew. I couldn’t read English. People were very welcoming.

There were also a lot of other shocks. For example, coming from a dull intellectual background of the Communists, I discovered books on yoga. I bought immediately. Whatever money I had, I bought books. Ten books on Hindu philosophy and yoga.

So, that was a huge discovery: the fact that you are free — intellectually free — that’s amazing. I mean, in Romania I knew there are things you don’t say. It’s dangerous to say. So something — meaning, very, very powerful. Later, I understood how powerful it was. To understand that you are free, it’s an amazing discovery.

First, my reading of the Hebrew Bible and Talmudic literature is a literature which is not theological.

Let me attempt to define theology. Normally theology is considered to be a systematic description — meaning, what is theo-logy? Logos? That’s… we discuss the abstract part of it. That is systematic. That’s coherent.

In the Bible it’s not so coherent. Jewish philosophers, or Kabbalists, infused in the observance of the commandments a variety of meanings. For them it was not robotical. It was to participate in the divine life, in the cosmic life, in the inner life, by the commandments.

So that seems to me to be the emphasis found in Kabbalah and not the theological.

Theology can exist in Kabbalah, but that is, how do you call it, subsidiary. It’s not absent — I don’t claim it’s absent — I claim it’s subsidiary.

Theology was not the dominant modus of thinking in the Bible and in Rabbinic Judaism. What was more important is: what do you do?

Since my emphasis is not so on the abstract part, the theological part, but much more on what those people did and how they lived — the rituals, the techniques, the experiences. That is to write not only about texts, about the past; you’re writing about personalities, living personalities, who had an impact on others.

I spoke with the Kabbalists. Things which was a little bit forbidden. I didn’t care.

I attempted to see how the text is performed.

I can see that the topics I’m dealing with are living topics.

I emphasize phenomenology because I believe that otherwise it’s not only dry, it’s not productive to write without it. For instance, I don’t believe there’s one, single good definition of ecstasy. Ecstatic experiences are part of something bigger.

…Look, I said to free the text from theology. Like not to be very simplistic, assuming that two different people reading the same text will have the same reaction. Texts are very complex, and people are seeing different issues, not because they have an agenda, but because they’re different from their character. I’m interested, by saying “free” to allow the surfacing of the complexity. Texts speak about the author, they speak about the period, they speak about the field. They speak about the audience.

From this complex melody everyone is listening to something different.

I believe it’s important to see all those different aspects of complexity and not to say “what’s important is what is the message,” as if there is one message encoded there.

The text is not a mailbox.

It is much more complex.

The language is changing. Even the person writing at the beginning of the book, is changing in comparison to what happened in the end.

That’s life.

I find this video liberating.

Every religion has its orthodoxy or orthodoxies.

But ultimately these orthodoxies are a formal consensus on matters beyond the institutions, just as current scientific orthodoxies are consensus on nature. What is considered true refers to realities that transcend knowledge.

If we believe — as I do — that religious dogma is a kind of truth about realities that transcend truth (especially objective, factual truth — we cannot approach these truths as closed and final — something passed down — an understanding to which we must conform ourselves.

History certainly confirms this. Only mythologized history is simple or coherent.

There is no simplicity or order in the past — not for us.

Our ancestors might have experienced meaning from which that we have become alienated. But we will never repossess that meaning by returning to past forms of life.

We must learn what we can from the past, to help us retrieve meaning from the future.

I love that Idel calls Kabbalah a “living topic”. I call it a subject. It is a medium of understanding, carrying messages (content) about realities that transcend it.

I just learned of a newish book by Idel called The Privileged Divine Feminine in Kabbalah.

This volume addresses the complex topic of the preeminent status of the divine feminine power, to be referred also as Female, within the theosophical structures of many important Kabbalists, Sabbatean believers, and Hasidic masters. This privileged status is part of a much broader vision of the Female as stemming from a very high root within the divine world, then She was emanated and constitutes the tenth, lower divine power, and even in this lower state She is sometimes conceived of governing this world and as equal to the divine Male. Finally, She is conceived of as returning to Her original place in special moments, the days of Sabbath, the Jewish Holidays or in the eschatological era. Her special dignity is sometime related to Her being the telos of creation, and as the first entity that emerged in the divine thought, which has been later on generated. In some cases, an uroboric theosophy links the Female Malkhut, directly to the first divine power, Keter. The author points to the possible impact of some of the Kabbalistic discussions on conceptualizations of the feminine in the Renaissance period.

I have quite a bit of negative feedback from Kabbalah experts on my latest dialectic Sefirot design. But the premise described above is precisely what that design is saying.

I think I will print it.

From Gershom Scholem’s “Ten Unhistorical Aphorisms on the Kabbalah”:

There is something in the Kabbalah like a transformative insight about which it remains doubtful if one might be able to signify it better than as magical or utopian. This insight discloses all worlds, even the secret of ain sof itself, to the place on which I stand. One need not deal with what is above and what is below, one need only (only!) see through the point where one stands oneself. For this transformative insight all worlds are, as one of the greatest Kabbalist has said, nothing but “names that are sketched on the paper of God’s essence.”

This seems to agree with the insight the seventh aphorism just induced in me.

The intuited truths I have struggled for decades to articulate clearly and coherently can be said with perfect clarity, coherence and luminosity in Kabbalistic language. But to ears who have not learned to hear it, this language is worse than foreign. It is the most senseless babble.

No. It is even worse than nonsense. It is meaning-sucking antisense that threatens reason. It is communicable insanity. It is a deadly mind virus, leaked from the inner laboratory of a secret laboratory, hidden under a ruin of a destroyed laboratory, concealed within a mirage of a long rebuilt laboratory. But the laboratory itself has escaped.

Yetzirah enworlds. Yetzirah is known only by its enworlding, and its enworlding is known only by its fruit: the givens of our “lived experience” and its consequent truth.

Empathy: Yetzeros.

Anything with graspable form, whether material thing, objective fact, or “subjective” phenomenon is of Assiyah.

Here “subjective” belong in quotes, because subject, properly understood, is entirely of Yetzirah. As a hand cannot grasp itself, as seeing is not itself visible, as hearing is not itself audible, the forming of Yetzirah is not itself a comprehensible form. (Comprehension cannot be comprehended, only existentially apprehended. But our apprehensions, reduced to events — if we are alert, receptive and diligent — can be understood in ways that open new possibilities of participatory knowing: Da’at d’Yetzirah.)

Beriah creates. Beriah does not form what is already here (or rather, more precisely, Beriah forms through/as Yetzirah.) Beriah creates finitude from its own infinity, which to us looks like something from nothing. Creation ex nihilo.

A profound event in Yetzirah rebirths us into a new world. We find ourselves reborn in a new rebirth of Malchut, a.k.a. Kingdom. This event allows Yetzirah to shine into the new life through Keter d’Assiyah, a.k.a. Crown, or if you prefer, Halo.

But multiple events of this kind demonstrates in the most undeniably immediate way that Yetzirah can enworld us myriad ways. What kind of reality is this that can bear forth entire worlds, each with its own shocking ontological novelties?

Shocking ontological novelty — inconceivable prior to its revelation, masked by oblivion — but thereafter impossible to re-obliviate — bringing forth new realities, new distinctions, new understandings that instantly recrystallize All in new brilliant clarity — from the depths of apparent Nothing! From Ayin.

Now — and only now — can we catch “sight” of Keter d’Yetzirah which opens the gates to the Kingdom of Malchut d’Beriah, from whom the brilliant halo of Keter d’Yetzirah, implodes forth. This is the ineclipsible light of exnihilism.

When we understand fourfoldedly, we vivify ourselves fourfoldedly, and inhabit four-worlds-in-one.

Every halo is a tunnel… up the trunk of the Trees of Life…

…up the artery in the divine circulatory system (divine light flowing down, divine minerals flowing up)…

…up the spinal column of Adam Kadmon, encased in thirteen vertebrae.

At the core of Kabbalah is a tetrad — a hierarchical tetrad, the tetrad — most compactly expressed in the Tetragrammaton — ???? — Yod – Hey (1) – Vav – Hey (2).

The Olamot, the four worlds — Atzilut (Emanation), Beriah (Creation), Yetzirah (Formation), Assiyah (Actualization) — correspond to each of these letters, as does our own selfhood across these four worlds — the distinctive kind of subjective presence and participation in each of the worlds. One very important kind of participation — increasingly important as one ascends from the actualizing world of Assiyah toward Atzilut — is modes of understanding, exemplified in four modes of understanding scripture, the hermeneutic tetrad PaRDeS. These definitions come from Nissan Dovid Dubov’s Inward Bound:

• Pshat – Simple interpretation corresponds to the world of Assiyah. (Hey 2)
• Remez – Allusionary interpretation corresponds to the world of Yetzirah. (Vav)
• Drush – Homiletical interpretation corresponds to the world of Beriah. (Hey 1)
• Sod – Secret/mystical interpretation corresponds to the world of Atzilut. (Yod)

At this point, I’d call these modes, respectively: factual, literary, revelatory, transformative.

The reason these hermeneutic modes matter to me, apart from the simple fact that hermeneutics is intrinsically fascinating, is that these modes of understanding are, I believe, our best and most tangible access to what otherwise might seem grand abstract speculations on unknowable metaphysical ultimates.

We “know” Yetzirah and its relationship to Assiyah because we have understood truths belonging to each, in a manner suited to each. We know how to read literary fiction and lose ourselves in its imaginary, vividly populated, poetic space, while bodily seated in an actual chair in an actual room. And when we have turned our attention from our book, stood up and looked around actual places, we have experienced how the mood, tone and coloration of our book clings to the world around us. Two parts of ourselves are activated together, and sometimes this feels like a restoration of inner integrity.

If you understand the experience of the scenario I just described, imagine taking this kind of experience as indicative of realities that elude the comprehending grip of factual knowledge.

Try to entertain the possibility that the materialism most educated people take for granted is only one possible mode of understanding, optimized for predicting and controlling the behavior of physical matter — but that this mode of understanding comes with tradeoffs, namely a loss of meaning and purpose. The cost of a materialist metaphysic is nihilism.

A materialist will conceptualize my scenario (of the experience of being absorbed in reading) physically and biologically. It will be all about evolution, organisms, societies, economies, brains, neurons, paper, ink, molecules, atoms, quarks, energy, etc., and, in doing so, they will close off myriad incommensurable modes of understanding. These modes of understanding, however, are the very channels that open us to feeling our belonging in creation. No amount of fairness or justice, affordance of dignity, acknowledgment of our various self-classification in this or that social identity can do anything to replace this lost meaning. And indulging in carnal or political pleasures or passions, provides only temporary relief, and eventually none at all. Addictions all terminate this way.

Placing material reality, and political realities in broader contexts of reality and ways of knowing, and giving each its own full due validity — science works, and justice is good! — allows us to develop higher selves who open us to the source of all meaning.

If we do not do this, we will become increasingly capable of controlling material reality, but increasingly alienated from who we are or why we should care about anything. We will rely on stimulating animal rage in order to even feel our own selfhood through that thick numbness that engulfs us. This is why I am one of the increasing numbers who advocate a return to religion, though I believe that many, perhaps most, of the loudest religion advocates are as clueless about religion as those who despise and oppose religion.

So, again, we know the Olamot, who are the various levels of emanation of the Absolute / One / Ein Sof by how we, ourselves, are present in them, and we know our presence through our participation — most tangibly through how we understand and the contents of our understanding. Our participation across the Olamot activates and unites our selves — highest to lowest — together and within their source, bathing our lives and worlds with meaning and light. So we know reality, ourselves and our relationship to God (in God’s own hierarchical Allness — ???? ) — all together, inseparably.

So:

• In Assiyah, Nefesh (vital soul) animates as the Pshat / factual mode of understanding. (Hey 2)
• In Yetzirah, Ruach (spirit) animates as the Remez / allusionary (literary) mode of understanding. (Vav)
• In Beriah, Neshema (breath of life) animates as the Drush / homiletic (revelatory) mode of understanding. (Hey 1)
• In Atzilut, Chayah (living one) animates as the Sod / mystical (transformative) mode of understanding.

One more related idea… A mistake I have been making is confusing the Sefirah/Sefirot associated with each world for the world itself. Or worse, the idea of the Sefirah, for the Sefirah, for the world.

The kinds of ideas beings like ourselves can have, ideas that are defined conceptual objects, belong only to the world of Assiyah. Actual, physical objects are confined to Malkhut in Assiyah, and the rest are mental or emotional objects.

When we try to think worlds above Assiyah, the best we can do is contemplate mental objects that imperfectly correspond to and transmit meaning from being beyond objective knowledge.

So, it is by conceptual objects of the Sefirot that we begin to understand higher worlds. By Yesod, Hod, Netzach, Tif’eret, Gevurah and Chesed we can conceptually approximate and receive the superformal meanings of Yetzirah. By Binah, we can conceptually approximate and receive the meaning of Beriah. By Chokhmah we can conceptually approximate and receive the meaning of Assiyah. This is (I think) why we speak of Sefirot corresponding to or predominating among worlds.

In all of this, of course, I may very well be wrong, especially where I say, parenthetically, “I think”. I’m being cautious, where I am aware of a need for caution. I don’t know why I bother, though. Our deepest errors are never where we expect them.

All these understandings, of course, make me insanely happy, which always compels me to letterpress something beautiful and holy.

I’m thinking of a reference card, connecting the Tetragrammaton to the four Olamot, each linked to a Sefirot, to the levels of soul, to the hermeneutic modes of PaRDeS.

This is a first, rough, highly inadequate draft. I’m going to consult with a rabbi to ensure everything is correct, both the ideas and the Hebrew. And I’m going to work at improving and perfecting its beauty and clarity.

This is the deepest and fastest change in understanding I’ve experienced since 2011, when my world was inverted, razed and reconstituted by Bruno Latour.

I’m no longer a philosopher at all. I have great respect for objective knowing, even more for objective praxis, but both are positively dwarfed by my respect and love for what transcends objective truths and the realities we can know by objective means.

I’m no longer a philosopher. Perhaps I never was one. What I am is a Kabbalist, still novice.