Elliot Wolfson
Elliot R. Wolfson, a Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many publications including Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (1994); Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics (1995); Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (1995); Abraham Abulafia—Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy (2000); Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (2005); Venturing Beyond—Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (2006); Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (2006); Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings From Zoharic Literature (2007); Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (2009); A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (2011); Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (2014); The Duplicity of Philosophy’s Shadow: Heidegger, Nazism, and the Jewish Other (2018); Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiēsis (2019); Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality (2021); The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes: Between Nihilism and Hope (2023).
Address: Department of Religious Studies
Mail Code 3130
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3130
Address: Department of Religious Studies
Mail Code 3130
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3130
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Note to the reader: Because of the constraints of the word limit imposed on me, the discussion of Eckhart is much abbreviated. This insufficiency will be rectified in a revised version of this study to appear in a future monograph on apophasis and infinity in philosophical and kabbalistic sources.
essence attests to its negation. Positively speaking, Ein Sof denotes the spread of the light from the impalpable essence, whose quiddity is comprised of a lack of intangibility. This process is akin to lighting a candle’s flame, wherein the flow is also equated with a receiving vessel. Hִayyon drew a distinction between the Ein Sof and the mystery it contains, on the premise that the word raza hints to ‘the foundation of the matter itself ’. This mysteriousness refers to either the concealed portion (ṣeni'u) of the Attiqa
Qaddiša de-khol Qaddišin, which is hidden in the light it emits, or to nišmeta
de-khol nišmatin (the soul of all souls) dwelling therein. Since the concealed element (the interiority of the First Emanator’s desire) is responsible for the ṣimṣum—a process that was set in motion by the feminine ability to define—we can assume that it should be classified as a female.
Note to the reader: Because of the constraints of the word limit imposed on me, the discussion of Eckhart is much abbreviated. This insufficiency will be rectified in a revised version of this study to appear in a future monograph on apophasis and infinity in philosophical and kabbalistic sources.
essence attests to its negation. Positively speaking, Ein Sof denotes the spread of the light from the impalpable essence, whose quiddity is comprised of a lack of intangibility. This process is akin to lighting a candle’s flame, wherein the flow is also equated with a receiving vessel. Hִayyon drew a distinction between the Ein Sof and the mystery it contains, on the premise that the word raza hints to ‘the foundation of the matter itself ’. This mysteriousness refers to either the concealed portion (ṣeni'u) of the Attiqa
Qaddiša de-khol Qaddišin, which is hidden in the light it emits, or to nišmeta
de-khol nišmatin (the soul of all souls) dwelling therein. Since the concealed element (the interiority of the First Emanator’s desire) is responsible for the ṣimṣum—a process that was set in motion by the feminine ability to define—we can assume that it should be classified as a female.
By placing Susan Taubes in dialogue with a host of other seminal thinkers, Wolfson illumines how she presciently explored the hypernomian status of Jewish ritual and belief after the Holocaust; the theopolitical challenges of Zionism and the dangers of ethnonationalism; the antitheological theology and gnostic repercussions of Heideggerian thought; the mystical atheism and apophaticism of tragedy in Simone Weil; and the understanding of poetry as the means to face the faceless and to confront the silence of death in the temporal overcoming of time through time. Wolfson delves into the abyss that molded Susan Taubes's mytheological thinking, making a powerful case for the continued relevance of her work to the study of philosophy and religion today.
SUNY Press, Theology and Continental Philosophy series, edited by Doug Donkel.
https://www.sunypress.edu/p-7179-d-g-leahy-and-the-thinking-now-.aspx