Abstract
In the past 60 years, the study of Jewish mystical thought has blossomed. Once the exclusive arena of a select and traditionally educated few, it is now the most rapidly expanding field in Jewish studies. We are still compiling the canon of kabbalistic texts—many languish in archives, unedited, unpublished, and hence, mostly unknown. Even the most important collections of medieval kabbalistic manuscripts have yet to be correctly identified or fully cataloged. Little by little, scholars in the field are becoming better able to account for these works and make them available to readers. However, in the rush to produce printed texts, the graphic elements of the manuscripts have been largely ignored. The manuscripts contain a rich tradition of graphic representation that remains to be cataloged and analyzed. The study of kabbalistic manuscripts, and in this the study of its diagrams, is largely neglected. This is attributable to two prevalent trends in the study of Jewish mysticism. The first is the conventional textual orientation of Jewish studies, which is in turn based on the common misunderstanding that Jewish culture is iconoclastic, forbidding visual representations such as those found in kabbalistic diagrams. The second is a tendency among both orthodox scholars of kabbalah and its popularizers to treat it as a divinely received and therefore ahistoric tradition.1
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Notes
See the work of Giulio Busi, especially Qabala Visiva (Torino: Einaudi, 2005).
Daniel Abrams, “New Study Tools from the Kabbalists of Today: Toward an Appreciation of the History and Role of Collectanea, Paraphrases and Graphic Representations in Kabbalistic Literature.” Journal des Etudes de Cabale 1 (1997): 1–7.
Nicholas Sed, “Une cosmologie juive du haut moyen age: la Berayta di Ma’aseh Bereshit,” Revue de Etudes Juives 123 (1964): 259–305;
Nicholas Sed, “Le texte, les manuscrits et les diagrammes,” Revue de Etudes Juives 124 (1965): 23–123.
Nicolas Sed, La mystique cosmologique Juive (Paris: Editions de l‘École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Berlin; New York: Mouton: 1981).
Giulio Busi, Libri e Scrittori nella Roma Ebraica del Medioevo (Rimini: Luise Editoro, 1990).
Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (New York: Schocken Books, 1991).
See Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (New York: Schocken, 1991).
See also Elliot Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Visions and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Wolfson speaks eloquently about noetic imaging of kabbalistic symbols, but does not discuss the graphic representations that accompany the manuscripts he studies.
These articles include: Nicolas Sed, “Une cosmologie juive du haut moyen age la Berayta di Ma’aseh Bereshit,” Revue de Etudes Juives 123 (1964): 259–305;
Nicolas Sed, “Le texte, les manuscrits et les diagrammes,” Revue des Etudes Juives 124 (1965): 23–123;
Klaus Herrmann and Massakhet Hekhalot, Traktat von de Himmlischen Palaesten (Tübingen: Übersetzung und Kommentar, 1994)
Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Nicholas de Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 84–85.
Malachi Beit Arie, The Makings of the Hebrew Book, Gefen Books, Jerusalem: 1993.
Malachi Beit Arie, Hebrew Manuscripts East and West, British Library, London: 1993.
Joseph Gutman, Hebrew Manuscript Painting (New York: George Braziller, 1978).
Exodus 20:4–6. See Joseph Gutmann, The Image and the Word (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press for the American Academy of Religion, 1977)
and Kalman Bland, The Artless Jew (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
See Kalman Bland, The Artless Jew (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Chapter 1 treats this issue at length.
Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941), 44. According to Scholem, the earliest Hekhalot text dates to about the second century. However, the dating of these texts is hotly disputed.
See Moshe Idel, “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and the Kabbalah,” Jewish History 18 (2004): 197–226.
Brian Lancaster, “On the Relationship between Cognitive Models and Spiritual Maps,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 7, no. 11–12 (2000): 231 [231–50].
Aryeh Kaplan, Jewish Meditation (New York: Schocken, 1985). See especially chapters 5–8.
See Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004);
Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008);
Rebecca Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, Harvard Theological Studies, 1998).
See also Filip Vukosavovic, ed. Angels and Demons: Jewish Magic through the Ages (Jerusalem: Bible Lands Museum, 2010), 12–33.
Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages. ed. and tr. Nicholas de Lange. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 68.
Ronald Kiener and Lawrence Fine, Early Kabbalah (New York: Schocken, 1985).
Moshe Idel, “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and the Kabbalah,” Jewish History 18 (2004): 197–226.
See Elliot Wolfson, “The Theosophy of Shabbetai Donnolo, with Special Emphasis on the Doctrine of Sefirot in Sefer Hakhmoni,” Jewish History 6 (1992): 281–316.
James Elkins, Domain of Images (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 52.
For example, Ruth Kempson writes in her book Semantic Theory, “Our semantic theory must be able to assign to each word and sentence the meaning or meanings as sociated with it in that language.” Ruth Kempson, Semantic Theory (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 2.
Daniel Abrams, “Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism,” Sources and Studies in Jewish Literature 26 (2010): 203, 259.
Clifford Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973).
Dan dates the text to the twelfth century, while Hillel Kieval places it in the thirteenth (see Joseph Dan, The Special Cherub Circle (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1999), and
Hillel Kieval, “Pursuing the Golem of Prague,” Modern Judaism 17 (1997): 1–23.
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© 2012 Marla Segol
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Segol, M. (2012). Word and Image in Medieval Kabbalah: Interpreting Diagrams from the Sefer Yetsirah and its Commentaries. In: Word and Image in Medieval Kabbalah. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137043139_1
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