Religions and mystics

Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, the key work of Gershom Scholem, seems to have been greatly influenced by Evelyn Underhill's work Mysticism, first published in 1911, followed by numerous further editions. The English Catholic author had a considerable influence on the way in which Scholem perceived and defined the phenomenon of mysticism, be it in adoption of or in opposition to Underhill's position. Although he refers to it only briefly, this does not mean it was not an influence. A similar phenomenon has been observed in relation to his precursors in the historical critique of the kabbalah which he deliberately omits to mention in order to appear to be a veritable pioneer in the scientific study of the kabbalah. Although Underhill's work is considered of little relevance today, at the time it was seen as an essential reference. Scholem reprises several of her concepts in order to explain what he understands by Jewish mysticism .

Fundamentally, for Underhill, mysticism represents the essential religious experience and also the most elevated expression of human creativity . The idea was familiar to Scholem, for whom the kabbalah constitutes, in spite of its apparent marginality, the heart of Judaism and its vitality. According to Scholem, it is the currents of mysticism at work throughout the history of Judaism which have, at different times, enabled the revival of religious life, threatened by sclerosis due to the excessive emphasis put on orthopraxy or legalism. A fortiori, the kabbalist tradition, as it was formulated by Isaac Luria became, from the 12^th century, the doctrinal system of reference, the theological and mental framework of the whole of Judaism . The kabbalah is not distinct from the religion, on the contrary, Scholem sees it as the heart of Judaism, the very essence of Jewish religious life, a perception which he clearly shares with Underhill.

All the same, Underhill nuances the centrality of mysticism in religious life: mystical experience can never constitute the entirety of a religion, and in order to touch the spirit, it must as a minimum be connected to the particular history of a religion, to its dogmas and its institutions. Mystical experience develops within a particular religious framework, using its vocabulary, its images and codes . This idea, closely developed by Underhill, is dear to Scholem. At the beginning of the 20^th century he tended to define mysticism in an abstract way, as an absolute, detached from all reference to religion itself. However, for our authors, the domain of mysticism cannot be seen as being separate from the religious framework; it constitutes an essential part of it, without being sufficient or encompassing it altogether. This concept is linked to a motif which constantly astonishes Scholem, that is, the capacity of the founding texts of the kabbalah and the whole kabbalist movement throughout its history to remain at the heart of the norms of Judaism even though it was so often situated at the limits of heterodoxy. Scholem observes the strength of the conflicting tensions at work in the different kabbalist trends. This was the case since ancient times with anthropomorphism of the literature of the 'Palaces and the Chariots^[1]' , in the Middle Ages with the Sefer ha-Bahir^[4] and its daring concept of reincarnation or again in the Lurian kabbalah^[2] in the 16^th century and its audacious theory that the forces of evil exist at the very heart of divinity .What astonishes him is that the kabbalists had not been more often and more systematically pursued by the rabbinical authorities, even excluded from Jewish communities. The researcher may find a number of clues to explain this paradox revealed by Scholem. First of all, one must take into account the way in which the kabbalah is positioned, sometimes in a formalised manner, in relation to tradition. With great skill, the kabbalist texts take care to present their often very innovative teaching in traditional forms. The text of the Zohar is a good illustration of this process which consists in adopting a style and language characteristic of the Midrach^[3] , artificially, so that it would appear to be a text completed several centuries earlier and attributed to a famous person recognised by tradition. Furthermore, the Jewish communities, unlike their Christian and Muslim homologues, had few means of repression at their disposal, and no state support. Finally, the kabbalah appears to be intrinsically religious: its study was at first reserved for the most religious members of the community and linked to the practice of the commandments. Medieval and modern kabbalists are in a way the ultra-orthodox of today, respecting strict orthopraxy in spite of their conceptual and doctrinal innovations. The phenomenon is particularly visible in today's Hasidic communities.

All the same, Scholem distances himself from other positions taken by Underhill: notably the idea that mysticism takes the same form everywhere. Scholem concedes that, in fine, mystical experience described by the various religions shares a common base, but he tries to make a case for the distinctiveness of Jewish mysticism, not only in its form, but equally in the themes it addresses (speculation on the creation of the world, the means by which man may learn its secrets and, thus “ascend” to the creator). Furthermore, according to Scholem, even within the kabbalah very different formulations of the mystical experience exist, but that, beyond its diverse forms, it retains its essential unity.

Finally, there is a last point on which Scholem is firmly at odds with Underhill: according to her, the mystical union of the faithful with the divine constitutes the final stage and the objective of process. Mystical experience culminates in the act of union. It is a point which is systematically called into question by Scholem. Thus, Scholem translates the traditional Jewish concept to describe the relationship with divinity, the devekut, as 'communion with God' . By translating it in this way, Scholem is nuancing the concept of devekut, central to Jewish mysticism. The root dbk initially implies a meaning of 'clinging to' or 'attachment'. According to Scholem, communion with the divine does not presume that there is an annihilation of the self of the person of the kabbalist in God, suggesting a fusion of the human and divine essences. Scholem insists that Judaism retains a strict dualism, which leads him to assert a fundamental difference with the way in which mysticism is considered in other religious systems, especially Christianity.

Scholem makes a distinction between Jewish mysticism as it is expressed in Hasidism, which is 'more open to all' and theosophical mysticism, or rather the kabbalah, which is reserved for a small number of people who are mostly interested in speculation on the mechanism of superior worlds. The two major tendencies identified by Scholem match the distinction which Moshe Idel^[5] would clearly establish. Based on his research on Abraham Aboufilia^[6] , Idel distinguishes between kabbalist mysticism, which is ecstatic and prophetic (that of Aboulafia, characterised notably by the precise techniques used to attain mystical union), and kabbalist theosophy, speculative and theurgic, represented by the Zohar (which is above all concerned with the structure of superior worlds, with the creation of the world, and with intermediaries between the spiritual and material world: the sefirot^[7] , emanations of the divine).

Having established the absence of aspiration for a union with divinity by the Jewish mystic, Scholem underlines another characteristic which distinguishes between the way Jewish and Christian mysticisms work: in kabbalist literature there is little emphasis on the personality of the mystic. Scholem stresses that very often the researcher has scant information about the personal life of mystics. On the contrary, their writings are marked by a kind of anonymity, which seems to him to differ markedly from what is observed in Christianity. Here, again, it is likely that Scholem wishes to oppose the emphasis Evelyn Underhill puts on the individuality of the mystic: she strongly rejects the idea that a mystic's own personality is a determining factor in their capacity to experience mysticism. She insists, on the contrary, that the achievement of the mystical experience is open to everyone.

There are a number of possible ways of understanding Gershom Scholem's wish to separate Jewish mysticism from the generality of mystical traditions, while accepting their common foundation. For one, we must consider it within the context of Scholems's religious-political sensibility and his desire to re-establish a Jewish identity around the kabbalist tradition – at odds with the tendencies of the typical enlightened Judaism of the German Jewish community Scholem himself came from. Insofar as the kabbalah would serve as a defence against the weakening, even the dilution of Jewish identity, it is understandable that Scholem would want to preserve its distinctiveness. Another consideration is that Scholem devoted his life to research studies and the demarcation of a field of study of which to a great extent he was the founder. He put a great deal of his energy into defining what the kabbalah is, but also what the kabbalah is not. Contemporary researchers have begun to recognise and look into his refusal to integrate certain pieces of the history of the kabbalah into his studies. Thus, Boaz Huss had demonstrated at length the lack of consideration given by Scholem to the modern and contemporary kabbalah; his exploration of Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism finishes with Hasidism in the 18^th century. Late developments in the kabbalist tradition are not taken into account by Scholem, on the grounds that they depart too much from the classic formulation which is the only one worthy of interest. For our part , the fact that he dismissed the Christian kabbalah (the 'Christian little sister' of the great Jewish mystic tradition) for a long time is based on the same attitude on Scholem's part of discrediting a trend in order to better demonstrate the specificity of that which essentially interested him. But this compartmentalisation he employed with 'authentic' kabbalist trends worthy of study is explained when one recalls his desire to preserve the aspect of identity which the kabbalah represented in his conception of Judaism, which seemed to him the best way to build or rebuild a Jewish identity which he considered to be endangered in the context of German Judaism at the end of the 19^th century.