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In the Lurianic Kabbalah we
are witness to a theosophical account of the world’s creation, which at the
same time provides a foundation for a theory of human creativity as well as a
general model for understanding linguistic significance. By explicating how the symbolic dynamic of
the Lurianic Kabbalah accounts for both human creativity and the signification
process, we can not only gain insight into human psychology and language, but
also deepen our understanding of the Kabbalah and its capacity to reveal the
hidden nature of God and the world.
I will begin by providing a general
account of the Lurianic theosophy, and then proceed to show how the Lurianic
symbols provide the foundation for a theory of human creativity. I will then
briefly describe the Kabbalist’s views on language, and close by offering a
preliminary outline for a Lurianic model of linguistic meaning.[1]
Isaac Luria (1534-72) was perhaps
the greatest of Kabbalistic visionaries. Living and teaching in the mystical
community of Safed, which had laready produced such luminaries as Moses
Cordovero and Joseph Karo, Luria developed a highly original theosophical
system which, though based in the Zohar, introduced a number of symbols that
hearkened back to early Gnostic ideas. These symbols were highly determinative
for the subsequent course of Jewish mysticism and became the foundation for the
Hasidic movement. Luria himself wrote comparatively little, and it is mainly
through the works of his disciples, most notably Chayyim Vital (1543-1620) that
we are aware of Luria’s unique system of thought.
The Lurianic
Kabbalah is an extremely complex system of thought[2]
that integrates a variety of symbols into what appears, at least on the
surface, to be a purely mythological account of the creation and the ultimate
destiny of the world. In the following
pages I outline the bare essentials of the Lurianic system; describing only
that which is necessary in order to comprehend the main points of my subsequent
exposition. Those interested in a more
detailed account should consult works by Scholem, Tishby, and my own Symbols of the Kabbalah and Kabbalistic Metaphors (see below).
Like previous Kabbalists, Luria begins and
ends his theosophical system, with the one, infinite God, who is beyond being,
existence and time, yet who contains and sustains within itself all that ever
was, will, or could be. This godhead, the Kabbalist’s Ein-sof (The Infinite, literally “without end”) is
Ayin (nothingness) prior to creation but is potentially
and actually the All. Ein-sof is the
potentiality, source, substance and goal of everything that is, and Ein’ Sof’s “light”, the Or Ein-sof (Light of the Infinite) is the energy that pervades and
sustains the cosmos. However, in order to complete itself as both Ayin and Yesh (nothing and being) Ein-sof
must manifest itself in a world. It does
so through a paradoxical process by which it negates, withdraws, contracts and
conceals its own infinite being, thereby providing an opening or place for
finite existence. In an act that Luria termed Tzimtzum
(concealment and contraction) Ein-sof
withdraws from a point within itself, yielding the “metaphysical space” for an
indefinitely large series of finite, seemingly independent worlds (ha-olamot) that are nonetheless
dependent upon Ein-sof for their
substance and continued vitality.
Acts of contraction alternate with emanations of
divine light, as the cosmos first comes to consist of Adam Kadmon,
a Primordial Human, who embodies within itself the archetypal ideas and values
out of which the finite world, and in particular, the soul of humanity, are
formed. The Kabbalists termed these
archetypal ideas and values the ten Sefirot,
a term that is related to Hebrew roots for “number,” “book” and
“sapphire,” and which came to connote
the fundamental dimensions of meaning and value in God, humanity, and the
world. The Sefirot,
which originally exist within Ein-sof
(as middot or divine traits) become
the elemental components of the created world.
They are, according to Luria, emanated by Adam Kadmon, the Primordial Man, and in their original form they
are vessels (Kelim) for containing
the further emanations of the divine, infinite light. These sefirotic
vessels embody the archetypal values of Will, Wisdom, Understanding, Kindness,
Judgment, Beauty, Endurance, Splendour, Foundation, and Kingship, which in the
Kabbalah encompass the basic structure of the cosmos.
Luria, followed other Kabbalists in holding that the Sefirot are complementary to or perhaps
even identical with the Otiyot Yesod,
the “22 Foundational Letters” of divine speech, which the proto-Kabbalistic, Sefer Yetzirah, had held were the
building blocks of creation. Luria held
that the Sefirot are organized into
five basic Olamot
(worlds), each of which contain varying proportions of each of the
ten Sefirot, as well as into
countless lesser worlds and several
divine personalities (Partzufim),
representing masculine and feminine aspects of God. Our world, Assiyah (the world of
"Making") is the most remote from the infinite God.
Luria was again innovative in his view that because
the Sefirot as they were originally
emanated were disunified and incomplete, they shattered under the impact of the
infinite light. This shattering, known
as the Shevirat ha-Kelim (the Breaking of
the Vessels) results in a condition in which all being is in a state of exile (galut): everything is out of place and
the lower worlds are riddled with spiritual, moral and psychological
contradictions. In addition, the masculine and feminine aspects of the cosmos,
which had hitherto been face to face (panim
a panim), are rent apart, turning
their backs on one another (acher v’ acher).
Shards from the broken vessels tumble through the
metaphysical void (tehiru) and in the
process capture sparks (netzotzim) of
divine light, forming husks or shells (Kellipot),
which are comprised of a lifeless outer shell and divine inner core that is
alienated from its source in Ein-sof. These husks constitute the dark and evil
realm of the Sitra Achra (the
"Other Side"), but are also the constituents of our actual world.
With the advent of the Breaking of the Vessels, the Sefirot immediately begin to reorganize
themselves into Partzufim (Visages or
Personalities), which in archetypal fashion represent the developmental stages
of man from birth to old age. The Partzufim restore the world by
reengaging in conjugal relations. However, this restoration, which is known as Tikkun ha-Olam (the restoration and
emendation of the World), must be completed by mankind. It is mankind's divinely appointed task to
extract (birur) and liberate the
captured sparks of divine light from their shells, gather them together, and raise
them on high, so they may once again rejoin the infinite God, Ein-sof.
In so doing, mankind completes creation and, in a fashion, gives full
actuality to God himself. The restored
world of Tikkun is the very meaning
of creation and the ultimate destiny of the universe. It is only with this
restoration and emendation of the world that Ein-sof, who had originally been Ayin (nothing) is completed and fully becomes itself.
The above, then, is a brief account of the Lurianic
Kabbalah; what I will refer to as its “fundamental "myth", or
"basic metaphor." I will argue
that this myth or metaphor provides the foundation for a theory of human
creativity and a model for linguistic significance. In order to assist in the
comprehension of these views it will be helpful to restate the Lurianic myth in
purely abstract terms (I have placed the Hebrew name of the Lurianic symbol for
each abstract stage in parentheses): (1) a primal nothing/being or “Absolute” (Ayin/Ein-sof) (2) initiates a contraction or self-negation
(tzimtzum), which gives rise to (3)
an imagined and alienated realm (ha-olamot)
(4) within which a created, personal subject arises (Adam Kadmon). (5) This subject embodies the fundamental structures,
ideas and values of both God and the human world (Sefirot), However, (6) these Sefirot
are inherently unstable and deconstruct (shevirat
ha-kelim), leading to (7) a further alienation of the primal energy from
its source (kellipot, Sitra Achra)
and (8) a rending apart of opposites, resulting in the intellectual, spiritual,
and moral antinomies and perplexities of our world. As a result of (9) a spiritual, intellectual,
and psychological process (birur),
(10) the ideas and values of the world are restored in a manner that enables
them to structure and contain the primal energy of the Absolute, and complete
both God and the world (tikkun ha-Olam).
We are now in a position to
understand how the Lurianic theosophy is both a theory of human as well as
divine creativity. I will later argue, after presenting some more material from
the history of Jewish mystical thought, that one can understand the basic
metaphors of the Lurianic Kabbalah as outlining the essential form of
linguistic creativity and exchange, and, more specifically, providing a model
for the significance of each and every linguistic proposition and act. However,
I will first examine how the Lurianic system as a whole, in its progression
from Ayin (Nothing), to Ein-sof (the Infinite), tzimtzum (Contraction), Sefirot (Archetypes/Values), shevirah (Breakage), Kellipot (Encapsulating “Shells”), Birur (extraction) and tikkun (Restoration) can be understood
as a metaphor for the structure of all creativity, thought and inquiry.
To
begin with just as Ayin, nothingness,
expresses the character of Ein-sof
prior to creation, nothingness characterizes the human subject in the initial
moment of creativity. In this moment,
the creating or inquiring intellect is Ayin,
empty or ignorant, experiencing a lack
prior to its initiating a creative work or inquiry. In the initial moment when one seeks to
create or inquire, one stands before infinite plenum of possibility, which at
the same time is an emptiness, lack or void, one that is analogous to, if not
identical with the nothingness, Ayin
which the Kabbalists equate with Ein-sof,
the infinite God. We should here note that the Zohar equates Ayin not only with Ein-sof, but also with the highest Sefirah, Keter, which it also refers to as desire or will. Prior to
creating, one experiences a lack (an Ayin
or void) and a desire which engenders a will to generate or fulfill.
Paradoxically,
however, the first act in the
creative (or investigative process) is to restrict one’s field, i.e. to limit
one’s creative aspiration or range of inquiry, to narrow the possibilities, and
focus on a limited area, in much the same way that, in creating and revealing
itself to a world, Ein-sof performs
an act of tzimtzum, contraction,
limitation and concealment of its own infinite potential. Having constricted one’s field in a human act
of tzimtzum, one has an initial flash
of insight (analogous to the Or Ein-sof—the
infinite light—bursting forth from the Primordial Man) and selects the values
or tools for one’s inquiry. In
expressing one’s initial insight and then creating a “draft” or positing an
initial assumption or hypothesis to contain it, one enters a positive moment in
the creative process, just as Ein-sof
enters a positive moment in creation by emanating the value archetypes or Sefirot. The Sefirot, which are initially rather fragile and disjoint serve as
the vessels for containing the divine light, and serve as the elements of
creation, which must, however, go through a processes of rupture and emendation
before they can fulfill their role. Like these Sefirot, which are unable to contain the full emanation of divine
energy, one’s initial assumptions, insights or ideas are inevitably inadequate
to comprehend, express or contain the subject matter of one’s creation or
inquiry. There is thus a shattering of
one’s hypothesis, idea, or creation, in much the same manner as the original Sefirot were shattered with the
“Breaking of the Vessels” (Shevirat
ha-Kelim). The result of this shattering is that the energy or notions
produced by one’s initial efforts are partially obscured and lost to one’s
endeavor or inquiry, in a manner analogous to the entrapment of the sparks (netzotzim) by the shards of the broken
vessels which form the “husks” or Kellipot
that obscure the divine creative light.
Just
as the Kabbalists held that humanity is enjoined to extract (Birur) sparks of divine light from their
“husks,” the individual faced with the failure of his initial efforts must
proceed to both recover what remains of his initial creative insight and
reorganize his work or inquiry in a manner that is more suitable to the subject
at hand. This latter process is
perfectly analogous to the Lurianic act of tikkun,
in which the lights recovered from the husks are emended and reorganized as the
restored Sefirot and Partzufim (divine visages) of the World
of Tikkun, and the process of
creation is finally perfected and brought to a close. In Kabbalistic terms, the completed work
becomes one piece in the overall re-creation and restoration of the world. However,
there is no real end, as the entire process repeats itself ad infinitum. Along the way there is a dialectical
progression in which an initial lack or creative urge (Ayin) surveys a field of infinite possibility (Ein-sof), constricts and focuses itself (tzimtzum), posits an initial hypothesis or creative effort (Sefirot), which proves inadequate to its
subject matter and breaks apart (shevirah),
only to be recovered and revised (tikkun).
In the process ideas that are initially
clearly defined, are torn asunder, and come to include what was originally
thought to contradict them or lie outside their scope, thus becoming open to
that which they were initially meant to exclude.
The Lurianic
Kabbalah is not on its face primarily a linguistic theory of creation. However,
the Jewish tradition in general, and the Kabbalistic tradition in particular,
clearly understood divine creativity in linguistic terms, and both the early
and later commentators on Luria’s system provided linguistic interpretations of
the Lurianic symbols. In this and the following sections I explore the role of
language in the Kabbalah in general, as well as the linguistic interpretations
of the Lurianic symbols that were provided by Luria’s followers and the
Hasidim. These interpretations provide the basis for my view that the Lurianic
system is a model of language.
For many Kabbalists, language was
thought to be both the vehicle of creation and the substance of the world.
Already in the earliest
proto-Kabbalistic work Sefer Yetzirah
(The Book of Formation) we find a theory of creation in which the universe is
said to have been created via the 22 consonant/letters of the Hebrew
alphabet. These letters and the ten Sefirot, which in Sefer Yetzirah constitute a parallel, numerical metaphor for
creation, together constitute “the thirty wondrous paths of creation.”[3] For Sefer
Yetzirah it is the Otiyot Yesod,
the foundational letters, through which God “formed substance out of chaos and
made nonexistence into existence.”[4]
The idea that language as the
vehicle of creation is present in what is generally regarded to be the earliest
Kabbalistic text, Sefer ha-Bahir,[5]
and in an anonymous early Kabbalistic text, “Source of Wisdom,” where we find
the theory that the world was created through an inscription of divine speech
in the Primordial Ether (Avir Kadmon).
The locus classicus of the Kabbalah,
the Zohar asserts that it is “the
supernal letters that brought into being all the works of the lower world,
literally after their own pattern.”[6]
The Kabbalists were, of course, simply reflecting
biblical and talmudic notions of the world’s origins in divine speech. The
rabbis had interpreted the early chapters of Genesis to mean that the world was
created via ten divine utterances, and the view ultimately developed that the
language of the Torah sustains
creation as well. The Talmud (Eruvin, 13a) records the advice of Rabbi
Ishmael to a scribe: “be careful in your work for it is the work of God, if you
omit a single letter, or write a letter too many you will destroy the whole
world.”
Moses
Cordovero, who was the leading Safedian Kabbalist prior to Isaac Luria held
that the language of the Torah we actually read (and the language that thereby
ultimately comprises the world) is the result of transformations in a hidden,
primordial language, which is the ultimate “deep structure” of our world, and
which transforms itself in each new age. Cordovero held a theory of
linguistic/ontological parallelism in which language and the world reciprocally
determine one another.
Israel
Sarug, an early exponent of the Lurianic Kabbalah, held that the torah, as it
was originally conceived in the highest world of Atziluth, is comprised of all possible combinations of the 22
consonants of the Hebrew language. This
idea is suggestive of both an infinite number of “possible worlds,” and, as we
shall see below, a type of infinity, which can be denoted as “linguistic space,”
that is indeed larger than any infinity of the actual or even the possible
(i.e. “logical space”).”[7] According to Sarug, the descent of the
letters through the various lower worlds caused them to take on distinct
combinations that yielded holy and angelic names, and finally the Torah itself,
which is a blueprint for all of creation. Each world, on Sarug’s view, is
constructed out of combinations of the primordial letters.[8]
The
Hasidim further radicalized the idea of linguistic creation. Schneur Zalman of
Lyadi, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, commenting on the words of the Baal Shem
Tov wrote: “For if the letters (which comprise divine speech) were to depart
[even] for an instant, God forbid, and return to their source, all the heavens
would become naught and absolute nothingness, and it would be as though they
had never existed at all, exactly as before the utterance, “Let there be a
firmament.”[9] Further,
Schneur Zalman held, in accord with a suggestion in Sefer Yetzirah, that the entire cosmos was created as a result of
the substitution, transposition and rearrangement of the “letters” which
comprised the ten biblical sayings with which God is described in Genesis as
creating the world.
Scholem
has pointed out that various Kabbalists and Hasidim held that human speech
creates new powers and lights in the world.[10] On this view, humanity, in its continual
combination and recombination of letters (or phonemes and morphemes), is
continues the creative process initiated by God.
Language and
Tzimtzum
Having
briefly described some general Kabbalistic views on language and creation, I
will now turn to the specifically linguistic interpretations of the symbols of
the Lurianic Kabbalah.
Schneur
Zalman of Lyadi, the first Lubavitcher rebbe, in his Shaar Ha Yichud Veemmunah, proffers a linguistic account of the tzimtzum, the divine act through which
the infinite G-d, Ein-sof, conceals
and contracts itself into a world. According to Schneur Zalman, in tzimtzum Ein-sof contracts and invests itself in the combinations of letters
that comprise the “ten utterances of creation,”[11] i.e. the phrases in the book of Genesis where
the world is described as having been created by divine speech (e.g. “And God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was
light”). According to Schneur Zalman,
the tzimtzum operates through the
letters’ “combinations of combinations, by substitutions and transpositions of
the letters themselves and their numerical values and equivalents”.[12]
For Schneur Zalman, each substitution and transposition of words and letters
involves a contraction and concealment of the divine light and life. According
to him, the Sefirot or
“vessels," which contain the divine light are the five “final” letters in
Hebrew, i.e. those whose “roots” always terminate a word, and which cannot be
followed by any other letters.[13]
Luria’s interpreters also elaborated
a second theosophical symbol, Shevirat
ha-Kelim, the Breaking of the Vessels, in a linguistic framework. As put by
Moses Chayim Luzatto
all the stages of extended Light are also represented
by combination of letters. These are the
functioning lights from which everything comes into being. Since they were unable to endure the
abundance of Light, the combination of letters became disarranged and were
severed from each other. They were thus
rendered powerless to act and to govern.
This is what is meant by their ‘shattering’.[14]
On Luzatto’s view the Breaking of the Vessels is a
shattering or disruption of linguistic coherence and meaning.
The
reverse or correction of this process, tikkun
ha-Olam, the Restoration of the World, involves a re-creation of meaning
and significance. According to Luria’s
student and early expositor, Chayyim Vital, the restored world of tikkun will be a world filled with
meaning and significance in which the lights that constitute the reconstructed Sefirot of tikkun, are emanated via the mouth of Adam Kadmon,[15]
and are comprised of phonemes and letters.
Vital emphasizes that these letters/lights are bound together in
significance by being emanated through a "single orifice. [16] According
to Vital, as the letters rush out of the mouth of Adam Kadmon they strike
and bump one another, fusing together and giving birth to the restored
vessels. Vital tells us “each letter, as
we know, is a dead or meaningless entity, but you put them all together and
there is light and significance.”[17]
For Vital the world prior to tikkun
(the World of Points) is a formless and essentially meaningless realm in which
the primordial letters are completely separated from one another. It is only
after tikkun that they are united in
significant discourse. When we recall that tikkun
is driven by the moral, spiritual and intellectual efforts of humankind, we
realize that the process of tikkun is
one through which humanity renders the
world meaningful.[18]
In the moment just prior to speech
or writing, we have said or written nothing, yet the whole universe of
discourse is potentially before us. This “moment”, prior to any speech or
writing, is aptly signified in the Lurianic equation of Ayin (nothing) with Ein-sof
(the infinite). A person takes up a pen and is about to write, or takes a
breath and is about to speak. In that moment it is possible for him or her to write
or utter virtually anything. Here we should recall Sefer Yetzirah’s dictum that the permutations of primordial letters
potentially constitute all that is or could be: “Twenty-two foundation letters:
He engraved them, He carved them, He permuted them, He weighed them, He
transformed them, And with them, He depicted all that was formed and all that
would be formed.”[20]
Imagine, for a moment, that we are approached by a
complete stranger, who we perceive is about to open his mouth in speech. Most likely
he will utter something routinized and predictable, asking us for the time or
for directions to a nearby location. But
just possibly he may utter something completely novel, something that we
consider to be of poetic beauty or great philosophical moment; he may well say
something that has perhaps never been said by anyone before in the history of
the universe (he may tell us, for example, that “the Jew’s are the acorns of
Shakespeare’s trees”) and say this in any of a number of the world’s languages.
He may say something completely nonsensical—stringing phonemes together that
(presently) have no sense in any language.
If we think about it for a moment, the person about to speak has before
him or her an infinity of great magnitude.
The number of sentences, paragraphs and discourses
that can be constructed in the English, indeed in any language, has to be
amongst the largest of infinities, as it would ipso facto make reference to and be descriptive of all states,
numbers, conditions, interpretations, etc. that could exist in any other
infinity. [21] To take
one example, a mere numerical infinity is obviously expressible using just a
small subset of the propositions available to any English speaker, i.e. those
propositions that describe numbers. If
we reflect for a moment, the entirety of a language is co-extensive with the
entirety of all existing and imaginable states of affairs and their interpretations.
Now there may be states of affairs, e.g. on worlds in other galaxies,
that no one has ever perceived or understood, but at least in principle, these
could be described in our language.
Putting aside for the moment the question of whether there are states of
affairs that are completely inexpressible, it is clear that a person who is
about to speak or a writer who is about to write finds him or herself on the
threshold of an infinity of such an immense magnitude that one could easily be
tempted to say that he or she is on the threshold of the Absolute, in a manner
that is analogous, though certainly not identical, to the position of God just
prior to his uttering the words that gave rise the world. The speaker on the threshold of speech has
thus far uttered nothing, yet he or
she has before him/her the possibility of all things. [22] In that moment he participates in the
dialectic of nothingness and infinity that characterizes Ein-sof, the Kabbalists’ infinite godhead.[23]
Once
speech or writing has begun, a selection is made, a specific route is taken, untold
possibilities are excluded and a limited idea begins to take contract form. In
this act, as Schneur Zalman implies, we have a perfectly human parallel to the Lurianic notion of the
divine tzimtzum or contraction. Such a tzimtzum
operates throughout the proposition,
progressively contracting and specifying its significance, each world
excluding whole realms of potential meaning until the period, the punctuation
that marks the (temporary) end to the tzimtzum,
specifies (as much as possible) the proposition’s content. Each word, and particularly each mark of
punctuation, serves as the vessel for containing and limiting a proposition or
other meaningful utterance. Recall that for Schneur Zalman, the tzimtzum through which Ein-sof contracts and conceals itself
and thereby creates the world, operates through the 22 foundational letters
(which Sefer Yetzirah had held were
the basic elements of the cosmos).”[24]
According to Schneur Zalman each substitution and transposition of words and
letters brings about a contraction and concealment of the light of the infinite
God, so that language, is in effect, a process in which an infinite plenum of
meaning is constricted, concealed and finitized into a specific meaning. Schneur Zalman implicitly recognizes the importance
of punctuation in the linguistic/tzimtzum
process, suggesting that it is the five Hebrew letters with final forms—which
are only found at the end of words and which cannot be followed by any other
letters,[25] that
have a special role in containing the divine light.
Recall
that for Luria, the first product of the divine tzimtzum is Adam Kadmon,
the Primordial Man. With this idea, Luria signals the fact that the contraction
of the divine can only reveal finitude and specificity for a knowing human subject. I will have more to say about the role of
language in the emergence of the human subject in later sections; here it
suffices to point out that is only with speech and writing, and the consequent
expression of a point of view that the human subject emerges, one who
asserts a proposition, asks a question,
issues a command, etc. Just as a-human-subject-in –general (Adam Kadmon) emerges with the divine tzimtzum, a particular human subject
emerges in the process of speaking and writing.
As the proposition is completed, a specific content,
idea and value is asserted, questioned, commanded etc. Such assertions,
questions, or commands obviously, take the form of audible phonemes or letters
of written language.[26] This phase in the process of speech or writing
is analogous to the emergence of the Sefirot
in the Lurianic theosophy. The Sefirot are, in effect, the content of
God’s divine speech and writing. Here we should recall that the Kabbalists not
only regarded the Sefirot to be the
content or elements of all creation, but that they typically followed Sefer Yetzirah in drawing an equivalence between the Sefirot and the 22 foundational letters. Sefer Yetzirah had
suggested that the very term Sefirah
is related to root words connected with language: books (Sepharim),
text (Sepher), number (Sephar) and communication (Sippur).[27] Further, in his classical exposition of the
Lurianic Kabbalah, Sefer Etz Chayyim,
Chayyim Vital held there to be two basic metaphors for the description of
celestial events, the form of the human body (which he takes to be the
equivalent of the Sefirot embodied in
the Primordial Man) and the shape of written letters. Vital draws an equivalence between the Sefirot and the letters when he writes:
“There is yet another way to describe by analogy, which is to depict these
higher things through the shape of written letters, for every single letter
points to a specific supernal light.” [28]
For Vital, whatever can be described in terms of the Sefirot and Adam Kadmon can
also be described in terms of the shapes of the Hebrew letters that comprise
the divine name. Vital states: “All ten Sefirot,
including each and every single world, when considered as a whole, are like an
aspect of a single Divine Name, YHVH.”[29] We can say that Kabbalistically, in positing
a specific thought content, value or communication, a linguistic proposition
passes from the negative stage of contraction embodied in the tzimtzum into the positive linguistic
stage of Sefirot.
The Sefirot,
in effect, comprise what is actually written or said, the words on the paper or
the speech embodied in sound. Indeed,
certain Kabbalists held that the progression of the Sefirot, represented the development of thought and speech in the
divine and human mind. On their view Keter
(the highest Sefirah, which they
equated with Ayin, nothingness)
represents the will or desire, and Chochmah,
the concealed representation or thought of that desire. The third Sefirah,
Binah is an internal, inaudible
voice, which becomes audible speech only with the sixth Sefirah. Tiferet:[30] As put by the Zohar: “If you examine the
levels (Sefirot) [you will see] that
it is Thought, Understanding, Voice and Speech, and all is one, and Thought is
the beginning of all... actual thought connected with Ayin (Keter, will).”[31]
However, what is said cannot be completely delimited,
circumscribed or understood; it splinters into an indefinite variety of
ambiguities, passes over into its opposites, is displaced and incomplete. We
have a human linguistic analog to the next phase in the Lurianic theosophy, the
inability of the sefirotic vessels to contain the full measure of divine light
and the Breaking of the vessels (Shevirat
ha-Kelim), the displacement and shattering of the Sefirot, and the
dispersal of their broken shards throughout the worlds. .A proposition is
understood differently by each of its listeners and is often multivalent and
ambiguous even for the speaker or writer him/herself, who finds both that
his/her idea cannot be fully specified or contained by letters and or sounds,
and that these same letters and sounds, convey far more than he or she
originally (consciously) intended to say.
The opening to ambiguity, the “sliding of the signifier” is in effect
the breaking open of the proposition
to that which is outside itself. Even before it is completed, the proposition,
breaks asunder and becomes alienated in each of the subjectivities who hear or
read it, in much the same manner as the shattered sparks from Adam Kadmon and the Sefirot become alienated in the husks (Kellipot) with the Breaking of the vessels. This rupture, in which communication between
subjects is blocked, is symbolized in the Lurianic theosophy by the turning on
the masculine and feminine aspects of the cosmos (the Partzufim), from a position of being face to face (panim a panim) to one of being back to back (acher v’ acher). While
such a radical rupture in communication may not be the fate of all, or even a
majority of propositions, there is always a threat of failure of communication,
miscommunication, and over-communication as the proposition overflows and
breaks the vessels of letters and speech within which it was originally
constricted and contained. As Jacques Derrida has insisted, this potential for
rupture is actually part of the very possibility of language itself.
The meaning of the proposition,
which was constricted and delimited in an act of articulation and punctuation (tzimtzum) must now be restored and
emended through acts of interpretation which actually complete the proposition,
much as humanity’s tikkun is said to
complete the creation that was begun by God. It is such acts of interpretation
that restore communication, and, in Lurianic terms, result in the re-turning of
the conjugal “face to face” relations
between masculine and feminine divine aspects, the Partzufim. (on Kabbalah and interpretation see S. Drob: The Torah of the Tree of Life: Kabbalistic
Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Infinity in Scholem, Idel, Dan, Fine and
Tishby.
The ambiguity and temporary loss of significance that
is potentially imminent in all propositions is disambiguated and recovered by a
reader or listener, who restores, but also restructures and emends the
proposition via interpretation. Such interpretation
reverses the limiting process (tzimtzum)
by which the proposition was created. In this manner the reader or listener
performs an act of tikkun
(restoration, emendation), which re-expands the original contracted meaning,
yielding a myriad of possibilities and associations, potentially connecting the
proposition to an entire language and to the infinite plenum of meaning (Ein-sof) (and thus nothingness) with
which the speaker began.
The
Kabbalists were acutely aware of the nearly limitless expansion of significance
that is potentiated through acts of understanding and interpretation.[32]
The Kabbalist Azulai, for example, held that each time an individual reads a
given verse of Torah the combination of its linguistic elements change in
response to the call of the moment.[33]
Scholem has pointed out that the Kabbalists adopted from the Midrash the idea
that every passage, phrase, and letter in the Torah has 70 aspects or faces,
corresponding to the 70 nations that were said to inhabit the world, a number
which the Zohar regards as symbolizing the inexhaustibility of divine meaning.[34]
The Safedian Kabbalists went so far as to hold that there are 600,000 aspects
of meaning to the Torah, corresponding to the number of Israelites present at
Sinai, and thus to the number of “primordial souls” that are present in each
later generation.[35] Certain Kabbalists even held that the Torah
itself was originally given as an incoherent scramble of letters and that these
letters rearranged themselves in response to historical events. The Lurianic
Kabbalist Israel Sarug held that the Torah manifests itself in different ways
in different levels of spiritual and material existence, and that at the
highest level (the world of “Atziluth”) it exists as all possible combinations of
Hebrew letters. In this way the Torah is said to correspond to the set of all
possible conceptual, and linguistic worlds[36]
and, thus, to the limitless possibilities inherent in human writing and speech. [37] Expanding this conception of the Torah, to
the whole of language, we might say that as a proposition is understood and
interpreted it necessarily breaks asunder into a myriad of interpretive
possibilities but ultimately (re)establishes itself within the infinite context
of human language and becomes a part of the “great human conversation,”
ultimately merging with the infinite possibilities of language itself.
We
can now see how the writing or utterance of a single proposition necessarily
traverses the Kabbalistic dynamic of Ayin,
Ein-sof, tzimtzum, Adam Kadmon, Sefirot, Shevirah and tikkun. In
short we can understand the proposition as being structured by “moments” of
emptiness or lack (Ayin), infinite
possibility (Ein-sof), focus and
contraction (tzimtzum), the emergence
of a subject or point of view (Adam
Kadmon) positing of an initial idea and/or value (Sefirot), rupture, dispersal and alienation of significance (Shevirah, Kellipot), restoration, reinterpretation (tikkun) and, ultimately, infinite expansion (return to Ein-sof). Each time we write or speak we bring into
play the entire process of world creation. Put another way, we might say that
the Lurianic “basic metaphor,” the dynamic expressed by the Lurianic myths, is
not only descriptive of cosmic creation, but is coiled up and contained in the
smallest units of significance that are uttered by a speaking human subject.
Our
analysis, however, is not yet complete; as promised we can and should say
something more about the emergence of the human subject in the context of our
Lurianic model of language. Where
precisely is the human subject in the
dynamic we have just described, how does it evolve, and how is that subject is
accounted for in the Lurianic myth?
After all, propositions don’t utter themselves; there is always a
subject that is connected to them, either as speaker or listener, writer or
reader. Without such subjects, the letters or sounds that constitute a sentence
would be dead marks on a page or meaningless vibrations in the air.[38]
This is a question of profound significance, one which, I believe, can be
answered, in part, through an analysis of the emergence of the
linguistic/psychological subject in the context of the Lurianic metaphors.[39]
The
Kabbalists were themselves concerned with the emerging subject in their
consideration of the development of God’s “I”.
For example, during the 13th century there emerged among many
Kabbalists, a theory of how the Sefirot
progressively reveal the identity of God.[40]
This theory was based on an esoteric reading of the first words of the book of
Genesis: Bereshit bara Elohim (In the
beginning God created...). These words were interpreted to make mystical
reference to the Infinite’s creation of His own subjectivity, via the
transformation from the nothingness (Ayin)
of the first Sefirah, Keter, to the individuated selfhood (Ani, or “I”) of the final Sefirah, Malchut. The explanation
involves an analysis of the emergence of a grammatically hidden subject (in
Hebrew the subject of a verb is often hidden or understood in the conjugation
of the verb itself) and the emergence of
the divine “I” ( “ANI” ) through a rearrangement of the letters in the Hebrew
root for nothingness “AIN.”[41]
Without
resorting to this kind of esotercism, I will briefly explore how the emergence
of a human subject with the utterance of a proposition can readily be accounted
for in the Lurianic scheme.
The
primal subject is Ayin,
nothingness. As philosophers such as
Sartre have argued, human subjectivity, because of its capacity to alter its
perspective and focus itself on any and all things, is, unlike all other beings
(which have determinate identities), no-thing. As no-thing, the subject is nothing
in-itself, yet free to posit and desire anything. In the moment before speech, at a time of
lack and desire, the human subject is both Ayin
and everything, not yet individuated or defined, yet open to infinite
possibilities. This undefined subject is purely “transcendental”, meaning that
it is not (yet) yours, mine or that of any specific individual, but is rather subjectivity per se. However, with first
breath of speech, and the contraction of infinite possibility into an arena of
focused interest, a primordial subject emerges.
For the Kabbalist’s this initial subject is the Primordial Man, Adam Kadmon, who encompasses all
humanity through the emanation of the letters and Sefirot, but who carries little, if any mark of individuality. It
is only with the contraction of possibility via the tzimtzum, and emergence of specific thoughts and values, i.e. when
we hear what a specific man or woman has to say, that an individual ego
emerges. This subject, which corresponds
to the stage of the Sefirot, is a
superficial, uncomplicated ego; one that has yet to be broken, complicated or
misunderstood. As we have seen, such a simple subject or ego cannot endure, as
it is immediately destined to be misinterpreted, and alienated from its own
words. In this moment we have arrived at the stage of the “broken subject,”
which corresponds to the Lurianic Shevirah,
or “Breaking of the Vessels.” What was
once a straightforward communication is now broken into and obscured by
manifold (mis)understandings in the minds of other subjects, as well as (in
what essentially amounts to the same thing[42])
in the individual’s unconscious.
An
“unconscious subject,” emerges, corresponding to the Lurianic stages of Sitra Achra (the “Other side’) and the Kellipot (the “husks”), the stage in
which the divine light is entrapped and obscured by the shards of the broken sefirotic vessels. It is only when one’s words become a part of
a dialog with others, and one’s meanings are restored, emended and expanded
both for others and for oneself that a more comprehensive manifold or rational
subject emerges. This stage corresponds
to the Lurianic process of Birur
(extraction of the divine sparks from the husks), and the reconstruction of the
Sefirot in the World of Tikkun. With the expansion of one’s
consciousness afforded by a fuller comprehension of the multiple significance
of one’s words, we are again afforded a glimpse into the infinite, and an
opportunity to transcend one’s individual point of view in favor of a
perspective based in a wider humanity and God.
The rational, manifold subject thus returns to the infinitude of Ein-sof and the no-thingness (freedom)
of Ayin, but in the process, after
having said something significant, the individual has now traversed a portion
of the world, raised a spark, and completed a piece of creation.
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[1] I am indebted to Zev
bar-Lev for helpful comments on an earlier draft.
[2] Idel has stated “There can be no doubt that Lurianic Kabbalah
is one of the most complex intellectual systems ever produced by a Jewish
author—indeed, as Gershom Scholem has correctly asserted, by any human mind.”
See M. Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 170.
also, David Biale, “Gershom Scholem’s Ten Unhistorical Aphorism in Kabbalah:
Text and Commentary”, Modern Judaism,
5, 1985, pp. 67-93. Scholem’s
point, however, that the Lurianic Kabbalah is more “hidden and occult” than
nearly any other system of thought.
[3] Sefer Yetzirah 1:1, Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation, Rev ed. (York Beach, Maine:
Samuel Weiser, 1997), p. 5.
[4] Sefer Yetzirah 2:6, ibid., p.
131.
[5] See especially Sefer ha-Bahir secs. 11a, 13, 18, 27,
48, and 54. Book Bahir, Joachim Neugroschel trans. In David
Meltzer, The
[6] Zohar 1:159a; H. Sperling & M. Simon, The Zohar. (
[7] The doctrine of “logical space”, of which actual
existing things are but a mere subset, originates with Ludwig Wittgenstein in The Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (D.
F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, trans. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1961). By analogy, “linguistic space” would
consist of all possible utterances (or all
possible combinations of letters), and “possible reality” being only those
utterances or combinations of letters that make sense (i.e. say
something). The ”actual world” would be
a subset of these.
[8] G. Scholem, “The
Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism” in Gershom Scholem, On the
Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 80.
[9]Schneur Zalman, Shaar
Hayichud Vehaemunah, Chapter 1; Zalman,
Likutei Amarim-Tanya, p. 287.
[10] Ibid., p. 76.
[11] S. Zalman, Likutei Amarim-Tanya (Brooklyn: Kehot,
1981), p. 319 (Shaar ha Yichud VehaEmunah 7).
[12] Ibid.
[13] Zalman, Likutei Amarim-Tanya, p. 299 (Shaar ha Yichud VehaEmunah 5).
[14] M. Luzzatto General Principles of the Kabbalah, trans.
Phillip Berg (Jerusalem: Research Centre of Kabbalah, 1970),, p. 64.
[15]In other places Vital says that these lights are
emanated from the forehead of Adam Kadmon.
[16] The lights and vessels
emanated in tikkun are completely
connected with one another. They are
called Akudim (striped or bound
together), alluding to Jacob's dream of "striped, spotted and blotched
sheep". The Torah uses the word Akudim to mean both striped and bound.
[17] Chayyim Vital, Sefer Ez Chayyim 2:2, The Breaking of
the Vessels. (Translation from working notes of my study of this work with
Rabbi Joel Kenney.)
[18] Here we should also note that in a process that
parallels these linguistic events, the Sefirot
and Partzufim (divine personalities),
which from another perspective are also said to constitute the cosmos, come to
be unified in such a manner that each Sefirah
is contained within each of the others and each successive Partzuf comes to be the “soul” of one of the others.
[19] In previous works I
have shown how the Lurianic metaphors are implicit within a variety of myths,
philosophies, and theories, including central notions in Hegel, Freud, and
Jung, as well as theories of human development (e.g. Piaget) and scientific
progress (e.g. Kuhn). [19] These
theories have this basic metaphor as their content in part because they are
theories about the activities of the
human mind, and in part because they are the product of human cognition, creativity and inquiry.
[20] Sefer Yetzirah 2:2, Kaplan,
ibid. p. 100.
[21] It may not, however, be
the largest of infinities, because while it may include descriptions of
non-linguistic acts, things and events, it does not include them in and of
themselves. For example, the sum total
of everything that can be said or written in every language does not include
the complete mental state of an artist prior to commencing a painting, or the
painting itself, though it would include descriptions of these things in
virtually infinite detail.
[22] One might here be inclined to counter that In the
moment before speaking anything can be said, but in point of fact, for the vast
majority of us, what we actually do say is governed by a set of tacit rules
that drastically limit our possibilities of speech. Indeed, this one reason why
many are inclined to say that the genius, and even the madman is, much closer to God, than the cleric. What comes out of
the mouth of the latter is totally routinized and predictable, whereas what
emerges from the mouth of the genius madman is often totally surprising and
new. Before speaking, the madman’s field is wide open. His or her speech lies outside the boundaries
established by the ruling discourse, and for this reason his speech touches
upon, what Lacan refers to as the “real,” that which has not (yet) been
circumscribed and routinized by ordinary linguistic convention). The moment before the madman speaks provides us
with an intimation of Ein-sof, the
infinite possibility before God spoke and created the world.
[23] We might suppose that before God said “Let there be
light…” he could have said anything. God was on the threshold of speech, and
virtually any and every possibility lay open before him, and from these endless
possibilities, of worlds that exist or could exist between the extremes of
darkness and light, life and death, he chose to speak and form our world. But
was He really on the threshold of infinite speech before uttering His
biblically recorded words? After all, without creation, what is/was there for
God to say? Indeed, it is only after
creation that it even make sense to say that “prior to speaking anything
can be said,” for if there is not yet any
thing (even any idea) how can one say anything.
If Ein-sof is to be a true infinite,
a meaningful infinite, an all inclusive infinite covering every possibility and
every actuality, the possibilities and actualities that he is must have somehow
been prefigured prior to his choosing to create the world. It is thus not a God
prior to creation that can represent Ein-sof
(the Infinite) in the moment before speech, but only a God (or humanity)
contemplating the whole of a vastly infinite created world. We are here
reminded of Sefer Yetzirah’s dictum
that “the beginning is wedge within the end,” (cite) and the Zoharic view that
God Himself, the creator of humanity is, paradoxically, created by human
endeavor. (cite)
[24] Ibid.
[25] Zalman, Likutei Amarim-Tanya, op. cit., p. 299 (Shaar
ha Yichud VehaEmunah 5).
[26] The Kabbalists, in
contrast to the Biblical tradition, often, but not always—see below--, placed
an emphasis on the written letters as opposed to spoken language.
[27] Sefer Yetzirah 1:1, Kaplan, Sefer
Yetzirah, op. cit., p. 5.
[28] Sefer Etz Chayyim 1:1; p. 28,
Also see, Menzi and Padeh, The
Tree of Life: Chayim Vital’s Introduction to the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria (Northvale,
NJ: Jason Aronson, 1999), p. 54.
[29] Sefer Etz Chayyim 1:1; p. 28, Menzi and Padeh, The Tree of Life, p. 59.
[30]
[31]Zohar, I, 246b.
Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar,
op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 326. Compare
Sperling & Simon, The Zohar, op.
cit., Vol. 2, p. 382.
[32] See Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections (
[33]Scholem, “On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism,”p. 76.
[34] Midrash, Numbers Rabbah
xiii,15, see Scholem “The Meaning of the Torah”, op. cit., p. 62.
[35] Scholem, “On the Kabbalah”, p. 65. Referring
to Sefer ha-kavvanoth (
[36] Ibid., p. 75.
[37] A similar view regarding the Torah’s plasticity is
attributed to the founder of the Hasidic movement, Israel Baal Shem Tov, Ibid.,
p. 76.
[38] The question arises if a computer, programmed with
the rules of English grammar and sentence construction along with a complete
vocabulary that enabled it to adequately generate English [or Hebrew] sentences
ever be on the threshold of speech in the way a man is? This is an important philosophical
question. Searles and others, c.f. “The
Chinese Room Argument.” have argued that the computer has simply manipulated
signs, and not understood or generated meanings. I would point out that before we would assign
the function of language to a computer it would not only have to generate
sentences but provide them with interpretations as well, e.g. it would have to
be able to say something like the sentence “Walter Payton’s seeds from Mars are
digging a hole to china” (which I am fairly certain has never before in the
history of the universe been written or
uttered) is from a proposed movie script about a 22nd century man
named after a 20th century football player, who purchases a lemon
that was grown on Mars and that unbeknownst to him was implanted with seeds,
that when disposed of, sprout into Martians who develop an underground colony
on earth and conspire to take over the world.
The computer would have to, as I have just done, create this
interpretation spontaneously, without, for example, having it “canned” in its
memory banks, and it would have to be
able to generate an indefinitely large number of alternative interpretations of
the same sentence and link them to whole realms of knowledge, feeling and
culture. It would have to do all of
these things, without being subject to the arguments of the Chinese Room, i.e.
that it was just flashing sentences according to programmed instructions
without really understanding them - i.e. in the same way that a non-speaker of
Chinese, inside a room filled with manuals, might appropriately responded to
Chinese questions by following a “response program” but who could not thereby
be said to understand Chinese. (In
Kabbalistic terms, in order to be a comprehending subject of language, a
computer would have to participate in Ayin,
Ein-sof, tzimtzum, Sefirot, Shevirah and tikkun, i.e. select from an
infinitude of possibility, and then expand upon, and in effect re-infinitize,
what was selected through analysis and interpretation).
When a man or a woman opens his or her mouth to begin
speaking we assume that we are not before a computer generating sentences
according to a linguistic program but rather before a thinking sentient being
who can not only generate propositions but provide us with and/or understand
many alternative interpretations of what he or she is about to say. We thus see
that the whole question of interpretation is actually already written into the
“threshold of speech,” into the Ayin/Ein-sof dialectic. This is a beautiful example of how tikkun is already a part of and the very
completion of Ein-sof. Consider: God’s creation/threshold before
divine speech and man’s: how much greater is God’s? Which is an example of which?
.
[39] S. Drob, Symbols of
the Kabblah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives (
[40] Scholem, Kabbalah
(Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), p. 110.
[41]As described in my Symbols
of the Kabbalah “It is a property of the Hebrew language that the subject
of a verb (I, You, He) is most often hidden (and as such is simply
“understood’) in the conjugation of the verb itself. In the opening passage of Genesis the verb
form “bara” (he created) contains the
subject “he” (here equivalent to “God”) in a “hidden”, non-explicit
manner. The Kabbalists equated this
hidden “he” in the verb bara with the
first Sefirah, Keter, which as the
hidden Primal Will does not yet explicitly involve a differentiated divine “he”
or self. The Kabbalists typically equate
the second Sefirah, Chochmah with reshit, the “beginning” or primal point of creation, and the third Sefirah, Binah, is equated with Elohim,
one of the names of God. In the
Kabbalistic reading of the first words of Genesis, Bereshit bara Elohim becomes a complete sentence with Elohim as its object. Bereshit (“through reshit”--the
second Sefirah) bara (he--the first Sefirah--
created) Elohim (God, the third Sefirah).
With
the creation of this third Sefirah,
God has begun to become an individuated being (Elohim), but he is still not the “Thou” who man addresses in
prayer. This, according to the
Kabbalists, does not occur until the advent of the sixth Sefirah, Tiferet which,
in harmonizing God’s kindness and judgment, is equated with the most exalted
name of God, the tetragrammatton, YHVH.
Still, even this “thou” is not the full achievement of God’s selfhood. This does not occur until the emanation of
the final Sefirah, Malchut, which the Kabbalists equated
with the divine “I”, according to the formula “Nothingness changes into
I”. The highest Sefirah, Keter, is
equated by the Kabbalists with Ayin,
“nothing” (in Hebrew spelled AYN). They affirm that through the emanation of
the Sefirot, the hidden “he” of bara (the Sefirah Keter) is transformed into the manifest “I” of Malchut.
All of this occurs via a transformation of the letters within AYN
(nothing), which when rearranged as ANY, form the personal pronoun, I. The creation of the world is the
manifestation of God’s selfhood, the emergence of an “I” or self out of a
primal nothingness or will. This
individuation process is mediated through “relatedness”, symbolized by the
“thou” of Tiferet/YHVH. Ein-sof thus becomes a personal God through his
relationship with humankind.
[42] The unconscious
meanings of one’s words involve not only one’s identifications with others (parents, authority, etc.) but
also significances that one’s words carry simply by being the word’s of an other’s (i.e. society’s) language.