“The Maggid Anticipated My Entire Psychology:” Erich Neumann’s “Roots” as an Articulation of Jung’s Relationship to Jewish Mysticism  

The publication of Erich Neumann’s The Roots of Jewish Consciousness, Vols. 1 and 2[1] in 2019 opens up new vistas into the relationship between Jungian thought and the Jewish tradition.  Neumann (1905-1960) was amongst Jung’s preeminent disciples,  and this work, especially “Volume Two: Hasidism,” sheds considerable light on Jung’s late life claim that “the Hasidic Rabbi Baer from Meseretz,[2] whom they called the Great Maggid… anticipated my entire psychology in the eighteenth century.”[3] Indeed, at times Neumann’s work is written as if it was aimed explicitly at drawing what appear to be uncannily close parallels between Hasidic and Jungian thought, and one wonders if Neumann, was somehow the source of Jung’s striking proclamation. The Maggid of Meseritz, Rabbi Dov Baer Friedman (1704-1772) succeeded his teacher the “Baal Shem Tov,” Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (c 1698-1760) as the leader of the nascent Hasidic movement, and was the first to formulate the philosophy underlying Hasidic practice. Neuman in his “Roots, Volume Two,” considers a number of the Maggid’s (and other Hasidic masters’) ideas in relation to Jungian psychology.

While it is tempting to speculate that Neumann influenced Jung with regard to the psychological significance of Jewish mysticism, and in a 1934 letter Neumann actually scolded Jung over his ignorance of Hasidism,[4] the evidence for a direct influence is limited. Prior to World War II while Neumann was in Palestine he sent Jung a manuscript, “Applications and Questions,”[5] in which he outlined some of the ideas that would later appear in “Roots” and without mentioning the Maggid of Meseretz, described how the Hasidic theory of the sparks involved “the taking back of the world into internal space.”[6]  Jung read this manuscript and responded, mentioning Buber’s “renewal of Hasidism.”[7] Neumann later informed Jung of his work on “Roots,” indicating that he was writing a “comprehensive chapter on Hasidism,”[8] and even wrote that he hoped to send Jung a copy of Part One.[9] However, while Neumann forwarded several of his other manuscripts to Jung, there is no indication that he ever sent Jung either Part One or Part Two of “Roots,” or that he provided Jung with any of the details regarding his work on Hasidism and depth psychology. Further, when Neumann resumed his correspondence with Jung after a five-year hiatus during the war, Neumann’s interests had completely shifted to more general and secular topics. As Martin Liebscher, who edited the Jung-Neumann correspondence notes, Jung and Neumann appear to have “crossed paths” intellectually, as Jung, after his “Kabbalistic vision” in 1944, began to take a keen interest in Jewish mysticism, and Neumann by that time had essentially put that interest behind him.[10] Thus, while a plunge into Neumann’s The Roots of Jewish Consciousness can provide us an understanding of why Jung could later claim that a Hasidic rabbi anticipated his entire psychology, it will not fully answer the question of exactly how it was that Jung arrived at this conclusion.

Neumann’s Roots ranges over a wide range of Hasidic ideas and principles premonitory of Jung. Amongst these are the centrality of symbols for the human psyche, the importance of accessing deeper, unconscious layers of the mind and soul, the integral connection between the psyche and the world, the discovery of divinity within the Self, the importance of engagement with evil and the “shadow” elements of personality, the emphasis upon creative individuality, the decentering, yet critical importance of the ego, reason and consciousness, the significance of “nothingness,” the complementarity and coincidence of opposites, the bisexuality of the human psyche, the value of joy, and the acceptance of the world. Many of these ideas are attributable to the Maggid of Meseritz and taken together they provide warrant for Jung’s late life assertion about him.

However, “Roots” is by no means simply a work that articulates the interface between Hasidic and Jungian thought. Indeed, it is primarily an original work of “psycho-theology” which contains important insights into the ethical, psychological and spiritual condition of Neumann’s (and our own) time and, in spite of some of Neumann’s more controversial assertions about the “Christianization” of Judaism in Hasidism, provides the basis for a psychologically meaningful reinterpretation of the Jewish tradition. As such, I will also examine Neumann’s Roots, with particular attention to Volume 2, with the thought of elucidating his understanding (and contribution) to Jewish thought and practice.

Neumann was ambivalent about publishing his work and failed to do so during his own lifetime. He expressed concerns that his work was not adequately grounded in the traditional sources and that as a result he might have distorted the true nature of the Jewish traditions he examined. This was (and remains) a legitimate concern, especially to the extent that we regard Neumann’s work to have been historical and exegetical, as was undoubtedly part of his intention in writing it.  However, if we regard Neumann’s Roots as the creative product of his encounter with the ideas and symbols of the Jewish, and moreover, the Kabbalistic/Hasidic tradition, as these were mediated through the authors he relied upon, the problem of his faithfulness to the “original sources” becomes less problematic. Understood in this way, his work should not be judged against some presumed criteria of “accuracy” but rather in terms of the value of the creative synthesis which he forged, a synthesis between his unique understanding of both Jewish mysticism and Jungian thought.

Neumann could not have known that several years after his death in 1960 that t a philosophical (e.g. Buber) and academic (e,g. Scholem) interest in Kabbalah and Hasidism would become the basis for a renewed interest in  and resignification of Jewish mystical symbols and ideas, and that this renewal would lend impetus to a psychologically-minded and universalizing  trend within Judaism—a trend that would give impetus to the “Jewish Renewal” movement. As we will see, one of the key figures in this movement, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a Hasidic trained rabbi, took a great interest in Neumann’s writings, and had even hoped to enter into analysis with Neumann prior to the latter’s untimely death.  Indeed, “Jewish Renewal” essentially followed Neumann’s prescription for a psychologically minded, creative, individuating, inclusive and universalizing Judaism.

Neumann’s work was incomplete and not intended for publication in its present form—and his endnotes read as abbreviated reminders to himself that he may have intended to elaborate upon should his book have proceeded into print. As such, Neumann’s text is problematic; he has the habit of quoting sources without identifying them; and his notes, which on a number of occasions required correction by his editors, often refer to his secondary sources without indicating the original authors of the quotations in question. At times his text in Roots Volume 2 reads as if he is quoting various Hasidic authors as representatives of the “Hasidic tradition” in general.  While in this essay I have identified the Hasidic thinkers Neumann refers to, my purpose is to understand Neumann’s interpretation of his sources and not to defend this interpretation in light of these thinkers’ views, or even in light of the secondary sources—e.g. those of Buber and Horodezky, which Neumann relied upon. My view is that Neumann has presented us with an original psychology and theology, one that is clearly rooted in the Hasidic tradition, but which interprets that tradition in the light of modern, and especially Jungian, psychology.

Neumann makes an extraordinary effort to provide a depth psychological interpretation of Hasidism and the Kabbalistic symbols upon which it is based—one that is in many ways successful, but which also suffers because of his failure to adequately consider the full range of the Kabbalistic, and particularly, the Lurianic, symbols upon which Hasidic thought and practice is grounded.  While he placed a strong emphasis on the Hasidic theory of the “sparks” (netzotzim) of divine energy that lay hidden in all things, the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of the divine, and Adam Kadmon, the primordial human who serves as a “template” for both humanity and the world, he paid less attention to the Hasidic understanding of such Kabbalistic symbols as the Sefirot (the divine value archetypes), and the Shevirah (the cosmic catastrophe which brought about our current world). As I proceed, I will at times amplify Neumann’s account of the Kabbalistic symbols which informed his exposition of Hasidism, with the thought of providing a fuller context for our reflections on Neumann’s Neo-Hasidic psychology and philosophy.

In addition, we should note that, as Moshe Idel points out in his Introduction to Roots II, Neumann followed Buber in emphasizing the “this worldly” aspects of Hasidism to the relative neglect of Hasidic theosophy, which involved a focus upon “the lifting of the divine sparks from the demonic realm and their purification and elevation on high.”[11]  In this regard, Neumann, like Jung, insisted that he was writing only about psychology and not about metaphysics or theology.  He writes:

We are investigating these texts for their psychological, not their metaphysical reality …the real aim of our interpretation is to reveal the psychic structure of the Jewish person… (and) says nothing about a deity’s existence independent of the human structure.[12]

However, like Jung, and perhaps even more pointedly than Jung, Neumann used theological language in an ambiguous manner which had the effect of floating theological claims under the guise of psychological observations. For example, Neumann writes: “In terms of the process of creation, the human Self is brought forth by divine self-union; it is the product of the connection between God’s active, masculine aspect and his feminine, worldly aspect, the Shekhinah.”[13]

Language like this produced ambiguities which Neumann never adequately resolved. Both Jung and Neumann risked appearing disingenuous when they used God-talk in (hidden) “scare-quotes” as a vehicle for speaking about psyche and self while simultaneously denying that they had any theological or metaphysical intentions.

Jung and Judaism

The Jung who claimed that a Hasidic rabbi anticipated his entire psychology was the same Jung who in the 1930s had used the epithet “Jewish psychology” in his attacks on Freud and Adler in a rather obvious effort to curry favor with the Nazis.[14] During this period Jung, both in his published papers and private correspondence had made a series of comments which could hardly be construed as anything but Anti-Semitic. To recall just one particularly pointed example: In 1933 Jung published an article in the Zentralblatt fur Psychotherapie, which at the time was under Jung’s editorship, and in the very issue of that journal in which Herman Goring (!) had published a directive which read in part, “the [psychotherapy] society expects all members who work as writers or speakers to work through Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf with all scientific effort and accept it as a basis.”[15] In Jung’s article, entitled “The State of Psychotherapy Today,” he wrote, “The Jew who is something of a nomad has never yet created a cultural form of his own and as far as we can see never will, since all his instincts and talents require a more or less civilized nation to act as host for their development.”[16]  Hitler had claimed  in Mein Kampf:

The Jewish people, despite all apparent intellectual qualities, is without a true culture, and especially without any culture of its own.  For what sham culture the Jew today possess is the property of other peoples, and for the most part ruined in his hands.[17]

We need only compare these two passages, Jung’s and Hitler’s to understand the level of anti-Semitic rhetoric Jung was willing to adopt as his own.

In 1934, Neumann castigated Jung, writing that he could not comprehend how Jung could ignore the obvious fact “that a mind-numbing cloud of filth, blood and rottenness is brewing” in the German psyche.[18]  He upbraided Jung for being conditioned by  a “general ignorance of things Jewish” and  while “knowing everything about the India of 2000 years ago” knows “nothing about Hasidism.”[19]

Jung’s late life pronouncement regarding the Maggid is all the more startling when viewed in the context of his anti-Semitic rhetoric. I have previously described Jung’s “turn” towards Judaism as a result of the visions he experienced after his 1944 heart attack.[20] [Jung’s Kabbalistic Visions]. The publication of Neumann’s Roots provides us with additional insight into Jung’s late life about face on the topic of “Jewish psychology.”

Judaism in its “Christian Stage”

Neumann’s radical reflections on the history of the Jewish religion and, in particular, on the “Christianization” of Judaism in Hasidism provide an important context for our understanding of the (anticipatory) relationship of Hasidism to Jungian psychology.

Neumann. held that in post-biblical times Judaism lost the tensions between YWH and earth, and this loss resulted in a hypertrophy of the spiritual within the Jewish religion. He believed that rabbinism became overly rational and Kabbalism overly ascetic and mystical, and argued that these opposing excesses provided the context for the development of Hasidism.  While the rabbinic tradition had rejected inner “religious experience”[21]  and the Kabbalah, became rigid, punitive, and overly theosophical, Hasidism, in Neumann’s view, at least initially, developed a psychologically balanced spirituality which promoted individual creativity.

Neumann held that “Hasidism, after almost 2000 years, involve[d] a delayed ripening of essential aspects of early Christianity within Judaism.”[22] Neumann did not fully develop this intriguing, if highly unorthodox thesis, but the gist of his idea was that in Hasidism Judaism had “arrived at its Christian stage” in which “religious revelation became individualized and internalized.”[23]

Jung had held that Christ was or, at least, had become a symbol of the self, and particularly in his early formulation in the Red Book, he saw Christ in existential terms as providing a call for the individuals to actualize their unique creative and spiritual paths. Neumann was of the view that with the advent of “Judaism in its Christian stage” the “heavenly kingdom” was brought into the individual human being, the cultic law was rejected, and there was an emphasis on “direct revelation.”[24] However, this creative, individuating tendency was, inhibited in Judaism until the advent of the Kabbalah, and, moreover, Hasidism, which forged “a reconnection with ancient Judaism in its primal Christian form,” a form “which saw religious individualism as the core of religious revelation.”[25]  Neumann held that through the public figure of the Tzaddik (the spiritual leader of the Hasidic community) and the inner figure of Adam Kadmon (the Primordial Human or divine aspect of the inner Self) “the Christianism of Jewish individuals took a new historical form.”  As it would later become for Jung, spiritual and psychic development, at least in the earlier phase of Hasidism, became “the central and personal task of each individual.”[26]

I will return to Neumann’s thoughts about the “Christianization of Judaism” in my concluding remarks.

The Value and Degeneration of Hasidism

Neumann’s project in both volumes of Roots involved an effort to demonstrate that Judaism has always struggled to create a balance between earth and sky, between the uncompromising masculine spiritual demands of Yahweh, and an awareness of the feminine depths of the unconscious. He argues that this balance was destroyed with the Jewish people’s exile from their land, the end of the temple sacrificial cult, and the resultant hyper-legalization of rabbinic Judaism. According to Neumann, Hasidism represented a revival of the feminine, prophesy, and access to the unconscious within the Jewish collective.

However, the opportunity to turn this revival into a revitalization of the Jewish people (and person) was lost when Hasidism degenerated into Tzaddikism, which produced a cult around the religious leader—who then became the only one with access to the psychic depths which Hasidism had originally vouchsafed for each individual.

Neumann provides an account of Hasidism’s failure to live up to its initial promise of providing an alternative to the Enlightenment for Judaism in modern times—one that would have avoided the pitfalls of illusory assimilation, the hyper-rationalism of modernism, and what in Neumann’s view was the soulless constriction of Jewish orthodoxy. According to Neumann, the early Hasidim emphasized the individual’s role in the redemption of both the world and God, and the original task of the tzaddik was to guide his followers in this process and “give each individual what he and he alone needs.”[27]  However, Hasidism developed into a tzaddik-centered movement in which the rebbe/tzaddik became the sole mediator of the divine, and in the process, Hasidism lost its opportunity to provide a psychology/theology of the individuated self.  Neumann writes that Hasidism “gave rise to a form of tzadikkism in which a mass of followers, stripped of selfhood, gathered around the mana-personality of the tzaddik.”[28] While early on the Maggid of Meseritz pronouncement of the “Godlikeness of the human being within himself”[29] was initially meant to apply to all human beings, it increasingly came to be attributed to the tzaddik alone.

Neumann was highly critical of what he regarded as the excesses of Tzaddikism, writing that “the tzaddik’s self-identification with Adam Kadmon [the ‘Archetypal Human’] leads to an obvious inflation.”[30] He points out that at least one Hasidic rabbi, Rabbi Nachman, went so far as to order “that his grave be worshipped.”[31] A similar “inflation” is evident in our own time where the last Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), failed to discourage his adherents from regarding him as the messiah, resulting in a messianic cult around him which continues today.[32]

Neumann refers to “Hasidism’s self-betrayal” and argues that its loss of its own “principle of inwardness” resulted in a diminution of thought and intelligence, one that surrendered to the Enlightenment, the claim of “legitimacy as the pioneer of Jewish intellectual development,”  and led to “the secularizing and atomizing of the Jewish person.”[33]  Within Hasidism there was a decline into “superstition, amulets, exorcisms, magical cures” related to the “mana-personalities” within the movement.[34]  This led to a fanatical rejection of Hasdism by (both Enlightenment Jews) and the non-Hasidic, “Mitnagdid” orthodox.

Neumann held that the decline in ‘Hasidic inwardness’ led to the Jews’ alienation from their unconscious, in particular the collective unconscious, an alienation which continued with Freud, who in spite of his having touched upon the collective layer of the unconscious (in his understanding of the Oedipus complex and later in Moses and Monotheism) failed to confront the obvious problem of the “Jewish collective.”[35]

In his historical analysis Neumann followed the general cultural critique laid out by Jung in holding that the 19^th century witnessed a “loss of memory” and alienation of large numbers of Jews from both their religious traditions and their “inner communal connection.”[36]  Many Jews believed that a return to Eretz Yisroel would provide a renewal of the Jewish spirit, and Neumann himself made aliyah in 1934.

For Neumann, the Jews’ alienation from their own history resulted in a turn towards general culture and values, a turn which in his view had the most terrible consequences,[37] the secularization and assimilation which prompted many Jews to see themselves primarily as Europeans, Germans, etc. and which contributed to their failure to adequately recognize the growing power Anti-Semitism which eventuated in the Holocaust. Neumann calls 19^th century Jewish assimilation a “grand delusion,”[38]  writing: “As if blinded, this ancient people abandoned itself with the naïve trust of a child to the enticing deception of the west, and no pogroms, no ritual murder trials, no antisemitic movements persuaded it otherwise.”[39]

Yet even as the Hasidim were amongst the greatest victims of the Holocaust, Neumann believed that Hasidism, which became historically powerless in regard to modern Jewish consciousness, continues to hold “a hidden, crucial meaning for the psychology of the modern Jew”[40] and also to the problems of “modern people in general.”[41]

According to Neumann, Hasidism failed not only because it abandoned the “sacredness” and creative potential of the individual but also because it “never seriously attempted to push the boundaries of legalistic Judaism” and this “hindered its influence.”[42]  Certain of the Hasidim, according to Neumann, regressed into to a form of “Kabbalistic rationalism,” one that attempted, as in the Chabad movement, to find a compromise with rabbinism, and this resulted in an equally sterile result, with these Hasidim being devoured by what Neumann referred to as the “dragon” of Torah (halakhic) Judaism.[43] While such later Hasidic figures as Nathan of Brezlav, endeavored to revive early Hasidism’s ethos, they were, on the whole, unsuccessful, and a figure like Mendel of Kotzk, who “declared drives and desires to be parts of God,”[44] lived his last years in a Nietzsche-like atheism and insanity.[45]

 “Jewish Renewal”

It is here worth noting, at least in passing, that Erich Neumann’s psychologically-minded vision of Judaism was brought to fruition, after Neumann’s death, by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Salomi (1924-2014), an émigré from Vienna who fled the Nazis and came to the United States in 1941 and was ordained as a rabbi with Chabad-Lubavitch. Reb Zalman, as he came to be known, originally led Chabad congregations in Massachusetts and Connecticut, but eventually left Chabad and Jewish orthodoxy, and became one of the moving forces in the “Jewish Renewal” movement which advocated for a far more open, ecumenical, and psychologically minded form of Jewish prayer and practice—one that was rooted in Kabbalah and Hasidism but which was committed to social justice and eschewed a slavish adherence to halakha, Jewish law. Reb Zalman became a committed feminist and advocated for the inclusion of LGBT individuals within Judaism, and he encouraged all individuals to develop their visions and talents and to bring these into their Jewish practice.

It is of significance in the present context that Reb Zalman developed a keen interest in the work of Erich Neumann and had, just prior to Neumann’s untimely death in 1960 hoped to enter analysis with Neumann in Israel.[46] In a recent book Shoshana Fershtman writes:

Reb Zalman was greatly influenced by the work of Erich Neumann. In my meeting with Reb Zalman just a year before his death, I was able to share my work researching the impact of Jewish Renewal on individuals reconnecting with Judaism. When I mentioned my training as a Jungian analyst, his whole being lit up as he began talking about Erich Neumann. “Oh, Neumann!” he said. “How I wanted to study with him![47]

Neumann, in Roots, shows that he is indeed a prophet of a psychologically minded Jewish mysticism, yet he ultimately abandoned his project of reinterpreting Judaism in order to focus upon a new ethic based in depth psychology, in effect, discarding his ethnic and religious interests for a more general, secular interests, the very thing he had, in Roots, warned against.

Having set the stage by examining Neumann’s general understanding of Hasidism, we are now in a position to explore his understanding of its relationship to Jungian psychology.

The Truth of Symbols

Jung regarded the symbol as a bearer of psychic reality and truth. In The Red Book Jung writes: “If the word is a sign, it means nothing. But if the word is a symbol, it means everything.”[48]  In that work he explains that a symbol is “born of man’s highest spiritual aspirations,” and that it arises “from the deepest roots of his being…from the lowest and most primitive levels of the psyche.”[49]

According to Neumann the symbol plays a critical role in Hasidism, a role that is rooted in the symbolic Kabbalistic world-view upon which Hasidism is based.  Neumann writes that for Hasidism the allegorical nature of the world is revealed “only to those who stand on the highest, the symbolic level.”[50]  For the Hasidim as for Jung, the symbol reveals a “truth” that is beyond the truths of empirical observation. Perhaps the most important of the Kabbalistic/Hasidic symbols are the sefirot, which play a role similar to the archetypes in Jung’s psychology. Neumann writes:

The sefirot may be called non-pictorial archetypal constellations. They are therefore conceived of as levels, aspects, characteristics, hypostases, principles, emanations, names, lights and forces. Like every archetype, each sefirah owes its nothingness to its energy, which infinitely surpasses ego-consciousness and thus has a disintegrating effect on the ego.[51]

For the Hasidim the “human form” is also understood as a symbol. The sefirot are said to be embodied in the form of Adam Kadmon, the Primordial Human.  Neumann quotes from a German translation of the Zohar which suggests that the human form contains all existent things.[52]

Neumann sees the Hasidic reliance on story and parable as serving a similar function as the symbol. He writes: “The tzaddik speaks in parables as God does, for the parable is tzimtzum, contraction, concealment of light. The whole world is also a parable, in which God’s light is hidden.”[53] (120)

The Importance of “This World”

Neumann’s’ account of the (early) Hasidic philosophy, a philosophy first formulated by the Maggid of Meseritz, focuses upon a series of symbols and ideas that were either discussed directly by Jung or readily assimilable to Jung’s psychology. Chief amongst these is the “Raising of the Sparks.”

The notion of a “spark” of divinity imprisoned in the material world is an old Gnostic idea which reappeared in the Lurianic Kabbalah and later served as an essential symbol and idea in Hasidism. Whereas the Gnostics held that by attaching oneself to the divine spark one could escape this world and merge with the divine pleroma, Isaac Luria (1534-72), and later, the Hasidim who based their philosophy on Luria’s system, believed that the “entrapment” of the sparks produces negativity and evil in both human souls and the world and by liberating the divine sparks a person can initiate Tikkun ha-Olam, the redemption and perfection of both the individual soul and this world. As Neumann put it, while the Gnostic redemption of the sparks involves “extracting bits of light from the evil world” and “leaving it below and behind as evil,” the Hasidim take the further creative step of “radiating back into the world” and causing the world to be “reborn” and redeemed.[54] In the process evil within both the self and the world is revealed as “a veiled, hidden goodness.”[55]  Neumann avers: “For Judaism and Hasidism, the human being’s specific salvific task is to make the world holy by redeeming the sparks.”[56]

I have argued that while Jung’s understanding of “the sparks” was initially derived from Gnosticism, his psychology is ultimately in far better accord with the this-worldly understanding of the sparks in Hasidism. In Gnosticism the world is escaped; in the Kabbalah it is elevated and restored. For Hasidism, the charge of each individual is to raise those sparks he or she encounters in their life journey. Neumann notes that according to the Maggid of Meseritz, the sparks constitute wisdom “mixed with all the contents of this world.”[57] and one’s “whole intention should be to lift the sparks to their roots, to the place of supreme holiness.”[58]

Neumann writes that because a spark is latent, like an “embryo” within all things, revelation “can break forth from anything and everything.”[59]  Such revelation involves a collision and, ultimately, a union between a human soul and the spark, yielding a “cross-fertilization” and “procreation” on the analogy of male uniting with female.[60] This procreation results in the spark, in effect, becoming a “talking being, which can release and express its living, mental and spiritual inwardness.”[61]

Neumann points out that for Hasidism, the raising of the sparks and the ultimate redemption of the world is intrinsically tied to the development of human life and mind. He quotes Buber’s translation of the Baal Shem Tov:

The human being should raise the holy sparks that fell when God built and destroyed worlds. He should purify them upward, from stone to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to the talking being. He should purify the holy spark, which is enclosed in a powerful shell. Everyone in Israel shares this basic purpose…And the one who is able to raise the holy spark from stone to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to the talking being with the good power of his spirit leads it to freedom. No other liberation of the imprisoned is greater than this.  It is like one who rescues a king’s son from captivity and brings him to his father.”[62]

Jung discussed the symbol of the sparks as it appeared in Gnosticism and Alchemy but was also familiar with their presence in the Kabbalah, and he understood them as unconscious complexes, the freeing of which would result in psychological redemption.[63] Indeed, the notion of a hidden, encapsulated psychic energy that that must be freed and returned to consciousness is a basic, perhaps the most basic, psychoanalytic idea.   Neumann focused on the raising the sparks as a means of reclaiming the unconscious and the shadow, as a symbol for the individual’s transition from the individual ego to an identification with the wider “Self,” and as a symbol of the Hasidic charge that each individual has a role in repairing and restoring this world.

The Shadow and Evil

Neumann observed that the Hasidim recognized what Jung would later describe as the “shadow” side of the personality.  He points out that according to the Baal Shem Tov, the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God, which symbolizes the divine presence on earth, encompasses both good and evil, “for evil is the throne of goodness.”[64] Further, the Maggid of Meseritz held that “goodness is hidden in darkness  and “there is good in all evil.”[65] Neumann writes that for the Hasidim, “the task of higher service is to free the sparks even from evil.”[66] Indeed, Neumann says that it was the Maggid’s view that if a person repents then God even enjoys an individual’s sin.[67]

He points out that according to the Maggid of Meseritz there are “divine sparks” even idols and idolatry. Indeed, “The holiest sparks exist on the lowest of levels.”[68] For Neumann, the notion that divine sparks exist “[e]ven in idolatry[69]…has the widest implications because…it completely revolutionized moral and traditional values.”[70]

According to Neumann when “rightly perceived” sin and evil are not only inevitable “but also a crucial part of this existence.”[71] One reason for this is that, “Only the knowledge of good and evil leads to consciousness,”[72] and consciousness, according to Neumann conditions freedom and choice. Further, “Whenever any real experience of inwardness occurs, the reality of demons and of Satan becomes the problem of the holy struggle.”[73] Neumann follows Jung in declaring: “Only evil, the other side, brings about the energic tension called life.”[74]  He points out that in the book of Genesis “evil becomes the consciousness-enhancing principle that leads to the affirmation of the world” as well as the affirmation of time.  For Neumann “only the world ‘equipped’ with evil is the real world.” [75]

Neumann contrasted what he termed the “old ethic” of obedience to set values and ethical norms with a “new ethic” grounded in depth psychology involving a recognition of the shadow side or (what from a traditional perspective would be regarded as) evil within the individual. For Neumann the “world of knowledge and fixed values constitutes the old, pre-Hasidic world of rabbinism…”[76]

Nature of the Self

Neumann saw in Hasidism the (Jungian) notion of a partly unconscious, non-rational creative “self” Neumann held that throughout the history of Judaism “the chief emphasis is to develop, support, and expand the system of consciousness.”[77]  However, Hasidism which, while “still emphasizing consciousness…dethrone[d] the ego and pure rationalism.”[78]  Hasidism’s renewed interest in accessing the unconscious is manifest in a variety of ways; for example, Rabbi Nachman’s interest in “the night world” and dreams. According to Rabbi Nachman it is in dreams that one “sees the spiritual naked, without a shell.”[79] Neumann quotes a translation of a saying of the Maggid of Meseritz: “God makes something out of nothingness, the tzaddikim make nothingness out of something.[80]  Neumann holds that the import of the Maggid’s aphorism is that by returning the individual to the “nothingness” of the creative unconscious the Tzaddik is able to effect the coincidence of opposites which completes the individual (and God).  The individual person is the “something” which provides actuality to divine creativity, whereas God is the (unconscious) and pre-formed “nothingness” which brings creativity, spirit and meaning to the individual. We have here yet another of the Maggid’s anticipations of Jungian psychology.

For Neumann, “The Copernican revolution in the development of Judaism, which begins with Hasidism, displaces the ego from its position at the center of the world,”[81] a view that was fully in accord with Jung’s understanding of the relationship between the ego and the self. Neumann suggests that by expanding the psyche to include its unconscious, non-rational underpinnings this actually “highlights the human being as the bearer of consciousness…against the cosmos of the unconscious.”[82]

Self and God

Jung is well known for his often quoted and frequently misunderstood assertion that there is an equivalence between God and the self, a view which evolved in his writings over time. In the Red Book Jung wrote: “through uniting with the self we reach the God” (Durch die Vereinigung mit dem Selbst erreichen wir den Gott).[83] In Psychological Types, a work that Jung authored during his Red Book period he quotes with apparent approval the Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart (c. 1260- c, 1328): “For man is truly God, and God is truly man.”[84] Jung writes that for Eckhart, “God is dependent on the soul…and the soul is the birthplace of God.”[85] In that work  Jung claimed: “God and the soul are essentially the same when regarded as personifications of unconscious content (CW6:421). Jung later asserted that he is not making claims about the metaphysical God per se,[86] but in Aion and elsewhere he held that the God image or archetype is identical with the “whole man” or “Self.”[87]

In Roots II Neumann suggests that a similar equation of God and self is present in Hasidic theology.  He writes that Hasidism heralds “the inward migration of the divine.”[88] This is because, “The world becomes increasingly free of God, increasingly an outer world and free of revelation, and the human being becomes increasingly filled with God and pregnant with revelation.”[89] There is, on Neumann’s interpretation of Hasidism, a reciprocal relationship between God and the Self. Neumann speaks of “human activity as a prior cause” (die vorlaufende Aktivitat des Menschen)[90] He is here making reference to the concept of “theurgy” the impact of human activity on the divine.[91] Humanity not only has the capacity to be transformed by God and the Sefirot, but also has it within its power to transform the very nature God. Neumann refers to a view attributed to the Baa Shem Tov that “God is a human shadow, and like his shadow, he does whatever the human being does.”[92] Neumann further notes that the Maggid of Meseritz held that God thinks what the Tzaddikim think, and that when the Tzadikkim “think with love, they bring God into the world of love.”[93] Indeed, the Maggid held that while God is the foundation and source of thought, actual thinking only occurs within the human mind.[94]

Neumann quotes a Hasidic saying: “The prayer a man says, the prayer, in itself, is God.”[95] Further, in his description of a view attributed to the Maggid of Meseritz, Neumann writes:

The human love of God is God’s attribute of grace. One is constituted by the other. It may also be said that God’s attribute of grace does not exist beyond the human love of God and, conversely, that no human love of God exists beyond God’s attribute of grace.[96]

These views are certainly congenial to Jung’s identification of the “God” and “Self” archetypes.

The Individual and the Collective

Neumann argues that Hasidism, while clearly embed within the Jewish “collective” placed an emphasis on the side of the individual, holding that “each person is always contained in the unconditionality and newness of the present moment.”[97] In this way the Hasidic ethos is not only individualistic but situational: Neumann writes that for Hasidism, at least in its initial phase, “The weight of destiny, both for God and the world, is thus placed on the individual and his life. He is anointed in his irreplaceability, as the mid-point of the world.”[98]  Further, in Hasidism “Individual life actualizes messianism, and the messianic stage of the individual actualizes the work to be fulfilled.”[99] Neumann quotes the Maggid: “[I]nner grace belongs to the one who begins with himself [through developing humility], and not with the Creator.”[100] Here again, we have a principle, attributable to the Maggid, which coincides with Jung’s early emphasis (most pointedly in the Red Book) on the individual “finding his own way,” and overcoming one’s pride and (e.g. in “Scritunies”) grandiosity. While Neumann observed that the “importance of the individual is a basic principle of Hasidism,”[101] he was, as we have seen, of the view that this principle waned with the advent of Tzaddikism in later Hasidism.

Neumann follows Buber in holding that Hasidism originally placed a crucial emphasis on individual free-will: “The world was created only for the sake of the one who chooses.”[102] For Rabbi Nachman, the possibility of free-will entails that “Every human being in the world can become worthy of the highest level.”[103] Individuals are responsible not only for their own ethical choices and acts but for the actualization of their unique nature. Neumann quotes the famous dictum of the Hasidic Rabbi Meshulam Zusha of Hanipol or Meshulum Zusil of Anipoli (1718–1800), known as Rabbi Zusya:  “I shall not be asked: “Why were you not Moses?’ I shall be asked: ‘Why were you not Zusya.’”[104]

Neumann quotes from Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim:

Rabbi Zusya taught: God said to Abraham: “Go out of your country, out of your birthplace, out of your father’s house, into the land that I will show you.” God says to man:” First you get out of your country, that means the dimness you have inflicted on yourself. Then out of your birthplace, that means, out of the dimness your mother inflicted on you.  After that, out of the house of your father, that means, out of the dimness your father inflicted on you. Only then will you be able to go to the land that I will show you.”[105]

Neumann comments that what is “inauthentic” “is the foreignness imposed on us by time, race and people, family, constitution, and type.”[106]  Here is an eloquent expression of the need of the individual to discover his/her “true self” by stripping away he obscuring identifications with what Jacques Lacan later spoke of as “the desire of the Other.”  Neumann quotes a Hasidic dictum: “There is no man who is not incessantly taught by his soul.”[107] and argues that this is “the new thing that Hasidism brought and still must bring to Judaism.”[108] Indeed, this is a major, if not the major theme of Jung’s Red Book.

The quest for unmitigated individuality, however, is not without cost. Such a quest can lead to an “atomistic,” alienated existence, if it is not paired with a personal (though not slavish) connection to the collective. Neumann writes that a “personal realization of collective destiny dissociates a person from the constraint of the outer collective…(and) also leads to a rooted connection with the inner collective’s creative forces,”[109] an idea which echoes Jung’s views on individuation and  the collective unconscious.  Foe Neumann “an individuated connection with “the inner seedbed of Judaism… prevents the individual from dissolving in the void of individualistic atomization.”[110] This, in brief, is Neumann’s philosophy of Judaism for “the modern person,” a philosophy he apparently intended to detail in the unwritten “Part II” of his “Roots” project.[111]

Neumann held that individuation can lead to a sense of guilt for not conforming to the collectives dictates and values. Jung, in a passage in which he made a nod towards ethical and (creative) value objectivity, wrote:

Individuation cuts one off from personal conformity and hence from collectivity. That is the guilt which the individual leaves behind him for the world, that is the guilt he must endeavour to redeem. He must offer a ransom in place of himself, that is, he must bring forth values which are an equivalent substitute for his absence in the collective personal sphere. Without this production of values, final individuation is immoral and-more than that ­suicidal. The man who cannot create values should sacrifice himself consciously to the spirit of collective conformity. In so doing, he is free to choose the collectivity to which he will sacrifice himself. Only to the extent that a man creates objective values can he and may he individuate.[112]

Creativity

Neumann writes that Hasidism stressed creativity over the “formally and rationalistically uncreative” aspect of consciousness emphasized in the rabbinic tradition.[113]  According to Neumann, the rabbis’ rejection of creativity was a principled one, parallel to their “rejection of inner religious experience.”[114]  By way of contrast, the early Hassidim welcomed innovation.  Neumann again quotes an account of the Maggid of Zlovoch (1726-1784)) from Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim:

Just as our fathers invented new ways of serving, each new service according to his character: one of the service of love, the other that of stern justice, the third that of beauty, so each one of us in his own way shall devise something new in the light of the teachings and of service, and do what has not yet been done.[115]

Neumann held that according to Hasidism, “humanity, by naming the unnamed, and forming and shaping the formless, continues God’s act of creating the world”[116] a notion which comports with Jung’s later pronouncement in Answer to Job that humanity forms a partnership with God in completing creation, an idea that Jung explicitly states he found in the Kabbalah.[117]

Neumann writes that for the Hasidim creative nothingness is the source of regeneration and is “beyond space and time, beyond oppositions, beyond individual differences.”[118]

Neumann points out that for Hasidism “nothingness breaks into the world, interrupts its continuity” and thus gives lie to a conception of a “cage-like” deterministic universe.[119] Nothingness is the source of both wisdom and creativity. Indeed, according to the Maggid of Meseritz, “all change in the world is impossible without wisdom, that is to say nothingness.”[120] and “every being must come to the level of nothingness, after which it can be another thing.”[121] Here we should note that in The Red Book Jung wrote about the “little drop of something that falls into the sea of nothingness” prior to the world’s creation, and which widens into “unrestricted freedom.”[122]

Neumann explains “creative nothingness” by stating that one cannot create through will power—but must, in effect, empty oneself in order to become a “tool of the contents passing through him.”[123] For the Hasidic masters “free-will,” in its mode of creativity, paradoxically relies upon an emptying as opposed to an act of the will, an idea that clearly anticipates Jung’s (and others’) view that creativity and personal growth most often results from acts that are devoid of intention.[124]

Indeed, Neumann writes that “Hasidism considers the law of creative energy, its freedom and spontaneity, to be a basic fact, which conditions the inconstancy of what is given,” and that this freedom originates in the fact that “the psyche continually experiences itself as originating in creation from nothingness.” [125] In this connection, Neumann quotes Buber:

The world was only created for the sake of choice and the one who chooses. The human being, the lord of choice, should say: The whole world was created for my sake alone.  Every person should therefore always and everywhere ensure that he redeems the world and fills its deficiency.[126]

The Return to Nothingness

The role of “nothingness” in the creative process leads to a broader consideration of the role of “Nothing” in Kabbalistic and Hasidic thought.   Neumann emphasizes that within both of these traditions there is the view that divinity is Ayin, Nothingness, inasmuch as God completely transcends human consciousness. Yet, as Neumann points out, such “nothingness” is provided a positive interpretation as “the primordial idea,”[127] and the Hasidim made returning to such nothingness a primary goal of their theology. This return, Neumann suggests, involves a movement from what is known to what is unknown, and thus, a movement towards the unconscious. Neumann equates the divine nothingness with the unconscious when he writes: “The human task in the world is fundamentally bound up with God’s hiddenness.”[128]

Neumann writes that for Hasidism, “nothingness, is the root and source of the world…[129]and an ecstatic return to “nothingness” assures that “all existence is reborn.”  Neumann writes: “It is almost as if the dissolution of consciousness into nothingness had to be seen essentially as the apex of a parabola, where the soul hurls itself into nothingness, in order to pass through the point and return to the world in the other direction.”[130]

The Kabbalistic notion of the Tzimtzum, the negation/contraction of the infinite divine plenitude which allows for finite existence, implies that the world itself is a species of “nothingness,” a subtraction, contraction and concealment of the infinite divine being. Neumann describes the Tzimtzum (which is often associated with Din or stern judgment) as a quality of creative mercy which permits the world to exist. He states that this mercy is the world’s “inwardness.”[131]  In a confusing passage Neumann seems to suggest that this inwardness is the divine “nothingness” breaking through into the human realm. The confusion results from the fact that for Hasidism there are two perspectives on reality—one in which divinity is nothingness and human reality an existing thing, and a second in which human reality is nothingness and divinity is the entirety of existence.  According to Schneur Zalman of Lyadi (1745-1813), the founder of Chabad Hasidism:

(Looking) upwards from below, as it appears to eyes of flesh, the tangible world seems to be Yesh and a thing, while spirituality, which is above, is an aspect of Ayin (nothingness). (But looking) downwards from above the world is an aspect of Ayin, and everything which is linked downwards and descends lower and lower is more and more Ayin and is considered as nought truly as nothing and null.[132]

These perspectives imply and complement one another in the manner which Jung referred to as a coincidentia oppositorum.

Neumann describes how a “return to nothingness” can result in a regeneration of faith for those who fall into spiritual doubt. He references a passage in the Zohar which states that each night “the soul takes off its bodily garment and ascends, is consumed by fire, and then created anew…”[133] Neumann quotes Rabbi Nahum of Tchernobil (1730-87), who wrote that those “who truly desire to come close to God, must pass through the state of cessation of spiritual life, and ‘the falling is for the sake of the rising’”[134] Rabbi Nahum derived the phrase ‘falling is for the sake of the rising’ from the Maggid of Meseritz,[135] a phrase that is again relevant to Jung’s claim that the Maggid anticipated his entire psychology, but in this case Jung’s personal psychology. This is because Jung, during his Red Book period, went through a “falling,” a “dark night of the soul,” which resulted not only in a personal and spiritual awakening but also in the psychological insights that he would spend a lifetime developing.

Neumann comments that sleep, spiritual seclusion and “pseudo-death” all involve a passage through nothingness which heralds a renewal and birth of the whole person.[136] He writes: “The intention is to link consciousness back to the creative aspect of nothingness, which today we typically call, just as negatively the un-conscious.”[137] According to Neumann, this (unconscious) “nothingness is the source of consciousness and its mental contents.”[138] Nevertheless an “affirmation of the world is a precondition for realizing the ‘whole person,’ regenerated in the slumber of nothingness.”[139]  Neumann writes: “The ascent to nothingness, which occurs through prayer and meditation, and the simultaneous transformation of the world’s sparks and of God’s reality, corresponds to a process of psychic transformation within the individual parts of the human soul.”[140]

Readers of Jung’s Red Book, and in particular his “Seven Sermons to the Dead” will be familiar with Jung’s deep engagement with “nothingness.” These sermons (which Jung variously attributed to his inner guide “Philemon, or the 2^nd century Gnostic Basilides open with: “Now hear: I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In infinity full is as good as empty.”[141] We soon learn that this “nothingness” is the “Pleroma,” the Gnostics unfathomable infinite, which Jung would later equate with the unconscious.[142] In the Sermons” “Jung writes that “the Pleroma is also in us,” and “We are also the whole Pleroma.”[143] Years later, in his May 1933 “Visions Seminar” Jung spoke about “approaching the void, which seems to me to be the most desirable thing, the thing which contains the most meaning.”[144]

The engagement with “nothingness” takes us to the limits of what can be known and pushes us to the realm of the unknown, non-sensical and incomprehensible. In the Red Book Jung describes the “Supreme Meaning” as the melting together of sense and non-sense.[145] In November 1915, he wrote to Hans Schmid, that “the   core of the individual is a mystery of life, which is snuffed out when it is ‘grasped’…[146]  In this connection, Neumann quotes the Maggid of Meseritz: “And every incomprehensible thing is a real part of God.”[147]

Paradox and the Coincidence of Opposites

Jung, in The Red Book wrote that his recognition of the coincidence and compensation of the opposites was his greatest innovation.[149] In this, he was again anticipated by the Chabad Hasidim.  Schneur Zalman’s son, Dov Baer Schneuri, wrote that, “within everything is its opposite and also it is truly revealed as its opposite.” He continued: “For the principal point of divine completeness is that…in every thing is its opposite, and…that all its power truly comes from the opposing power.” [150]    A century prior to Jung’s Red Book, Aaron Ha-Levi Horowitz of Staroselye  wrote that “the revelation of anything is actually through its opposite.”[151] According to R. Aaron Ha- Levi: “He [God] is the perfection of all, for the essence of perfection is that even those opposites which are opposed to one another be made one.”[152]

Jung, of course, was not the only 20^th century thinker to speak in such paradoxes—for example, Jean-Paul Sartre, in his epic Being and Nothingness,[153] equated human subjectivity with “nothingness” precisely because it has no fixed nature, is creative and free through its capacity for negation, a notion that Sartre adopted from Hegel, who wrote in his Logic:

every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed elements.  Consequently, to know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations.[154]

Neumann references a Hasidic tale about a condemned man who told another how he was able to traverse a rope that was strung across a chasm: “I don’t know anything but this: whenever I felt myself toppling over to one side, I leaned to another.”[155] According to Neumann, Hasidism “refuses to acknowledge any position once acquired as having a fixed value.” Further, “Hasidism insists that the conscious and common attitude must be compensated by its opposite” and that one must develop “the other side.”[156]

Male and Female

In his Foreword to Neumann’s Roots, Moshe Idel points out that Jung’s interest in the archetype of the feminine was anticipated by both certain Kabbalistic texts and in particular in the thought of the Maggid of Meseritz. Idel relates that the Maggid was reported to say that “there is nothing which is not constituted by male and female.”[157] Idel also quotes from the Maggid’s disciple, Rabbi Abraham Yehoshu’s Heschel of Apta: “[E]verything in the world necessarily possesses aspects of male and female… emanator and recipient.”[158]  Idel remarks that both the Maggid and his disciple anticipated “the famous Jungian theory of anima/animus.”[159] Idel writes that Neumann’s (and Jung ‘s) interest in the archetype of the feminine goes beyond anything present in either Scholem’s or Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism.[160]

Neumann himself writes that the raising of the sparks, the key act of redemption in Hasidic thought, involves a (human) male penetration of a passive female vessel which results in the female becoming fertile and the production of an embryonic offspring.[161] It is through this process that the human female “conceives” and redeems the spark—which now demonstrates that is “male.”[162]

Neumann relates that in Hasidic theology God’s feminine aspect, the Shekhinah, is in exile and must be redeemed by humankind. This notion is based upon one of the Kabbalist’s major metaphors for Tikkun Haolam: the redemption of the Shekhinah involves “the creative union of masculine and feminine on which the life of the world depends.”[163]   Neumann quotes the Zohar:

Every form in which one does not find the male and female principle is imperfect. The Holy One, the Blessed, only makes his abode where both principles are completely united…the name ‘human’ applies only to both together, man and woman in their union’”[164]

Neumann points out that according to the Great Maggid, “the inwardness of the male is female, and the inwardness of the female is male,”[165] a comment that is startlingly “Jungian.” Neumann writes that according to the Maggid the energy of the world is derived from the tension of male and female and its redemption involves the confluence of opposing genders to, in effect, realize “the prehistoric double sexuality of Adam Kadmon,”[166] the Primordial Human.  According to the Maggid, the tazddik is able to unite male and female.[167] It is interesting to note that Jung, in the Red Book, endeavors to unite male and female within himself.

Neumann points out that the “marriage” in which God is male and humanity female results in Rachamim (Compassion) and Tiferet (Beauty)[168] and is essential for the harmony and redemption of the world.  A marriage is also said to take place between Adam Kadmon and the world and on the heavenly level between the sefirot Tiferet and Malkhut, i.e. the Holy One Blessed Be He and his feminine counterpart, the Shekhinah. It is precisely this union which Jung so strongly identified with in his 1944 “Kabbalistic Vision,” recorded in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, when he experienced himself as the marriage of Malchuth with Tifereth!”[169]

Neumann understands the marriage between humanity and God as an awakening of the “transpersonal self” (represented by God) by “the activity of the human ego.” [170] It is not a far stretch to see this as an analogy to the analytic or psychotherapeutic process.  However, Neumann further relates that union of the masculine and the feminine, between God and humanity, leads to the human being achieving identity with the divine.[171] This involves an act which is initiated by the ego but which eventuates in the “dethroning of the ego” from its central position in the psyche and a consequent “emergence of the Self.”[172] It is, according to Neumann, an experience of “It teaches,” as opposed to “I learn.”  In subordinating a short-sighted, outward facing “ego-consciousness” to the Self the individual allows God to enter the psyche, with the result that suffering, sin and negativity is overcome.[173] The “inner meaning, that all things are related to the whole” is grasped when the divine symbol of the Self emerges.

One might here fault Neumann (as one can at times fault Jung) for an overly romanticized and naïve faith in the potential for human wholeness. Neumann suggests that a whole self will not see the world as disintegrating—and in retrospect this view seems naïve and optimistic in light of the great tragedy that was to befall Europe soon after Roots was written.

Neumann recognizes that the Kabbalistic tradition associates Hesed (kindness and grace) with the male principle and Din (judgment) with the female,[174] a view that is reflected in the tradition’s negative view of Eve, and which is so counterintuitive as to be suggestive of a projection of male aggressivity. Neumann makes what, at least in retrospect, the misogynistic observation that

The castrating, infantilizing dominance of the mother archetype in every dogma, in every ‘mother church,’ paralyzes consciousness in its active, masculine, enlightening aspect.”[175]

Neumann holds that it is this paralysis which “leads Judaism to the often sterile, formal pilpul rationalism…in which consciousness…demonstrates its own sterility.”[176] His remark is at once quite misogynistic and overly-dogmatic in its denigration of the Talmudic rational tradition. Neumann is of the view that such rationalism constrains consciousness and must be “transformed…into a dynamic relationship with existence…(and between) consciousness and the creative unconscious,” a transformation that Neumann sees occurring in the Hasidic notion that “the sparks enliven the world.[177]”

Neumann writes that the development of the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of the divine, reaches its zenith in Hasidism.[178] He indicates that the Shekhinah is identified with creation itself and this might suggest that she serves as a counterbalance to the notion that the divine is centered only in humanity and the self. Neumann. quotes the Yiddish scholar, Salomo Birnbaum (1891-1989): “The Shekhinah encompasses all worlds—inanimate, plant, animal, and human—everything created, the good and the evil. The Shekhinah is the true union.”[179] While Neumann recognizes that Hasidism (as does Judaism in general) interprets the world from an anthropocentric perspective,[180] this understanding of the Shekhinah gives warrant to the idea that the entire world is ensouled and that all of its animate and inanimate entities are loci of value. This appears to conflicts with the biblical charge that humanity has dominion over the earth, and (as discussed above) the Hasidic emphasis upon the sparks being raised through human sentient activity,[181] but it suggests a wider, more inclusive understanding of value, one that complements and stands in coincidentia oppositorum with ethical anthropocentrism.  This understanding is particulary suited to our time when so many are raising legitimate questions about humanity’s dominion over the earth and whether it has violated this sacred trust.

Joy and Passion

Hasidism is well known for its encouragement and celebration of joy as a holy value. Neumann writes that the Hasidim affirmed joy both because of its affirmation of the created world and because it unites the “human personality into wholeness.”[182]  He quotes Rabbi Nachman to the effect that it is a divine law “to always be joyful” and to derive pleasure from everything “even from pranks and jokes.”[183] Neumann says that while joy, derived, for example, from dance and music is a “physical experience,”[184] it involves “a heightening of the process of life, which is meant to increase consciousness…”[185] Indeed, the Hasidim, even today, engage in a joyous, almost frenzied song and dance during religious celebrations.

In the Kabbalah, joy is associated with the highest Sefirah, Keter, which is also referred to as Tinug (delight).  However, the Kabbalists were often quite ascetic, and Neumann points out that while the Hasidim adapted their theology from the Lurianic Kabbalah, they departed from its punishing approach to compliance with Torah law and introduced an emphasis upon its joyful fulfillment.

Neumann further relates that certain of the Hasidim held that a passionate engagement with both life and Torah is spiritually superior to a quiet and respectful one. He writes (without providing his source):

A tzaddik spoke about two opponents of Hasidism, one of whom angrily threw a newly published Hasidic book on the floor, whereas the other picked it up because after all, it contained words of the Torah. And he said: ‘The angry one will become a Hasid, but the mild one will always remain an opponent.[186] (101).

Neumann points out that the theory of the sparks creates a metaphor for the fire of passion and that, “Passionate feeling, raised to ecstasy, melts the diverse parts of the human soul together into a whole.”[187] The individual’s personality, he tells us, is “unified in joy.”[188]

In this connection we should note that in the Red Book, Jung is confronted by “The Red One,” an internal, imaginal figure who Jung recognizes to be the devil. The Red One upbraids Jung for his Christian seriousness and ponderous attitude, and tells Jung, in Dionysian/Nietzschean fashion, that it would be better if Jung would “dance through life.”[189]   Finally, the Red One “burst(s) into leaf” and he reveals himself as an embodiment of “Joy.” Jung then declares that the Red One is his “beloved” and says that perhaps there is “a joy before God” that he has yet to discover. (It is interesting to note that in the midst of this transformational encounter, the devil criticizes Jung for his defense of Christianity and its traditional vilification of the Jews.[190])

Accepting the World

Jung wrote about his struggles with “accepting all,” both the horrors and wonders of life in this world. In the Red Book his soul presents him with a progressively horrid sequence of artifacts, acts, and events as a measure of Jung’s willingness and capacity to accept the evil, destructiveness and tragedy which is repeatedly caused by humankind.[191]

Neumann’s Roots again provides the Hasidic antecedents to Jung’s struggle. He quotes a passage from Buber’s Tales (II. P. 166):

“In this day and age,” said Rabbi Mosche, “the greatest devotion, greater than learning and prayer, consists in accepting the world exactly as it happens to be’”[192]

And according to the Maggid of Meseritz:

The law of things is: everything that a person sees and hears, and all events that happen to him, come to stir him.”[193]

Neumann tells us that “This is the background for the principle of accepting the world, of redeeming through acceptance whatever one encounters, every place, every moment, every situation.”[194] According to the Hasidim, everything a person encounters contains holy sparks that he or she is uniquely suited to release and bring to light for the purpose of personal and world redemption.  The Hasidic “accepting all” is not a passive resignation but rather “enables the human being to extract meaning from everything he encounters.”[195] Such acceptance, according to Neumann, not only “delivers” the meaning of objects and events, but also the meaning of the individual: “When the sparks are raised to the ‘human level,’ they deliver to the human being not only their meaning but his as well.”[196]

Even the acceptance of “unfaith” and atheism has a place in the world and provides an opportunity to raise holy sparks, as the denial that there is a God to protect us, rightly places the onus on the individual to act in a helpful and charitable manner.[197]

Concluding Reflections

As we have seen, Neumann’s The Roots of Jewish Consciousness was a work in progress, one that Neumann himself abandoned and never completed. As such we must not regard it as either his or the final word on the relationship between Hasidism and Jung, or psychology in general, but rather as a valuable starting point for our own inquiries and reflections on these connections. In some instances, found Neumann’s analysis either lacking or incomplete.

As we have seen, Neumann, like Jung, equivocated on the relationship between psychology and theology—at times making what appeared to be theological proclamations, and then “covering” himself by stating that he has no metaphysical intentions and is speaking only in psychological terms.

Neumann’s understanding of Kabbalistic symbol of the “sparks,” was limited by his failure to fully consider the Lurianic notions of the “Breaking of the Vessels” (Shevirat ha-Kelim).  More importantly, while Neumann inarguably made significant contributions to an ethic informed by depth psychology,[198] he failed to adequately consider the full ethical and axiological implications of the doctrine of the Sefirot, glossing over the fact that in both Kabbalah and Hasidism the Sefirot symbolize objective values that, in effect increases the depth of life and consciousness, e.g. Chochmah (wisdom), Chesed (love) Tiferet (Beauty).

Neumann (again, like Jung) tended to locate psychic development in inwardness and failed to adequately consider and account for the Hasidic emphasis on the relational aspect of psychic and spiritual life that was articulated in a philosophical idiom by Buber. We find in Neumann, as in Jung, a preference for the introverted stance.  Neumann writes about “the path of turning [or repentance] from outside to inside, from extraversion, which stands in the sign of the ego and the world, to introversion, which stands in the sign of the Self and the soul.”[199] It is interesting that Neumann, who relies so extensively on Buber, places such little emphasis upon Buber’s view that it is primarily an encounter between individuals, or between humans and the world, the proverbial “I-thou” relationship, that is soul-making, and provides one with a window in the divine or “Eternal Thou.” Indeed, Buber quite bitterly criticized Jung on this very point.[200]

Neumann, in spite of his ground-breaking work on the “mother archetype,” and his awareness of the “the strange identification of the woman with evil”[201] in Judaism, also, in my view, failed to be sufficiently critical of the Kabbalistic and Hasidic degradation of the feminine.  As we have seen, Neumann writes uncritically about the “The castrating…mother archetype (which) paralyzes consciousness in its active, masculine, enlightening aspect.”[202]

From a Jewish perspective, Neumann’s belief that Hasidism represents a “Christianisation” of Judaism, a delayed, and in Neumann’s view, overdue ripening of essential aspects of early Christianity within Judaism”[203] comes dangerously close to justifying the Anti-Semitic Christian doctrine that the Jews are to be castigated (and persecuted) for their failure to accept Jesus Christ. One might even speculate that (in spite of Neumann’s criticisms of Jung’s views on National Socialism and ignorance regarding Judaism) that this served as a sort of concession to Jung who had, for example, in The Red Book claimed that the Jew lacks a failed to “carry Christ in his heart” and as such  “he himself feels that he lacks something?”[204]

In spite of these controversies, and in this author’s opinion, other limitations and defects, the publication of Neumann’s “Roots” and in particular his analysis of the parallels between Hasidism and depth (especially Jungian) psychology has opened new vistas for our understanding of both Jung and the psycho-spiritual possibilities inherent in Judaism in particular and contemporary religious life in general. If the Roots of Jewish Consciousness does not completely unlock the mystery of Jung’s 80^th year birthday pronouncement that “the Hasidic Rabbi Baer from Meseritz, whom they called the Great Maggid… anticipated my entire psychology…”[205] it certainly enhances our understanding and prompts us to make further inquiries into the relationship between depth psychology and Jewish mysticism.

Notes

[1] Neumann, Erich. The Roots of Jewish Consciousness, Volume Two: Hasidism. Ann Conrad Lammers, ed., Mark Kyburz amd Ann Conrad Lammers, trans, London and New York: Routledge, 2019. (Hereafter referenced as “Neumann, Roots II.”). Hereafter, all citations to the second volume of this work

[2] Jung’s spelling. There are many alternate English spellings. ”Meseritz,” is  utilized in Neumann’s “Roots.” “Mezeritch” and “Mezhirichi”are  also common spellings. It is a town in the Ukraine where the “Maggid” (itinerant Jewish preacher) spent the latter portion of his life.

[3] “An Eightieth Birthday Interview.” C.G. Jung Speaking, pp. 271-2.

[4]  C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann, Analytical Psychology in Exile: The Correspondence of. C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann, Ed. Martin Liebscher. Trans. Heather McCartney. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015, p. 13.

[5] Jung and Neuman, Analytical Psychology in Exile, pp. 37-50. Sent to Jung on July 19, 1934.

[6] Jung and Neuman, Analytical Psychology in Exile, p. 42.

[7] Jung and Neuman, Analytical Psychology in Exile, p. 52. Letter 7 J, August 12, 1934.

[8] Jung and Neuman, Analytical Psychology in Exile, p. 141. Letter 27 N December 5, 1938.

[9] Jung and Neuman, Analytical Psychology in Exile, p. 156, Letter 31 N, May 11, 1940.

[10] Jung and Neuman, Analytical Psychology in Exile, p. xxxvi.

[11] Idel, Moshe, Foreword: On Erich Neumann and Hasidism. Neumann, Roots II, p. xiv.

[12] Neumann, Roots II, p. 3.

[13] Neumann, Roots II, p. 83.

[14] See Chapter 10 herein.

[15] Jay Sherry, “The Case of Jung’s Alleged Anti-Semitism,” in Maidenbaum and Martin, Lingering Shadows, pp. 117-132, p. 121.

[16] C.G. Jung, The State of Psychotherapy, in Collected Works, Vol. 10, pp. 157-173, p. 165.

[17] Hitler, A. Mein Kampf. Translated by Ralph Mannheim.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999 (Originally published in 1927).

[18] Jung and Neumann, Analytical Psychology in Exile, p. 12.

[19] Jung and Neuman, Analytical Psychology in Exile, p. 13.

[20] See Drob, S Jung’s Kabbalistic Visions. Journal of Jungian Theory and  Practice, 7 (1), 2005, 33-54. Download full pdf Drob Kabbalistic Visions_S Drob

[21] Neumann, Roots II, p. 32.

[22] Neumann, Roots II, p. 18.

[23] Neumann, Roots II, p. 164.

[24] Neumann, Roots II, p. 164.

[25] Neumann, Roots II, p. 164.

[26] Neumann, Roots II, p. 165.

[27] Neumann, Roots II, p. 8.

[28] Neumann, Roots II, p. 171.

[29] Neumann, Roots II, p. 123, 157n.24 referencing Samuel A. Horodezky, Torat ha-maggid mi-Mezeritz ve-sihotav. (The Teachings of the Maggid of Meseritz and his Concersations, 1923. P. 108. [ Referred to by Neumann (and hereafter in this essay) as Horodezky, Great Maggid]. Samuel Horodezky (1871-1957) was a respected Ukrainian scholar of Jewish mysticism who in 1935 founded the Hasidic archives for Schocken Press.)

[30] Neumann, Roots II, p. 132.

[31] Neumann, Roots II, p. 133.

[32] See Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson. NY: Columbia University Press, 2009.

[33] Neumann, Roots II, p. 173,

[34] Neumann, Roots II, p. 173.

[35] Neumann, Roots II, p. 177.

[36] Neumann, Roots II, p. 174.

[37] Neumann, Roots II, p. 177.

[38] Neumann, Roots II, p. 178,

[39] Neumann, Roots II, p. 178.

[40] Neumann, Roots II, p. 178.

[41] Neumann, Roots II, p. 179.

[42] Neumann, Roots II, p. 171.

[43] Neumann, Roots II, p. 172, cf. Roots I, p. 132.

[44] Neumann, Roots II, p. 172.  Neumann (p. 180, n, 29) references Martin Buber, Die chassidischen Bucher (1928), p. 403.

[45] Neumann, Roots II, p. 172. On Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, see Joseph Fox,  Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk: A Biographical Study of the Chasidic Master. New York:Bash Publications Inc., 1988, Available on line at: https://itethics.tripod.com/kotzk.pdf (Downloaded June 25, 2021).

[46] Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi with Edward Hoffman, My Life in Jewish Renewal, Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012, pp. 116-117.

[47] Shoshana Fershtman, The Mystical Exodus in Jungian Perspective: Transforming Trauma and the Wellsprings of Renewal. London: Routledge, 2021, p. viii.

[48] C. G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus, ed. Sonu Shamdasani, trans. Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), p. 310b.\

[49] Psychological Types, Vol. 6 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull, ed. H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, Wm. McGuire, 20 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953-1979). (Hereafter referenced as “CW”) par. 823 (CW 6:823).

[50] Neumann, Roots II, p. 120.

[51] Neumann, Roots II, p. 68.

[52] Neumann, Roots II, p.72, citing Zohar III 144a (Roots II, p. 87, n.45).

[53] Neumann, Roots II, p. 120.

[54] Neumann, Roots II, p. 141.

[55] Neumann, Roots II, p. 142.

[56] Neumann, Roots II, p. 142.

[57] Neumann, Roots II, p. 47, citing to Horodezky, Great Maggid p. 35 (Neumann’s edito’rs note that the correct cite is to p. 39), Roots II p. 54, n. 189.

[58] Neumann, Roots II, p. 47, citing to Horodezky, Great Maggid p 36, correct cite should be to  p. 40. Roots II, p, 54, n.190.

[59] Neumann, Roots II, p. 60.

[60] Neumann, Roots II, p. 60.

[61] Neumann, Roots II, p. 61.

[62] Neumann, Roots II, p. 55. Neumann is quoting from Buber’s Unterweisung, p. 28, Roots II, p. 85, n.1. cf Roots II, pp. 61, 65.

[63] Jung writes that “sparks of light” (scintillae) are archetypes, hidden in the unconscious and “from which a higher meaning can be ‘extracted.’”²⁰ Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, p. 491.

[64] Neumann, Roots II, p.106, citing Buber, Unterweisung, p. 86, Roots II, p.  118, n. 76.

[65] Neumann, Roots II, p.105, citing to Horodezky, Great Maggid, p. 15, cited as p. 40, Roots II p. 118, n. 67.

[66] Neumann, Roots II, p. 107.

[67] Neumann, Roots II, p. 107, citing to Horodezky, Great Maggd, p. 193, Rootys II, p. 118 n. 79.

[68] Neumann, Roots II, p. 47, citing Great Maggid 135 (Neumann’s editors point out that the correct cite is to p. 135), Roots II, p. 54, n. 184.

[69] Neumann, Roots II, p.143, citing Great Maggid, p. 39, Roots II, p. 160, n. 116.

[70] Neumann, Roots II, p.143.

[71] Neumann, Roots II, p. 107.

[72] Neumann, Roots II, p. 107.

[73] Neumann, Roots II, p. 28.

[74] Neumann, Roots II, p. 31.

[75] Neumann, Roots II, p. 31.

[76] Neumann, Roots II, p. 138.

[77] Neumann, Roots II, p. 136.

[78] Neumann, Roots II, p. 136.

[79] Neumann, Roots II, p. 27, citing Horodezky, Great Maggid, p. 78, Roots II, p. 51, n. 92.

[80] Neumann, Roots II, 29, citing Horodezky, Great Maggid, p. 200, Roots II, p. 52. N.103.

[81] Neumann, Roots II, p. 136.

[82] Neumann, Roots II, p. 137. One might even go so far as to argue that on Neumann’s understanding of Hasidism it is not only the Jungian “self” but also the  Hegelian Absolute Spirit” that is completed by the incorporation of the unconscious and shadow!

[83] C. G. Jing, The Red Book, p. 338b.

[84] C. G. Jung, Psychological Types, CW6: p, 245, par. 416.

[85] C. G. Jung, Psychological Types, CW6: p, 251, par. 426.

[86] C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, p. 14, par 125; Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14: p. 548,  par. 781.

[87] C. G. Jung, Aion, CW9, II: p. 40, par. 73, p. 63, par. 116, p. 109, par.170.

[88] Neumann, Roots II, pp. 145, cf. 148.

[89] Neumann, Roots II, p.145.

[90] Neumann, Roots II, pp. 135, 147.

[91] See Neumann, Roots II, p. 159, n 89).

[92] Neumann, Roots II, p. 148, citing Horodezky, “Baal-Shem-Tom,” Jüdische Enzyklopädie . (1928-34)  col. 838, Roots II, p. 160, n.135.

[93] See Neumann, Roots II, p. 148, citing Horodezky, Great Maggid, p.201, Roots II, p. 160, n. 134.

[94] See  R.  Schatz  Uffenheimer.  Hasidism  as  Mysticism:  Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1993, p. 207.

[95] Neumann, Roots II, p.152, citing Buber, Chasid Buch, p. 574, Tales of the Hasidim 1, p. 125, Roots II, p. 161, n. 153.

[96] Neumann, Roots II, p.153,

[97] Neumann, Roots II, p.103.

[98] Neumann, Roots II, p.105.

[99] Neumann, Roots II, p.103.

[100] Neumann, Roots II, p.15, citing Buber Chasid Buch, p. 437. Roots II, p. 50, n. 49.

[101] Neumann, Roots II, p. 7.

[102] Neumann, Roots II, p. 19, citing Buber: Chassid Buch, p. 33. Roots II, p. 50, n. 64.

[103]  Neumann, Roots II, p. 19, citing Samuel A. Horodezky, Torat Rabbi Nachman mi-Bratslav ve-sihotav (The teaching of Rabbi Nachman of Brezlav and his conversations, 1923  (Hereafter referred to as Horodezky R. Nachman),  p. 17. Roots II, p. 50, n. 65.

[104] Neumann, Roots II, p. 20. Neumann’s editors indicate that this passage is found in a 1948 pamphlet by Buber Der Weg des Menschen nach der schassidischen Lehre (The Way of Man, According to the Teachings of Hasidism, p. 17.  Roots II, p. 50, n. 40.

[105] Neumann, Roots II, p. 124, citing Buber, Chasid Buch, p. 592, Tales of the Hasidim I, p. 244, Roots II, 157, n. 28.

[106] Neumann, Roots II, p. 124.

[107] Neumann, Roots II, p. 100, citing Buber, Chassid Buch, p. 591, Buber Tales I, p.121, Roots II, p. 117, n. 45.

[108] Neumann, Roots II, p. 100.

[109] Neumann, Roots II, p. 170.

[110] Neumann, Roots II, p. 170.

[111] See Neumann, Roots II, p. 180, n. 20.

[112] C. G. Jung, “Adaptation, Individuation, Collectivity,” The Symbolic Life, CW 18, p. 451, par 1095.

[113] Neumann, Roots II, p. 32.

[114] Neumann, Roots II, p. 32.

[115] Neumann, Roots II, p. 32, citing Buber, Chasid Buch 581f, Tales I, p. 147, Roots II, p. 52, n. 115.

[116] Neumann, Roots II, p. 33.

[117] C. G. Jung Letters, ed. Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffé, trans. R. F. C. Hull, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973) Vol. 2:p. 157.

[118] Neumann, Roots II, p. 66, citing R. Nachmun, p. 60 (Neumann’s editors indicate that the actual cite is to p. 69) and Buber, Chassid Buch, p. 148. Roots II , p 86, n. 27, 28.  Cf., Roots II, p, 139.

[119] Neumann, Roots II, p. 39.

[120] Neumann, Roots II, p. 40, citing Horodezky, Great Maggid, p. 46, Roots II, p. 53, n.158.

[121] Neumann, Roots II, p. 39, citing Horodezky, Great Maggid, p. 215, (Neumann’s editors indicate that the actual cite is to p. 296)  Roots II, p. 53, n. 156.

[122] Jung, Red Book, p.  320a, Reader’s Edition, p. 424.

[123] Neumann, Roots II, p. 40.

[124] In The Red Book Jung writes: “Do you still not know that the way to truth stands open only to those without intentions?… We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life. We believe that we can illuminate the darkness with an intention, and in that way aim past the light. How can we presume to want to know in advance, from where the light will come to us?” Jung, Red Book,  236a-237b.

[125] Neumann, Roots II, p. 142.

[126] Neumann, Roots II, p. 102, citing Buber, Chassid Buch, p. 33f. Roots II, p. 117, n.55.

[127] Neumann, Roots II, p. 21.

[128] Neumann, Roots II, p. 22.

[129] Neumann, Roots II, p. 22.

[130] Neumann, Roots II, p. 32.

[131] Neumann, Roots II, p. 25.

[132] Schneur Zalman Likutei Torah, Devarim, fol. 83a, as quoted in Elior, Paradoxical Ascent, p. 137-8.

[133] Neumann, Roots II, p. 36. Zohar I, 19 a, b. Neumann quotes from a translation by Gershom Scholem,  Die Geheimnisse der Schöpfung: Ein Kapitel aus dem kabbalistischen Buche Sohar. Roots II, p.  52, n. 134. Matt, in the Pritzker edition of the Zohar translates the passage as follows, “Every single night, the spirit strips itself of that garment and ascends, and the consuming fire consumes it. Later they are restored as before, figured in clothes” (Daniel Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Vol. I, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004, p. 147. See Roots II, Appendix A: Passages from the Zohar, p. 182). Matt comments that “that garment” refers to the body.

[134] Neumann, Roots II, p. 37.  Neumann references Buber, Chasid Buch p. 632, Tales I, p. 173, Roots II, p. 52, n. 138).

[135] Neumann’s editors point out that the saying is found in Dove Baer of Meseritz, Maggid Devarav le-Yaakov (1780, Critical Hebrew Edition edited by Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer, Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1976). . Neumann, Roots II, p. 52, n. 138.

[136] Neumann, Roots II, p. 37.

[137] Neumann, Roots II, p. 38.

[138] Neumann, Roots II, p. 39.

[139] Neumann, Roots II, p. 38.

[140] Neumann, Roots II, p. 69.

[141] C. G. Jung The Red Book, p. 346b, Reader’s Edition, p. 509.

[142] C. G. Jung, Aion, CW 9ii, pp. 190-1, par. 298.

[143] C. Jung, The Red Book, p. 347a, Reader’s Edition, p. 510.

[144] C. G. Jung, Visions: Notes of a Seminar Given in 1930-1934, Vol. II (31 May 1933), Claire Douglas, Ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997,  p. 1026.

[145] Jung, The Red Book, p. 229a.

[146] Jung to Hans Schmid, 6 November 1915, C.G. Jung, Letters, Volumes I and II, eds., Gerhard Adler, Aniela Jaffe, and R.F.C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), Vol. I, p. 31.

[147] Neumann, Roots II, p. 144, citing Horodezky, Great Maggid, p. 107, Roots II, p. 16, n. 117.

[148] Neumann, Roots II, p. 46.

[149] C. G. Jung, The Red Book, p. 319, Reader’s Edition, p. 554.

[150] Rabbi Dov Baer, Ner Mitzvah ve-Torah Or, II, fol. 6a. Quoted in Rachel Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, trans. J. M. Green (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993).p. 64.

[151]  Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, p. 64.

[152] Quoted in Elior, Rachel Elior, “Chabad: The Contemplative Ascent to God,” in Jewish Spirituality: From the Sixteenth Century Revival to the Present, Arthur Green, Ed. (New York, NY: Crossroads, 1987), p. 166.

[153] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1966 (1943).

[154] Hegel’s Logic, William Wallace, trans., (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1975), par. 48, Zusatz 1, 78.

[155] Neumann, Roots II, p. 111, citing Buber, Chasid Buch p. 543, Tales II, p. 60), Roots II, n.118, n. 83.

[156] Neumann, Roots II, p. 144.

[157] Neumann, Roots II, p. xvii. Idel cites Or ha-‘Emmet, (Light of Truth) Bnei Beraq, 1967, fol. 37c.

[158] Neumann, Roots II, p. xvii-xviii, citing Ohev Israel (Love of Israel), Zhiomir, 12863, fol. 81cd.

[159] Neumann, Roots II, p. xviii.

[160] Neumann, Roots II, p. xvii.

[161] Neumann, Roots II, pp. 60-1.

[162] Neumann, Roots II, p. 61.

[163] Neumann, Roots II, p. 81.

[164] Neumann, Roots II, p. 82, citing Zohar I:55b, Bischoff Zohar p. 100f. Matt, in the Pritzker edition of the Zohar translates the passage as follows: “Any image not embracing male and female is not fittingly supernal…Anywhere male and female are not found as one, the blessed Holy One  does not place his abode..One is not even called human, unless male and female are as one.” Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Vol. I,  p. 314. See Appendix A, Roots II, p. 184).

[165] Neumann, Roots II, p. 130, Citing Horodezky Great Maggid, p. 115, Roots II, p. 158, n. 153.

[166] Neumann, Roots II, p. 130.

[167] Neumann, Roots II, p. 130.

[168] Neumann, Roots II, p. 150.

[169] C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 293.

[170] Neumann, Roots II, p. 150.

[171] Neumann, Roots II, p. 151.

[172] Neumann, Roots II, p. 151.

[173] Neumann, Roots II, p. 151.

[174] Neumann, Roots II, p. 130.

[175] Neumann, Roots II, p. 166.

[176] Neumann, Roots II, p. 166.

[177] Neumann, Roots II, p. 166.

[178] Neumann, Roots II, p. 145.

[179] Neumann, Roots II, p. 146, citing  Salomo Birnbaum, Leben und Worte des Blaschemm nach chassidischen Schriften, Auswahl und Übertragung von Salomo Birnbaum, Berlin: Welt, 1920, p. 86, Roots II, p. 160, n.126.

[180] Neumann, Roots II, p. 62.

[181]Neumann holds that foe the Hasidim, meaning is discerned when one sees the entire world as a “cipher” and this is achieved by viewing the external world through the prism of the psyche, thus making the world an “inner world.” Neumann writes: “Every event that appears to come to a person from outside, if we look into its reality, reveals that it is related to something inside the person” (Neumann, Roots II, p. 115.)

[182] Neumann, Roots II, p. 93.

[183] Neumann, Roots II, p. 93, Horodezky, R Nachman, p. 161, Roots II, p.116, n. 22.

[184] Neumann, Roots II, p. 94.

[185] Neumann, Roots II, p. 94

[186] Neumann, Roots II, p. 101.

[187] Neumann, Roots II, p. 102.

[188]Neumann, Roots II, p. 102.

[189] Jung, The Red Book, p. 260b.

[190] Jung, The Red Book, p. 261a.

[191] Jung, The Red Book, p. 305b.

[192] Neumann, Roots II, p. 111, citing Buber, Chasid Buch, p. 638, Tales II, p. 166, Roots II, p. 118, n. 88.

[193] Neumann, Roots II, p. 112, citing Horodezky, Great Maggid, p. 175, Roots II, p. 118, n. 94.

[194] Neumann, Roots II, p. 122.

[195] Neumann, Roots II, p. 112.

[196] Neumann, Roots II, p. 112.

[197]  Neumann, Roots II, p. 112, citing Buber, Chasid Buch, p. 515. Neumann’s editors point out that the correct citation is to p. 609 (and Buber, Tales II, p. 89), Roots II, p. 118, n. 98.

[198] Especially in his Depth Psychology and A New Ethic. Eugene Rolfe, trans. Boston: Shambhala (Reprint Edition), 1990.

[199] Neumann, Roots II, p. 125,

[200] Martin Buber, “Religion and Modern Thinking,” in his Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 1988), pp. 63-92. Buber’s dialog with Jung receives a thorough and sympathetic analysis by Barbara. D. Stephens in her “The Martin Buber-Carl Jung disputations: protecting the sacred in the battle for the boundaries of analytical psychology,” Journal of Analytical Psychology 46 (2001): 455-91.

[201] Neumann, Roots, II, p. 31.

[202] Neumann, Roots II, p. 166.

[203] Neumann, Roots II, p. 18.

[204] Jung, The Red Book, p. 260a, Reader’s Edition, p. 215.

[205] Jung,  “An Eightieth Birthday Interview.” C.G. Jung Speaking, pp. 268-72, pp. 271-2.