A comprehensive treatment of visionary experience in some of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, this book reveals the overwhelmingly visual nature of religious experience in Jewish spirituality from antiquity through the late Middle Ages. Using phenomenological and critical historical tools, Wolfson examines Jewish mystical texts from late antiquity, pre-kabbalistic sources from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and twelfth- and thirteenth-century kabbalistic literature. His work demonstrates that the sense of sight assumes an epistemic priority in these writings, reflecting and building upon those scriptural passages that affirm the visual nature of revelatory experience. Moreover, the author reveals an androcentric eroticism in the scopic mentality of Jewish mystics, which placed the externalized and representable form, the phallus, at the center of the visual encounter.
In the visionary experience, as Wolfson describes it, imagination serves a primary function, transmuting sensory data and rational concepts into symbols of those things beyond sense and reason. In this view, the experience of a vision is inseparable from the process of interpretation. Fundamentally challenging the conventional distinction between experience and exegesis, revelation and interpretation, Wolfson argues that for the mystics themselves, the study of texts occasioned a visual experience of the divine located in the imagination of the mystical interpreter. Thus he shows how Jewish mystics preserved the invisible transcendence of God without doing away with the visual dimension of belief.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
Good Scholarly Work:
This book reminds me a lot of the works of Gershom Scholem and, to some degree, of Moshe Idel. It is a scholarly work and, thus, not easy reading. But, the author makes many interesting points and has some translations (perhaps, the best part for the more advanced student). Thus, it's more a book about Kabbalah than a book of Kabbalah. Nevertheless, a mystic needs to keep his/her feet on the ground as well as his/her head in the clouds. I find a mixture of theory and practice books is optimal for... more info
Speculum is an excellent analysis of kabbalah.:
While it is a challenging read, I found Speculum to be both a careful reading of the texts, and an excellent analysis of the issue at hand - vision in Jewish mystical texts. Fortunately (and quite surprisingly in this field), Wolfson neither glosses over anything, nor exaggerates anything. Rather, he presents it in a balanced, yet brilliant manner. If there was one book to read about Jewish mysticism, this is it.
Brilliant but very dense book:
I rate this book a 10 in academic brilliance but only a 3
in presentation. There is no doubt that Dr.Elliot Wolfson
is a world class scholar in the field of Jewish Mysticism.
However I had to wind my way through extremely dense
scholarship to get at the material. I unfortunately
find this to be an annoying trait of most books in
this genre... Overall I rate this book highly and would
recommend it... but be prepared to invest the time and
effort...
