Kabbalah: A Love Story by Lawrence Kushner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Signs of the Times

This charming little book is the perfect sequel (or antidote) to anything involving modern physics, especially Quantum Gravity and String Theory. It's also not a bad companion to calm the spirit after much post-modernist fiction.

Kabbalah is attractive because it is neither rationalist nor dogmatic, yet it respects both thought and faith. It neither preaches nor proves; it simply invites consideration. Kabbalah does not provide truth; it hints at reality. What better way to present Kabbalah therefore than as a love story between a rabbi and a cosmologist?

There is a perennial controversy about the date and authorship of the central text of Kabbalah, The Zohar. Attributed to both the 13th century Moses de Leon and to the 2nd century sage Simeon bar Yochai, The Zohar is without doubt a sign of its times when it reached its 13th century form. Mysticism had been on the rise for two centuries in the dominant Christian society. Gregory the Great, John Scotus Eriugena, Bernard of Clairvaux, Raymond Lulle, William of St. Thierry, and Hugh of St. Victor were Christian voices reacting to a growing rationalism and dogmatism that were affecting the lives of medieval Jews as well as Christians.

The principle technique of Kabbalah is the exposure of language. It is intentionally obscure, vague, ambiguous in order to redirect thought and to require the questioning of vocabulary and logical categories. Kushner interprets this explicitly as a literary device:

"Judaism is a religion of books. The entire tradition is initiated by a novel...the Five Books of Moses...This is what distinguishes Jewish fundamentalism...each word issuing from the Source of Meaning must obviously contain an infinity of meanings.... The Zohar, itself masquerading as a commentary on God's novel, becomes inexhaustible."

This is Kabbalistic Semiology: the world conceived as a sign, that is, a story. This applies to the world in general but also especially to sacred texts. According to The Zohar, the stories of God and the Israelites in the Torah cannot be what they superficially appear to be because God would have written more interesting stories. The task of Kabbalah therefore is to uncover the hidden stories of the Torah, the meanings placed there by God within, or really beyond, the language.

Interestingly, this idea of the theology of the sign, of language, was also a principle concern of the 'Seraphic Doctor' of the Catholic Church, St. Bonaventure. Born a generation before Moses de Leon but very possibly known by him, Bonaventure also considered the world and its components as signs to be interpreted not taken at face value. Bonaventure was subsequently overshadowed by his contemporary Thomas Aquinas and Thomas's very Aristotelian rationalism.

Not until the 20th century, in the 'dialectical theology' of the Swiss Karl Barth did the insights of both Bonaventure and de Leon return to mainstream theology. Barth plays continuously, for example, with the simultaneous process of hiding and revealing that occurs in all language about God. This dialectic is the central theme of Kabbalah.

Kushner's weaving together of a simple love story with what might be called the universal love story of the cosmos with itself is totally apt. According to Kabbalah, both Creation and the Creator learn together what it means to love through their experience with each other. The relationship between Creature and Creator is necessarily tenuous, each making exploratory advances and unexplained retreats. There is progress and there is alienation; affection and disgust; communication and misunderstanding.

Ultimately it is the mutual commitment to find the meaning of love that continuously re-creates the world. Neither Creature nor Creator knows the final result, but simply trusts in the other. This is not a means to some other end - heaven, salvation, etc. - it is purpose pure and simple. Nothing else matters.

Philosophers like Daniel Dennett and scientists like Carlo Rovelli make the case that our intuitions of human purpose and intention and consciousness are illusory. While admitting they cannot demonstrate this contention empirically, they insist on its superiority. In other words, they have made a pre-rational, an aesthetic, choice about how to view the world. Having made that choice, the world appears to conform. This is the power of aesthetics: to create the world around us. The real illusion is that we claim this power as illusory while we exercise it. Kabbalah is a mode of grappling with this illusion.

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