Notes on Books I've Read: Seekers of the Face, Melila Hellner-Eshed

The Zohar read Phenomenologically, A Word I Pretend to Understand

So, really I should be giving you notes on Hellner-Eshed’s first book, “A River Flows Through Eden” which presents her method of reading the Zohar, but I actually enjoyed that book too much to flag anything in it. Everything in it was written clearly and in a way that would absorb such that there was nothing in it that I was like, I’m scared I won’t remember this. Really recommend her stuff as work that gives you a great feel for the Zohar but isn’t dry and overly technical, and gives you a good sense for the material.

Her basic methodology, as I understand it, is to assume that the Zohar was written as the result of genuine mystical experiences in a group setting, where participants would enter a sort of flow state of mystical interpretation of biblical verses (she likens it to Jazz at one point), and that the Zohar is a record of actual events in the mystical circle of R. Moshe de Leon, who was actually not the main guy (and is represented in the text as R. Abba, not R. Shimon Bar Yochai). You have to follow up on her references to go read the Yehuda Liebes (her teacher) article her whole thing is based on to find out that the guy identified in the Zohar as R. Shimon Bar Yochai was probably R. Todros ben Yosef Abulafia (not to be confused with his cousin, a troubador with a penchant for dirty lyrics who Liebes rejects as having had anything to do with the Zoharic circle, for reasons I find unconvincing)¹

But her main way of understanding the Zohar is to see it as something that produced mystical experience in its participants and that induces mystical experience in its readers, which are essentially flow states and trance states that can be induced from involvement in a mentally challenging activity in a group setting. It’s cool stuff and I would like to see more analysis of mystical texts that seek to understand not just the circumstances behind their writing, but the effect they had on readers, and why certain mystical texts and doctrines caught on with readers. Especially when you consider how rare books were before the printing press, the fact that the Zohar catches on and becomes influential really has something to do with its effect on the reader, and Hellner-Eshed is doing great work in drawing attention to that.

This has been my Melila Hellner-Eshed advocacy. Go read her stuff. It’s a great shabbos afternoon read. It’ll change your life, unless you’re no fun at all.

So after I read “A River Flows Through Eden” (and once again, thanks to Dr. Alan Brill for the recommendation), R. Yonah Lavery-Yisraeli highly recommended I read Hellner-Eshed’s second book on the Idra Rabba, “Seekers of the Face”.

The Idra Rabba, by way of introduction, is a section of the Zohar which describes a meeting of R. Shimon Bar Yochai and his disciples (read: R. Todros Abulafia and his disciples) where they get together and try to use mystical interpretation of biblical verses to conjure up the Face(s) of God. Y’know, your average weekend. It goes well, except for the three people that die. It’s trippy. Does it conflict with rationalist ideas of God and what kind of discourse is allowed about God? Duh, obviously, (and the Idra Rabba and the Zohar may in fact be a reaction to such ideology and claims). But let’s follow Hellner-Eshed’s lead and take the Zohar on its own terms.

Page 36

So the first section is about the Idra’s choice to portray God in terms of faces, and the ramifications of such a choice. Obviously not going to go into her entire argument, even though I feel like I have to in order to justify it to the more rationalist sectors of my audience, but just…read her book okay. I’m just talking about stuff I found interesting. But this is interesting to me because it talks about the role faces play in maintaining individuality and boundaries around that individuality. Faces are where our emotions are regulated, where we put up a boundary between what we might be feeling and what we are willing to express publicly. They are a place where the boundaries between individuals are enforced. This is a really interesting insight, and plays well with stuff in Chazal about the face being the expression of individuality of a person (“just like their faces are different from one another so too are their minds”) and both R. Hutner² and, I’m told, Levinas have stuff about faces in the encounter between human beings.
So maybe what there is to draw out here is that the Face(s) of God being described in the Idra Rabba are also boundaries, they represent what God is kivyachol (and let’s just say one kivyachol at the front and be patur for the rest of it, this is ALLL kivayachol) comfortable with expressing publicly, and is actually not identified with God’s “true self”. But maybe she expands on that in something else I flagged.

Okay, skipping ahead a bunch, and I’m sorry to not give you the play by play of the Idra theology, to page 68

So to very briefly sum up, we’ve got Arik Anpin, The Long Face, which is the first face of God, that is an old man with a long beard, who is patient and wise, and the Ze’ir Anpin, the small face, the warrior king who, when he gazes upon the world, is angered at sin and human error, and who must be “healed” by gazing up at the Arik Anpin. What’s going on here? I’m very intrigued by psychological explanations of kabbalah, in general, and here she quotes psychologist/philosopher/all around interesting dude Erich Neumann.

Quick word about Erich Neumann. Fascinating guy. Student of Carl Jung, excitedly wrote to Jung calling him “my rebbe”, Jung was like “chill out dude”. Wrote some important books on psychology, wrote a multi-volume work on a philosophy of Judaism that he never published because he didn’t think it was very good. I tried reading it, didn’t understand a lot of it, so either he was right or I need more of a background in Jung. But given his reading of kabbalistic and chassidic sources, this idea in Neumann could not just be an explanation of a Zoharic text, it could be its source. This has been a moment of Erich Neumann advocacy. Back to the text.

So we’ve got a baby who, when they’re born, doesn’t see itself as a separate entity from all of creation, who slowly begins to get an ego so that their “I” can be differentiated from the “Self”. In order to do that they have to break their connection from the “Self”, but eventually as they grow up they reform their bonds to the source of the Self and heal that connection. This is kind of similar to the dynamic we talked about in Hillel Zeitlin last time, of the need to be yourself and express your I, but not so much that it becomes a thirst for power for its own sake, and then the return of your Ego to its source in “Ayin” in the Nothingness that is Infinite that is prior to creation.

Hellner-Eshed explains the application of Neumann to what we’re talking about.

page 69

The Zeir Anpin is the ego, differentiating itself from the infinite and undifferentiated Arik Anpin, who must gaze back at the Arik Anpin for a sense of perspective and balance, to realize his connection with the All of the Universe even when he is distinct and separate.

Interestingly, this seems to be not something that happens constantly or naturally, but has to be specifically done, even forced by way of human intervention. Page 70

Zeir Anpin needs to be occasionally reminded of his connection to the Arik Anpin, because usually Zeir Anpin’s energy is connected to differentiating himself from the All represented by Arik Anpin.

I didn’t flag this, but Hellner-Eshed rightly spends some time in previous chapters noting that the beginning of the Idra Rabba, with Rashbi saying “it is time to act for YHVH”, is itself highly significant because in rabbinic texts it indicates that an emergency measure must be adopted that breaks prior precedent. Famously it is the proof text used to justify the writing down of the Oral Torah. There is an atmosphere being established here of emergency, of we need to do this now before its too late.

I personally would argue, and I’ll see if Hellner-Eshed goes in this direction, that this is a call to rescue Judaism from the Rambam and the medieval rationalists. There is a last chance here to rescue Judaism for mysticism and, perhaps, creative and artistic expression within it, before it is steamrolled by the Maimonidean conception of Judaism. But that’s just me, for now.

Skipping ahead to page 100, and again, sorry for the lack of play by play, just go read the book,

Probably flagged this so I could go check this guy out more, but important stuff here about the role that imagination plays in the religious life, especially that of mystics. (When I tackle the stuff I’ve read on the Piacezner this will be discussed more in depth because it’s a big sugya with the Piacezner)

Then no flags until page 176, where we then start having them every page or so. Apparently I found this part very cool.