Description

Since 1945, scholarship and interest in the ancient tradition of Kabbalah have reached unprecedented heights. What originated as an esoteric ritual, secretly studied by a select elite, is yielding to increasingly widespread interest. Renowned as one of the world's most astute interpreters of Kabbalistic texts, Elliot Wolfson offers an illuminating and original presentation of Kabbalah. Combining its wisdom with Western philosophical heritage from Plato to Heidegger and beyond, synergy guides his elucidation of the fundamentals of Jewish mysticism and shapes his taxonomy of Kabbalistic thought. A deeply dialectical thinker, Wolfson holds seemingly paradoxical tenets in tandem: Medieval Judaism and American modernity; the 'tradition' of Kabbalah and postmodern philosophy; sexual body and human spirit; ontological truth and religious imagination; revelation and occultation; good and evil; left and right - none of these, he writes, are diametrically opposite. Rather, they are dialectical poles with which to think and through which to intuit, tools to gaining a deeper understanding of the Jewish mystical tradition and its meaning for the twenty-first century. An insightful collection of seminal essays written between 1986 and 1998, "Luminal Darkness" reveals the unmistakably poetic nature of this important scholar's creative process, and delineates the evolution of his thinking on the role and importance of the Zohar in Kabbalistic tradition.