Review of Orlov, "Dark Mirrors"

At the SBL in November, 2012, I participated in a book review session for Andrei Orlov's fine new book, Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology. I've just posted my review as a Page on this blog - Review of Dark Mirrors.

Today at the SBL

I went to a couple of interesting sessions at the SBL today - the first was the morning session of the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism section, which was a book review session. The first book reviewed was Peter Schäfer's The Origins of Jewish Mysticism. James Davila and Seth Sanders both spoke about it. I was supposed to be one of the reviewers, but I was really over-committed this semester and thus was unable to complete my review. I will, however, be writing a review to be published sometime next year. They both brought up interesting critical points - you can read all of Jim's review at his blog, PaleoJudaica (there's a link to a PDF of the review). Jim's critique focused on the lack of attention given by Schäfer to the ritual, instructional character of the Hekhalot texts, which he thinks is the way we should be reading them, rather than getting involved in the old fight over whether the texts describe mystical experiences or are literary, exegetical texts. Seth's reading focused on another point raised by Schäfer, on how the biblical book of Ezekiel should be understood - again, not as giving us access to the supposed ecstatic experience of Ezekiel which provides the basis of the book, but to certain linguistic features ("the hand of the Lord" upon Ezekiel) that indicate a pragmatic effect upon Ezekiel. I hope that Seth will say more about his interpretation on his blog, Serving the Word.

The second part of the EJCM session was a review of another book, The Spirit World in the Letters of Paul the Apostle, by Guy Williams. Charles Gieschen reviewed the book, and Williams responded.

This afternoon I went to a session of the Qur'an and Biblical Literature Section. I missed the first talk, by Herb Berg, on "Islamic origins and the nature of the early sources," but was there for the other papers, by Stephen Shoemaker, Vernon Robbins, Devin Stewart, and Gordon Newby, which were all very interesting. This is by no means my field, but I am very interested in it, especially the way in which the  Qur'an takes up earlier Jewish and Christian traditions (biblical as well as post-biblical) and re-uses/re-fashions them for its own theological/rhetorical agenda. Since I don't know Arabic, it's not going to be an area that I can do my own academic research in, but I like to follow what others are doing. If I have time I'll write more about each paper.

I'm now going to seize the moment and go to the book display. Tomorrow morning is another session of the EJCM, and tomorrow night there is a reception for Rachel Elior, with presentation of a festschrift to her.

Religious experience and mysticism

April DeConick, in her excellent Forbidden Gospels Blog, has an interesting discussion of a new article by Peter Schäfer on the question of religious experience and mystical texts. As April notes, in his writing on the Hekhalot literature Schäfer has usually emphasized the importance of viewing early Jewish mystical literature as coming out of an "exegetical impulse" and not out of personal religious experience. While I agree with Schäfer that we need to look at both the ritual (usually called "magical") and the mystical aspects of the Hekhalot literature, I think that he goes overboard in his emphasis on exegesis. I agree with April in her approach: "My own approach is to consider the intersection of these two aspects, and to take very seriously the mystical tradition as a living practiced religious tradition." Anyway, read her blog posting - it's a very interesting and worthwile discussion of how to define early Jewish (and Christian) mysticism.

Deeper meaning of this blog's name

It has occurred to me that perhaps I should explain the deeper meaning of the name of this blog -- not only do I want to write about mysticism and politics, I also intend to write about the politics of mysticism and political mysticism. One of the phenomena I was thinking of was the use of amulets during Israeli elections. I've been in Israel several times during election campaigns (most recently this past January, 2003), and during one of the campaigns in past years I picked up an amulet that was being given out by the Shas party (the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi party). It urged the recipient to vote for the party and its leader, Aryeh Der'i (who subsequently had to leave politics because he was convicted of using his office as Minister of the Interior to enrich himself and various yeshivot [Jewish religious seminaries] that he was connected to; he served about three years in prison for these offenses). The amulet was a standard one for protection against evil forces, the evil eye, etc. -- the text obviously heir to the long tradition of Jewish amulets.

I was also living in Israel during the 1998-99 academic year (October-August), and there was an election then also -- if I recall correctly, when I was there the Labor Party, led by Ehud Barak, defeated Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu. Part of the electioneering of the Shas party during that election had to do with a supposed exorcism -- it was videotaped, the tape was subsequently played on national television and sold publicly. A woman was possessed by the spirit of her dead husband, and sought help from various quarters until she came to a rabbi affiliated with the Shas party -- he conducted an exorcism to rid the poor woman of her husband's spirit. The tape was used as part of the election campaign of the Shas party, I guess as a demonstration of their connection with heavenly forces.

Another way that I think of the intersection of mysticism and politics has to do with how contemporary politics in a broader sense affects the study of Jewish mysticism (indeed, of any subject in Jewish studies). In the academic world as a whole over the last thirty years there has been intensive attention devoted to issues of race, class, and gender and how one's own identity affects one's scholarship -- such as who it is that gets to do scholarship, who has access to college and advanced study, the topics one chooses to study, the methods one uses to approach those topics, etc. My current research has to do with women's involvement (or not) in early Jewish mysticism/ritual practices to gain power. The mere fact that I've chosen to address this topic is heavily influenced by the feminist movement of the last thirty years -- and the fact that others are interested in reading what I have to say also means that the field as a whole has been affected by feminism.

When I first started thinking about these questions, in the early 1990s, when I was writing the prospectus for my doctoral dissertation, one of the members of my committee did not even understand why the question of women's involvement had to be addressed -- his point of view was that there were no women in Jewish mysticism, so why bother about the question any further? In reply I attempted to say that I thought it worthwhile to consider why there were no women -- especially in comparison to the development of Christian mysticism, where there have been many significant women mystics. The rise of the feminist movement allowed me to raise this question as a valid question and attempt to answer it.