Nihilating Nonground and the Temporal Sway of Becoming

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Notes

1. See Idel, “Jewish Kabbalah” 325–31; Katz 279–98, especially 287–89; Wolfson, “Negative Theology” v–xxii; idem, Language 215–20.

2. Gikatilla 1: 57, 144, 164, and see editor's introduction 30–31. See also David ben Yehudah he-[Hdot]asid 129, 131; Zohar 3: 258a (Ra‘aya Meheimna); Tiqqunei Zohar, sec. 22, 68b.

3. Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi 2c, 28b; David ben Yehudah he-[Hdot]asid 80, 224; and see the editor's introduction 22.

4. Cordovero 2: chapter 7, 23a; Ergas 63–64.

5. On the term hashwa’ah, especially in the writings of Azriel of Gerona, see Wolfson, Language 98–99, and Valabregue-Perry 232–44.

6. Unless otherwise noted, all references to the Zohar are from Sefer ha-Zohar, edited by Margaliot.

7. Scholem (Origins 272) surmises that the kabbalists may have been influenced by the discussion of divine nothingness and self-creation in the ninth-century Neoplatonic cosmology of John Scottus Eriugena, based, in part, on Gregory of Nyssa. See Harry Wolfson 1: 199–206; Sells 36, 45–48.

8. Compare the similar portrayal of the Ein Sof in Azriel of Gerona's catechismic Be’ur Eser Sefirot, published most recently in Schatz, Ma‘yan 83: “Since it is elevated and concealed, it is the root of everything hidden and revealed, and since it is concealed, it is the source of faith and the source of rebellion.”

9. The expression was used by Scholem in a letter to Walter Benjamin dated 20 Sept. 1934, in his attempt to delineate the status of the law in Kafka's Trial. See Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 142, and analysis in Wolfson, Venturing Beyond 233–34.

10. Scholem, Major 315–18; idem, On the Kabbalah 10–11, 119; idem, Messianic 19–24, 49–141; idem, “Nihilismus” 27–35; Wasserstrom 215–24. See also the interview with Scholem in Ben Ezer 282, where Scholem describes himself as a “religious anarchist.”

11. See the brief references to Eckhart's doctrine of the divine nothingness in Matt 122, 126.

12. I have translated the version of the text in the Cremona edition (1559–60) of the Zohar, p. 99. The passage with variations appears in the Mantua edition (1558) of the Zohar 1: 21a.

13. Here I have paraphrased the formulation of the seventh master of the dynasty of [Hdot]abad-Lubavitch [Hdot]asidism, in Schneerson 476. See Wolfson, Open 100, 212, 215.

14. For discussion of this motif and citation of relevant sources, see Wolfson, Circle 69–72; idem, Language 182–83, 273–77, 281, 285.

15. Compare the beginning of Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Yesodei Torah 1:1, “The foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a first being [maṣuy ri'shon], and he brought every existent into existence. All the existents from heaven to earth, and everything between them, exist only on account of the truth of his existence.”

16. One passage that might intimate something close to the Neoplatonic hyperessentiality appears at the end of the exegesis of Ezekiel's chariot vision in Maimonides, Guide 3: chapter 7, 430: “Accordingly everything to which the parables contained in these apprehensions refer is only the glory of the Lord, I mean to say the Chariot, not the Rider, as He, may He be exalted, may not be presented in a likeness in a parable” (emphasis in original). The chariot is the figurative representation of the cosmos, and thus nothing about the necessarily existent God can be expressed in the idiom of the scriptural parable. Maimonides does not explicitly refer to God as the being beyond being, but it does seem that he comes close to such a perspective in this passage. See Wolfson, “Via Negativa” 409–10. See also Maimonides, Guide 2: chapter 4, 258–59: “It cannot be true that the intellect that moves the highest sphere should be identical with the necessary of existence.” Implied here as well is the possibility that Maimonides places God outside the concatenation of being.

17. Emphasis in original.

18. I am here revising the conclusion I reached in Wolfson, “Assaulting” 475–514, especially 505–08.

19. The term is appropriated from Nishitani 40.

20. For a fuller discussion of this aspect of time in kabbalistic lore, see Wolfson, A Dream 245–50.

21. My English rendering of the critical German terms (Ab-grund, Ur-grund, and Un-grund) departs from the translation of Emad and Maly. Heidegger's threefold characterization seems indebted to Schelling's views on the Abgrund and the Ungrund. See Wolfson, Alef 34–46.

22. I have corrected the German text according to Wehr 46.