1

Eighteenth Century Kabbalistic Cosmology

Potts Annual Lecture,
The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, May 2014
Professor Jonathan Garb
I would like to preface my case study by some general comments on the
study of Jewish cosmology in the early modern period. The recent wave of
interest in this period, evidenced in David Rudermans broad cultural history
and several important Hebrew-language studies (such as recent and
forthcoming books by David Sorotzkin and Maoz Kahana) has not yet lead to
a thorough reevaluation on the place of cosmological thought. Rather, the
assumption that Jewish cosmology is largely a medieval enterprise has
largely been maintained.
The eighteenth century can be seen as a turning point for Jewish
cosmology. In Palestine (the Land of Israel) and more generally in the Orient,
the little-researched system of R. Shalom Sharabi opened up new vistas,
including three-dimensional parallel universes, and what is phrased as a
general law of relativity. In Italy, the academic training of the circle of R.
Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto was expressed, amongst other things in the
cosmological treatise Binyan Olam by this kabbalist, and a parallel treatise
by one of his students.
However, the most striking developments occurred in Eastern Europe: The
Hasidic movement threatened to dismantle the entire apparatus of
kabbalistic cosmology by psychologizing it. On the other hand, an even
greater threat was posed by the move towards the scientific world view
within the Jewish enlightenment, or Haskala. In response to both movements,
the circle of R. Elijah Kramer, the Gaon or genius of Vilna, offered an
innovative resolution, strongly maintaining the integrity of the traditional
Kabbalistic cosmos yet incorporating some modern elements. The espousal

of the figure and towering reputation of the Vilna Gaon by adherents of the
Jewish Enlightenment, or Maskilim is well known and addressed in a short
volume by Immanuel Etkes. A forthcoming study by Ruderman will focus on
the Kantian and scientific interpretation of Kabbalah by R. Pinhas Elijah
Horowitz, who can be loosely be said to belong to the circle of the Gaon, in
his Sefer ha-Brit, to be discussed anon. And the scientific and Maskilic
leaning of a later writer affiliated with this circle, R. Manasseh of Ilya, has
been documented by Yitzhak Barzilay and others.
Recently, Eliyahu Stern has offered an innovative and well-written
Leibnizian reading of the Gaons world-view and cosmology. Although it is
highly interesting, this ambitious edifice lacks several important historical
building-blocks: For example, the influence of Leibniz on R. Luzzatto, though
plausible, is presented as an unshakable fact, and in doing so the influence
of R. Luzzattos writings (some of which took two centuries to resurface) on
the Gaon is inflated, with an error in describing the chain of transmission.1
Through recognizing the centrality of the Vilna Gaon for understanding
eighteenth century Eastern European Jewry, I would like to take today the
road less travelled and return to the texts written by the Gaon himself
(setting aside nineteenth century interpretations, such as those written by
his main student R. Hayyim Iczkovitz). A general survey of these writings
must be prefaced by a philological study that I have now commenced,
separating authentic texts from later attributions. Therefore, I have selected
one specific case study, based on two works that my investigation to date
has shown to be authentic, starting with the Gaons commentary on the very
early treatise Sefer Yesira (probably dating from late antiquity) that many
1 E. g. Isaiah Tishby is misread (E. Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making
of Modern Judaism, Yale University Press, 2013, 194, n. 6) as claiming that the chain
was R. Luzzattos student R. Yekutiel Gordon, rather than his own student, R. Elijah
of Brisk. See at length in my recent biography, Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm:
R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (Tel Aviv University Press, 2014), 325328 where the
place of philosophy, science and enlightenment in this circle are also discussed
(esp. 42, 175, 2689).

commentators, traditional and academic, have described as cosmological. I

am working with the Jerusalem 2009 edition that is based on a manuscript in
the Gaons own handwriting.
Stern, for example, discusses but one text from this work, and in doing
so introjects his interpretation in his translation from the Hebrew.2 Clearly, a
careful study of this text, considering also an extensive super-commentary
Toldot Yitzhak, by R. Yitzhak Kahana (of the fourth generation of the school),
is a precondition for an investigation of the Gaons cosmology as well as his
hermeneutics. However, as Yehuda Liebes has well demonstrated the
connection between Sefer Yesira and the Zoharic or medieval treatise Safra
De-Tzniuta, a comparison to a second work, namely the Gaons commentary
on the latter work (that is certainly authentic) will be shown today to be
fruitful. I will also note in passing that R. Horowitz, besides his Sefer Ha-Brit,
wrote a commentary on Sefer Yesira, Beit Yotzer. If I may insert an
autobiographical note: I studied our two core texts, namely the Gaons
commentaries on Sefer Yesira and Safra di-Tzniuta, more than 25 years ago
during my first years of Kabbalah studies.
The Main Text
Here is the Gaons commentary on Sefer Yesira, Chapter 6, Mishna 1 (I am
not entering the question of the original version and meaning of the text, and

2 Stern, Pp. 41-43. Sterns parallel between Leibniz and the Gaons thought here rests on the
claim that the former knew Sefer Yesira, however his argument is meaningful only if one
implausibly assumes that the philosopher understood the text the way Stern assumes the
Gaon understood it! If one rejects the interpolation and accepts the interpretation of E. R.
Wolfson, 1996, From Sealed Book to Open Text: Time, Memory, and Narrativity in Kabbalistic
Hermeneutics. In: Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age. Ed.Steven Kepnes, 145-178.
New York University Press (which is entirely correct in my view), the entire argument is
undermined. see also http://orot.com/872/

rather refer to the Gaons version, that he claimed was that of the central
modern Kabbalist, R. Itzhak Luria, and his own understanding of the text):

) ( :
: "

"

,
, " " "
. " "
Sefer Yesira: (Faithful witnesses in the world, year and soul, law of twelve), They are present
in the Tali, celestial sphere and heart.
Tali is the serpens amongst the constellations and through it all constellations go out and
return and through it are all the changes in speed or delay and in the positioning of the
stars and their return and it includes all of them. And as it was not known by the
philosophers and astronomers, they erred in the speed and delay of the stars and all of the
above and other matters and concluded that the sphere returns and the constellations are
fixed and resorted to epicycle and eccentric orbit and strange matters. And denied the
words of our sages, of blessed memory on the windows of the firmament, but through the
Tali amongst the constellations all is resolved, yet it is hidden like the heart, just as the
heart rules all organs and is hidden amongst them and by it they come and go, and also
speed and delay in the organs and all of the above are by means of the heart.
Firstly, one should note the elaboration of Sefer Yesiras comparison of the
macrocosmos, the stars, with the microcosmos, or anatomy, a commonplace
in medieval astrology. Indeed, R. Kahana in his super-commentary,
emphasizes the will, a central theme in the Gaons Kabbalah: The Tali directs
the spheres of the constellations with its will, presumably like the heart is a
3 See the Hayman edition and translation, 176, whom I followed somewhat, while
choosing not to translate tali. See also Liebes, Ars Poetica, 241.

seat of volition directing the body and its circulatory processes.4 One should
add that in the supplements to this commentary, R. Kahana mentions an oral
messianic tradition around these issues.5
The Gaon, who wrote a book on geometry (the seventh chapter of which
deals with astronomy), and reportedly studied astronomy already as a child,
writes that both philosophers and astronomers are in error, and the sages
are correct. The Gaon is referring to Babylonian Talmud, tractate Pesachim
94b: According to the Jewish sages the sphere fixed and the constellations
return or revolve, hozrim, while the wise of the gentiles say that it is the
sphere that revolves, while the constellations are fixed. The Talmud then
cites empirical evidence (based on locations of specific constellations) for the
opinion of the sages.
Then there is a second dispute: The sages say that the sun is below the
firmament during the day and at night it is above it, while the sages of
gentiles say that both are below, here the editor of the Mishnah is cited here
as ruling in favor of the sages of the gentiles due to empirical proof (based
on the temperature of spring water at day and night). I cannot discuss this
passage in its original Rabbinic context, as I am concerned here with its
modern reception.6 This is a source that troubles those who claim that the
rabbinic sages possessed all scientific knowledge. Thus, while Maimonides
takes the Sages retraction at face value, and indeed extends it to the first
dispute,7 the great twelfth century Talmudic commentator Rabbinu Tam, in a
passage much quoted by later commentators, writes that the gentiles were
proved right only in terms of rhetoric but the truth lies with the sages, as the
4 Toldot Yitzhak, vol. 1, p. 144.
5 Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 80.
6 See however BT, Hagiga 12B.
7 Guide 2, 9 (and see 3, 14).

prayer book says breaks open windows of the firmament. According to the
gentiles this cant happen because there is no change in the positioning of
the sun.8
The Gaon is close to the conclusion of Rabbinu Tam, but for a different
reason. He claims that non-Jewish science is in error on both issues. For him
the question of empirical observation is moot, as we are dealing with the tali,
a super-constellation, as it were, that is not susceptible to empirical
observation. R. Michel Zilber (in an important article in the major journal of
Yeshiva scholarship Yeshurun9) is correct in saying that by not seen, the
Gaon means that this central entity was denied by philosophy and science as
it was cannot be observed empirically.10
Why does the Gaon say that the Tali is not seen? The Mishna, Avoda Zara
(3,3) mentions statues with the shape of the dragon, and Mainonides in his
commentary ad loc writes that he never observed this shape but there is a
tradition of a dragon like constellation (draco?) known as tali. This
formulation is oft echoed in the earlier Sefer Yesira commentaries. One of the
most prominent of these is R. Yehuda Ha-Levi, author of the work translated
as Sefer ha-Kuzari, greatly valued by the Gaon. Halevi writes there that the
tali, that he identifies with the Arabic term al-Guzhar, is not empirically
observed.11 The Gaon himself, in his legal commentary on the Code of Law
(Yore Dea 141, 3) cites Maimonides and all commentaries (i.e. Sefer Yesira
interpretation) on the tali having a snake like dragon form, which again is not
8 Cited in Shita Mequbetzet, Ketubot 13B, and quoted inter alia by the great 18 th19th century Talmudist R. Akiva Eiger.
9 1999.
10 R. Zilber asks as follows: When the Gaon writes that the gentile sages disputed the
Jewish ones on the windows he is referring to the sphere argument and not to the sun
argument (573). Zilber adduces various commentators that conflate the two issues.

11 Kuzari 4, 25.

seen but is an attribution.12 This then, concludes R. Zilber, is the source for
the claim that the tali is not empricially observed. And this is why non-Jewish
empiricist science is wrong for the Gaon.
A similar view was presented earlier in the century, in a book that the Gaon
greatly valued, Adir ba-Marom by the above-mentioned R. Luzzatto. R.
Luzzatto writes that the Torah is not concerned with external reality but with
its inner meaning, which is that of hanhaga, or divine direction of the world
and of history, and the sages are entirely right on that level, while Gentile
science is preoccupied with the external level. He also states that on the
internal level, the world being round, there is not fixed reference point in any
case, and all is in constant movement. As I have shown in my book, this idea
of constant flux is central to his historiosophy.13
The Parallel Text
12 Again, I will not enter the question of what the dragon means in the Mishnah. I hope to
address this in a future study of the dragon image in modern Jewish and non-Jewish
mythology.

13 Adir Ba-Marom, 235-236 in the complete edition (I discussed later reception of

this passage in my book Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm: R/ Moshe Hayyim
Luzzatto, p. 215, and this will also feature in a future study by Maoz Kahana). A
possible earlier Italian source is R. Menahem Azzariyah of Fano, who (like R. Luzzatto
and the Gaon) emphasizes the centrality of the will for this esoteric level (Asara
Maamarot, Em kol hai, pt. 1, 12). R. Yonatan Eybeschtz, an eighteenth century
Kabbalist and Halakhist who was in contact with R. Luzzatto and whom the Gaon
declined to excommunicate, wrote in his Yearot Dvash (part 1, drush 4) that many
non-Jewish astronomers, in the post-Copernican period, say that the Sages should
not have retracted, while he himself offers a complex interpretation, according to
which that the Sages acknowledged that the gentile sages are correct on one aspect
of the movement of heavenly bodies, but not in another aspect (see also part 2,
drush 10). See also R. Horowitz in Sefer Ha-Brit (Maamar 2, chapter 6), who
critiques Maimonides for writing that the sages could have erred on astronomy, and
offers an interpretation similar to that of R. Luzzatto and the Gaon: Namely the
sphere is fixed as it is spiritual, and the constellations are merely physical (see also
ibid., chapter 10, where he explains that Maimonides followed a corrupt manuscript.
This is part of this preference for print culture, addressed by Ruderman in his
Stroum lectures, forthcoming in book form).

I will now turn to my second core text by the Gaon, in the commentary on
Safra De-Tzniuta (end of chapter 1,14) where he writes that the thirteen
attributes of divine mercy, or emendations of beard in anthropomorphic
terms, depend on mazal, which usually denotes constellation. The Tali
includes all twelve classical constellations, as it is the king (the thirteenth,
non-empirical master constellation) identified with the tannin. Let us recall
that in the sefer Yesira text, the Gaon commenced his exegesis by stating
that the Tali is the tannin, or serpens in the constellations. Now based on
Isaiah 27, 1 (in the JPS translation: In that day the Lord with His sore and
great and strong sword will punish leviathan the slant serpent, and leviathan
the tortuous serpent; and He will slay the dragon that is in the sea), the
Babylonian Talmud (Baba Batra 74B), interprets that the tanninim of the fifth
day of creation (in Genesis) are the two leviathans, the slant, bariakh, and
torturous or crooked, aqalton snakes, that are also male and female.15
In our present text, the Gaon writes that the slant bariakh snake crosses the
sea in a straight line, while the crooked aqalton snake curls round the world
and grasps its own tail. This Ouroboros myth in its Jewish context has been
touched on by Liebes and others.16 The tannin of heavens incorporates the
14 18A-B in most editions. See also 14b. One should also examine the authenticity
of the commentary on the legends of BT Baba Batra. Further parallels, of mixed
authenticity, are cited in the editors notes on Toldot Yitzhak, vol. 1. See especially
Aderet Eliyhau on Genesis chapter 1, verses 6, 8.
15 The identification of this snake with the Tali is found in medieval Kabbalah )Yosef
Gikatilias Secret of the serpent).. Further Sefer Yesira interpretation is adduced by
Zilber.
16 Liebes, Ars Poetica, 135-6, and the Phd (Hebrew University, 2011) of his student
Jonathan Benarroch, Sabba and Yanuqa, two that are one: Allegory, Symbol and
Myth in Zoharic Literature, 343-343, 352. This myth and that of the Leviathan in
the Gaons thought are discussed in the popular yet highly interesting work by J. D.
Bakst, The Josephic Messiah, Leviathan, Metatron and the Sacred Serpent (vol. 2 of
The Secret Doctrine of the Gaon of Vilna), City of Luz Publications, 2013.

qualities of both Leviathans, as he crosses the skies in a straight line and

then circles back.17 Technically speaking, the straight line goes to top of
head, circles round the back of neck and goes down to the tail (The
resemblance to tantric alchemical cosmology, as discussed by David Gordon
White and others, is striking).
Elsewhere I see the Gaons thought as pivotal for the emergence of what I
term national kabbalah, and here too the text soon develops a national
theme: The adherence of forces of evil is to the tail of holiness that is the
present hanhaga or guidance of the world. Due to this adherence, during the
exilic period the gentiles ascend. Just as the head is bent down towards the
tail, so the Jews are in utmost sifhlut, or lowliness. This statement is part of
the Gaons negative assessment of the present historical era, presented
especially in this commentary. This is why the miracles of the Exodus, in a
similar lowly historical situation, were performed with serpents and
specifically by grasping their tail.18 Moses, who performed these miracles, is
the sea serpent of the sea of Torah. As Liebes has argued, the Gaon
continues to develop Kabbalistic myth making, in our case, that of the the
Mosaic serpent.19
R. Itzhak Haver, a prominent figure in the nineteenth century third
generation of the Gaons circle, fleshes the last move out: The tali represents
17 As R. Elyashiv, the major twentieth century expositor of the Gaons Kabbalah
(discussed at length anon) writes in his gloss ad loc, this parallels the Lurianic
structure of straight lines and circles, the history of which has been discussed by
Pachter.
18 It is likely that the Gaon is influenced here by the discourse on the tail of serpent
in the Luzzatto circle, including printed works, as discussed in the third chapter my
biography.
19 In several Hebrew articles and lectures (all found at
http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~liebes/zohar/Luria.html ) Liebes has elaborated on
Moses as a tanin and the self-perception of the Gaon. I would add that this Mosaic
self-identification includes the task of combating the forces of heresy (at times
identified by the Gaon with Moses arch-enemy Amalek).

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the supernal power of providence, again the thirteenth above the twelve
constellations. Through a complex calculation, twelve become the known
fourty-eight paths of the Torah and thus the 49th gate, the utmost human
achievement, was revealed to Moses, who is the secret of the Leviathan.20
The Leviathan myth cannot be discussed here, but one should stress the
intersection of mythic, proto-scientific and national-historiosophical
discourse.21
A Fascinating Twentieth century Discussion
The prolific and profound 20th-century interpreter of the gaons Kabbalah, R.
Shlomo Elyashiv, in his gloss on safra commentary refers to a discussion in
his book of principles, where he writes an awesome secret that the heart
cannot reveal to the mouth as the Talmudic saying goes. His reference to the
second principle is deliberately cryptic, yet I have found this discussion: It is
striking that already towards the beginning of the first principle (and at the
end of the second principle he writes that the two principles must be
understood in tandem) he refers to the exact timing of the wisdoms and
sciences that are constantly renewed each of these manifests, to the
minute, in the timing determined at the beginning of creation, in maase
bereshit, the deed of creation, usually associated with Kabbalistic
cosmology.22 Generally speaking, the approach of R. Elyashiv is that the
secrets of Kabbalah are progressively being revealed, so that the secret

20 Beit Olamim 48B. For Havers account of the Gaons views of science, see also
his Magen Ve-Tzina (111 in the 1985 edition, and see also 67).
21 The political dimension of the discussion of the Tali is reinforced by the
description of this entity as king in war in Mishna 3 of the above-discussed sixth
chapter of Sefer Yesira (and see the Gaons commentary ad loc).
22 Elyashiv, Sefer Ha-Kalalim, Jerusalem 1924, Klal 1, Anaf 2, 12 A.

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hidden yesterday is revealed today, and at times he tracks this process in his
own writing, as we shall now see.
In the terminology that R. Elyashiv developed, this primal, all-inclusive
aspect is the first extension of the divine that has a circular and straight
aspect. He then goes on to say that this aspect is the root of the root of the
two serpents, straight and winding, discussed in the above-mentioned text
by the Gaon. He then refers, in a kind of textual game of hide and seek, to
another discussion of his in this book, where he promises deep matters. 23
And here we finally reach the awesome secret:
And now is the desirable time to raise an awesome matter that the Holy
One Blessed be He enlightened me on the eve of Yom Kippur of the year
1891, when I contemplated the matter that I wrote above in Principle 2.
About the circling and circled light of the infinite that is the root of the
straight and winding circle.

24

After reminding that the circling snake goes all the way down and meets the
straight snake, he asks why the straight line never meets the circling line.
This is exactly the issue where the Vilna Gaon locates the ascendancy of the
Gentiles in exile. He initially offers a Sharabian resolution, and then moves
on to an even deeper matter. I cannot go into all of his subsequent
discussion, that relates to gendered mythic symbolism, and then a
fascinating psychological discussion on the heart and brain. However, it his
usual method of scattering the secret, he returns to the serpents and says
that the depth of the matter (this is already the third depth) is truly a very
awesome secret. The crux of it is that actually the twain do not meet, and
though the circling line, usually associated with the natural world is revealed
in this epoch, the straight line, usually associated with the wisdom of the

23 Ibid., Klal 2, Anaf 1, 13B.

24 Ibid., clal 17, Anaf 4, 79A.

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Torah, will only be revealed in the Messianic future, at the end of the sixth
thousand that is to say, sometime after the year 1840 or 5600.25
In a comment that will fascinate Kabablah scholars with a Freudian bent, he
writes that this is the Talmudic (in the above-mentioned Baba Batra 74
Talmudic passage) myth of the castration of the male Leviathan and the
slaughter of the female Leviathan. He then says that this is the myth of the
hiding of the primal cosmic light at the beginning of creation. However, there
were moments of revelation of this light, as in the case of Moses. Following
this, he writes that the issue is yes, even deeper (no. 4), and calls on the
reader to contemplate so that he will also be enlightened. And then he
moves (no.5) to the main depth of the matter, and the secret of the entire
matter.26
Here too, I must encapsulate, and but say that after writing that the material
world is only possible due to the hiding of the light, he moves to even deeper
no. 6, explains that this is the source of evil and then sets out the entire plan
for the rectification of the material world and its return to divinity, from the
end of the sixth thousand onwards. At this point, all lacks will be filled, all
masks removed, all reality will shine, all the gates of light will open.27 All the
rectifications embedded in the deed of creation will shine in an infinite
manner. The two serpents will be unified, all this enabled by the removal of
evil at the end of the 6th thousand of history.
The scheme of 6000 years of human history being central to the Kabbalah of
the Gaon and that of R. Luzzatto). Each stage is the correction of the
castration of the male and the death of the female. And as he concludes:
this is all of our hope for the days of the Messiah.28 As he later explains (in

25 Ibid., 81B.
26 82A.
27 82B.

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the 7th depth), the very distinction between above and below will be
abolished.29 He then apologizes for revealing all this.30
We have seen that according to R. Elyashiv, the root of all scientific
innovation, with the timing of its manifestation, is in the cosmic level
corresponding to the first extension of the divine, that is also the root of the
myth of the cosmic serpent, the locus of the debate between Jewish wisdom,
only to be fully revealed in the Messianic period, and gentile science.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude with a statement that I heard by a leading
Kabbalistic theoretician in Jerusalem: The reason that the main twentieth
century proponent of the Kabbalah of the Gaon, R. Shlomo Elyashiv, rejected
the early eighteenth-century views of R. Luzzatto, is that these, unlike those
of the Gaon, preceded the scientific revolution and remained embedded
within an Aristotelian framework. Certainly, other twentieth century
Kabbalists in this tradition, such as R. Naphtali Hertz, R. Avraham Isaac Kook,
R. Eliyahu Mordekhai Welkovsky and R. Yehuda Leib Ashlag, freely
incorporated scientific doctrines, including evolution, in their cosmology.
Although there is significant doubt as to the authenticity of the contested
work Kol Ha-Tor published in this century, one can say that if it even partially
reflects the views of the Gaons circle, we have a messianic view of the
advent of modern science. One may even speculate that the location of the
debate between Jewish and empiricist, non-Jewish science is in the issue of
the tali, precisely where according to the Gaon, in his parallel Safra di
28 83A.
29 85A. Compare to the commentary of R. Israel Septimus, shaarei Hokhma, vol. 2,
185, 188, on the Safra de tzniuta commentary, that seems to go in a different and
far less complex direction. For interesting gender symbolism, see 190-192.
30 86A.

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Tzniuta commentary, the present dominion of the gentiles is rooted. It is

possible then, that the view of this text is that the messianic process of
acquisition of scientific wisdom will reveal the hidden, non-empirical nature
of the tali, and thus demote the rule of non-Jewish science. In other words,
contrary to the maskilic interpretation, the Gaons scientific interest was
related less to an approval of non-Jewish science, and more to a protonationalist desire to create a Jewish science and reverse Gentile dominion,
that the Gaon possibly attributed to scientific superiority.
In this context one should recall the tradition that R. Elyashiv cites in the
name of R. Israel Lipkin Salanter, founder of the Lithuanian Mussar
movement and a fourth-generation holder of the Gaons lineage. R. Lipkin
was almost directly influenced by the statesman and scientist Benjamin
Franklin, another eighteenth century giant. According to R. Lipkin,
interpreting a Zoharic passage, the year 1840 marks the opening of the
wellsprings of wisdom above and below, and thus heralds the era of the
revelation of the secrets of Kabbalah.31 The lower wellsprings were later
associated (as in Kol ha-Tor) with the development of scientific knowledge.
Though this interpretation is not explicit here in the Leshem, it is highly
plausible, in view of his above-mentioned discourse on the timing of scientific
discoveries alongside with the timing of the revelation of wisdom.
The above-mentioned Kabbalist kindly referred me to the history of the
Volozhin Yeshiva founded by R. Iczkovitz in the beginning of the nineteenth
century, where both R. Kook and maskilic figures such as Hayyim Nahman
Bialik studied: R. Barukh Epstein testified in his Makur Barukh as to the
unofficial, yet extensive knowledge of European languages and culture and
sciences amongst the students of the Yeshiva.32 It is not surprising that the

31 Leshem Shvo ve-Ahlama, Droshei Olam ha-Tohu, part 1, 4, 3 (38b) based on

Zohar 1, 117A.
32 Vol. 4, pp. 2023.

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partial English translation was recalled by Art Scroll publishing,33 infamous for
their hyper-conservative approach, just as the espousal of scientific study
leading to Jewish dominance, in Kol ha-Tor, is still hotly contested by major
contemporary Kabbalists, such as R. Y. M. Morgenstern.34
Although it would be nave to trace all of these developments directly to the
Gaon, nonetheless his cosmological writing marks a reawakening of interest
in the sublunary natural world as part of a vision of Jewish science closely
allied with Kabbalah. In any case, I believe that we have made some steps
here towards locating the history of science within what I have elsewhere
termed the hidden history of modern Kabbalah.35 And as we have here
Yitzhak Melamed, one of todays leading Shlomo Maimon scholars, here is
what this contemporary of the Gaon wrote of Kabbalah:
Originally Kabbalah was presumably nothing else than psychology, physics,
ethics, politics and so on, represented by means of symbols and
hieroglyphics, fables and allegories, whose secret meaning was revealed only
to those apt to it. With time, perhaps through some revolutions, this secret
meaning was lost and the signs were taken for the designated things
themselves.36

33 My Uncle the Netziv, ed. M. Dombey, Art Scroll Publishing 1978. I cannot enter here the
question of the validity of R. Epsteins testimonies. See e.g. Dan Rabinowitz, Rayna Batya
and other learned women : a reevaluation of Rabbi Barukh Halevi Epsteins sources,
Tradition 35,1 (2001) 55-69; J. J. Schachter, Haskalah, Secular Studies and the Closing of
the Yeshiva Volozhin in 1892 , Torah U-Madda 2 (1990): 76-133.

34 Deeh Hokhma le-Nafsheka, Preparation for Purim, 2014.

35 J. Garb, Shamanism and the Hidden History of Modern Kabbalah, in: A.
DeConick and G. Adamson (eds.), Histories of the Hidden God: Concealment and
Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions. 2013, pp. 175-192.
Acumen Publishing: Durham.
36 Quoted and discussed in Gideon Freudenthal, No Religion without Idolatry, 169.

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