Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and its Philosophical Implications

by Moshe Halbertal, Jackie Feldman (Translator)

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, great new trends of Jewish thought emerged whose widely varied representatives--Kabbalists, philosophers, and astrologers--each claimed that their particular understanding revealed the actual secret of the Torah. They presented their own readings in a coded fashion that has come to be regarded by many as the very essence of esotericism. Concealment and Revelation takes us on a fascinating journey to the depths of the esoteric imagination. Carefully tracing the rise of esotericism and its function in medieval Jewish thought, Moshe Halbertal's richly detailed historical and cultural analysis gradually builds conceptual-philosophical force to culminate in a masterful phenomenological taxonomy of esotericism and its paradoxes.


Among the questions What are the internal justifications that esoteric traditions provide for their own existence, especially in the Jewish world, in which the spread of knowledge was of great importance? How do esoteric teachings coexist with the revealed tradition, and what is the relationship between the various esoteric teachings that compete with that revealed tradition?


Halbertal concludes that, through the medium of the concealed, Jewish thinkers integrated into the heart of the Jewish tradition diverse cultural influences such as Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticisims. And the creation of an added concealed layer, unregulated and open-ended, became the source of the most daring and radical interpretations of the tradition.

Genres: Judaism

208 pages, Hardcover

First published August 27, 2007

About the author

Moshe Halbertal (Hebrew: משה הלברטל; born Montevideo, Uruguay, 1958) is an Israeli philosopher, professor, and writer, a noted expert on Maimonides, and co-author of the Israeli Army Code of Ethics. He currently holds positions as Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Gruss Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. In 2021 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society

Reviews

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

With Concealment and Revelation Moshe Halbertal presents a thorough overview of the function of esotericism in Medieval Judaism that raises questions for today about how we might reconcile tradition with external truths. His focus is on the function of esotericism rather than the contents, which varied depending on the predilections of the esotericist in question. Indeed, the attitudes of individuals toward the esoteric varied, and there were auxiliary concerns that didn't manifest broadly. Halbertal's main thesis is that the claim of a secret realm of knowledge at the very core of Jewish tradition allowed it to be infused by foreign beliefs that became identified with the center. While the astrology of Ibn Ezra hasn't had as lasting an impact, it is certainly the case that this mechanism has allowed for the continuing impact of both the rationalism exemplified by Rambam and the complex cosmologies of the kabbalists.

Today, Halbertal observes, it is much more difficult for most of us to accept the notion of privileged access to the esoteric. I do wonder if this is entirely the case. As a number of scholars have observed, within New Age circles there is a strong attempt to reveal the hidden that has meant a proliferation of new "esoteric" content and as Boaz Huss has shown, New Age proclivities are alive and well within Jewish society, even among seemingly haredi producers of Jewish thought. Still, for much of the community a degree of skepticism has set the realm of the esoteric off limits and thus also its function as a renewer of tradition through the masked injection of contemporary thought into its core. The primary approaches that I have observed in place of the loss of the esoteric's promise of a revitalization of tradition without compromising a certain multivocal coherence to tradition are seemingly an entrenched dogmatism that increasingly reifies the ontological validity of religious symbols against all foreign knowledge and a rejection of the significance religious symbols in favor of a cultural Judaism for which religious practice is not quite connected to a personal engagement with Judaism's rich symbology. Incidentally the last point was touched upon briefly in a Hebrew language lecture that Professor Halbertal presented as the opening speaker for a recent conference that's available here: http://hsf.bgu.ac.il/cjt/files/2010%2... . It's specifically when he adds to "belief in" and "belief that" the idea of "belief as/like."

As always Professor Halbertal provides much food for thought.

[Juliana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Solved so many of my questions, only to bring dozens more. Fascinating final chapter on the politics of concealment, fascinating discussion of concealment/intimacy. Incredibly wide ranging with remarkable facility. A must re read.

[C F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting but repetitive.