Angelaki

Journal of the Theoretical Humanities

ISSN: 0969-725X (Print) 1469-2899 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cang20

Nihilating Nonground and the Temporal Sway of

Becoming

Elliot R. Wolfson

To cite this article: Elliot R. Wolfson (2012) Nihilating Nonground and the Temporal Sway of
Becoming, Angelaki, 17:3, 31-45

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 ANGEL AK I
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 17 number 3 september 2012

more
than
nothing
is nothing
more
than
nothing
that elliot r. wolfson
nothing is
Elliot R. Wolfson

et me begin by posing the obvious question: NIHILATING

L can anything be said about nothing other
than nothing? Would it not be the case that
NONGROUND AND
any effort to speak or to write of nothing amounts THE TEMPORAL SWAY
to a distortion? Franz Rosenzweig well voiced the
philosophical quandary: OF BECOMING
What is nothing? Already in this very question kabbalistically
the single answer that would let the nothing
remain nothing is forbidden, the answer:
envisioning nothing
nothing. For nothing can never designate the beyond nothing
essence, never be predicate. (Rosenzweig 412)

Nothing, then, should be ascribed to nothing, spoken in speaking of what is unspoken.

and yet precisely because this is so, attempts to
picture the nothing, whether verbally or visually,
are seemingly endless. Contrary to Wittgenstein’s
oft-cited dictum at the end of the Tractatus,
I would argue that the unspeakable nature of the
mystical is not what we pass over in silence but
rather that which needs to be spoken constantly.
One must thus distinguish between speaking-not
and not-speaking. The latter is characteristic of
the Wittgensteinian silence; the mystical is more
properly aligned with the former. To take the
specific case of the kabbalists, they have not
typically remained silent about the nothing; on
the contrary, they have savored the opportunity
to declaim apophatic utterances, literally, to
speak-away, that is, to unspeak what they have
Kabbalistic lore displays a complex intermingling
of kataphasis and apophasis.1
creatio ex deo: pantheistic and
atheistic implications of the divine
nothing
From the very early stages of the historical
manifestation of kabbalah in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries one can detect an inordinate
emphasis placed on the concept of nothingness,
which describes either Ein Sof, literally, the
unlimited, the ground of all being that is beyond
conceptual classification and linguistic demarca-
tion (Scholem, Origins 265–70; Tishby 229–55;
Valabregue-Perry), or, alternatively, Keter, the

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/12/03031^15 ß 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2012.722392

31
 nihilating nonground
crown, the first of the ten emanations (sefirot),
also identified as the nothing (ayin), the
incomprehensible thought (mahashavah) and/
_
or incalculable will (rason) (Matt 121–59).
_
Conceptually, it seems reasonable to ask how
one can discriminate between the nothingness
that is Ein Sof and the nothingness that is Keter.
Can there be gradations of nothingness such
that the nothing of the one is greater – or perhaps
we should say less – than the nothing of the
other? If we are to speak of multiple infinities,
can we speak intelligibly of a primary infinity
that is more infinite than a secondary infinity?
Through the centuries kabbalists have debated
this subtle point under the guise of interrogating
whether or not Ein Sof and Keter are identical
or different (see Cordovero 3: chapters 1–8,
25a–37b; Tishby 242–46). Some maintained that
there is no reason to distinguish the two and
thus even the name Ein Sof is applied to Keter,2
while others insisted on the need to uphold
this distinction, and still others argued that the
difference between them is solely that one is the
cause and the other the effect, a belief that was
initially deemed a very sensitive secret about
which one had to hold one’s silence, since it
narrowed the gap separating the emanator and the
emanated,3 but later interpreted as emphasizing
an unbridgeable chasm between cause and effect.4
By the last decades of the thirteenth century,
the predominant view – although by no means
accepted unanimously – was that the nothingness
of Ein Sof signifies the absolute transcendence
that is beyond signification, whereas the nothing-
ness of Keter is the beginning of the immanenti-
zation of transcendence, the commencement
of differentiation taking shape within the indif-
ference of infinity, designated by the terms
hashwa’ah or ahdut ha-shaweh, which corre-
_ _
spond, as Gershom Scholem noted, to the
technical Latin expressions indistinctio and
aequalitas (Scholem, Origins 439).5
The distinction between the nondifferentiated
nothing of Ein Sof and the differentiated nothing
of Keter is captured succinctly in the following
passage from the Zohar, the major anthology
of kabbalistic lore and practice that began
to circulate in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries in fragmentary units, whence, through
an extensive process of scribal transmission,
the manuscript witnesses were redacted into
a book first printed in Mantua and Cremona
(1558–60):
Ein Sof cannot be known and it does not
produce an end or a beginning like the
primordial Nothing [ayin], which brings
forth a beginning and an end [. . .] There
are no wills, no lights, and no radiances in
Ein Sof [. . .] That which knows, but does
not know, is none other than the supernal
Will, the concealed of all concealed, the
Nothing. (Zohar 2: 239a)6
Immediately preceding the above extract, Ein Sof
is described as the incomprehensible and impene-
trable ‘‘concealment’’ (seni‘u) that contains the
_
‘‘will of all wills,’’ a technical reference in zoharic
symbolism to the highest facet of Keter. On the
face of it, the intent of this remark is to highlight
the inseparability of Ein Sof and Keter and not
to aver that volitional agency can be applied to
infinity. On the contrary, it is stated explicitly
that there is no dimension of will within Ein Sof,
for to suggest otherwise would imply some need
or lack.
In some sources, Keter is symbolized by the
letter alef, since the inherent muteness of this
letter underscores the ineffable mystery – in
Hebrew pele, which is made up of the same
consonants as the word alef – of the immeasur-
able will, such as in Zohar (3: 193b), Gikatilla
(2: 119) and Cordovero (14: chapter 2, 187b).
In other passages Keter is thought to be too
recondite to be symbolized by any letter and thus
it is alluded to in the orthographic tittle on the tip
of the yod, the first letter of the Tetragrammaton,
which itself symbolizes the second emanation,
H okhmah, the point of wisdom, the something
(yesh) that materializes from the nothing (ayin)
(Gikatilla 1: 144, 2: 115, 118–19; David ben
Yehudah he-Hasid 209; Scholem, Major 218–19).
_
The depiction of the emergence of H okhmah
_
from Keter in this fashion subverts the standard
connotation of creatio ex nihilo. Instead of
conveying that the world is created out of nothing
by God, the expression, mystically conceived,
implies that everything emanates in an unbroken
chain from the nothing that is the ‘‘pure absolute
32

Being’’ (Scholem, Major 25, 217; Matt 123–26).
In a word, ex nihilo becomes ex Deo: the nothing
whence the world is created is the hidden essence
of the infinite, and hence the ontic distinction
between divinity and nature is significantly
challenged.7
Reflecting on this aspect of kabbalistic
theosophy, Scholem noted that the creation of
the world from nothing is the
external aspect of something which takes
place in God Himself. This is also the crisis
of the hidden En-Sof who turns from
repose to creation, and it is this crisis,
creation and Self-Revelation in one, which
constitutes the great mystery of theosophy
and the crucial point for the understanding
of the purpose of theosophical speculation.
(Scholem, Major 217)
I would take issue with the language of ‘‘crisis’’ to
describe this process, a turn of phrase that tells
us more about Scholem than the sources he is
purportedly characterizing. In using this wording,
Scholem is interpreting the early kabbalah
in light of his approach to the beginnings of
emanation according to the Lurianic kabbalah,
which he also famously understood as a cataclysm
within the Godhead that supposedly corresponds
to the spiritual calamity experienced by the
sixteenth-century kabbalists as a consequence of
the expulsion from the Iberian peninsula at
the end of the fifteenth century (ibid. 244–52,
261–62). Be that as it may, I do concur with the
main point of Scholem’s assessment that the
traditional dogma of creation was fundamentally
transformed by the kabbalists. The paradoxical
nature of this radical recasting is articulated
concisely by the thirteenth-century kabbalist
Azriel of Gerona:
The One who brings forth something out
of nothing is not depleted, for the something
is in the nothing in the manner of the nothing,
and the nothing is in the something in the
manner of something [. . .] The Creator is
the principle of identity for every way of
faith and way of heresy,8 for they are identical
in the place of the conjunction of his
nothing in his something. (Scholem, ‘‘New
Fragments’’ 207)
33
wolfson
Inasmuch as there is a coincidentia oppositorum
in the indifferent oneness of the infinite, it is
marked as the place where nothing and some-
thing are conjoined, a place that is, in truth,
no-place, the place of utter annihilation in
relation to which everything is affirmed in its
negation and negated in its affirmation such
that there is no distinction between the one
and the other.
In the fifth of his ‘‘Ten Unhistorical
Aphorisms on Kabbalah,’’ Scholem incisively
captures the philosophical issue at stake in the
kabbalistic identification of God as nothingness:
The essential plentitude of the hidden God,
which remains transcendent with respect to
all knowledge [. . .] becomes Nothingness
in the primal act of emanation, an act which
is above all the pure turning toward creation.
This is that Nothingness of God which
necessarily had to seem to the mystics [. . .]
to be the ultimate stage in the process
of ‘‘profanation’’ (des Entwerdens) [. . .]
‘‘Experience’’ (Erlebnis) was never able to
attain more than Nothingness and one might
well ascribe the early Kabbalists’ pantheistic
identification of Ein-Sof and Nothingness to
their own real experience. The mystic who
treats his experiences undialectically must end
up in pantheism. (Biale 79–80)
According to Scholem, those who distinguished
Ein Sof and Keter were able to preserve the
theistic transcendence of God, while those who
collapsed this distinction were susceptible to
lapsing into pantheism. Scholem makes a similar
claim when he writes that the Lurianic idea of
simsum, the withdrawal or contraction of the
_ _
light of Ein Sof, ‘‘acted as a counterpoise to the
pantheism which some scholars think is implied
in the theory of emanation.’’ Luria and his
disciples acknowledge that there is a residue of
the divine light in every being, otherwise nothing
could exist, but the doctrine of the withdrawal
‘‘guards against the danger of dissolution into the
non-individual being of the divine ‘all in all.’’’
Luria is upheld, therefore, as the ‘‘living example
of an outspoken theistic mystic,’’ since he
imposed a ‘‘strictly theistic interpretation’’ on
the ‘‘intrinsic pantheism’’ of the Zohar (Scholem,
Major 262).
 nihilating nonground
I do not agree with Scholem’s insistence on
Luria’s theism nor do I accept his contention
that a literal interpretation of simsum secures
_ _
the ontic difference between God and human.
In my judgment, underlying the Lurianic teach-
ing is the paradox, whose roots go back to the
early kabbalah but which is expressed explicitly
by any number of sixteenth-century kabbalists,
that the concealment is the disclosure and the
disclosure the concealment. Inasmuch as infinity
cannot be revealed unless it is hidden, every
manifestation perforce must be an occlusion
(Wolfson, ‘‘Divine’’ 110–15).
The transition from the infinite to the nothing-
ness of the primal emanation is depicted as an act
of profanation. To appreciate this locution, one
must bear in mind Scholem’s contention
that the kabbalist’s encounter with the infinite
is an experience of what he called in one context
the ‘‘nothingness of revelation’’ (Nichts der
Offenbarung),9 the ineffable presence of the
divine word that cannot be delimited in any
particular form and thus has the potential to lead
to an ‘‘anarchic suspension’’ of the law (Scholem,
On the Kabbalah 30). I cannot enter here into
a discussion of the nihilistic implications of the
innately formlessness of mystical experience and
the dialectic of conservatism and innovation,
authority and anarchy that permeate Scholem’s
work.10 What is crucial for our purposes is the link
he makes between the nothingness of mystical
experience and pantheism whence he draws the
following inference: if there is nothing beyond the
nothing, that is, a superior form of nothing that is
transcendent to the nothing that initiates the chain
of emanation, then theism would inevitably give
way to pantheism, since there would be nothing
that is truly separate from the something that
issues from the nothing. Expressed alternatively,
according to the esoteric cosmology, the universe
can be explained as the twofold movement of
procession from and reversion to the One and
hence there is no gap separating divinity and
nature (Scholem, Major 20).
from nothing to nothing: erasing the
trace of the trace
Scholem’s argument is problematic, for even if a
kabbalist were to distinguish between the infinite
nothingness and the nothing that is the first
emanation along the lines he suggests, there
would still be a tension with theism. If the
Ein Sof is beyond all cognition and verbalization,
every kataphatic depiction of the deity, inter-
preted literally, would technically be a false
idolization. That Scholem himself was aware
of the dilemma is evident from his assertion
about the ‘‘conflict’’ between the known and the
unknown God in the teachings of the kabbalists.
Indeed, he went so far as to say that the
distinction between the personal deity of the
scriptural narrative and the deus absconditus
that can be named only metaphorically entailed
a dualism that occasionally led the kabbalists to
use formulas with an
implied challenge to the religious conscious-
ness of monotheism [. . .] It is clear that with
this postulate of an impersonal basic reality
in God, which becomes a person – or appears
as a person – only in the process of Creation
and Revelation, Kabbalism abandons the
personalistic basis of the Biblical conception
of God. (Scholem, Major 11–12)
Although kabbalists would never have formulated
matters so boldly, support for Scholem’s asser-
tion can be found in the statement of Azriel of
Gerona that the Ein Sof is not mentioned in
Scripture except allusively (derekh ha-remez),
since no word can comprise it (Azriel of Gerona,
Be’ur 89). Even more daring is the formulation in
Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut, an anonymous treatise
written in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth
century:
Know that the Ein Sof, which we mentioned,
is not alluded to [ramuz] in the Torah, in the
Prophets, or in the Writings, and not in
the words of the rabbis, blessed be their
memory, but the masters of worship have
received a slight allusion. (Ma‘arekhet
ha-Elohut chapter 7, 82b)
The logic underlying the extreme apophatic
position leads to this distinction between the
Ein Sof and the God of revelation (Tishby
240–41). As Joseph Ergas (1685–1730) noted
in his Shomer Emunim, since the infinite
‘‘is removed from all attributes, modifications,
34

and corporeal delimitations, it is clear beyond
doubt that there is no place for the Torah, the
commandments, the prayers, and the sacrifices
without the reality of the sefirot’’ (Ergas 62).
Ergas would have been loath to treat the
hidden Godhead and the manifest God dyadi-
cally. Nonetheless, the Ein Sof is described
in such a way that it is completely detached
from the text of revelation and the life of piety.
From this vantage point, I do not think
it would be an exaggeration to say that the
kabbalists – as mystic contemplatives in other
religious settings – anticipated the view
expressed by various contemporary thinkers
concerning the atheistic ramifications of mono-
theism such as Jean-Luc Nancy, who argued
that the true legacy of the belief in the divine
unicity is that God’s presence cannot be given
in the world, for any reduction of that pre-
sence to a phenomenalizable datum would be
an act of idolatry (Nancy 383). In an ironic
twist, the aniconism of the monotheistic creed
leads to the undoing of theism insofar as any
imaging of the divine in personalist terms
should be considered an idolatrous projection
on the basis of monotheism’s own demand to
purify religious faith of any and every form
of idolatry (ibid. 386). The apophatic over-
coming of the theopoetic temptation to portray
God anthropomorphically and anthropopathi-
cally (Wolfson, Open Secret 247) is especially
enhanced in the mystical traditions that
affirm at the end of the path the nothingness
that is, in Meister Eckhart’s mystical lexicon,
the hidden Godhead beyond the manifest
trinitarian God, the primordial ground with
regard to which there is nothing to be said,
since everything is a unity so complete that
even God unbecomes (entwirt) (The Complete
Mystical Works 294).
That kabbalists followed a similar course11 can
be educed from the following extraordinary
directive offered by Azriel of Gerona: ‘‘Son, you
should know that he who prays should remove
every obstacle and impediment, and he should
restore the word to its nothingness [meshiv
davar le-afisato], for this is the matter of
the nothing’’ (Scholem, ‘‘New Fragments’’ 215).
35
wolfson
Commenting on this passage, Scholem opined
that if the worshipper
brings the words to the limit of the Nought,
their being does not thereby suffer any
absolute interruption. Rather it renews itself
and draws from this contact with its origin
‘‘the power for its own existence.’’ The
debhequth of man to God does not, therefore,
erase the boundaries between Creator and
creature but preserves them in this particular
form of communion. (Scholem, Origins 416)
At play here is Scholem’s insistence that the
concept of devequt affirmed by the early
kabbalists implies communion rather than
union, a distinction he makes based on his
conviction that the kabbalists wished to safeguard
the theistic conception of God and therefore they
rejected the possibility of an experience wherein
the boundaries between divine and human would
be completely obliterated in ‘‘any pantheistic
overstepping of the limits’’ (ibid. 302–03). The
general reticence on the part of Scholem to
acknowledge the possibility of unio mystica on
the part of the kabbalists has been duly and justly
criticized (Idel, Kabbalah 59–73). In terms of the
specific example at hand, if the ultimate purpose
of prayer is to return the words to the nothing-
ness of infinity, as Azriel taught, echoing the view
of his master, the Provenc al kabbalist Isaac the
Blind, then the text affirms the very erasure
of boundary that Scholem denies (Scholem,
‘‘Kavvanah’’ 165–66; idem, Origins 300–01;
Wolfson, Speculum 288–90). In this nothingness,
the liturgical words lose their referential mean-
ing, for there is no other to be addressed
dialogically, and, consequently, theism gives
way to a pantheism in which the very purpose
of prayer is disrupted. To the extent that the
Ein Sof should be envisioned as the Godhead
that is free of God, the kabbalah lends credence
to Rosenzweig’s observation that the ‘‘funda-
mental idea’’ of negative theology, a ‘‘way that
leads from a found something to the nothing,’’
culminates with atheism and mysticism shaking
hands (Rosenzweig 32), or as Derrida put it,
‘‘Like a certain mysticism, apophatic discourse
has always been suspected of atheism’’ (Derrida,
Name 36).
 nihilating nonground
being beyond being: hyperessentiality
and ontologizing the infinite
The atheistic/atheological implications of the
kabbalistic sense of infinity are evident in the
following zoharic passage:
The thought of the blessed holy One is the
concealed, hidden, supernal alef. Human
thought in the entire world cannot compre-
hend or know it. If the matters that
are dependent on the supernal thought
cannot be comprehended, how much more so
the thought itself! Within thought who can
conceive a thought? There is no understanding
to even ask a question, let alone to know.
Ein Sof has no trace at all.12
In line with the well-known apophatic emphasis
on the inability of the human mind to know the
divine, the author of this text concludes empha-
tically that there is not even a trace (reshuma) in
the infinite. Prima facie, this image obviously
denotes the utter inscrutability of Ein Sof; it is
so enigmatic that it leaves no imprint. Probing
the matter further, we can draw the following
implications of this statement: if there is no trace,
there is no presence, but if there is no presence,
there is no absence, since we can speak mean-
ingfully of absence only in relation to presence.
That there is no trace in Ein Sof, therefore,
signifies its inability to be signified as either
the presence that is absent or the absence that
is present. All that exists is a trace of the trace
of what cannot be traced, the essential conceal-
ment of infinity, a concealment that is essenti-
ally the disclosure of the concealment that is
beyond the polarity of concealment and
disclosure.13
Lest there be any misunderstanding, let me
state unequivocally that I am well aware of the
fact that at times it does appear that the medieval
kabbalists presume that the divine nothing
should be understood as the excess of being.
A striking example is found in Masoret ha-Berit
by David ben Abraham ha-Lavan, most likely
composed in the early part of the fourteenth
century. After offering several philosophical
proofs for the belief in the creation of something
from nothing, he turns to the mystical
explanation:
‘‘From nothing’’ [me-ayin] – that is to say,
he has no partner, for everything is from his
power, but that nothing is more of a some-
thing [yesh] than all the substance [ha-yeshut]
in the world. However, since it is simple, and
all the simple beings are composite vis-à-vis
its simplicity, it is called in relation to them
nothing. (David ben Abraham ha-Lavan 31)
Texts such as this seem to imply that the
nothingness affirmed by kabbalists is an ontolo-
gical plentitude construed as an absence due to
the superfluity of its presence, the hyperessential
essence, the being beyond the totality of beings,
the ‘‘perfection without any deficiency’’ (Azriel of
Gerona 83). The complexity of this issue can be
gauged from a passage in Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut.
Commenting on the expression belimah used to
qualify the ten sefirot in the first section of Sefer
Yesirah, the anonymous kabbalist wrote:
_
It says beli mah to allude to the superior
matter [ha-inyan ha-me‘ulleh] whence they
emanated [. . .] for divinity is without sub-
stance [ki ha-elohut beli mahut] [. . .] And the
Ein Sof is without beginning, since there is no
beginning [ro’sh] without an end [sof] [. . .] the
beginning of the matter and its end are
identical in his existence [mesi’uto] and in
_
his unity [ahduto], for the one is not found
_
without the other. (Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut
chapter 3, 28a–36a)
Being (mahut) and existence (mesi’ut) are here
_
distinguished; the former cannot be attributed
to the infinite but the latter must be – indeed
it is a necessary corollary of its unity (ahdut).
_
Note also the technical term inyan me‘ulleh used
to designate the Ein Sof, which I have translated
as ‘‘superior matter.’’ Needless to say, this
rendering is not meant to suggest that the Ein
Sof is a corporeal matter, but the fact that it is so
labeled lends support to the ontologizing of the
infinite. This is enhanced further by the claim
that the sefirotic emanations were ‘‘in their
Emanator until the will arose from him, blessed
be he, to be revealed, to go forth from
potentiality to actuality’’ (ibid. chapter 3, 36b).
36

This idea can be traced back to some of the
earliest kabbalistic documents, such as the
commentary on Sefer Yesirah that preserves the
_
teachings of Isaac the Blind (Perush 4).
The same idea is expressed more audaciously
by Judah Hayyat (fifteenth–sixteenth century):
_ _
Prior to the blessed holy One creating the
world, the attributes were hidden in the
Ein Sof in his simple unity. He did not
incline from side to side until he desired
creatures [. . .] and the letter alef instructs
about this simple unity and in it is hidden the
name YHWH, which numerically equals
twenty-six, for the alef is [composed of] two
yodin and a waw in the middle, which equal
twenty-six. Before the attributes were dis-
closed there was no articulate name, since
there were no letters whence the name could
have been constructed [. . .] and thus the
alef instructs about the Ein Sof. (Ma‘arekhet
ha-Elohut 11a)
Apart from anthropomorphizing the infinite in
speaking of it as desiring to produce creatures –
an orientation that intensified in sixteenth-
century kabbalah where the Ein Sof is described
overtly (based on earlier sources) as toying
with himself (mishta‘ashe‘a be-asmuto) before
_ As for the beyond (hyper) of that which is
the emanation of the sefirot, a rhetorical
trope that connotes, at once, noetic and erotic
self-gratification14 – we must also assume an
ontological posture inasmuch as the sefirotic
gradations are concealed in the infinite just as the
Tetragrammaton is contained in the alef, an idea
supported by the numerical equivalence of the
letters of the name YHWH (10 þ 5 þ 6 þ 5) and
the assumption that the alef is orthographically
made up of two yodin plus a waw (10 þ 10 þ 6).
One of the most glaring examples of con-
templating the infinite from this ontotheological
standpoint is the application of the Maimonidean
terminology ‘‘necessary of existence’’ (mehuyav
_
ha-mesi’ut) – derived from Avicenna’s descrip-
_ What ‘‘differance,’’ ‘‘trace,’’ and so on, ‘‘mean-
tion of God as the wājib al-wujud, that is, the
being whose existence is necessary in virtue of its
own essence, in contrast to all other beings whose
existence is contingent with respect to their
essence – to the Ein Sof by Moses Cordovero
(1522–70). To be sure, Maimonides maintained
that there is no similarity between the necessary
37
wolfson
of existence and all other beings and hence
we cannot make any substantial claims about
the divine nature (Wolfson, ‘‘Via Negativa’’
397–404). Nevertheless, he does not deny that
God is a being; indeed, he does not even speak
of God as ‘‘above being,’’ opting instead to
describe God as the ‘‘first being,’’15 the ontolo-
gical foundation of all existence, or in Aristotelian
terms as the ‘‘form of the world,’’ the intelligible
substance that is the ‘‘first cause’’ or the ‘‘first
intellect’’ (Maimonides, Guide 1: chapter 69, 171;
3: chapter 21, 316).16 It would seem, therefore,
that Cordovero’s application of this philosophical
jargon to Ein Sof implicates him in thinking of
the infinite in such a way that it would be subject
to Derrida’s criticism of Eckhart’s affirmation of
the nothingness of God as remaining ‘‘enclosed in
ontic transcendence [. . .] This negative theology
is still a theology and, in its literality at least,
it is concerned with liberating and acknowledging
the ineffable transcendence of an infinite exis-
tent’’ (Derrida, Writing 146). Or, as Derrida
put it in ‘‘How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,’’
when discussing the via negativa promulgated
by the Neoplatonist who wrote under the
pseudonym Dionysius the Areopagite,
beyond Being (hyperousios), it has the double
and ambiguous meaning of what is above in
a hierarchy, thus both beyond and more.
God (is) beyond Being but as such is more
(being) than Being: no more being and being
more than Being: being more. (Derrida,
Psyche 158)17
Deconstruction and negative theology are con-
trasted based on the fact that the latter ‘‘seems
to reserve, beyond all positive predication,
beyond all negation, even beyond being,
some superessentiality, a being beyond being’’
(ibid. 47). Elaborating the point, Derrida writes:
to-say’’ – which consequently does not mean
to say anything – would be ‘‘something’’
‘‘before’’ the concept, the name, the word, that
would be nothing, that would no longer pertain
to being, to presence or to the presence of the
present, or even to absence, and even less to
some hyperessentiality. Yet the ontotheological
 nihilating nonground
reappropriation always remains possible [. . .]
One can always say: hyperessentiality is exactly
that, a supreme being that remains incommen-
surable with the being of all that is, that is
nothing, neither present nor absent, and so on.
If in fact the movement of this reappropriation
appears irrepressible, its ultimate failure is no
less necessary. (Ibid. 148; emphasis in original)
From this Derridean perspective, medieval
kabbalah would be subject to the same critique:
Ein Sof is the being beyond being, which
surpasses the plethora of discriminate beings
that make up the universe but it is still a being,
and thus there appears to be no eluding an
‘‘ontotheological reappropriation.’’
A similar position is taken by Badiou. As he
notes, the Platonic depiction of the Good as the
supreme being that is ‘‘beyond substance’’
(epekeina tes ousias) is a path of thought that is
found in negative theologies, for which the
exteriority-to-situation of being is revealed in
its heterogeneity to any presentation and to
any predication [. . .] an alterity which insti-
tutes the One of being, torn from the multiple,
and nameable exclusively as absolute Other.
From the point of view of experience, this path
consecrates itself to mystical annihilation;
an annihilation in which, on the basis of an
interruption of all presentative situations, and
at the end of a negative spiritual exercise, a
Presence is gained, a presence which is exactly
that of the being of the One as non-being.
(Badiou 26; emphasis in original)
The mystical path leads to the ‘‘One of being,’’
the absolutely Other that is removed from all
multiplicity, but, in the final analysis, the alterity
of transcendence, allegedly beyond being, pre-
sents itself as the presence of the ‘‘being of the
One as nonbeing.’’
negating the negation:
transmetaphysical overcoming
of ontotheology
The criticism that Derrida and Badiou leveled
against the Neoplatonic apophaticism is surely
valid for some kabbalists but it cannot be applied
universally.18 Indeed, the same can be said about
his interpretation of the hyperessentiality in
Neoplatonism. The semantics of these texts
is ambiguous enough to allow for a different
explication of the meaning of the expression
‘‘beyond’’ implied in the description of the
One as the metabeing. The words hyperousia
and superessentia do not denote a being or a
substance but rather ‘‘non-being’’ or ‘‘non-
substance,’’ the ‘‘more-than-substance’’ (Moran
101). The expression being beyond being is an
apophatic pronouncement, which is to say, the
being that is beyond being is a being only insofar
as it is not a being – its being, in other words,
is not to be. As Michael Sells has argued,
‘‘Apophasis is a discourse in which any single
proposition is acknowledged as falsifying, as
reifying. It is a discourse of double propositions,
in which meaning is generated through the
tension between the saying and the unsaying’’
(Sells 12). The being beyond being is not an
entity subject to a substantialist metaphysics.
The inadequacy of language compels us
to continue to speak of the One as if it were a
being, but the apophatic utterance is a form
of ‘‘disontology,’’ the term deployed by Sells (20)
to name ‘‘the ongoing discursive attempt to gain
a momentary liberation from the delimitations
of predication and reference as represented
by thus and not thus.’’ The possibility of such
utterances ensues from the mystical union
wherein ‘‘the transcendent is undone,’’ inasmuch
as neither the soul nor the deity in the unitive
state can be evaluated from the vantage point of
the conventional boundaries of self-identity.
Technically speaking, apophatic language ‘‘has
as a subject neither divine nor human, neither
self nor other’’ (ibid. 12–13).
Words invariably prove to be deficient, since
there is no way to unsay what needs to be said
except by saying the unsaid. On this score, it is
not only that every act of unsaying presupposes a
previous saying or that any saying demands a
corrective unsaying, as Sells (3) suggests, but,
more paradoxically, every saying is an unsaying,
for what is said can never be what is spoken
insofar as what is spoken can never be what is
said. In a previous publication I remarked that
the mystical element as it evolved in medieval
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ensues from the
38

juxtaposition of the kataphatic and the
apophatic such that in the verbal gesture of
speaking-not, which is to be distinguished from
not-speaking, the mystics within these cultural
matrices availed themselves of images of negativ-
ity that are no less imagistic than the affirmative
images they negate (Wolfson, Language 215,
217–19, 343).
Based on this criterion we can conjecture
that the expression ‘‘infinite existence’’ may be
assigned to Ein Sof only if it is understood
that this existent cannot be objectified or
thematized ontotheologically. The nothing of
infinitude is conceived meontologically as being-
other-than-what-is-conceived – ‘‘that which
thought cannot comprehend’’ (mah she-ein
ha-mahashavah masseget), according to the
_
language attributed to Isaac the Blind, which
Scholem linked to the Greek akatalepton or its
Latin equivalent incomprehensibilis as it used
by Eriugena – but in being so conceived, this
being-not, which is to be distinguished from
not-being, is the object of contemplation (Isaac
the Blind 1; Scholem, Origins 270; Wolfson,
Language 291). What is contemplated is not a
what at all, not this and not that, the absolutely
other vis-à-vis all existents, the nihility that is
prior to the distinction of being and nonbeing
and therefore beyond affirmative and negative
propositions. As we read in an anonymous
commentary on the ten sefirot, in all likelihood
written in Spain in the last decade of the
thirteenth century or in the early part of the
fourteenth: the Cause of Causes, the primordial
and hidden source, ‘‘is neither something
nor nothing [lo yesh we-lo ayin]’’ (Scholem,
‘‘Traditions’’ 227). Sounding a similar note,
Shem Tob Ibn Shem Tob (1380–1440) wrote in
his commentary on the sefirot:
I have also found in the book of R. Simeon
ben Yohai that he called the Root of all Roots
_
ein sof, and this is an honorable name by
which to discern its existence, and to know
that it has no boundary and that it is not
grasped by any thought or idea, and we are not
to say that it is either something or nothing
[. . .] and this name negates from it everything
that speculation necessitates to negate.
(Ariel 42)
39
wolfson
To cite one more illustration from Meir Ibn
Gabbai’s Derekh Emunah, composed in 1539:
‘‘The Ein Sof has no name in itself, for even the
name ein sof should not be attributed to it in
truth [. . .] Thought does not grasp the Cause of
Causes and neither something nor nothing should
be said about it’’ (Ibn Gabbai 117, 122).
These texts shed light on the difficulty of
thinking of Ein Sof in Neoplatonic terms as the
hyperousios, at least if the latter is understood
à la Derrida’s explanation as the presence
that presents itself as nonpresent. If the infinite
is truly neither something nor nothing, then it is
outside the either/or structure that informs the
ontological economy of negative theology; it is, in
short, the chiasm that resists both the reification
of nothing as something and of something as
nothing. To speak of this nothingness as the
absence of presence is as inadequate as it is to
speak of it as the presence of absence; it is
technically beyond both affirmation and nega-
tion. It is possible to read the kabbalistic texts in
a way that would put into question the distinction
that Derrida made between the apophasis of the
via negativa, which still presumes that divine
transcendence is the essence about which nothing
can be said, and the dénégation of deconstruc-
tion, which posits that in the absence of any
transcendent essence what is unavowable is
simply the fact that there is nothing to be
avowed. To the extent that the kabbalistic symbol
of Ein Sof names the infinite that is beyond the
negation of the affirmative and the affirmation of
the negative, it may, in fact, be closer to what
Derrida is claiming as his own view regarding
that which is neither something that is nothing
nor nothing that is something. For the kabbalist
as well, infinity both is what it is not and is not
what it is because it neither is what it is not nor
is not what it is.
The infinite nothingness cannot be constricted
by images of affirmation or images of negation,
since the latter presuppose the positivity they
ostensibly negate. To say of Ein Sof that it is
nothing is as erroneous as saying that it is
something. It is useful here to recall Adorno’s
critique of Hegel’s ‘‘positive negation,’’ and his
insistence that the ‘‘nonidentical’’ – a genuine
sense of alterity that is not subsumed under the
 nihilating nonground
stamp of the same – cannot be obtained as
‘‘something positive’’ or by ‘‘a negation of the
negative,’’ for equating the ‘‘negation of negation
with positivity’’ is the ‘‘quintessence of identifi-
cation’’ (Adorno 158). As Adorno points out,
the negating of a negation
does not bring about its reversal; it proves,
rather, that the negation was not negative
enough [. . .] The thesis that the negation
of a negation is something positive can only
be upheld by one who presupposes positivity –
as all-conceptuality – from the beginning.
(Ibid. 159–60)
If we continue to think of infinity as the nothing
that nothings, we negate the negation and thereby
render the negative into a positive. What is
necessary, therefore, is to negate the negation
of the negation, to reclaim a negativity that no
longer contains its own other within the identity
of the same.
Ein Sof may be called transmetaphysical19
insofar as it is the One that must be thought
beyond thinking, the One that exists beyond
existence, the One that is the negation of the One.
When representation ceases to be representation,
we discern – albeit through the lack of discern-
ment – that the One is the insubstantiality that
refuses objectification, the nothingness that is
beyond the binary of being and nonbeing, the
substratum out of which all differentiated beings
arise – as absolute zero is the material whence
numbers come forth – and in which their mutual
relationality is grounded. Ein Sof, accordingly,
can be envisaged as the self-negating negativity,
the double negative that yields the positivity of
the entangled manifold that constitutes the fabric
of the world, the effluent emptiness that is the
womb of all becoming. Ein Sof is the linguistic
signpost that marks this interrelationality, the
eternal enfolding that is continuously unfolding
in time, a process that cannot be uttered in
language because each and every thing is
constantly becoming the nothing it is not. The
essence of time (zeman) is determined from
the indeterminacy of this primeval futurity,
the hiddenness that is steadfastly the not yet
manifest one, the impetus of the infinite
will ‘‘summoned to extend and to produce
everything’’ (zammin le’amshekha wi-le’olada
khola), the calling into the open of what is
secreted from eternity (Zohar 3: 65b).20
The kabbalistic concept of infinity can be
expressed in Heideggerian terms: Ein Sof is not
the ‘‘nothing’’ (das Nichts) that is ‘‘something
negative’’ (weder negativ), but the ‘‘not-being’’
(Nichtseyn), the ‘‘actually nihilating’’ (eigentlich
Nichtige) that
has the character of the not [das Nichthafte]
and is not at all the mere ‘‘nothing’’ [das bloße
‘‘Nichts’’], as when it is only represented by
the represented negating of something [die
vorstellende Verneinung des Etwas], on the
basis of which one says that the nothing ‘‘is’’
not [das Nichts ‘‘ist’’ nicht]. (Heidegger,
Contributions 187–88; Beiträge 266–67)
This not-being, which ‘‘holds sway in what is
not ownmost,’’ is the ‘‘essential enquivering
[die wesentliche Erzitterung] of be-ing itself
and therefore is more-being [seiender] than any
beings’’ (Heidegger, Contributions 188; Beiträge
266). It is the ‘‘hesitating refusal’’ (zögernde
Versagung) of the ‘‘swaying not-character of
be-ing as enowning [das wesende Nichthafte
des Seyns als Ereignis],’’ the ‘‘fullness of ‘time’
[die Reife der ‘Zeit’]’’ that is ‘‘pregnant with
the originary ‘not’ [ursprünglichen ‘Nicht’]’’
(Heidegger, Contributions 189; Beiträge 268),
the ‘‘abyss’’ (Ab-grund) of the ‘‘primordial
ground’’ (Ur-grund) that is the ‘‘unessential
ground’’ (Un-grund) (Heidegger, Contributions
265; Beiträge 380).21 The following oracular
statement of Heidegger, to my mind, enunciates
the far-reaching implications of the kabbalistic
notion of nothingness:
Der erste Sprung des Denkens denkt:
Das Seyn ist das Nichts. Das Nichts nichtet.
Die Nichtung verweigert jede Erklärung des
Seienden aus Seiendem. Die Verweigerung
aber gewährt die Lichtung, in der Seiendes
aus- und ein-gehen, als ein solches offenbare
und verborgen sein kann.
The first leap of thought thinks: Being is
Nothing. The Nothing nihilates. The nihila-
tion refuses every explanation of being from
beings. The refusal, however, endows the
clearing within which beings can go in and
40

out, and they can be revealed and hidden as
such. (Heidegger, Geschichte 168)
If we presume, as I think we must, that creation
is the manifestation of the infinite, and any
manifestation of the infinite is concomitantly an
occlusion, since the infinite cannot be revealed
unless it is concealed, then it follows that the
nothingness of Ein Sof is the ‘‘originary not,’’ the
nihilating nonground, the fecundity of being
that engenders the unity manifest through the
plurality of the discrete beings in nature
(Wolfson, Language 25–31). To quote Azriel
of Gerona once again, the ‘‘foundation of all
created beings’’ consists of matter (homer), form
_ can never be absent. The nothing is the unname-
(surah), and the nothing (efes), an obvious
_ able and unknowable essence that permeates and
appropriation of the three Aristotelian principles
of hyle, morphē, and steresis (Scholem, ‘‘New
Fragments’’ 215). Focusing on the concept
of steresis, we can say that it is mystically
reinterpreted by Azriel such that the efes is not
the privation of something but the fathomless and
boundless abyss (tehom) that is the potentiality
for perpetual renewal and transformation inher-
ent in all things (Azriel of Gerona, Commentary
103; Scholem, Origins 420). The wisdom of the
kabbalah is encapsulated in the aphorism ‘‘The
Godhead is Nothing’’ (Die Gottheit ist ein nichts)
in The Cherubinic Wanderer of Angelus Silesius
(1624–77):
Die zarte Gottheit ist ein Nichts und
Übernichts,
Wer nichts in allem sieht, Mensch glaube,
dieser siehts.
The gentle Godhead is nothing and beyond
nothing
Who sees nothing in all things, believe me,
sees this.
(Schelling 24)22
To grasp the paradox of the Godhead, that is both
nothing and more than nothing, one must be able
to perceive the nothing that is everything. The
(non)essence of the nothing must be reckoned
from the absolute incommensurability of indivi-
dual entities. The goal of the mystical quest is to
be conjoined to the infinite, to reverse the order
of creation by transforming the something into
the nothing, the same other returning always as
41
wolfson
what has never been but as already other to the
same. The hiddenness of the infinite, therefore,
does not signify the transcendence that protects
the theistic dogma of divine separateness; on the
contrary, the concealment relates to the mystery
of the disclosure of the nothing in the limitless
cycle of becoming that has neither beginning nor
end. From this perspective, nothingness can be
regarded as the temporal sway of eternal becom-
ing, the fullness of time that is continuously
emptying itself in the coming to be of what passes
away persistently. In the nothingness of Ein Sof,
time is eternalized in the nonpresent present,
the present that can never be present and thus
yet escapes all beings, the groundlessness above
time and space that is the elemental ground of the
temporal-spatial world, the pleromatic vacuum
that is neither something nor nothing but the
not-being that continually comes to be in the
ephemeral shadow-play of being, the void
wherein everything possible is actual because
what is actual is nothing but the possible, the
sheltering-concealing wherein the real is what
appears to be real, the clearing in relation to
which being is no longer distin-
guishable from nothing, the
matrix within which all beings
are revealed and concealed in the
nihilation of their being.
notes
1 See Idel,‘‘Jewish Kabbalah’’ 325^31; Katz 279^98,
especially 287^ 89; Wolfson, ‘‘Negative Theology’’
v^xxii; idem, Language 215^20.
2 Gikatilla1: 57,144,164, and see editor’s introduc-
tion 30 ^31. See also David ben Yehudah he-Hasid
_
129, 131; Zohar 3: 258a (Ra‘aya Meheimna); Tiqqunei
Zohar, sec. 22, 68b.
3 Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi 2c, 28b; David
benYehudah he-Hasid 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 writ-
ings of Azriel of Gerona, see Wolfson, Language
98 ^99, and Valabregue-Perry 232^ 44.
 nihilating nonground
6 Unless otherwise noted, all references to
the Zohar are from Sefer ha-Zohar, edited by
Margaliot.
7 Scholem (Origins 272) surmises that the kabbal-
ists 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 Matt122,126.
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 Habad-Lubavitch
_
Hasidism, 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,
Language182^ 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 [masuy ri’shon], and he
_
brought every existent into existence. All the exis-
tents 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 scrip-
tural 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 possibi-
lity that Maimonides places God outside the con-
catenation 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.
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Elliot R. Wolfson
Hebrew and Judaic Studies
New York University
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
USA
E-mail: erw1@nyu.edu