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Boaz Huss, ed., Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival

Article in Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review · January 2019

DOI: 10.5840/asrr201910267

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The University of Sydney
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Boaz Huss (ed.), Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival (Beer Sheva: Ben-
Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2011); 33 pp; ISBN 978-965-536-043-1;
hardback; RRP: ?.

In the twenty-first century Kabbalah seems to have broken free from its Jewish
roots and become part of a diffuse range of spiritual options that are often called
‘New Age’. This sixteen-chapter volume stems from an international workshop
on “Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival” at Ben-Gurion University of
the Negev in May 2008. Yaakov Ariel’s opener “From Neo-Hasidism to Outreach
Yeshivot: The Origin of the Movements of Renewal and Return to Tradition” puts
the revival of Hasidism in the context of the 1940s-1960s, and traces the efforts
of Chabad through Zalman Schachter and Shlomo Carlebach, sent by Menahem
Mendel Schneerson to do “outreach work on American college campuses” (p. 20).
This resulted in outreach to mixed groups of both sexes, attempting to bring ‘fun’
into Judaism, and going in different directions regarding whether to draw upon
exclusively Jewish traditions (Carlebach) or to add Eastern religions (Schachter).
The counterculture and the Six Day War, the varied aims of neo-Hasidic Renewal
and Return to Tradition, are neatly framed in an interesting historical sketch.
Next is Chava Weissler on Kabbalah in “ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal” (p.
40), continuing a focus on Zalman Schachter-Shaloni (as he became) and eclectic
approaches to other religions; then Rachel Werczberger’s “Self, Identity and
Healing in the Ritual of Jewish Spiritual Renewal in Israel” which considers Israel
specifically and a range of practices that may be termed New Age, or growing out
of the “Human Potential [Movement] and Transpersonal Psychology” (p. 81),
with key themes of aesthetics and healing.

Zvi Mark’s “The Contemporary Renaissance of Braslav Hasidism: Ritual, Tiqqun

and Messianism” introduces two new schools in the tradition of Rabbi Nachman
of Braslav, those of Rabbis Israel Odesser and Eliezer Shlomo Schick. Practices
like reciting ten psalms in the “Universal Rectification” (p. 107) give rise to new
rituals, including mass emotional recitations at Rabbi Nachman’s grave. This
affective turn in Orthodox Judaism is further traced in Jonathan Garb’s “Towards
the Study of the Spirital-Mystical Renaissance in the Contemporary Ashkenazi
Haredi World in Israel”, which considers groups that are more reclusive than
Chabad or the Braslav schools. Haredi mysticism is exclusively focused on men, a
contrast with some earlier chapters. The next two chapters, by Elliot Wolfson
and Jonatan Meir, focus on individual teachers (Itamar Schwartz and R. Yaakov
Moshe Hillel respectively). The eighth chapter, Jody Myers’ “Kabbalah for the
Gentiles: Diverse Souls and Universalism in Contemporary Kabbalah”, focuses on
teachers who have non-Jews as pupils: Yitzchak Ginsburg, Ariel Bar Tzadok, and
Michael Laitman.

Philip Wexler’s “Towards a Social Psychology of Spirituality” shifts the register to

more methodological concerns, tracing modern sociological ideas about religion
and attempting to go beyond their limitations to map the sociology of spiritual
movements. Veronique Altglas discusses Kabbalah in tandem with Yoga as once
belonging to inherited religions but now increasingly like “world religions” in
their globalized and evangelical forms. This focus is continued in Chapters 11
and 12, Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s “Kabbalah in Gnosis Magazine (1985-1999)” and
 Graham Harvey’s “Paganism: Negotiating Between Esotericism and Animism
under the Influence of Kabbalah.” In these studies, Kabbalah is adrift from its
Jewish roots and substantially “Westernized”. The final four chapters return the
focus to Israel. Shlomo Fischer’s “Radical Religious Zionism: From the Collective
to the Individual” maps a trend that has affected Christianity in the West since
the mid-twentieth century, and Tamar Katriel’s “Precursors to Postmodern
Spirituality in Israeli Cultural Ethos” which discussion the tensions between
ruhaniyut (spirituality) and artziyut (practicality, linked to secular modernity) in
the country’s foundation and history. Israel is a secular state, so citizens may
belong to or practice religions other than Judaism, after a fashion. “Between
Univeralism and Relativism: The Acquiring of a Continuously Liberating Self by
Buddha-Dhamma Israeli Practitioners” by Joseph Loss is half a meditation on
what is a Buddhist or Buddhism if it is not essentialized, and fieldwork among
two Vipassana organizations (Israel Vipassana Trust and Tovana) and a Tibetan
Buddhist association (Dharma Friends of Israel) between 2001 and 2005. The
final chapter is by editor Boaz Huss, and shifts the focus back to how Kabbalah is
studied, “Contemporary Kabbalah and its Challenge to the Academic Study of
Jewish Mysticism”. This chapter identifies a significant issue, that most work on
contemporary Kabbalah is not informed by academic study of Jewish mysticism,
and “most scholars of Jewish mysticism are not interested in the contemporary
manifestations of Kabbalah and Hasidism” (pp. 361-362). Huss notes that the
study of contemporary Kabbalah would necessitate scholars of Jewish mystical
traditions to come to terms with the social scientific study of practitioners, and
that such study has a de-essentializing effect. In the eight years since this volume
appeared, this sort of shift has become dimly visible, rendering Kabbalah and
Contemporary Spiritual Revival a fascinating historical snapshot of the academic
field. It is deserving of a wide readership both for its mass of original content and
also for its methodological experimentalism.

Carole M. Cusack
University of Sydney, Australia

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