• David Rosenberg-Wohl is a student in the GTU/ UCB Joint Doctoral Program in Jewish Studies. In this essay, he explores how his early study of the classics, his training as a lawyer, and his family life eventually led him to CJS and to a personal and intellectual fascination with Jewish studies.
  
  
• Ron Feldman, a GTU Ph.D. student, published "Fundamentals of Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah" in 1999. In the following essay, M.A. student Jeremy Rothenberg reviews the work.

Exploring the Tradition

David Rosenberg-Wohl

This story appeared in the Winter 2001 issue of the CJS newsletter Zeramim.

David Rosenberg-Wohl

The value of tradition, a rabbi once told me, is to be found in its repetition, not in its meaning. Habits stay with you, but meanings change over time.

Yes, I was Jewish, and I was proud of my heritage, but I was also ignorant, uncomfortable, and uninterested in remedying the situation. I studied American history, English literature, Latin and Greek. It was the Greek and Roman authors with whom I really identified. It was they who most compellingly explored the potential and the limitations of being human, and who offered the thrill of the past made present. I obtained my A.B. at Harvard College in classics, investigating in particular how an archaic Greek concept-the word "arete" as used by Homer and Hesiod-came to be translated by the Romans, and ultimately by us, as the Western idea of "virtue."

Law school was more of a tradition in my family than a bar mitzvah. Much as I avoided the latter, I doggedly sought the former, attending Harvard Law School immediately after graduation from college. Law was intellectually challenging, sociable, prestigious, and financially rewarding. Unfortunately, it was also frustrating. Law requires the close reading of words, and spending more and more time with words that were not written in exploration of the human condition left me feeling less and less human.

I took comfort in the Greek and Latin books in my study, the very appearance of which suggested to me that I was, in fact, an interesting person-only in hibernation. Ironically, it took a rekindled interest in Judaism to bring my enthusiasm for classics, for humanistic literature and philosophy, back to life.

When my wife and I had children, we quickly realized that we had to decide how best to transmit our Jewish tradition. We visited temples in San Francisco, ultimately settling in at Congregation Emanu-el. We took some classes at the local JCC. Most significantly, we decided to send our kids to a Jewish school, Brandeis Hillel Day School, so that they would grow up more familiar and more comfortable with their Jewish tradition than their parents were. And it was during a meeting at Brandeis that I realized I would love to study and teach the significance-the continuing significance-of Jewish values in Western culture. It was, after all, what I was actually doing, day to day, with my family.

I met Naomi Seidman, the director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the GTU, and enrolled in her class on modern Jewish thought. Aside from Maimonides and Spinoza, there was absolutely nobody on the syllabus I had even heard of. I was sure to learn something.

The class turned out to be my best scholastic experience to date. I looked forward to each week's readings, and to exploring my jumbled thoughts in each week's papers, far more than to my legal responsibilities. And from that moment forward, the intellectual focus of my life began to change.

With two classes the next semester, three the following, and this fall, a full course load, I have moved in quick succession from the GTU's Certificate program and then its Master's program into the Joint Degree Program. And with equal rapidity, I have come to target my area of study, which truly is uniquely suited not just to my personal background but to the specific intellectual environment of the GTU.

I intend to study the interaction of Jewish and Christian humanist thinkers in the Italian Renaissance, particularly those intimately involved in the Platonic Academy founded under the auspices of Cosimo de' Medici and Marsilio Ficino in the mid quattrocento. This is the time of renewed discovery of Greek and Latin authors in monastery libraries, it is a time of translation, and it is a time in which progressive thinkers of Jewish and Christian backgrounds explored and expanded their respective traditions under a renewed appreciation of common human bonds.

I think they built their humanistic bridges on the architectural foundations of the classical authors. I think they can do so today.

Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah

Jeremy Rothenberg
1999 saw the publication of Fundamentals of Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah by Ron Feldman, a GTU Ph.D. student majoring in Jewish studies. We congratulate Ron on his achievement!

This story appeared in the Spring 2000 issue of the CJS newsletter Zeramim.

Traversing the waters of Jewish mystical thought and practice is a daunting task. From texts to contexts, the scholar is faced with many storms at sea before land is found. And as with all pursuits of mystery, that which is found often turns out to be but an island, a weigh station for launching the next (and final!) stage of the journey. Ron Feldman's Fundamentals of Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah is a more than a journal from his boat, it is a bold attempt at synthesizing a broad and oftentimes, bewildering tradition. Informed through a mixture of academic inquiry and lived experience, an even keel is forged that will lead some to newfound land while leaving others at dock awaiting a more treacherous expedition.

The divide between a living tradition and academic scholarship can be great. Claiming that academia cannot, with its emphasis on intellect over experience, provide answers to spiritual questions, Feldman turns an academic eye towards his experience with the Jewish Renewal community and their leaders. Considering itself post-denominational, and in some ways, neo-Hasidic, Jewish Renewal, loosely led by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, is an American Jewish movement that seeks to incorporate what might be thought of as traditional Jewish values and practices with mystical insights and contemporary language. Fundamentals of Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah shares the goal of integrating mystical concepts with a modern sensibility.

With broad strokes of a fine brush, the theory, practice, and history of Jewish mysticism is swiftly painted for easy perusal. The unfamiliar reader will find Hebrew terms rendered with a "transliteration-translation," so one can avoid repeated trips to a glossary. Likewise, Jewish practices are described so that a reader from any tradition or background will understand the references. A more seasoned inquirer will find charts, diagrams, and an abundance of information packed into this small book. Chapters on such themes as "The Structure of Reality," "Kabbalistic Healing," and "The Holiness of Body and Sex," provide nice summaries of compelling and complex issues. Referring often to states of consciousness while utilizing the language of transpersonal psychology, Feldman's work is an example of a changing representation of kabbalistic notions-from a metaphoric description of the external universe to an internal examination of one's own being.

Like a medical student who must dissect a cadaver to see the innards of a human body, academia often finds itself sifting through the static remains of historical records of what was, and is at once, a living tradition. In response to this discord, Ron Feldman blends scholarship with lore-the written with the oral, creating what amounts to a digestible summary of Jewish mystical concepts. While some of his techniques are admittedly cumbersome-the transliteration-translation technique seems to unnecessarily stabilize otherwise fluid concepts-this introductory look into the world of the mystical element in Judaism is filled with intriguing notions, such as the kabbalistic basis for Crowley's Tarot deck, that are missing in academic inquiry. This book should be read by all who fear the tangled web of Jewish mysticism. A legion abounds!

Fundamentals of Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah by Ron H. Feldman (Freedom, California: The Crossing Press, 1999).