Kabbalah as Literature

A perpetually creative platform, kabbalistic literature challenges plain, predictable, or privileged interpretations of biblical narratives, reimagining and reinventing familiar characters, episodes, and images. Eve, Esther, and Judith, for example, embody the female aspect of the kabbalistic divinity, as do several nameless women whose roles the Kabbalah augments and celebrates, often in daring and surprising ways.

What allows the Kabbalah to revolutionize hermeneutical practices is its capacity to explore a wide variety of styles and genres: drama, poetry, the fairy tale, the picaresque novel, the personal diary, the dream journal, surrealist fiction, magical realism, philosophical investigations, modernist modes of expression, and other storytelling strategies. This book traces the development of kabbalistic literature, from the late Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, while applying kabbalistic methods and sensibilities to the parables of Jesus, the epistles of Paul, and other related texts.

Despite its literary and theological sophistication, the Kabbalah rarely promotes its unique version of the human-divine story as a definitive account or an authorized version. Refraining from favoring one meaning at the expense of others, the Kabbalah offers a truly diverse and highly capacious program that serves as a potential antidote to the current division of human experience into proverbial echo chambers.