Sublime

Many aspects of Kabbalah presage psychoanalytic thinking. For example, dream interpretation, close attention to language, conceptualising sexual desire as an energy, and recognition of symbols. Moreover, Kabbalistic knowledge is usually communicated orally. This resembles ‘training analysis' - the psychoanalytic convention of being psychoanalysed i

a temporal configuration that is circular in its linearity and linear in its circularity.118 What is brought forth each moment is a renewal of what has been, albeit always from a different vantage point.

the faith of a man who has considered the very real possibility that chaos and bloodshed are simply all there is.

Saadia Gaon was correct in asserting that Israel is a people only by virtue of its Torah,74 that the only assurance for Israel’s peoplehood is the Torah. On the other hand, Rabbi Halevi reminds us, “If there were no Jews, there would be no Torah.”75

For Shimen, the “community” is a set of concentric circles beginning with his (dead) family, extending to Gerer Hasidim, and extending further to others committed to the Jewish way of life; the farther out the circle, the less weight it earns in Shimen’s calculus.

replacing temple rituals with equally ritualized blessings and prayers, study of Torah, and elaborately regulated interpersonal ethics. The sages frantically arguing about when and how to recite which prayers are survivors and descendants of survivors, remnants of a destroyed world.

Which brings us back to Moses and Vayak’hel. By placing community at the heart of the religious life and by giving it a home in space and time – the synagogue and Shabbat – Moses was showing the power of community for good, as the episode of the golden calf had shown its power for bad. Jewish spirituality is for the most part profoundly communal. H

Paul creates a transcendental hierarchy. Akiva and rabbinic Judaism create an egalitarian spirituality.