Approaching Modesty and Mystery in Kabbalah, Philosophy and Science

Mystery of the Infinite

—no one ends at himself,
each one is an all
in another all,
in another one.
The other is contained in the one,
the one is another:
we are constellations.
Octavio Paz  (28)

—Your name in my name in your name my name
One to another one against the other one around another
One in the other
Unnamed
Octavio Paz  (29)

—Their apparations open
another space
in space,
another time in time.
Octavio Paz  (30)

Of the many philosophic attempts to deal with vision, one, in particular, emerges with a counter to vision in the form of the concept of modesty. Emmanuel Levinas, in the course of his many translations of Judaic thought into the universal language of philosophy, develops a notion of modesty that is akin not only to the Biblical verses we’ve attempted to explicate, but also succeeds to inscribe the ideas of the kabbalistic tradition on the concealment that aids and abides the other in escaping the objectifying stare.  For Levinas, vision evokes “…the agreeableness of sensibility, enjoyment, contentment with the finite without concern for the infinite.”  (31)  To remember, preserve and acknowledge infinity—or the infinitization of the other—points to the promise of modesty. Finitude would thereby be the transgression of infinity running up against an ‘other’ immodestly conceived.

Bridging from Levinas back to Kabbalah, the reflections of Elliot Wolfson spring off a remark originally made by Erich Neumann from his work on the Origins and History of Consciousness where he observes that: “to be ‘unveiled’ means to be naked, but this is only another form of anonymity.” (32) Engaging this idea, Wolfson writes: “To translate Neumann’s language into a kabbalistic idiom, every gradation is a mask by which that which has no face appears, the transpersonal, Ein Sof, that which is beyond any and all representation and hence may be considered the catalyst for the multifaceted imaginary representations, the drawing of verbal icons—visual signs—in the poetic imagination of the contemplative kabbalist.” (33) Thus, the link between Ein Sof in the language of the kabbalists and Levinasian infinitization may be brokered.

A further association is ventured in the attachment of the infinite/Ein Sof as the ‘beyond’ representations that resides beyond ‘representations.’ (34) Unrepresentable, the trace of Divine invisibility finds paradoxical expression in the lowercase alterity of the human other. It founds all signification, all finitude, all appearances all the while remaining transcendent to them in the manner of the kabbalistic description of the Ein Sof or infinity contracting itself (tzimtzim) in order to engender finite reality. Wolfson follows this thread to its outer limits, traveling through a wide range of kabbalistic texts with special regard for the Lithuanian kabbalistic tradition that has so influenced Levinas. (35) Here we turn to the Gaon of Vilna, where his commentary on the sifra di-zeni‘uta adds additional fuel to Wolfson’s investigation:

The reality beyond the first book, according to R’ Elijah Gaon, is the hidden concealment of Ein-Sof, which he calls by various zoharic expressions including, most frequently, the Head that is not known, reisha de-lo ’ityeda, that defies signification. All signification occurs within the textual boundaries of the first book, which is the book of concealment. The negative theology implies by the Gaon of Vilna is not radically different from what is suggested by the Derridean notion of trace, for the origin to which the book of concealment points is not an origin that can ever be known or demarcated. The Ein-Sof cannot properly be referred to as a transcendental signified, for it forever eludes signification.  (36)

Eluding signification by that which cannot be brought to light even when illuminated strikes at the heart of the metaphysics of modesty in Kabbalah. Continuing on Wolfson knits these ideas together with the doctrine of the tzimtzum or ‘self-effacing concealment’ of the Ein Sof in the Gaon’s work:

In great measure, this dialectic of concealment and manifestation underlies the Gaon of Vilna’s understanding of zimzum, the contraction and withdrawal of divine light. That is, the purpose of the diminution of light is to allow for its reception by other beings. The act of diminution and reduction is the flip side of the process of adornment (hitlabshut) and egression (hitpashtut). ‘Every spark,’ writes the Gaon of Vilna, ‘is the source of measure’ (23a), that is, every manifestation of light derives from an act of limitation imposed by the measure that is an instrument of the attribute of judgment. The contraction of light, therefore, does not imply distancing God from the concatenation of worlds but rather the condensation of God within those worlds. Hence, when viewed dialectically, the concealment of the divine light that ensues from the zimzum is a form of revelation, As R’ Elijah expressed it: ‘This is the essence of the tiqqun, to diminish the light so that the lower entities could receive the light. This too was the initial intention in the withdrawal of the light (zimzum ha-’or)’ [Gaon of Vilna 2c]. (37)

Could this ‘withdrawal of the light,’ of the undefinable Other/other, of unperceivable transmissions, of the uncontainable, be the modesty of the individual in an original sense which reverses the meaning of its concealment when “dressed” in the multitude of its finite appearances. Each garment is a definition. Each is garment is an act of self-limitation. Each garment insures a new reception and founds receptivity. For, as Wolfson points out: “The withdrawal of light, designated by the Gaon of Vilna by both Lurianic terms, zimzum [tzimtzum]and shevirah [breaking of the vessels], is a manifestation of divine judgment insofar as a limitation is imposed upon the infinitely expanding effluence of divine mercy.” (38)

Judgment itself relates to finitude, definition, knowability, and choice. Selection based on these criteria fragments the object in question. The policy of tzimtzum (self-limitation) acts in a philosophic sense like the term reductionism. Besides its pragmatic mind-frame, reductionism would seem to give rise to the shevirah or fragmentation of what is revealed. Instead of looking at an individual as indivisible, we work with an image stored in pixels.

If we recast the drama of Divine concealment and fragmentation in terms of the human drama, we labor to create a world where the self-other relationship can take place, yet this ‘space’ has the twofold provisions of 1) submitting to a categorical reductionism of self in the mode of being in and of oneself to the mode of being for and with the other and 2) signing off on the display of fragmentary images, images that may or not be reassembled correctly into the semblance of the individually constituted being from which they were taken.

Rephrased in Levinas’ universe, our participation in modest interaction creates not only a sense of separation but also the possibility of relation. A human being, far from playing the role of an automaton, actively and consciously extends this separation that founds all relation. Levinas argues for the human contribution to this arrangement with ardent enthusiasm:

An infinity that does not close in upon itself in a circle but withdraws from the ontological extension so as to leave a place for a separate being exists divinely. Over and beyond the totality it inaugurates a society. The relations that are established between the separated being and Infinity redeem what diminution there was in the contraction creative of Infinity. Man redeems creation. (39)

Wolfson, whose work has been said to be a ‘quilt of translations’ continues his own characteristic intertextual and integral unfolding of this issue, revisiting this material from many angles over the course of several essays. Confirming what some have suspected but never verbalized (at least not so directly) Wolfson offers the ‘photosynthesis’ of this entire web of concepts:

The matter is expressed in terms of the Lurianic teaching of simsum  [tzimtzum], the withdrawal of the infinite light to create a space wherein the chain of being can be unfurled: ‘he constricted his glory and left a place, as it were, for the existence of the powers and the worlds.’ And this is precisely how Levinas presents the idea of simsim, the ‘originary contraction,’ as interpreted in Nefesh ha-Hayyim: Whereas this idea was originally intended by kabbalists to resolve ‘the antimony between God’s omnipresence and the being of creature outside of God,’ the contraction of God ‘from Creation in order to make space, next to self, for something other than self,’ according to Hayyim of Volozhyn, simsim denotes a ‘gnoseological event’ that consigns the Infinite to concealment and obscurity but thereby allows for the ‘possibility if thinking the Infinite and the Law together, the very possibility of their conjunction.’ (40)

And finally, by way of summation, the problem in full bloom as Wolfson presents it:

In kabbalistic lore, there is symmetry between emanation and esoteric hermeneutics: the one as the other entails a process of uncovering preexistent roots by laying bare the complex simplicity of the simple complexity of Ein Sof. That which is without-limit can be revealed only when concealed, for if not concealed, it could not be revealed as the concealed being it appears (not) to be. All that exists, therefore, is simultaneously a manifestation and occlusion of the divine essence. (41)

 

28) “A Tale of Two Gardens”: Collected Poems, pp.297-8.

29) “Alter”: Collected Poems, p.289.

30) “A Tale of Two Gardens”: Collected Poems, p.291.

31) Totality and Infinity, p.191.

32) Origins, p.53.

33) Language, Eros, Being, p.529.

34) One particularly salient passage in the Zohar II 239b and also repeated III 26b attests to this unrepresentability:

: אמר ליה, הא אוקימנא עד אין סוף, דכל קשורא ויחודא ושלימו, לאצנעא בההוא צניעו, דלא אתדבק ולא אתידע, דרעוא דכל רעוין ביה, אין סוף לא קיימא לאודעא, ולאו למעבד סוף, ולא למעבד ראש, כמה דאין קדמאה אפיק ראש וסוף, מאן ראש דא נקודה עלאה דאיהו רישא דכלא סתימאה, דקיימא גו מחשבה, ועביד סוף, דאקרי סוף דבר, אבל להתם אין סוף, לאו רעותין, לאו נהורין, לאו בוצינין בההוא אין סוף.

Along the same lines, Moses Cordovero in his Pardes Rimmonim 11:5 [p.161] commenting on this passage in the Zohar renders tzniut as concealment:

“ופי’ דבריו, כי שרש השרשים הנקרא אין סוף אינו עומד להתגלות מפני רוב העלמו שאין בו ידיעה כלל. וז”ש לא קיימא לאודעא. ואמר כי בזולת שא”א לדעתו ולהשיגו בערך בחינתו כפי מציאות העלמו.”

35) See Levinas’s remarks in his essay “In the Image of God”: Beyond the Verse pp.166-167. This is one of the few times that Levinas opens up regarding his kabbalistic influences. This and other citations of Levinas’s mystical tendencies are all detailed in Wolfson’s essay “Secrecy, Modesty, and the Feminine: Kabbalistic Traces in the Thought of Levinas” in The Journal of Jewish Philosophy and Thought, pp.193-224.

36) “From Sealed Book,” p.153.

37) Ibid. p.158.

38) Ibid. p.159.

39) Totality and Infinity, p.104

40) “Secrecy,” pp.214-215 where Wolfson quotes from Levinas’ essay in Beyond the Verse: “In the Image of God,” p.166.

41) Ibid. p.216.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/clothed-in-clarity-veiled-in-light-part-5/

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