ELLIOT 
R. WOLFSON
METAPHOR, DREAM, AND THE PARABOLIC BRIDGING OF DIFFERENCE:
A KABBALISTIC AESTHETIC
In trying to give an account of a dream, every accurate
person must often have felt that it was a hopeless un-
dertaking to attempt to disentangle waking interpre-
tations and fillings out from the fragmentary images of
the dream itself…. A dream, as far as its own content
goes, is exactly like an actual experience…. Besides,
even when we wake up, we do not find that the dream
differed from reality, except by certain marks, dark-
ness and fragmentariness. Not unfrequently a dream
is so vivid that the memory of it is mistaken for the
memory of an actual occurrence.
Charles S. Peirce. “Questions Concerning Certain
Faculties”
Para realizar um sonho é preciso esquecê-lo, distrair
dele a atenção. Por isso realizar é não realizar. A vida
está cheia de paradoxos como as rosas de espinhos.
Fernando Pessoa, Livro do desassossego
Any attempt to reify a phenomenon as multifaceted as
the kabbalah by identifying an essential core is dubi-
ous and runs the risk of what Alfred North Whitehead
called in the 1925 Lowell Lectures the fallacy of mis-
placed concreteness, that is, obfuscating the intricacy of
the concrete by a presumed abstraction that proffers a
false sense of the whole.1 Expressed in Peircean terms,
if we ignore the interdependence of all things, and
1 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
(New York: Free Press, 1967), pp. 51–55, 57–58. Many scholars
have written about this Whiteheadian concept. For instance, see
H. Edward Thompson, III, “The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness:
Its Importance for Critical and Creative Inquiry,” Interchange 28
(1997): 219–230.
2 Charles S. Peirce, “Nominalism versus Realism,” in Writings of
Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, edited by the Peirce Edi-
tion Project, vol. 2 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984),
pp. 153–154. On Peirce’s rejection of the Kantian notion of things-
in-themselves, see William L. Rosensohn, The Phenomenology of
Charles S. Peirce (Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner, 1974), p. 16.
3 Cristina Ciucu and Regan Kramer, “A Female Messiah? Jewish
Mysticism and Messianism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries,” Clio: Women, Gender, History 44 (2016): 67 n. 22. The
one-dimensional presentation of my work by these authors is due
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 IMAGES
Also available online—brill.com/ima DOI:10.1163/18718000-12340142
consider each thing for itself, then general terms would
correspond to no object; if, however, we accept that
any particular thing is dependent on what lies beyond
its immediate limits, then we discern that the per-
petually abiding totality of that thing’s true being—the
generic—must be appraised constantly from the view-
point of the changeable, transitory, and evanescent.2
This criterion can be applied to the kabbalah: if we are
to speak of an essence, then it can be ascertained only
from the vantagepoint of the inessential, which is to
say, any appeal to fixed meaning is adduced from the
fluctuating nature of temporal contingencies. It is a spe-
cious dichotomization to contrast the constancy of the
structural and the variation of the historical.3 On the
contrary, not only can the same structure recur in dif-
ferent chronological contexts, but the variation of the
invariable is the factor that facilitates the continuity of
discontinuity. This hermeneutical insight, which finds
support in cognitive neuroscience, does not preclude
the positing of deep structures of thought that persist
timelessly in different chronological settings. Presum-
ing the existence of such structures does not justify the
application of such pejorative terms as “monolithic”
or “monochromatic.”4 Regrettably, characterizations
of this sort betray an inability to grasp a central
tenet that has shaped my hermeneutical orientation:
to their uncritical acceptance of Idel’s negative assessment (for
references see the following note). In considering my argument,
they demonstrate no independent thinking or critical judgment
based on the ability to read and analyze the primary material.
4 Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpre-
tation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 580–581
n. 135; idem, Kabbalah and Eros (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2005), pp. 100–101, 128–131; idem, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysti-
cism (London: Continuum, 2007), pp. 619–620; idem, Kabbalah in
Italy 1280–1510: A Survey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011,
pp. 312, 449 n. 106); idem, The Privileged Divine Feminine in Kab-
balah (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2019), pp. 26, 197–199, 217–218. For
a partial response, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Structure, Innovation, and
Diremptive Temporality: The Use of Models to Study Continuity
and Discontinuity in Kabbalistic Tradition,” Journal for the Study of
Religions and Ideologies 18 (2007): 143–167; idem, “Retroactive Not
2 Elliot  R. Wolfson
sameness of structure produces variation and multi-
plicity.5 Heterogeneity and homogeneity need not be
set in diametric opposition; on the contrary, inasmuch
as we cannot discern deviation empirically without
hypothesizing stability ideationally, thinking, like the
cadence of time, comports a concurrence of the het-
erogeneity of the homogeneous and the homogeneity
of the heterogeneous.6
Repetition of Difference and the Kenosis of Time
Rather than setting the conservative and the innovative
poles of kabbalistic creativity—correlated respectively
with the oral dispersal of a circumscribed number
of secrets versus the written proliferation of secrets
extracted exegetically—in diametric opposition, the
two tendencies should be viewed as complementary
pairs intertwined in the sameness of their difference.
My thinking reflects the principle of complementarity
in quantum physics, first articulated by Niels Bohr,
which posits that objects have pairs of complementary
properties that cannot be observed or measured simul-
taneously, as we see, for example, in the dilemma that
matter at times behaves as if it were made of particles
Yet: Linear Circularity and Kabbalistic Temporality,” in Time and
Eternity in Jewish Mysticism: That Which Is Before and That Which
Is After, edited by Brian Ogren (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 30–37.
5 See the section on “Dynamism and Stasis in Kabbalistic Sym-
bolism” in Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic
Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham Univer-
sity Press, 2004), pp. 88–94. Idel, The Privileged Divine Feminine,
p. 199, concludes that “Kabbalistic literature is both variegated,
complex, and in a continuous conceptual flux, although still operat-
ing with several stable models.” I have not used the term models,
but this statement is not inconsistent with my own view regarding
the intricate intermingling of the new and the old that informs
kabbalistic hermeneutics. Curiously, Idel makes no reference to
my interventions on this issue. This omission leaves room for
suspicion that his modification obfuscates—whether intentionally
or not—an appropriation of my outlook that was formulated, in
part, as a critical rejoinder to his previous pronouncements. My
trepidation has been confirmed by Idel’s audacious attempt in a
more recent publication to claim that my view is closer to his own,
leaving the impression, as he is wont to do, that I have claimed for
myself something I have appropriated from him. See Moshe Idel,
Primeval Evil in Kabbalah: Totality, Perfection, Perfectibility (Brook-
lyn: Ktav Publishing House, 2020), pp. 36–37 n. 99. Idel’s comment
was provoked by his attempt to respond to my criticism of his very
sharp distinction between what he identifies as the innovative and
the conservative trends of kabbalah. Obviously, Idel is entitled to
uphold his view against my challenge, but he cannot reasonably
appropriate my counterview that is based on disputing his rigid
dichotomy between innovation and conservation and the correla-
tive distinction between orality and writing as a way to explain the
and at other times behaves as if it were made of waves.7
Complementarity transforms the bimodal logic of
either α or ¬α into the tetralemmic logic of both α and
¬α and therefore neither α nor ¬α. The dialetheic logic
is a repudiation of the law of noncontradiction based
on the assumption that the identification of opposites
in the identity of their opposition yields a genuine
and irresolvable contradiction; that is, the truth of a
statement that presumes the paradoxical form α and
¬α, which translates into the disjunctive syllogism if
it is the case that α, then it is not the case that α, is a
direct reproach of the more prevalent logic that for
every statement either α or ¬α is true but both cannot
be true at the same time and in the same relation. The
mode of logic that I have briefly charted underlies the
assumption that the excitations of the oscillations in
the quantum field of electromagnetic interactions are
observable both as particle and wave even though they
cannot be ontically reified as either one or the other.8
If we adopt a heuristic along these lines and apply
it to the question of how we are to assess the nature of
tradition at play in the worldview of kabbalists, there is
no compelling reason to presume that the more inven-
tive patterns chronologically replaced, or polemically
historical development of Jewish esotericism. His pointing out that
he, too, has noted that medieval kabbalists received older tradi-
tions is a far cry from my contention that destabilizes the inflexible
contrast he makes between the two trends of kabbalah.
6 For a more expanded discussion, see the section “Homogene-
ity and Heterogeneous Fluctuation” in Elliot R. Wolfson, Heidegger
and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiēsis (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2019), pp. 30–32. See the depiction of time
and the imagination as it pertains to the hermeneutical condition
in ibid., pp. 278–279.
7 Mara Beller, Quantum Dialogue: The Making of a Revolu-
tion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 223–267;
Timothy E. Eastman, “Duality Without Dualism,” in Physics and
Whitehead: Quantum, Process, and Experience, edited by Timo-
thy E. Eastman and Hank Keeton (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2004), pp. 14–30; Arkady Plotnitsky, “What is Comple-
mentarity? Niels Bohr and the Architecture of Quantum Theory,”
Physica Scripta T163 (2014): 1–20.
8 For a lucid articulation of the point, see James Owen Weather-
all, Void: The Strange Physics of Nothing (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2016), p. 110: “The particles of modern particle physics are not
particles in the classical sense of small, localized bodies bouncing
around like small tiny ball bearings. They are manifestations of the
particular ways in which a quantum field can be configured—much
as light is a manifestation of some of the ways in which a (clas-
sical) electromagnetic field can be configured, or a tsunami is a
way in which the ocean can be configured. It is a remarkable fact
about quantum fields that they exhibit particlelike behavior, and
that we so fruitfully think about elementary particles in a world
of quantum fields.”
 Metaphor, Dream, and the Parabolic Bridging of Difference 3
responded to, the more derivative, or that we should
chart the history of esotericism as a progression from
the more hidden to the more revealed correlated with
a change from orality to writing.9 The linear explana-
tion for the development of kabbalistic hermeneutics
as a transformation needs to be replaced by a more
nuanced interpretive scheme that resists positing
productivity and receptivity as antinomical cultural
factors.10 Kabbalists through the generations have
exemplified the principle that repetition facilitates
novelty and that multivocality is a species of unifor-
mity. The hermeneutic underlying this claim is deeply
enmeshed with understanding time as the perpetual
retrieval of what has never been, the saying again of
what is always left unsaid in what is spoken. The tem-
9 This modernist explanation of the transformation of kab-
balistic esotericism is attested, for example, in Moshe Idel,
“From R. Isaac Sagi Nahor to R. Isaac Luria: From Hiding to Printing
as Esoteric Lore,” Studia Judaica 1 (2014): 5–40. Idel repeats his
methodology in many studies but what I have cited is sufficient
for the reader. Summarizing his hypothesis in the first paragraph
of the essay, Idel writes, “From the historical inception of this lore,
Kabbalistic topics have been regarded as esoteric matters. This
means that the very committing to writing of matters belonging to
the esoteric lore has been conceived of as a transgression…. Kab-
balah has been conceived of in the imaginaire of the Kabbalists as
that part of the Oral traditions that has not yet been committed
to writing, but passed over orally for generations. Orality, which
once was conceived of as the proper medium of the transmission
of the Oral Law in antiquity, is connected by some early Kabbalists
with precise ways of transmission of this lore” (“From R. Isaac Sagi
Nahor,” pp. 5–6). I note that in this matter, even though it is never
acknowledged, Idel follows the perspective of Scholem, who simi-
larly emphasized the nexus between orality and esotericism, and
understood the latter primarily as transmitting the secrets to a
small circle of initiates and concealing them from the populace. See,
for example, Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
(New York: Schocken, 1956), pp. 34, 329; idem, The Messianic Idea
and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1971),
pp. 296–297; idem, On the Origins of the Kabbalah, edited by R, J,
Zwi Werblowsky, translated by Allan Arkush (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1987), pp. 123, 183–184, 220, 258, 262, 374, 382–
383, 402, 443. This is not to deny that Scholem also on occasion
made reference to “esoteric literature” or to “esoteric writings” for
periods prior to the textualization of the oral lore, which indicates
that he also considered the written medium as a valid channel for
the transmission of secrets alongside orality. See Scholem, Major
Trends, pp. 43, 75. Consider also the reference to the “esoteric and
apocalyptic books of the Talmudic period” in Gershom Scholem, On
the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, translated by Ralph Manheim (New
York: Schocken, 1965), p. 41. On the interplay between the oral and
the written in the transmission of esoteric doctrines, see Scholem,
On the Origins, pp. 41–42, 90, 238, 335, 444. More importantly, even
though Scholem did maintain a difference between orality and
writing in the transmission of esoteric matters, he did discern as
well that even when the secret is revealed in writing, the diffusion
deepens the recondite and inaccessible nature of what has been
poral assumption to which kabbalists are beholden is
that the old may be envisioned as new to the extent
that the new may be envisioned as old. The chain of tra-
dition is constituted by limitlessly distended moments,
which should not be envisaged mathematically as
spatially discrete points strung together and unified
by an internal time consciousness, but rather as the
mythopoeic instantiations of an infinitely protracted
torrent that implements the eternal recurrence of the
same, which is to say, the indefatigable duplication of
difference.11 To capture this sense of the timeswerve, I
have coined the expressions linear circularity or circu-
lar linearity to avoid the conventional split between the
two temporal modalities of the line and the circle. The
dual deportment, by contrast, yields the paradoxical
transmitted. Alluding to this issue already in the sixteenth of the
“95 Thesen über Judentum und Zionismus,” composed in 1918 as
a gift for Walter Benjamin’s twenty-sixth birthday although never
delivered, Scholem remarked, “Written tradition is the paradox in
which Jewish literature unfolds essentially” (Geschriebene Tradition
ist die Paradoxie, in der die jüdische Literatur sich essentiell entfaltet).
See Gershom Scholem, Tagebücher nebst Aufsätzen und Entwürfen
bis 1923, vol. 2: 1917–1923, edited by Karlfried Gründer, Herbert
Kopp-Oberstebrink, and Friedrich Niewöhner, with the assistance
of Karl E. Grözinger (Frankfurt am Main: Jüdischer Verlag, 2000),
p. 302. The written tradition is paradoxical because tradition,
which Scholem labels in the twenty-second thesis “the absolute
subject of Jewish mysticism” (der absolute Gegenstand der jüdischen
Mystik), is by nature oral. Scholem elucidates the same paradox in
the first of the ten unhistorical aphorisms on the kabbalah, first
published in 1938, “Authentic tradition remains hidden; only the
fallen tradition falls upon an object and only when it is fallen does
its greatness become apparent” (Echte Tradition bleibt verborgen;
erst die verfallenden Tradition verfällt auf einen Gegenstand und
wird im erfall erst in ihrer Größe sichtbar). See Gershom Scho-
lem, Judaica 3: Studien zur jüdischen Mystik (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1973), p. 264; David Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah
and Counter-History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1979), pp. 101–102; idem, “Gershom Scholem’s Ten Unhistorical
Aphorisms in Kabbalah: Text and Commentary,” Modern Judaism
5 (1985): 71–72; Harold Bloom, “Scholem: Unhistorical or Jewish
Gnosticism,” in Gershom Scholem, edited by Harold Bloom (New
York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987), p. 208. Bloom’s interpreta-
tion of this Scholemian text is accepted by Agata Bielik-Robson,
Jewish Cryptotheologies of Late Modernity: Philosophical Marranos
(New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 16–17.
10 The binary of the conservative and the innovative poles is
a mainstay of Idel’s understanding of kabbalistic hermeneutics,
which I have challenged in a number of studies. See the extended
criticism in Elliot R. Wolfson, “The Anonymous Chapters of the
Elderly of Secrets: New Evidence for the Early Activity of the
Zoharic Circle,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical
Texts 19 (2009): 159–172.
11 For a more elaborate discussion, see the chapter “Hermeneutic
Circularity: Tradition as Genuine Repetition of Futural Past” in
Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, pp. 29–60, esp. 35–47.
4 Elliot  R. Wolfson
delineation of time as an extending line that rotates like
a sphere or as a rotating sphere that extends like a line.12
Hence, time may be compared to a circular ladder, to
borrow an image utilized by Abraham Abulafia in the
thirteenth century in the following description of the
tree of knowledge (eṣ ha-daʿat) beheld by Raziel, one
of the code names for Abulafia, in his commentary to
Sefer ha-Meliṣ:
Now he desired to form [leṣayyer] for us something of
its image, and he said that it is in the image of a circular
ladder [sullam agol]…. Thus, I have explained to you the
literal meaning of his words in detail, but now I must
explain to you their matters, and this is impossible for me
without an image of a ladder [ṣiyyur ha-sullam], and even
though it cannot be formed in truth unless it is spherical
[kadduri], you can find some benefit from it in this image
of the circle [maʿgal]…. Know that with respect to this
ladder you must configure its circularity [leṣayyer iggulo]
as if it were standing before the eyes of a person like an
extensive sphere rotating frontward and backward before
him…. And this spherical ladder [ha-sullam ha-kadduri]
has two clear lines and a few wide gradations between
the two lines.13
In a similar vein, an anonymous kabbalist, most likely
writing in the late fifteenth-century, compares the
12 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Kenotic Overflow and Temporal Transcen-
dence: Angelic Embodiment and the Alterity of Time in Abraham
Abulafia,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts
18 (2008): 133–134; idem, “Retroactive Not Yet,” pp. 22–27.
13 Abraham Abulafia, Sefer ha-Meliṣ, MS Munich, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek 285, fols. 15a–b, printed version in Abraham
Abulafia, Maṣref ha-Sekhel we-Sefer ha-Ot, edited by Amon Gross
(Jerusalem: Aharon Barzanai, 2001), pp. 30–31. For the fuller
context of this passage, see Moshe Idel, The Mystical Experience
of Abraham Abulafia (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1988), pp. 109–113; Elliot R. Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia—Kabbalist
and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy (Los Angeles:
Cherub Press, 2000), pp. 128 n. 92 and 135; idem, “Textual Flesh,
Incarnation, and the Imaginal Body: Abraham Abulafia’s Polemic
with Christianity,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and
Social History: Festschrift in Honor of Robert Chazan, edited by David
Engel, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Elliot R. Wolfson (Leiden: Brill,
2012), p. 216 n. 111.
14 MS Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Mic. 1990, fol.
106a. I have also consulted the versions of this text preserved in
MS Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Mic. 2030, fol. 12a and
MS Oxford-Bodleian, Christ Church 188, fol. 218a. Concerning this
composition, see J. H. Chajes, “Spheres, Sefirot, and the Imaginal
Astronomical Discourse of Classical Kabbalah,” Harvard Theologi-
cal Review 113 (2020): 231, and idem, “The Kabbalistic Tree,” in The
Visualization of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,
edited by Marcia Kupfer, Adam S. Cohen, and J. H. Chajes (Turn-
hout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 460, 469 n. 16 and 472 n. 69. I thank the
author for providing me with digital copies of these two studies. For
a survey of this phenomenon, see also J. H. Chajes, “Kabbalistic Tree
sefirotic emanations of the divine to a tree that is
round: “The order of the image of the tree [ṣiyyur ha-
ilan] in accordance with what we have received from
our holy teachers, peace be upon them. They instructed
first that their image must be a circle to impart about
their holiness that they have no beginning or end.”14
For the purposes of this analysis it is important to note
that both texts emphasize the need to form a mental
image that forges the conjunction of the circle and the
line. I offer that this relatively simplistic meditational
practice encapsulates one of the profoundest truths
promulgated by masters of Jewish esoteric lore.
Envisioning Nothing and the Snare of Metaphoricity
The geometric anomaly of the linear circle or the
circular line gives us insight into the enduring fasci-
nation of kabbalists to penetrate the impenetrable
secret of infinity, to untangle the intractable knot of
the mystery of the eternal beginning issuing from the
nihilating nonground of the origin beyond conceptual
and linguistic demarcation.15 The generalization I
have offered is justifiable not only because it is made
on the basis of painstaking textual analysis across
the span of many decades, but because it is pliable
as Epistemic Image,” Peʿamim 150–152 (2018): 235–288 (Hebrew);
idem, “Kabbalistic Trees (Ilanot) in Italy: Visualizing the Hierarchy
of the Heavens,” in The Renaissance Speaks Hebrew, edited by
Giulio Busi and Silvana Greco (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2019),
pp. 170–183; idem, “Kabbalah Practices / Practical Kabbalah: The
Magic of Kabbalistic Trees,” Aries—Journal for the Study of Western
Esotericism 19 (2019): 112–145; Eliezer Baumgarten, Uri Safrai, and
J. H. Chajes, “‘He Saw the Entire World Resembling a Ladder’: Rabbi
Yehoshua ben Rabbi David of Kurdistan’s Kabbalistic Tree,” in Meir
Benayahu Memorial Volume, vol. 2: Studies in Kabbalah, Jewish
Thought, Liturgy, Piyut, and Poetry, edited by Moshe Bar-Asher,
Yehuda Liebes, Moshe Assis, and Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem: Carmel,
2019), 843–871 (Hebrew); Eliezer Baumgarten and J. H. Chajes,
“About Faces: Kabbalistic Visualizations of the Divine Visage in
the Gross Family Collection,” in Windows on Jewish Worlds: Essays
in Honor of William Gross, Collector of Judaica on the Occasion of
His Eightieth Birthday, edited by Shalom Sabar, Emile Schrijver,
and Falk Wiesemann (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2019), pp. 73–83.
Mention should also be made of the pioneering work in this area
by Giulio Busi, Qabbalah Visiva (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 2005), and
the more limited monograph by Marla Segol, Word and Image in
Medieval Kabbalah: The Texts, Commentaries, and Diagrams of the
Sefer Yetsirah (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
15 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Nihilating Nonground and the Temporal
Sway of Becoming: Kabbalistically Envisioning Nothing beyond
Nothing,” Angelaki 17 (2012): 31–45. The topic of infinity in the early
kabbalah has been explored in a philosophically nuanced manner
by Sandra Valabregue-Perry, Concealed and Revealed: ‘Ein Sof ’ in
Theosophic Kabbalah (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2010) (Hebrew);
and idem, “The Concept of Infinity (Eyn-sof) and the Rise of Theo-
sophical Kabbalah,” Jewish Quarterly Review 102 (2012): 405–430.
 Metaphor, Dream, and the Parabolic Bridging of Difference 5
enough to comprise an invariable array of variables.
It is thus eminently defensible to assert that much
energy has been expended by kabbalists in deciphering
the indecipherable materialization of the immaterial
oneness of the indiscriminate being into the plethora
of discriminate beings that constitute the nature of
reality. From the very early stages of the history of
kabbalah, one can detect an inordinate emphasis
placed on the emanation from or coeternality with
Ein Sof of the absolute nothingness (ayin ha-gamur),
the first of the ten emanations (sefirot), commonly
denominated as Keter, the crown, and identified as
the incomprehensible thought (maḥashavah) or as
the incalculable will (raṣon). Insofar as the cosmologi-
cal speculation of kabbalists has been fixated on the
imponderable transition from the infinitesimal expanse
of infinity to the infinite delimitation of finitude—the
disclosure of the nondifferentiated nothingness of Ein
Sof in the differentiated nothingness of Keter, and the
further manifestation of the latter in the something-
ness of Ḥokhmah, the divine wisdom, the indivisible
point whence the line of equally indivisible points of
zero-dimensionality extends—we might even say the
endeavor to penetrate this obdurate spot of impen-
etrability, the place that is no place, according to the
memorable formulation in one zoharic passage,16 is
the central nerve that animates the visual dimension
of kabbalistic poiēsis.
16 Zohar 1:161b.
17 Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead:
Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, translated by Joachim Neugroschel,
edited by Jonathan Chipman, foreword by Joseph Dan (New York:
Schocken, 1991), p. 41.
18 For a recent study that discusses the biblical context for the
Israelite and later Jewish aniconism, see Christoph Uehlinger,
“Beyond ‘Image Ban’ and ‘Aniconism’: Reconfiguring Ancient Isra-
elite and Early Jewish Religion/s in a Visual and Material Religion
Perspective,” Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism,
Christianity and Islam: Contested Desires, edited Birgit Meyer and
Terje Stordalen (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 99–123.
19 Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, translated by
Katherine Jones (New York: Vintage Books, 1939), p. 144. See
Richard J. Bernstein, Freud and the Legacy of Moses (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 32–34.
20 Gershom Scholem, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected
Essays, edited by Werner J. Dannhauser (New York: Schocken
Books, 1976), p. 280.
21 Since the time that Scholem made his comment, quantum
physics has advanced the possibility of nonphenomenalizable
phenomena such as the gluon that binds together the quarks, the
constituent particles of which protons and neutrons are composed;
the axion presumed to be a component of dark matter; or the
positing of electromagnetic fields of energy that are invisible and
The imaginal configuration of the imageless
embraces what Scholem referred to as the “dialectic
of form,” that is, the concomitant disclosure and
concealment of the ineffable that accompanies every
expression in the different worlds that constitute
the concatenation of being.17 The scriptural prohibi-
tion against making images of God gave way to the
theological dogma that it was impossible to visualize
God,18 which in turn led to the “compulsion to worship
an invisible God,” as Freud famously put it in Moses
and Monotheism.19 In language that curiously echoes
Freud’s locution, Scholem writes in his “Reflections
on Jewish Theology” (1974) that the “veneration of an
imageless God simultaneously cast doubt on the visu-
alizable character that seemed to pertain to everything
created. Nothing created was worthy of representing
what was beyond visualization.”20 However, going
beyond the Freudian insight, Scholem draws the more
radical implications of extoling a God that is not visible:
the visualizable aspect of the world should be rendered
as mere pretense inasmuch as the visualizable cannot
serve as an adequate approximation of that which is
incapable of being visualized. Consequently, creation is
as much beyond visual representation as is the creator.
The thesis of a world beyond visualization, a concept
that Scholem correctly notes revolutionized physics in
the twentieth century no less than the ideas of Coper-
nicus and Newton in previous centuries,21 corresponds
thus can fill space without tangibly revealing their presence. Simply
put, the corporeal entities of our sentient experience are presumed
to be shadows of subatomic particles that are not perceptible to
the eye or computable by ordinary systems of computation. Even
though quantum phenomena are not empirically observable,
hypothetical predictions based on their existence are confirmed
experimentally, and hence we can speak of a cloak of invisibility
through which all material entities within the optical spectrum
are rendered visible. See Lawrence Krauss, Quintessence: The
Mystery of Missing Mass in the Universe (New York: Basic Books,
2000), pp. 233–265, 326–327; Shimon Malin, Nature Loves to Hide:
Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality, a Western Perspective
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Bernard d’Espagnat, Veiled
Reality: An Analysis of Present-Day Quantum Mechanical Concepts
(Boulder: Westview Press, 2003); Brian Greene, The Hidden Real-
ity: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos (New York:
Knopf, 2011), pp. 15, 63, 128–129; Wolfgang Dür and Stefan Heusler,
“Visualization of the Invisible: The Qubit as Key to Quantum Phys-
ics,” The Physics Teacher 52 (2014): 489–492. The complex point is
summarized succinctly by Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma:
Finding the Hidden Key, with a foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
third revised edition (Sherwood: Angelico Press/Sophia Perennis,
2005), pp. 33–34: “Strictly speaking, no one has ever perceived a
physical object, and no one ever will. The entities that answer to the
modus operandi of physics are by their nature invisible, intangible,
6 Elliot  R. Wolfson
to this notion of creation resulting from the idea of
the “unvisualizable oneness of God,” identified by the
mystics as the name of God. Viewing matter itself as
an expression of the inexpressible—or, in Scholem’s
poetic formulation, nature is nothing but the shadow of
the divine name22—deprives the world of its phenom-
enalizable aspect, and hence every property ascribed
to it must be viewed as a metaphorical representation
of the factical rather than as a factical representation
of the metaphorical.23
Alternatively expressed, the aesthetic underpinning
of kabbalistic metaontology presumes that the foot-
prints of the invisible are apperceived in the field of
the visible. Phenomenologically, if we are to presume,
as kabbalists have through the centuries, that all exis-
tence is a manifestation of the light of infinity—traces
of transcendence that cannot be traced—then the light
can be revealed only in the concealment disclosed as
the concealment in the disclosure concealed as dis-
closure. It follows that truth is unmasked through the
inaudible, devoid of taste and scent. These imperceptible objects
are conceived by way of mathematical models and observed by
means of appropriate instruments. There are, however, physical
entities which present themselves, so to speak, in the form of
corporeal objects.” Related to the question of invisibility are the
imaginary confabulations of the quantum vacuum, the plenitudi-
nal void that destabilizes the distinction between something and
nothing. See Henning Genz, Nothingness: The Science of Empty
Space, translated by Karin Heusch (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 1999);
Weatherall, Void. The author pithily summarizes the thesis explored
in his monograph on p. 11, “Nothing really matters” (p. 11), or in
more technical detail on p. 89: “In quantum theory, this picture of
a state as a definite arrangement of objects in space or space-time
goes out the window. A quantum state is a much more abstract
thing…. We still think of a state as a possible configuration of physi-
cal stuff. But these possible states of affairs no longer correspond
in any direct way to a definite arrangement of bodies in space and
time…. Rather than straightforwardly characterizing locations and
velocities, a quantum state encodes probabilities about what you
might find if you were to try to measure some physical quantity.
The quantities that we might in principal measure—such as the
position of an object, its momentum, or its charge—are known
as observables. So a quantum state is a way of determining how
likely a given result would be if we performed a measurement of an
observable” (emphasis in original). See ibid., p. 113: “What is really
going on is that our classical concept of nothing, even though it
motivated our definition of a vacuum state, doesn’t line up with
anything that quantum theory gives us…. Perhaps the best way
of understanding the counterintuitive features of the quantum
vacuum is that quantum theory tells us that even the zero field is
very much a kind of stuff. And a vacuum state of, say, an electro-
magnetic field might be thought of as the quantum mechanical
analog of the zero field. In other words, in quantum field theory,
the vacuum state is just another state of matter—one that happens
mask of truth that is the untruth. That the removal of
the veil results in the unfurling of another veil to be
unfurled implies that the enunciation of the secret can
never coincide with what is enunciated. Unconceal-
ment is thus not a disrobing of a naked truth but the
disposing of the vestment in which truth is attired. The
point was expressed lucidly by the Sabbatian theolo-
gian Abraham Miguel Cardoso in his insistence on the
uncompromising metaphoricity of kabbalistic gnosis:
The one who transmits wisdom cannot transmit it except
through a parable, and the one who receives it cannot
receive it except by parable and a garment, for the human
intellect cannot comprehend spirituality all the time it is
bound to the body…. Thus, the spiritual wisdom must be
garbed in the corporeality of this world to be engaged in
it. And just as from the physical speech he understands
the very language of the mind and of the intention of
his friend who is speaking, even though the speech is
physical and the intention is spiritual, but he who does
not understand the language hears the spiritual speech
to make some suggestive probability assignments about certain
in-principle global measurements, but which can yield quite dif-
ferent results when measured locally by our particle detectors. If
we recall that particles are just a particular kind of phenomenon
that fields can exhibit in quantum field theory, the vacuum state
just represents the field configuration where we minimize the
particlelike phenomena” (emphasis in original). The central role
accorded nothingness in general relativity and quantum field theory
raises the epistemological problem of the logic of antirealism and
the inescapable corollary that reality is constructed always from
the standpoint of an observer. See Christopher Norris, Quantum
Theory and the Flight from Realism: Philosophical Responses to
Quantum Mechanics (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 40–71, and
consider the intermediate position designated agential realism by
Karen Barad, “Meeting the Universe Halfway: Realism and Social
Constructivism Without Contradiction,” in Feminism, Science, and
the Philosophy of Science, edited by Lynn Hankinson Nelson and
Jack Nelson (Dordrecht: Kluwer 1196), pp. 161–194, and idem, Meet-
ing the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement
of Matter and Meaning (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007),
pp. 132–185. I note, finally, that the antirealist position buttresses
the persistence of metaphor or myth in the scientific construal
of objectivity. See Theodore L. Brown, Making Truth: Metaphor in
Science (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003); Mary B. Hesse,
“Physics, Philosophy, and Myth,” in Physics, Philosophy, and Theol-
ogy: A Common Quest for Understanding, edited by Robert J. Russell,
William R. Stoeger, S.J., and George V. Coyne, S.J. (Vatican City:
Vatican Observatory Foundation, 2005), pp. 185–202.
22 Scholem, Judaica 3, pp. 264–271; idem, Explications and
Implications: Writings on Jewish Heritage and Renaissance, vol. 2,
edited by Avraham Shapira (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1989), pp. 32–37
(Hebrew). For a similar formulation, see idem, “The Name of God
and the Linguistic Theory of Kabbala,” Diogenes 79 (1972): 62–63
n. 3.
23 Scholem, On Jews and Judaism, p. 280.
 Metaphor, Dream, and the Parabolic Bridging of Difference 7
in the aspect of the shell, and he does not comprehend
the thought of the speaker. Similarly, the one who
knows the wisdom through the corporeal parables under-
stands the spirituality of the wisdom alluded to within
it. On account of this they said in the chapter “Do not
explicate” that the wisdom of kabbalah is not transmit-
ted except to one who is wise and understands from his
own mind,24 one who is wise in the natural, the sensible,
and the intelligible. For a man learns these wisdoms as
they are in their existence without a garment, and it is
sufficient for the listener to understand the words of the
master. However, it is impossible to learn the wisdom of
kabbalah in its existence. Therefore, it is necessary for
the one who learns it to understand from the power of
his mind one thing through another after he has com-
prehended the words of the master.25
The talmudic specification that the secrets about
the chariot—rendered more broadly as a reference
to the kabbalah—are to be transmitted only to one
person provided that he is wise and has the ability to
understand on his own (ḥakham u-mevin mi-daʿato) is
interpreted by Cardoso as stipulating that the recipi-
ent should be capable of arraying the secrets in the
apparel of metaphor. The wisdom of kabbalah can-
not be conveyed discursively to the human intellect
except by way of parable (derekh mashal) because
as physical beings we are incapable of apprehending
the spirituality of the divine hypostases without this
intervention.26 That there is no truth denuded of the
raiment of untruth accords with the assumption that
the infinite cannot appear except as inapparent, that
every configuration of the imageless is an imaginal
disfiguration of the image. Put simply, truth is not
visible unless it is enveloped in the veil of invisibility.27
Icon of the Invisible: Picturing the Sefirot
A striking illustration of the centrality of the figura-
tion of that which has no figure is found in a passage
from a fifteenth-century kabbalistic text to which I
24 Babylonian Talmud, Ḥagigah 11b.
25 Abraham Miguel Cardoso, Boqer Avraham, MS Moscow,
Günzberg 660, fol. 4b. See Elliot R. Wolfson, “Constructions of the
Shekhinah in the Messianic Theosophy of Abraham Cardoso with
an Annotated Edition of Derush ha-Shekhinah,” Kabbalah: Journal
for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 3 (1998): 54 n. 136.
26 Nissim Yosha, Captivated by Messianic Agonies: Theology,
Philosophy and Messianism in the Thought of Abraham Miguel
Cardoso (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2015), pp. 197–215 (Hebrew).
27 I have taken the liberty here to repeat my formulation of
this fundamental tenet of my thinking in Wolfson, Heidegger and
Kabbalah, pp. 158 and 305.
briefly referred above. Elucidating the last of the fif-
teen principles that must be known by anyone who
wishes to acquire the traditional gnosis, the anony-
mous author offers the following instruction: “The
one who enters to learn this wisdom must first learn
all the images [ha-ṣiyyurim] and how all the worlds
concatenate one after the other, and all of them will
be configured [meṣuyyarim] before him so that he will
hear and comprehend when it is spoken to him.”28 In
the continuation of the text, the reader is given more
explicit instructions about how to form the image
of the divine emanations. Commenting on this text,
J. H. Chajes surmised:
The complete introductory course is extant in one
manuscript and hasn’t a single diagram. Instead, as a
kind of final project, the student is instructed to draft a
large and complex drawing to represent the knowledge
acquired in the preceding chapters on the basis of the
very precise and technical verbal instructions to which
the final chapter is entirely devoted. To be a student of
the Kabbalah is to visualize its knowledge as a graphic
no less than a mental image.29
As Chajes acknowledges, the word ṣiyyurim, which
he translates as “drawings,” can refer both to mental
images (Denkbilder) and to material images (Abbilder)
to be fashioned by the adept.30 I would add, by way
of elucidation and not opposition, that a crucial
dimension of the contemplative practice embraced by
kabbalists entails envisioning the sefirot as the imagi-
nal body, a term that I have employed in an effort to
avoid the dichotomy of treating the divine emanations
as either literal or figurative. The material delineation
of the image is an iconic construction of what is con-
strued imaginally. The imagination, on this score, is the
psychic faculty that affords one access to the interme-
diary plane positioned between the spiritual and the
corporeal.31 Imagining the emanations mentally and
sketching them graphically, therefore, is a distinction
that should not be drawn too rigidly. The practice of
28 MSS Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Mic. 1990, fol.
106a; Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Mic. 2030, fol. 12a;
MS Oxford-Bodleian, Christ Church 188, fol. 218a.
29 Chajes, “Spheres,” p. 231.
30 Ibid., p. 239. See now J. H. Chajes, “Imaginative Thinking with
a Lurianic Diagram,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100 (2020): 30–63.
31 I have articulated my perspective in several publications over
the decades, but for a succinct summary, see Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Bifurcating the Androgyne and Engendering Sin: A Zoharic Read-
ing of Gen 1–3,” in The Hidden Truths of Eden: Esoteric Readings of
Genesis 1–3, edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Susanne Scholz
(Atlanta: SBL Publications, 2014), pp. 88–95.
8 Elliot  R. Wolfson
visualization ensues in the domain wherein the real
is virtual because the virtual is real. Hence, when the
author of this text writes about the details of the image
(peraṭei ha-ṣiyyur) and instructs the reader to take
hold of a scroll,32 this is unquestionably an allusion
to a process of physical drawing, but we must not lose
sight of the fact that the latter is at the same time an
act of mental diagramming.
The extract I have cited is sufficient to make the
point regarding the ocularcentric focus of the kab-
balistic praxis. To be sure, the auditory dimension is
alluded to at the end of the passage, “so that he will
hear what is spoken to him.” Moreover, it is worth
recalling that in the second principle, the author reiter-
ates the conventional taxonomy of the term qabbalah
as the oral transmission (mi-peh el peh) of the wisdom
that cannot be comprehended by intellect (sekhel).33
This taxonomic specification notwithstanding, the
ocularcentrism is evident in the emphasis placed on
the need to envision the images whence all the worlds
concatenate in the mystery of the incarnation of the
infinite in the finite, the secret of the garment through
which the nonmanifest light beyond nature is manifest
in the timespace continuum of material nature.
I would propose, moreover, a key to the dynamics of
the kabbalistic aesthetic is that the one who imagina-
tively contemplates the sefirotic emanations emulates
the divine process of autogenesis. Consider, for
instance, the following zoharic passage that describes
the coming to be of Ḥokhmah and Binah from Keter:
“When the concealed of all concealed [setima de-khol
setimin] wanted to be revealed, he initially made one
point, and this arose to be thought [maḥashavah], and
he drew in it all the images [ṣiyyer bah kol ṣiyyurin],
engraved in it all the inscriptions [ḥaqaq bah kol geli-
fin], and he inscribed within the holy, concealed flame
[boṣina qaddisha setima] one inscription of a concealed
image [gelifu de-ḥad ṣiyyura setima ʾah], the holy of
holies, the deep edifice that emerged from within
thought … the beginning of the edifice, it exists and it
does not exist [qayyema we-lo qayyema].”34 That the
sefirot are labeled as both images (ṣiyyurin) and inscrip-
tions (gelifin) points to the conflation of the visual and
32 MSS Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Mic. 1990,
fol. 106a; Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Mic. 2030, fol.
12b; MS Oxford-Bodleian, Christ Church 188, fol. 218a.
33 MSS Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Mic. 1990,
fol. 102a; Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Mic. 2030, fol. 9a.
34 Zohar 1:2a.
the graphic, two registers of the imaginal configuration
of the sefirotic potencies that cannot be separated.
Significantly, Binah is referred to as an inscription of
a concealed image that exists and does not exist. The
repercussion of the notion of an image of a concealed
image can be elucidated from a second zoharic pas-
sage where Binah is depicted as the void (tohu) that
is the “place in which there is no color [gawwan], no
icon [diyoqna], and is not comprised in the mystery of
the icon [we-lo itkelilu be-raza de-diyoqna]. Now it is
in an icon, but when they contemplate [mistakkelan]
it, it has no icon at all. Everything has a garment in
which to be garbed except this one.”35 Just as Binah is
identified from the auditory perspective as the “voice
of subtle silence,” qol demamah daqqah (1 Kings 19:12),
that is, a sound that is no sound, so from the optical
perspective it is the icon that is no icon. From the
standpoint of the logic of the excluded middle and
the principle of noncontradiction, these propositions
are nonsensical—how can it be said coherently of
something that it concomitantly exists and does not
exist, that it is a voice that is silent, or that it is the icon
contemplated as not being iconic? In the speculative
world of the kabbalistic symbolism, however, truth
can only be delivered in the form of the paradox, the
quintessential paradox, we might say, the paradox that
is the wellspring of all paradoxes: concerning every
representation of the nonrepresentable we must say
that it is precisely because it is not and that it is not
precisely because it is. By means of this paradox of the
givenness of the ungiven, we encounter the founda-
tional axiom of the kabbalistic aesthetic: the pictorial
image is the veil through which the veiled is unveiled
in the veiling of the unveiled.
To illustrate the point, I will reference a passage
from the introduction to Tiqqunei Zohar, where three
levels are distinguished in an attempt to make sense
of how the imageless can be envisioned.36 The lowest
level is the prophecy of Ezekiel, who beheld openly
(be-itgalya) the images (ṣiyyurin) below the world
of emanation in the manner of “a trace of the image
of a seal in wax” (di-reshimu de-ṣiyyura de-ḥotama
be-shaʿawah); the second level is the visualization
35 Zohar 1:16a. See Elliot R. Wolfson, “Murmuring Secrets: Eroti-
cism and Esotericism in Medieval Kabbalah,” in Hidden Intercourse:
Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism, edited by
Jeffrey Kripal and Wouter Hanegraff (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 96–97.
36 Tiqqunei Zohar, edited by Reuven Margaliot (Jerusalem: Mosad
ha-Rav Kook, 1978), Introduction, 6b.
 Metaphor, Dream, and the Parabolic Bridging of Difference 9
in the “closed eyes” (bi-setimu de-ayyenin) of the
icon of the King and the Matrona (diyoqna de-malka
u-maṭronita); the third and highest level relates to the
“cause of everything” (illat al kolla) or the “master of
all” (baʿal ha-kol) concerning which there is no icon
(de-leit leih diyoqna), not even an image of a letter
or a vowel (ein bo ṣiyyur shel ot u-nequddah). Hence,
the one who imputes an image to that which has no
image is guilty of idolatry, a transgression conveyed
by the verse “Cursed be anyone who makes a sculp-
tured idol or a molten image, abhorred by the Lord, a
craftsman’s handiwork, and sets it up in secret” (Deu-
teronomy 27:15).37 The connotation of this passage is
well captured by Solomon ben Ḥayyim Eliashiv: “And
thus is the obligation … to know and to understand
that all of these disclosures entirely, which are all of
his names, blessed be he, and all of the matters about
which we speak regarding the emanation entirely, it
is prohibited and forbidden to attribute them also to
Ein Sof itself prior to its being revealed … And see as
well the introduction to Tiqqunim 7b, as it is explained
there that anyone who forms an icon of [the worlds
of] creation, formation, and doing in [the world of]
emanation is in the category of what is written ‘Cursed
be anyone who makes a sculptured idol or a molten
image … a craftsman’s handiwork, and sets it up in
secret,’ which is the secret of the world (as it written
also in the Idra Rabba 127b). The one who forms the
icon of emanation with respect to Ein Sof itself, which
is above the emanation, is likewise in the category of
he who is cursed, God forbid.”38
It is possible that the citation of Deuteronomy 27:15
on the part of the author of the introduction to Tiqqu-
nei Zohar is an allusion to and subversion of the use of
the very same scriptural reference in the preamble to
37 Compare Tiqqunei Zohar, § 66, 97b.
38 Solomon ben Ḥayyim Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we-Aḥlamah:
Sefer ha-Deʿah (Jerusalem: Aaron Barzanai, 2005), pt. 1, p. 154.
39 Zohar 3: 127b–128a. Noteworthy is the interpretation of the
passage from the preamble to the Idra Rabba in David ben Solo-
mon Ibn Zimra, Magen David (Jerusalem: Yerid ha-Sefarim, 2007),
pp. 13–14. The placing of the idols in secrecy is explained as the
transgression of directing one’s prayers to one of the sefirot rather
than to the attribute (middah) or the name (shem) through which
Ein Sof, the one unified in his existence (ha-meyuḥad bi-meṣiʾuto),
acts.
40 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Iconicity of the Text: Reification of the
Torah and the Idolatrous Impulse of Zoharic Kabbalah,” Jewish
Studies Quarterly 11 (2004): 18–19.
the Idra Rabba, the section of the zoharic compilation
that recounts the assembly of the mystical fraternity
in which Simeon ben Yoḥai reveals secrets about
the configurations (parṣufim) of the divine in bold
anthropomorphic language.39 As I argued in an essay
published years ago,40 the citation of this scriptural
verse is meant to suggest that from the vantage point
of those not illumined with mystical insight it might
seem that theosophic descriptions of the divine anthro-
pos constitute a form of idol-making, and thus the
master begins his exposition with the moral exhorta-
tion against making an idol and setting it up in secret.
When viewed from the perspective of the enlightened
kabbalists, however, not only is the anthropomorphic
representation not to be confused with idol worship
in secret, but it constitutes the disclosure of the secret
on the mystical path, a secret that is consonant with
the prophetic mandate, as expressed in Hosea 12:11,
to form an image of the divine in accord with the
imaginary vision that is conjured in one’s heart.41 To
craft the image of God in the imagination is the para-
mount act of devotion that unifies the divine nature
and thereby sustains the world. It is for this reason
that Simeon ben Yoḥai is adamant in his warning to
members of the fraternity that they should not set up
an idol in secrecy, that is, they should not reify the
anthropomorphic images of God conjured within the
imagination. The ironic intimation of this admonition
is that disclosure of secrets about the divine anthropos
is a form of erecting an idol carved not from stone but
from images in the mind. One who envisions the secret,
therefore, must be mindful of not placing the idol in
secret.42 For the author of the passage from Tiqqunei
Zohar, the mystical meaning of the stipulation of set-
ting the idol in secret (we-sam ba-sater) is that one
41 Zohar 1:103b; 2:42b; Tiqqunei Zohar, § 18, 31b. See Elliot R. Wolf-
son, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in
Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994), pp. 313–314.
42 The connotation of the zoharic passage is stated cogently by
Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Adir ba-Marom, pt. 1, edited by Joseph
Spinner (Jerusalem: Sifrayyati, 1990), p. 76: “He opened and said
‘Cursed be anyone who makes a sculptured idol or a molten
image … a craftsman’s handiwork etc.’ (Deuteronomy 27:15). And
this is a great secret, and it is speaking about someone who says
things with respect to this wisdom about which he does not know,
for this is a great evil, and it is verily a sculptured idol and a molten
image, and his secret is that of a bastard. For they take the light of
the Torah, and in place of making through the secret of acting with
these hands of holiness, they perform an evil deed by means of the
hands of the other side, and this is verily ‘a craftsman’s handiwork’.”
10 Elliot  R. Wolfson
has iconically represented the “secret of the world”
(sitro shel olam) that has no icon (diyoqna).43 Even
with respect to Tif ʾeret and Malkhut, personified as the
King and the Matrona, the iconic depiction is qualified
inasmuch as it can only occur through the vision of the
closed eyes. But what is the import of seeing with eyes
that are closed? Ostensibly, the gesture of closing the
eyes should block vision, but in this case, the blocking
of vision constitutes the sight appropriate to beholding
what cannot be beheld.44
Kabbalists indulged in the physical drawing of the
sefirot out of the conviction that the iconographic activ-
ity mirrors both the introspective envisioning on the
part of Ein Sof, which resulted in the imagistic emana-
tion of the divine potencies, and the mandate for one
to contemplate the sefirotic emanations—embodied
in the icon of the masculine and the feminine poten-
cies—with closed eyes. The point is substantiated if we
consider the mandate to visualize the sefirot in Moses
Cordovero’s Pardes Rimmonim.45 It is correct, as Chajes
notes, that Cordovero begins the first chapter of the
sixth gate of his magnum opus, which is dedicated to
the order of the arrangement of the emanations, with
the observation that kabbalists draw the forms of the
sefirot on great parchments (ṣiyyaru ṣurot bi-yeriʿot
gedolot) and they are called a “tree” (ilan). The botani-
cal metaphor suggests that the “sefirotic iconography”
is indeed diagrammed on a material substance.46
Nevertheless, the principal mode of representation
is not concrete visualization but rather abstract con-
fabulation. I concede that the term ṣurot ha-sefirot is
deployed for the mental as well as the material images
of the divine emanations, and this is enhanced by the
utilization of astronomical terms such as “constellation”
(maʿarekhet) to denominate the order of the sefirot, but
43 Compare Ḥayyim Viṭal, Eṣ Ḥayyim (Jerusalem: Sitrei Ḥayyim,
2013), 11:10, 55d: “There are those who say with regard to the
curses in the section Ki Tavo that the first, ‘Cursed be anyone who
makes a sculptured idol or a molten image’ (Deuteronomy 27:15)
corresponds to Arikh Anpin, and this is ‘and sets it up in secret.’
And the rabbis, blessed be their memory, said ‘in the secret of the
world’ (be-sitro shel olam), and this is Arikh Anpin, who is hidden
and garbed within the emanation, as is known.” See Ḥayyim Viṭal,
Sefer ha-Liquṭṭim (Jerusalem: Sitrei Ḥayyim, 2015), p. 203; idem,
Shaʿar ha-Pesuqim, edited by Meir Yoḥanan Elkoubi (Jerusalem:
Shaʿarei Yiṣḥaq, 2017), p. 255; idem, Shaʿar Ma ʾamerei Rashbi,
edited by Meir Yoḥanan Elkoubi (Jerusalem: Shaʿarei Yiṣḥaq, 2017),
pp. 292–293. It is of interest to note the phallomorphic interpreta-
tion of the words we-sam ba-sater in Luzzatto, Adir ba-Marom, pt.
1, p. 77: “And this is [the meaning of] ‘a sculptured idol or a molten
image … a craftsman’s handiwork, and sets it up in secret’—in
the secret of the world, that is, Yesod, which sits in secrecy within
I would argue nonetheless that the primary denotation
is the imaginal forms that assume bodily shape within
the imagination.47 It is the imaginality of the sefirotic
gradations that facilitates the pictographic portrayal
of what is beyond imagistic representation. The model
for this aesthetic principle of imaging the imageless
is the description of the process by which the sefirot
emanate from Ein Sof. Consider the formulation of
Jonathan Eibeschütz:
It is known that every light that is more proximate to Ein
Sof, each one goes by way of its circle and clears a path
for itself, and from this were made the secret of the ten
sefirot. That is, the image [ha-ṣiyyur] by way of example
like the artist prior to his having drawn some likeness
[demut] or icon [diyoqan], he will produce some color
on the tablet, which is like the matter and the image to
receive the likeness and the icon. Thus the matter was
verily like this, for these sefirot were made only in the
secret of the image, to receive afterwards the edifice of
the chariot [binyan ha-merkavah]. And know that in this
image was the essence of Ḥokhmah and Binah, for they
formed all the sefirot and the many circles, and thus was
also the intention of [the Zohar],48 “For in Yah the Lord
an everlasting rock [ṣur olamim]” (Isaiah 26:4)—all the
worlds were formed there.49
Essential to the mystery of the eternal is the indeter-
minacy that determines its temporal imprint as the
constant deferral of the same, a genuine repetition
that erupts continuously from an originary transfor-
mation of the second that is first, the beginning that
cannot begin without being prior to the beginning, the
always-beginning that is ipso facto never-ending. The
kabbalistic infinite, on this score, may be envisaged as
the empty suchness of the moment positioned between
what is no longer and what is not yet, the interval of
Nuqba.” See also Elijah ben Solomon, Tiqqunei ha-Zohar im Beʾur
ha-Gra (Vilna: Shemaryahu Zuckerman, 1867) 12b: “That is to say,
the holy covenant, which is in the secret of the world that is in
secrecy [be-sitro shel olam de-hu bi-setiru].”
44 On the vision of the closed eye in zoharic texts, see Wolfson,
Through a Speculum, pp. 380–383.
45 Chajes, “Spheres,” pp. 238–259.
46 Ibid., pp. 238–239.
47 Moses Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim (Jerusalem: Yerid ha-
Sefarim, 2000), 6:1, p. 68.
48 Zohar 2:22a.
49 Jonathan Eibeschütz, And I Came this Day unto the Fountain,
critically edited and introduced by Pawel Maciejko, with Additional
Studies by Noam Lefler, Jonathan Benarroch and Shai Alleson
Gerberg, second revised edition (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2016),
p. 39 (Hebrew).
 Metaphor, Dream, and the Parabolic Bridging of Difference 11
permanent impermanence wherein becoming dons
and thereby discards the façade of being, the instant
that is always the same because interminably different.
Like the time of the dream, this moment, which has
neither past nor future, is a present without duration
or extension, a presence that resists representation
except as nonpresent.50
Dream, Shadow, and Presencing of Absence
The insight concerning the compresence of all three
temporal modes and the nature of the dream is but-
tressed in the following numerology utilized by Ḥayyim
Viṭal: the letters of the Aramaic term for dream, ḥelma
(8 + 30 + 40 + 1), have the numerical sum of 79, which
is the same as the sum of the words hayah (5 + 10 +
5 = 20), we-howeh (6 + 5 + 6 + 5 = 22), and we-yihyeh
(6 + 10 + 5 + 10 + 5 = 36), plus the additional one for
the word itself (im ha-kolel).51 The numerology anchors
the idea that the time of the dream is the moment in
which there is a convergence of the three temporal
ecstasies of what was, what is, and what will be. From
that standpoint, the dreamtime emulates the eternal
temporality that is the esoteric signification of the
Tetragrammaton. The intrinsic connection between
the dream and the ineffable name is affirmed by Moses
David Valle: “It is already known that Jacob is the secret
of diminution [sod ha-qaṭnut], and sleep is also the
secret of diminution, and the dream is the secret of the
augmentation [sod ha-gadlut] that is concealed within
the diminution; that is, the name YHWH is garbed and
hidden in the name Elohim, which is the secret of dimi-
nution…. It is in the nature of the dream that the name
YHWH will be hidden within Elohim, not overtly and
with a great openness.”52 That the texture of the dream
is constituted by YHWH being garbed in the cloak of
Elohim yields the paradoxical insight that the conceal-
ment reveals the concealment by concealing what is
revealed, the hermeneutical truism that undergirds the
notion of mystery essential to kabbalistic esotericism.
The initial characterization of Jacob as the secret of
diminution, based on the talmudic reference to this
patriarch as the “small one” (qaṭan),53 which, in turn,
50 Elliot R. Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on
Time, Truth, and Death (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2006), pp. 71–72. On the undoing of time and the syntax of the
dream interlude, see Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted within
a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York:
Zone Books, 2011), pp. 219–274, esp. 245–255.
51 Ḥayyim Viṭal, Mavo Sheʿarim (Jerusalem: Shaʿarei Yiṣḥaq,
2016), p. 447.
is based on the scriptural description of him as “little,”
ki qaṭon hu (Amos 7:5), alludes to the insight that the
self of the dream is subjectless, that is, a depersonalized
self that is not an autonomous metaphysical entity but
the consequence of a multifarious grid of relationality.54
The identity of the dreamer is configured precisely in its
dissolution much as the kabbalist who seeks union with
the unnameable and unknown infinite must become
himself unnameable and unknown.
As a seeing in night—a vision that is beyond the
binary of externality and internality insofar as the
outside of nocturnality is completely identified with its
inside—dreaming can serve as the model to articulate
the kabbalistic aesthetic predicated on the invis-
ibility that is the epistemic condition of all visibility,
the unseeing that enframes every act of seeing. The
undulation of the dream discloses the limit delimited
and yet breached by the imagination in divulging the
image whence it is disclosed that the stuff of which
dreams are made can be phenomenally present only
in being absent from being either ontically present or
absent. Rather than viewing the dream as a shadow
of the light, it can be regarded as an illumination of
the shadow, provided it is further understood that the
oneiric phenomenon is, as Heidegger put it, “a kind of
absencing on the part of that which illuminates and of
that which itself properly appears.” The dream is not
“only an intensification of what is shadowlike, thus
the shadow of a shadow, and thereby what is most
fleeting of everything fleeting: a nothing [ein Nichts],
and therefore that which is wholly and utterly unreal
[Unwirkliche].” On the contrary, as Heidegger elicits
from Pindar, “the dream is the way in which whatever
is itself in a certain way already lightless, absences
[Abwesung]: the dream as the most extreme absenc-
ing into the lightless, and yet nevertheless not nothing
[nicht nichts], but in this way too still an appearing: this
vanishing itself still an appearing [dieses Entschwinden
selbst noch ein Erscheinen], the appearing of a passing
away into that which is altogether devoid of radiance,
which no longer illuminates.”55 The dream may be
classified as the unreal—as opposed to the nothing—
that belongs to the actual and to the real. “What is
52 Moses David Valle, Et Leḥenena, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Joseph
Spinner, 2017), pp. 45–46.
53 Babylonian Talmud, Ḥullin 60b.
54 Wolfson, A Dream, pp. 81–90.
55 Martin Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymn “Remembrance”, trans-
lated by William McNeill and Julia Ireland (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2018), p. 98; idem, Hölderlins Hymne “Andenken”
[GA 52] (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992), p. 115.
12 Elliot  R. Wolfson
dreamlike cannot be crudely and mistakenly notched
up to what is merely unreal, or to the erosion of the
real into nullity [Nichtige]. The dreamlike and the
dream are a vanishing of the light and radiance that
itself is already absencing, of that which presences of
its own accord and appears in shining (illuminating).
The absencing, as the absencing of such vanishing, is
also still a presencing.”56
The shadowy nature of the dream conveys the
paradox that the dream is the appearance of the
nonapparent, that is, the appearing of what abstains
from appearing, the presencing of what prevails
as absent, not because it is a presence that is not
present—the nonbeing (Nichtsein) measured according
to the metrics of being—but because it is present as
nonpresent, the nonbeing that belongs to the being of
the human being. What is decisive about the dream is
not that it deals with the realm of shadows, thought
to be ontically unreal and null, but that, in its fleeting-
ness as shadow, it corroborates that “all presencing is
in itself at the same time absencing [alle Anwesung
ist in sich zugleich Abwesung],” a presencing that per-
severes in the absencing of absencing, a disappearing
of the appearance abandoned in the appearing of its
disappearance. The dream, therefore, is the real that
essentially stretches into the unreal (Das Wirkliche
erstreckt sich wesenhaft in das Unwirkliche), but insofar
as the nonreal (Nicht-Wirkliche), each time differ-
ently, is “either the no-longer-real or the not-yet-real”
(entweder das Nicht-mehr-Wirkliche oder das Noch-
nicht-Wirkliche), it becomes “the possible for what is
actually real [das Mögliche für das Wirkliche]. The pos-
sible is in this instance never that which is merely null,
or pure nonbeing; it is rather more a ‘state’ between
being and nonbeing [eher schon ein ‘Zustand’ zwischen
Sein und Nichtsein].”57
It is for this reason that some kabbalists com-
pared gnosis about God to a dream: the sefirotic
gradations are the imaginary constructs of an infinite
luminescence whose presence at the horizon of the
nonphenomenalizable consists of being not present.58
The comparison to Heidegger is enhanced further by
56 Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymn “Remembrance”, pp. 99–100;
idem, Hölderlins Hymne “Andenken”, pp. 116–117.
57 Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymn “Remembrance”, p. 100; idem,
Hölderlins Hymne “Andenken”, pp. 117–118.
58 Wolfson, A Dream, pp. 198–202.
59 Jonathan Garb, “The Authentic Kabbalistic Writings of
R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish
Mystical Texts 25 (2011): 187–188 (Hebrew).
the fact that the process of imputing an image to the
imageless, which, as I noted above, is at the crux of
the kabbalistic vita contemplativa, is at the same time
an appurtenant beckoning to the nameless declaimed
in the investiture of the name. To illustrate the point,
I will cite the following passage from Ma ʾamar Yiḥud
ha-Yirʾah, a text that circulated amongst the students of
Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto. There is reason to doubt that
Luzzatto is the author, but the contents are unquestion-
ably in accord with the teaching preserved in treatises
that he wrote.59
For all the worlds are naught but the disclosure of what
was already arrayed in the perfection of the infinite,
blessed be he … for all the reality of the worlds is naught
but as one who dreams a dream and sees the matter in
the imagination, and similarly the entire potency of the
infinite, blessed be he, which has no temporality [she-ein
bo zeman], is seen according to the way of time [derekh
ha-zeman], and when they want to remove the imagina-
tion from this—the reality is nothing…. Thus, the infinite,
blessed be he, acts in the way of his perfection, and there
is placed before him the curtain of withdrawal [masakh
ha-ṣimṣum] in which are dependent all these colors, and
they are all the laws of nature from beginning to end. All
of these things vis-à-vis the infinite, blessed be he, are in
a verily different manner, which we cannot comprehend
how they are…. Similarly, the matter of time is nothing
at all but how we imagine nature as it appears to us in
accord with the withdrawal [lefi ha-ṣimṣum]. As we see
in the dream itself that days and years pass in one dream,
and with respect to the dreamer it seems to him that this
is how it actually is [nirʾeh lo she-hu kakh mammash].
Analogously, when we are awake, we imagine the matters
of nature in accord with what we see, and we call this
imagining [ha-shiʿur] time, as if there could be one hour
or one moment like the years of a dream, which are in
truth a single moment [rega eḥad].60
The author of this text exploits the archaic trope that
the spatiotemporal world is but a dream, an idea that
probably originated in Confucianism and Daoism, and
was then transported into various schools of Hinduism
and Buddhism, and ultimately found its way into both
Islamic and Jewish sources at the time when kabbalah
60 The text is published in Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Adir ba-
Marom, pt. 2, edited by Joseph Spinner (Jerusalem: Sifrayyati, 1988),
pp. 150–151. I have previously cited and analyzed this passage in
Wolfson, “Retroactive Not Yet,” pp. 47–48, and in Wolfson, Hei-
degger and Kabbalah, pp. 118–119. See also Jonathan Garb, Kabbalist
in the Heart of the Storm: R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (Tel Aviv: Tel
Aviv University Press, 2014), p. 179 (Hebrew).
 Metaphor, Dream, and the Parabolic Bridging of Difference 13
began to proliferate as an historical phenomenon.61
The disciple of Luzzatto appropriates this wisdom to
explain one of the deepest mysteries of the esoteric
tradition. If we assume that everything was contained
indiscriminately in the incomposite oneness of Ein
Sof prior to the ṣimṣum, then what appears to us as a
temporal progression is in fact the manner in which
the single instant of eternity—a moment shaped by
the paradoxical simultaneity of immeasurable velocity
and interminable rest—is manifest on the phenom-
enal plane. We cannot speak of anything absolutely
new occurring as a consequence of the withdrawal,
since all was encompassed in the infinite, and hence
time would be illusory like a dream; and yet, the trace
that remains in the space after the withdrawal is the
emanated light (or neʾeṣal) that provides the “place
for all that exists” (maqom le-khol nimṣa), and thus it
is viewed as a “new light” (or ḥadash).62 The nature of
temporality is to be discerned from this image of the
trace, which signals not only the novelty of repetition,
but also the blurring of boundaries as what is imagined
to be real is really imagined.
The comparison of imagining the divine and the
dream state is taken up by Luzzatto himself as we see
from this passage:
The form in the sefirot is not essential [aṣmit] but
contingent [miqrit] in accord with the prophetic vision
[marʾeh ha-nevuʾah], according to the secret “and through
the prophets I was imaged” (Hosea 12:11). For when the
supernal will desires to inform a prophet about a secret it
shows him the sefirot in one image, and afterward when
it desires to show him another matter, it shows them
in another image, even if it is opposite to the first. And
this is verily like a dream, for the subjects change in one
moment in accord with the dreamer.63
The forms assumed by the sefirot are variable and
dissonant as we find in the case of dream images. As
Luzzatto writes in Derekh ha-Shem,64 the imagination
is strengthened at the time of sleep when all the other
physical and psychical faculties are at rest. Precisely
61 Wolfson, A Dream, pp. 255–274.
62 Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Qelaḥ Pitḥei Ḥokhmah, edited by
Ḥayyim Friedlander (Benei Beraq: Sifrayyati, 1992), p. 66. Concern-
ing the authorship of this text, see below, n. 70. On ṣimṣum in
Luzzatto’s thought, see Wolfson, “Retroactive Not Yet,” pp. 44–48,
and Garb, Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm, pp. 175–176, 183–184,
197–199.
63 Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Beʾurim le-Sefer Oṣerot Ḥayyim, sec.
18, in Ginzei Ramḥal, edited by Ḥayyim Friedlander (Benei-Beraq:
Sifrayyati, 1984), p. 299.
on account of being severed from the bond to the
somatic, the imagination is hyperactive and produces
oneiric images (ṣiyyurim), some of which may be true
and others false, a mixture (taʿarovet) that is implied
in the talmudic dictum attributed to Simeon ben Yoḥai
and transmitted in the name of R. Yoḥanan, “Just as
wheat cannot be without straw, so there can be no
dream without nonsense [devarim beṭelim].”65 In a
second passage from this composition, the matter of
dissimilitude is connected more directly to the role
of the imagination in prophetic vision: “And thus the
disclosure of his glory, blessed be he, will be effectual
[ yihyeh ha-poʿel] in all that will proceed to the prophet
in his prophecy, and thus it will proceed from him
through the faculty of the imagination [be-khoaḥ ha-
dimyon] in the soul of the prophet and there will be
formed in it matters that are necessitated in him from
the power of the supernal disclosure and not from the
perspective of himself at all. And from these imaginings
[ha-dimyonot] there proceeds in him thought and intel-
lection [maḥashavah we-haskalah] whose engravings
are from the power of the glory that is revealed and
the matter persists as fixed in his intellect, for when
he returns to his human condition, the knowledge will
clearly be found in him.”66 That no absolute veracity
can be affixed to the images by which the divine is
perceived leads to the disquieting discernment that
these images are true insofar as they are false, just
as the dream is the semblance of the simulacrum par
excellence wherein truth is not opposed to error, since
the appearance of truthfulness cannot be determined
independently of the truthfulness of appearance.
Luzzatto explicates the imaginative nature of the
prophetic vision in Daʿat Tevunot through the voice
of the intellect:
It is a complete verse “and through the prophets I was
imaged” (Hosea 12:11). And with respect to Moses, our
master, may peace be upon him, it is said “and in a vision
and not through riddles” (Numbers 12:8), thus to others—
in riddles. It says there explicitly “I speak with him in a
64 Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Derekh ha-Shem, edited and anno-
tated by Joseph Spinner, revised edition (Jerusalem: Hamesorah,
2009), pp. 131–134.
65 Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 55a. Concerning this rabbinic
teaching and its interpretation in subsequent texts, see Wolfson,
A Dream, pp. 188–197. The admixture of true and untrue images in
a dream is also connected to the phenomenon of the false prophets
(neviʾei ha-sheqer). See Luzzatto, Derekh ha-Shem, pp. 160–162.
66 Luzzatto, Derekh ha-Shem, pp. 151–152. On the dream as a
means to transmit prophecy, see ibid., pp. 165–166.
14 Elliot  R. Wolfson
dream’ (ibid., 7). And the rabbis, blessed be their memory,
established what they received: “the dream—one sixtieth
of prophecy.”67 And this [implies that] permission was
not given to the prophets to see the supernal glory as it
is, but rather the glory was revealed to them and there
was generated in their hearts prophetic images [dimyonot
nevuʾiyyim], which were like garments and riddles for
matters that were worthy to reach their knowledge, like
all the other parables and riddles in the world…. And
like these matters the Rambam, may his memory be for
a blessing and for the life in the world to come, wrote in
chapter seven of the Yesodei ha-Torah,68 and this is his
language: “The matters that were communicated to the
prophets in a vision of prophecy, [they were communi-
cated to him by way of parable,] and immediately there
was engraved in his heart the solution of the parable in
the prophetic vision, and he knew what it was.”69
The central role of the imagination in the gnosis of
the divine is attested in a passage from Qelaḥ Pitḥei
Ḥokhmah, another treatise that is likely not authored
by Luzzatto but which faithfully preserves his teach-
ings: “The sefirot can be seen in images that even
conflict with one another [yekholot ha-sefirot lera ʾot
be-dimyonot afillu hafkiyyim zeh la-zeh], just as one
verily sees in a dream that subjects change before him
in one moment [kemo mammash ha-roʾeh ba-ḥalom
she-mitḥallefim ha-nosʾim lefanaw be-rega eḥad].”70 In
contrast to the waking sensation, the dream imagina-
tion epitomizes the capacity to picture a matter in
varying and conflicting images in tandem, a charac-
teristic of prophetic visions as well. Since the sefirotic
emanations are also apperceived concurrently in con-
tradictory terms—for example, as circular and linear,
as above and below—the oneiropoetic imagination is
the epistemic modality best suited to comprehend the
paradoxical nature of the imaginal presentation of the
67 Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 57b.
68 Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, edited by Yoḥai Makbili
(Ḥaifa: Or wi-Yeshuʿah, 2009), Yesodei ha-Torah, 7:3, p. 41.
69 Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto, Daʿat Tevunot, edited and annotated
by Joseph Spinner (Jerusalem: Hamesorah, 2012), pp. 291–292.
70 Luzzatto, Qelaḥ Pitḥei Ḥokhmah, pp. 26–27, previously cited
in Wolfson, A Dream, p. 199. I accept the conclusion of Garb, “The
Authentic Kabbalistic Writings,” pp. 188–199, that this work was
infinite beyond all visual and verbal representation.
The kabbalistic aesthetic pivots around the assumption
that the invisible can be disclosed only as the event of
presence in excess of and continually absconding from
the spectacle of being present. The invisible, accord-
ingly, is not to be understood as a potentially visible
phenomenon that is presently occluded, but rather as
the nonphenomenal that makes all phenomena vis-
ible by eluding visibility. In virtue of the inexorable
nonshowing of the showing in the showing of the non-
showing, the artistic sensibility cultivated by kabbalists
can be compared profitably to the dream.
Elliot R. Wolfson, a Fellow of the American Academy
of Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed
Chair in Jewish Studies and Distinguished Professor of
Religion at University of California, Santa Barbara. He
is the author of many publications including Through
a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in
Medieval Jewish Mysticism (1994); Language, Eros,
Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and the Poetic Imagi-
nation (2005); Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on
Time, Truth, and Death (2006); Venturing Beyond—Law
and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (2006); Open
Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revi-
sion of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (2009); A Dream
Interpreted within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism
of Imagination (2011); Giving beyond the Gift: Apophasis
and Overcoming Theomania (2014); Elliot R. Wolfson:
Poetic Thinking (2015); The Duplicity of Philosophy’s
Shadow: Heidegger, Nazism and the Jewish Other (2018);
Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of
Poiesis (2019); Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic,
and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality (2021).
probably not written by Luzzatto, but its content is consistent with
the views we find in his genuine writings. On the role of metaphor,
imagination, and dream in Luzzatto’s approach to the anthropo-
morphic nature of kabbalistic symbolism, see Elliot R. Wolfson,
“Tiqqun ha-Shekhinah: Redemption and the Overcoming of Gender
Dimorphism in the Messianic Kabbalah of Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto,”
History of Religions 36 (1997): 292 n. 8, and Garb, Kabbalist in the
Heart of the Storm, pp. 174–185.