AJS Review

http://journals.cambridge.org/AJS

Additional services for AJS Review:

Email alerts: Click here

Subscriptions: Click here
Commercial reprints: Click here
Terms of use : Click here

Michael Fishbane. The Kiss of God: Spiritual and

Mystical Death in Judaism. The Samuel and
Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994. xii,
156 pp.

Ira Robinson

AJS Review / Volume 21 / Issue 02 / November 1996, pp 402 - 403

DOI: 10.1017/S0364009400008692, Published online: 15 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0364009400008692

How to cite this article:

Ira Robinson (1996). AJS Review, 21, pp 402-403 doi:10.1017/
S0364009400008692

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/AJS, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 18 Apr 2015

402 BOOK REVIEWS

Muslims were not prohibited from drinking wine, p. 115; Hebrew poetry does
not only refer to drinking in courts or palaces; in fact, it rarely does so, p. 116;
Isaac al-FasI was hardly a "grammarian," p. 250; the death of Ibn Nagrillah's
brother was in 881/1041, not 441/1050, p. 247; and he ignores altogether the
eulogy on the death of his brother Judah).
In discussing boy-love poetry, while the author is certainly to be com-
mended for at least recognizing its existence, there is too much (incorrect)
emphasis on the supposed "effeminate" nature of the boys, which is totally
unsupported in the Hebrew genre and only rarely in the Arabic (nor did the
author apparently know of the articles—at least five!—which this reviewer
has published on the subject).
In sum, this book is useful in providing insights from the perspective of
an Arabist on some of the motifs utilized by four of the major Hebrew poets
of al-Andalus. It is a significant step on the long road yet to be traversed in
researching these motifs, but the conclusions are as yet premature.

Norman Roth
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wis.

Michael Fishbane. The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism.
The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies. Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1994. xii, 156 pp.

At the heart of Judaic spirituality lies the concept of the relationship

between human beings and the divine. The elucidation of this relationship
involved the greatest minds of successive generations of Jewish scholars in
a process of creative reinterpretation both of texts and of interpretations of
the past. This process has certainly been studied in many ways, but anything
resembling a comprehensive treatment has remained a daunting task, given
the required mastery of a broad spectrum of texts and genres of thought.
It is a testimony to Michael Fishbane's comprehensive vision of the
development of spirituality in Judaism that he has succeeded in treating one
topic—that of spiritual and mystical death—and utilizing it in an exemplary
way to create a small but wonderful book. Both he and the Stroum Lectureship
at the University of Washington, under whose auspices the lectures comprising
this book were originally delivered, are to be congratulated.
It is clear that the command of Deuteronomy 6:5, "You shall love the Lord
BOOK REVIEWS 403

your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might," is
central to any analysis of Jewish spirituality. Fishbane's book is, in a sense, an
extended commentary on this verse and its implications as unfolded in Jewish
sources from the midrash through Bialik, with not infrequent comparative
excursions to such non-Jewish philosophers and mystics as Plato and St. John
of the Cross.
Within Fishbane's "commentary," the reader willfindJews over the course
of millennia seeking God through attempts at both physical and spiritual
transcendence. This involved them in attempts at total self-sacrifice that,
even if phrased differently by philosophers and kabbalists, were designed
to bring the true worshipper to the ultimate freedom and happiness of a
"dying into God"—death by a divine kiss. This form of "dying" brought the
worshipper, as well, to a contemplation of and confrontation with the prospect
of a martyr's death either as a preparation for a possible reality or else as a
spiritual exercise designed to facilitate the onset of the divine "kiss."
Fishbane gives the reader an insightful glimpse into rabbinic Judaism as it
engaged in its process of continual self-definition. As he states it, Judaism is
"a vast intertextual system whose internal life expands and contracts through
exegesis. This is the secret of its spirit; and this is the reason that even the
love of God in Judaism is an interpreted love [emphasis in original]. Only
tradition can tell the faithful how to love truly. But only the living God can
confirm the quest" (p. 13).

Ira Robinson
Concordia University
Montreal, P.Q.

Elliot Wolfson. Circle in the Square: The Use of Gender in Kabbalistic

Symbolism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. xiii, 268 pp.

Wolfson. Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism and

Heremeneutics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. xiii, 283
pp.

Elliot Wolfson's comprehensive study, Through a Speculum That Shines:

Vision and Imagination in medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994), has been recognized as a work of great significance
in the overlapping disciplines of religious and Jewish studies. As scholars