Admiration and Disgust: The Ambivalent Re-Canonization of the ...

Boaz Huss
… a creation of several generations. Whatever may be the value
of the doctrines that they incorporate, they will always be worthy
of preservation as a monument to the patient struggle of a people
for intellectual freedom during a period of religious tyranny.
But that is not all. The system that they present constitutes, by
virtue of its source and its influence, an extremely important
element in the history of human thought. 9
Similar approaches to the Kabbalah and the Zohar appear among other
scholars of the period. For example, Meyer Heinrich Landauer, who
expressed great interest in the Kabbalah, and who in his Wesen und
Form des Pentateuch (Stuttgart, 1838), even before the publication of
Francks' book, argued the antiquity of the Zohar. While Landauer later
changed his mind and attributed the Zohar to R. Abraham Abulafia,
this did not alter the great interest and esteem in which he held the
Zohar. 10 Other scholars, including Solomon Munk 11 and Ignatz Stern, 12
also adopted Franck's position that the Zohar, notwithstanding its late
editing, incorporates earlier strata as well. Other scholars rejected
Franck's claim regarding the antiquity of the Zohar, but in order to
disprove his opinion devoted detailed historical studies to this work.
9 'Ces deux livres, encore une fois, ne sont pas moins que l'oevre de plusiers
generations. Quelle que soit la valeur des doctrines qu'ils enseignent, ils meriteront
toujours d'être conserve comme un monument des longs et patients efforts de la
liberté intellectuelle, au sein d'un people et dans un temps sur lesquels le despotisme
religieux s'est exerce avec le plus d'energie. Mais tel n'est pas leur seul titer a
nôtre interet: ainsi que nous l'avons déjà dit, et comme on ne tardera pas à en
être convaincu, le système qu'ils renfermet est par lui-même, par son origine et
par l'influence qu'il a exercée, un fait très important dans l'histoire de la pensée
humaine'. A. Franck, La Kabbale, ou la Philosophie religieuse des Hebreux,
Paris 1843, p. 140 (English: A. Franck, The Kabbalah, the Religious Philosophy
of the Hebrews, New York 1995, p. 62). And cf. M. Idel, Kabbalah: New
Perspectives, New Haven 1988, pp. 8-9.
10 See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 7, and in extenso, E. Goodman-Thau,
'Meyer Heinrich Hirsch Landauer - Eine Brücke zwischen Kabbalah und
aufgeklärtem Judentum', in Kabbalah und die Literature der Romantik (above,
n. 4), pp. 249-275.
11 See Salmon Munk, Mélange de philosophie juive et arabe. Paris 1859, p. 276;
on Munk's approach to Kabbalah, see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 9.
12 Ignatz Stern, 'Versuch einer umständlichen Analyse des Sohar', Ben Chananja
1-5 (1858-1862). For details, see G. Scholem, Bibliographia Kabbalistica, Leipzig
1927, pp. 151-152; and cf. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 49.
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