Concealment and Revelation : Esotericism in

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, great new trends of Jewish thought emerged whose widely varied representatives--Kabbalists, philosophers, and astrologers--each claimed that their particular understanding revealed the actual secret of the Torah. They presented their own readings in a coded fashion that has come to be regarded by many as the very essence of esotericism.Concealment and Revelationtakes us on a fascinating journey to the depths of the esoteric imagination. Carefully tracing the rise of esotericism and its function in medieval Jewish thought, Moshe Halbertal's richly detailed historical and cultural analysis gradually builds conceptual-philosophical force to culminate in a masterful phenomenological taxonomy of esotericism and its paradoxes. Among the questions addressed: What are the internal justifications that esoteric traditions provide for their own existence, especially in the Jewish world, in which the spread of knowledge was of great importance? How do esoteric teachings coexist with the revealed tradition, and what is the relationship between the various esoteric teachings that compete with that revealed tradition? Halbertal concludes that, through the medium of the concealed, Jewish thinkers integrated into the heart of the Jewish tradition diverse cultural influences such as Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticisims. And the creation of an added concealed layer, unregulated and open-ended, became the source of the most daring and radical interpretations of the tradition.

Acknowledgments	p. ix
A Note on Editions Used	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
The Paradox of Esotericism: "And Not on the Chariot Alone"	p. 8
The Hidden and the Sublime: Vision and Restriction in the Bible and in Talmudic Literature	p. 13
The Ethics of Gazing: The Attitude of Early Jewish Mysticism Toward Seeing the Chariot	p. 18
Concealment and Power: Magic and Esotericism in the Hekhalot Literature	p. 28
Esotericism and Commentary: Ibn Ezra and the Exegetical Layer	p. 34
Concealment and Heresy: Astrology and the Secret of the Torah	p. 44
Double Language and the Divided Public in Guide of the Perplexed	p. 49
The Breaching of the Limits of the Esoteric: Concealment and Disclosure in Maimonidean Esotericism	p. 60
From Transmission to Writing: Hinting, Leaking, and Orthodoxy in Early Kabbalah	p. 69
Open Knowledge and Closed Knowledge: The Kabbalists of Gerona-Rabbi Azriel and Rabbi Ya'akov bar Sheshet	p. 77
Tradition, Closed Knowledge, and the Esoteric: Secrecy and Hinting in Nahmanides' Kabbalah	p. 83
From Tradition to Literature: Shem Tov Ibn Gaon and the Critique of Kabbalistic Literature	p. 93
"The Widening of the Apertures of the Showpiece": Shmuel Ibn Tibon and the End of the Era of Esotericism	p. 105
Esotericism, Sermons, and Curricula: Ya'akov Anatoli and the Dissemination of the Secret	p. 114
The Ambivalence of Secrecy: The Dispute over Philosophy in the Early Fourteenth Century	p. 120
Esotericism, Discontent, and Co-Existence	p. 135
Taxonomy and Paradoxes of Esotericism: Conceptual Conclusion	p. 142
Notes	p. 169
Index	p. 191
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Concealment and Revelation : Esotericism in Jewish Thought and its Philosophical Implications

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