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Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity provides a comprehensive intellectual and institutional history of Chabad Hasidism through the Kabbalistic concept of ṣimṣum. The onset of modernity, Eli Rubin argues, was heralded by this startling idea: existence itself is predicated on a self-inflicted "rupture" in the infinite assertion of divinity. Centuries of theoretical disputations concerning ṣimṣum ultimately morphed into religious and social schism. These debates confronted the meaning of being and forged the animating ethos of Chabad, the most dynamic movement in modern Judaism.
Chabad's distinctive character and self-image, Rubin shows, emerged from its spirited defense of Hasidism's interpretation of ṣimṣum as an act of love leading to rapturous reunion. This interpretation ignited a literal conflagration, complete with book burnings, denunciations, investigations, and arrests. Chabad's subsequent preoccupation with ṣimṣum was equally significant for questions of legitimacy, authority, and succession, as for existential questions of being and meaning.
Unfolding the story of Chabad from the early modern period to the twentieth century, this book provides fresh portraits of the successive leaders of the movement. Innovatively integrating history, philosophy, and literature, Rubin shows how Kabbalistic ideas are crucially entangled in the experience of modernity and in the response to its ruptures.
Contents
Note on Citation and Transliteration
Preamble: Conflagration and Cosmic Rupture
Part I: Being as Rupture (1572-1801)
Introduction: What Does Ṣimṣum Mean?
1. The Ari as a Herald of Modernity
2. Love and Rupture in Early Hasidism
3. "Due to This, the Known Book Was Burned"
4. Ṣimṣum, Soul-Knowledge, and the Function of Parable
Epilogue: Ṣimṣum and the Institutionalization of Chabad
Part II: Being as Nothing (1792-1866)
Introduction: Does the World Exist?
5. Cosmic Construction as Cosmic Effacement
6. The Chabad Sermon: Articulating Singularity
7. Being, Nothing, and Chabad's First Succession Controversy
8. Rereading Rashaz, Rereading Reality
Epilogue: Opening and Closing the Door on Acosmism
Part III: Being as Infinity (1865-1884)
Introduction: A Tale of Two Brothers
9. Dynastic Rupture and Cosmological Recalibration
10. The Hemshekh: A New Literary Collage
11. The Finite Trace of Unruptured Infinity
12. Chabad's Internal Ṣimṣum Split
Epilogue: History and the Metaphysics of Materialism
Part IV: Being as Innovation (1882-1915)
Introduction: The Ruin and Renaissance of Lubavitch
13. Rediscovering Malkhut, the Cosmic Womb
14. Why? Innovation and the Purpose of Ṣimṣum
15. Desire, Pleasure, and the Transcendence of Sense
16. Three Paths to Essential Originality
Epilogue: Rashab, Freud, and the Meanings of Modernity
Part V: Being as Humanity (1915-1994)
Introduction: Undergoing and Overcoming Dislocation and Catastrophe
17. Letter Writing and the Soviet Ṣimṣum
18. Bati Legani and the Triumph of Humanity
19. Wissenschaft, Ṣimṣum, and Midcentury Succession
20. Messianic Faith in the Shadow of the Holocaust
21. "Many-Worlds" and "Uncertainty" in Ṣimṣum and Science
Epilogue: Living for the Sake of Ṣimṣum
Postscript: The Art of Being
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
