Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson [Hardcover]

Elliot R. Wolfson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0231146302 | ISBN-13: 978-0231146302

Menahem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile.

While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated—an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation.

At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.

(1/16/10)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Elliot R. Wolfson's new work is a masterful exposition of the phenomenology and ontology of Habad thought, particularly its bearing on messianic mysteries and consciousness. This study is an extraordinary integration of precise philology, philosophical comprehension, and the inner course of Habad theosophy as it flows through the discourses of its seven masters. Wolfson analyzes the climactic position of Rabbi Schneerson within this complex with exemplary and original insight.

(Michael Fishbane, Nathan Cummings Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Chicago )

Elliot R. Wolfson's dark brilliance is itself an open secret, unfolding mesmerizing rhythms of chiastic paradox. The relevance of his commentary cannot be confined to the study of a particular movement, religion, or discipline. In this philosophical meditation on a controversial strand of recent messianism, a profound historical kabbalism appears edged with a postmodern Kafkaesque irony—in the legacy of a 'future that is already present as the present that is always future.'

(Catherine Keller, Drew University, and author of Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming )

This highly original reading of Menachem Mendel Schneerson's messianic doctrine renders irrelevant much of the ongoing speculation and debate on the question of whether or not the Lubavitcher Rebbe, like the bulk of his following, believed that he was the Messiah. The book argues insightfully that beneath his well-attested endeavors to demonstrate the imminence the messianic advent, and his resort to the traditional language of Jewish messianic speculation, lays the paradoxical 'open secret' of a totally impersonal Messiah who, reflecting the nature of the infinite kabbalistic godhead itself, can be revealed in the world only by way of concealment. His advent is conceptualized as a universal expansion of spiritual consciousness, a nonevent that continuously occurs, has occurred, and will occur 'immediately, without delay, in actuality,' which effectively means beyond measurable time.

(Ada Rapoport-Albert, University College London )

Wolfson's spiritual quest is contagious, and the intrepid reader will brave the many difficult passages in order to follow him

(Lawrence Grossman Forward )

Every researcher or enlightened reader should be interested in this profound construction, in order to understand the most significant Jewish messianic phenomenon in the Jewish world of the last two generations.

(Alon Dahan H-Judaic )

Review

A poetic blend of scholarship and philosophy unprecedented and often breathtaking in its boldness, Open Secret negotiates the vast range of Lubavitcher literature by and about Menahem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. From an authoritatively learned but nonsectarian perspective, Open Secret reads the Rebbe's messianism seriously. Elliot R. Wolfson confronts the Rebbe as a major figure in the Jewish esoteric tradition. The Lubavitcher Rebbe's Messiah presents a challenge that is inescapable for anyone who seeks to understand a twenty-first-century globalized Judaism, and Wolfson compellingly engages that challenge.

(Steve Wasserstrom, Reed College )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (October 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231146302
• ISBN-13: 978-0231146302
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #772,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great book, with one fatal flaw..., January 17, 2011

By 

Zvi M. Aranoff (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (Hardcover)

The fatal flaw in this dense, virtually impenetrable, book is that there's very little to connect Wolfson's ideas, however interesting, to the ideas of the person he purports to analyze, namely, R. MM Schneerson. In order to achieve this, he must first adopt a radical postmodern POV that rejects the validity of facts and sees them as mere subjective fabrications. Once that notion is established, he can sail easily into fantasy land, and claim anything he desires about Schneerson's "secret", which only he, a non-Hassid, was able to crack.

One only wonders why none of Schneerson's numerous disciples, including those who spend their entire life studying every scintilla of his work, have heard him live since he became Rebbe and even prior to that, and have a deep understanding of his and his predecessors' work - why none of them seem to grasp this "secret", and only an outsider, an academic, was able to. That alone should give you pause, that something is off in this book.

Here's the rub. The author's main thesis is that Schneerson did not really intend to preach the notion of the Messiah as an actual figure who will redeem the world. Schneerson's Redemption is not World Redemption but Personal Redemption, a state of mind that is achieved through the liberation of consciousness that allows one to see The Unity of Everything and does not fall prey to illusionary distinctions of good and evil. That's the big "open" secret his disciples didn't get.

Alas, virtually nothing in Schneerson's writings suggests that. Countless times throughout his speeches and letters, he refers to the Messiah as an actual, physical human being, he alluded numerous times that he in fact is that person, and that Redemption is World Redemption, not only Personal Redemption. This is clearly spelled out in his work, and is easily inferred by his behavior. Only highly elaborate academic somersaults can twist this around, and argue that he meant pretty much the exact opposite of what he clearly said and did.

13 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing truly good is easy, June 4, 2010

By 

Religion Faculty - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (Hardcover)

I've taught in the Religion Department of a highly-regarded liberal arts college for 23 years, and over that period have fought a constant uphill battle in my own teaching to avoid watering down material for students. This past semester, in a course on Jewish messianism, I decided to assign "Open Secret," a brilliant book that I myself was struggling through, in an attempt to puzzle out its thesis together with my advanced students.

I am rarely surprised by the intelligence and perspicacity of my students, indeed, I take it for granted. But I was truly amazed at how many in class really got into the book. We proceeded slowly and deeply and unpacked small enough chunks of Wolfson's thesis that they really got it. Earlier in the semester, we had discussed the idea of apophatic language--language that erases itself, like a person walking on a beach trailing a palm frond and obviating her footsteps--in relation to the Zohar, where the rose is and yet is not a rose, or a particular color is or is not that color (On apophasis generally, see "Mystical Languages of Unsaying" by Michael Anthony Sells). When Wolfson's language got tough (poetry can be difficult, as any English major knows) they pointed out to me the way in which the study itself was often couched in apophatic language that was performative or mimetic of the apophasis in the concepts themselves. As the title of this short review indicates, nothing truly good is easy, particularly when one speaks of concepts that are esoteric to begin with. This is a book worth going back to again and again in order to plumb its depths, which truly exist and which help counterbalance the heavily sociological approach generally taken with regard to Habad Hassidus with a true investigation of the "inside of the inside" of actual doctrine and theology. Kudos!

13 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars remarkable, December 31, 2009

By 

Ordinary Joe (Brooklyn, ny United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (Hardcover)

Professor Wolfson's Open Secret is thoroughly researched. Habad texts are typically lengthy, voluminous (thousands upon thousands of pages). Prof. Wolfson's successfully distilled these texts, setting forth a fascinating and clear exposition of Habad's approach to messianism. I enjoyed reading this book, and learned a couple of things along the way.