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Professor Nan Goodman sits down with the College of Arts and Sciences to explain why Jewish mysticism is important, why her course on the topic is so unique and

Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah and the exuberant joy of teachingJewish mysticism, Kabbalah and the exuberant joy of teachingPublished:2/7/2018 2/7/2018 • By Craig LevinskyFive questions with scholar Nan Goodman Nan Goodman doesn’t spend much time wondering what Madonna, Mick Jagger or Ashton Kutcher may have gotten from dabbling in the “Kabbalah trend” of the early 2000s. What concerns Goodman are what people are searching for—and what might be offered to them in return—when they approach Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah.Goodman, a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of English and the director of the Program in Jewish Studies, explores this and other topics in her unusual course “Mysticism and the Jewish American Literary Tradition,” which she will teach again in fall 2018.She uses medieval literature, modern and contemporary literature and history to examine such questions as, “What are we doing?,” “How are we all connected?” and “Why are we here?” as well as the history and tradition of examining those timeless, universal matters.I love teaching about Shabbtai Sevi because I’m obsessed with him. Obsessed!"Identifying herself as “an early Americanist by training,” Goodman was first introduced to Jewish mysticism through her research in covenant theology, Christian Hebraism and the 17th century puritans, who “truly believed themselves to be the surrogate Jews, or the chosen people.”Using the terms “Jewish mysticism” and “Kabbalah” not quite interchangeably (mysticism is a belief system, Kabbalah a compendium of the written materials that compose that belief system), she explains Kabbalah as “another way of trying to understand what the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, or Torah, are all about.” To do this, she investigates its two most mysterious aspects: the creation story and the story of Ezekiel’s chariot.With more enthusiasm than can be captured in print, she recently explained her course and its “secret content” and importance.First, please share what you’d like your students to gain or take away from this course. Why is Jewish mysticism important?Well, the class is introductory, and that’s a good thing. At a large public university, we’re committed to introducing and exposing students to a wide diversity of knowledge, opinions and cultural traditions. This course is unusual because the content matter is usually not among the courses that are offered at a university, not to mention a large public university.The idea was a very simple one, to expose students on a basic level to a body of knowledge, namely Jewish mysticism, that has been extremely important on the development of western civilization.So, is Jewish mysticism basically a synonym on your syllabus for Kabbalah, because everything seems to reference early Kabbalistic work? Yes! I reference the Kabbalah a lot in class. Contrary to what most people think, the Kabbalah is not a single text, but a series of texts, and one of the joys I get from the class is reminding the students that the texts that make up the Kabbalah were not widely available, even for those who were literate.There were all kinds of restrictions on who could read the Kabbalah. It was hidden, forbidden information. I take great pleasure, and I think they do, too, in being able to access these texts, like, “Hey, go home. Read the first 30 pages of The Bahir,” which is an early Kabbalistic text. So, I contextualize it like that for them. They like the idea that they’re reading stuff that has secrets.Nan Goodman. Photo by Craig Levinsky.Would you mind explaining what Kabbalah is?Well, when most people think about the Jewish hermeneutical tradition, which is the Jewish interpretive tradition, they think about the rabbinical tradition, right? They think about texts like the Mishnah (or Talmud), or the aggadah, which are non-legalistic explanatory texts … So, the rabbis went back to the Hebrew Bible, which is a very rich and confusing text, and they thought, “Let me see whether we can explain this better. Let’s see if there’s a different way of understanding the Hebrew Bible and particularly the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Let’s see whether we can figure it out,” because on this page it says this and on this page it says that, and there’s either a contradiction between them, or a question that’s left open.So, in the rabbinic tradition, the impulse was to explain, and we’re more or less familiar with that in our secular understandings of the Jewish tradition.The Kabbalah is another interpretation of the Torah, of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. It’s another explanation. It’s the explanation that is not rabbinic and doesn’t figure as much in traditional doctrinal Judaism.In particular, the Kabbalah tried to answer the two most mysterious aspects of the Hebrew Bible, or Torah. The first is the creation story; most people think that there was just one creation story, but in fact, there are two. There’s the first creation, which really ...