Today’s post is by Dr. Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel, who is senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa, as well as research fellow in both the Kogod Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Her research is focused on the intersections between mysticism, gender, and psychoanalysis. Her books are Holiness and Transgression: Mothers of the Messiah in the Jewish Myth (Academic Studies Press, 2017), The Feminine Messiah: King David in the Image of the Shekhina in Kabbalistic Literature (Brill, 2021), and Human Ropes – Birth in Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis (De Gruyter, 2022). The latter won the Gorgias Press competition in the category Jewish Thought. Her forthcoming book deals with dreams and revelations of kabbalists. Ruth is also a poet and editor of poetry, as well as translator of Russian poetry into Hebrew.
Ruth has researched the topics of prostitution, incest, and abuse in terms of how these are rooted in sacred textual sources such as the Bible, Midrash, and Kabbalistic literature. In recent years, she has been supporting women who have experienced sexual abuse, alongside therapists working in this area.
*This post is an adapted and updated version of an earlier publication by Ruth (see here). **The picture is used with Ruth’s permission.
In recent years, harrowing accounts have come to light in Israel, as women have reported experiences of ritual and group-facilitated sexual abuse during childhood. The memories they suppressed (believing them to be fantasies or delusions) are now being recounted, set in motion by testimonies of other women who were harmed in similar groups and ways within ultra-Orthodox and Religious Zionist worlds. These women often suffer from severe post-traumatic stress. Eight testimonies were recently compiled and brought before the Knesset; these testimonies were recorded with the complainants’ faces and identities concealed (see here).
According to the survivors’ testimonies, the abusive rituals involved the use of biblical verses, the recitation of prayers, and the performance of brutal acts based on perversions of mystical and Kabbalistic practices. Distressingly, the phenomena of ritual abuse, paedophilia and child abuse exist far and wide. Nevertheless, there is a distinctive dimension to the perversions and violations perpetrated by rabbis and other figures of religious and halakhic authority. This article seeks to illuminate some of the Kabbalistic roots of these power dynamics operating within Jewish circles of exploitation and abuse, and to examine their conceptual, theoretical, and spiritual dimensions.
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Charismatic rabbis have engaged in exploitative relationships and both spiritual and sexual abuse; they are responsible but addressing the harm this abuse continues to cause rests with all of us.
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Great power and magic are inherent in Kabbalistic theories of redemption growing out of sin; these theories claim that the means to redemption are found through breaking boundaries and reversal of good and evil. This theme of inversion cuts across the Zoharic literature and the writings of Rabbi Isaac Luria (the ARI) and appears also in many Hasidic sermons. Paradoxical Kabbalistic approaches contain the principle according to which not only God has “created worlds and destroyed them” (before creating our world, as described in Genesis Rabbah 3:7) but human beings also destroy while completing their task of repair (tikkun). As early as rabbinic literature we find sayings such as, “greater is a transgression performed with good intent than a commandment performed without good intent” (Gedolah aveirah lishmah me-mitzvah she-lo lishmah, Babylonian Talmud Nazir 23b); these were later woven into Kabbalistic and Hasidic messianic mythology.
Clear examples can be found in the writings of Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Isbitza, in particular his Mei HaShiloach, which develops an in-depth theory of the greatness of the sinner’s soul. His thought has gained considerable popularity in the world of Zionist-religious yeshivot,[1] especially in the “spiritual” streams (in yeshivot such as Otniel, Eli, Siach Yitzhak, and even in streams like Merkaz HaRav and Har HaMor), and also in new-age culture, in the neo-Hasidic space that has developed in recent decades. [I discuss the mystical background of the Mei HaShiloach’s Judaic and antinomian[2] messianism and its influence on contemporary spiritual approaches elsewhere. I am happy to provide pointers to exploring this further to anyone interested.]
Next, I will briefly address the danger of copying mystical and spiritual language, whose goal is cleaving to the divine and attainment of holiness and union with God, into exploitative human-to-human relationships, which take place in contexts of gender-based power hierarchies and/or bonds between teacher and student and where the goal is achieving sexual, emotional or other satisfactions at the expense of harm to another human being.
I do not write this in a vacuum. In recent years, terrible incidents have come to light, of charismatic Jewish spiritual leaders, some of whom have come from the Kabbalistic-Hasidic and neo-Hasidic world, who through their teachings and authority have exploited and harmed women or male students. Has the idea of the “holy sinner” come to serve as a corrupting and dangerous example? Should we routinely view with suspicion groups of men studying in hevruta,[3] who are fascinated by the theory of redemption borne from sin? It seems, yes. It should be noted that in almost all research on neo-Hasidism there is scant treatment – and often complete disregard – of ethical questions and of the use of the rhetoric of “holiness” for the purpose of exploitation, including sexual exploitation. But when this is not acknowledged, it cannot be warned or guarded against.
One attraction of the Mei HaShiloach’s thought is the freedom this work assumes for the rabbinic teacher as interpreter and the apparent freedom he bestows on his students. These are joined by originality of thought, extreme creativity and teachings of Zoharic and Lurianic Kabbalah.[4] From the time I first encountered such teachings in my youth, I also admired the teachers who revealed to me the dialectic of the reversal of good and evil, redemption and sin. Later on, I devoted my first book to the study of this topic in the Midrash[5] and the Zohar, in order to explore the multifaceted messianic myth that was developed from the stories of the house of David.[6] In my book, I seek to address the price women pay for redemption, alongside giving recognition to their contribution to Jewish history. One of my claims is that in the face of death, exploitation, sexual abandonment and harm, David’s foremothers – the daughters of Lot (Genesis 19), Tamar (Genesis 38), Ruth (book of Ruth) and Batsheva (wife of David and mother of his royal successor, Solomon, 2 Samuel 11–12) – give birth and bring forth life. Indeed, in this messianic lineage, the journey to giving birth passes through using women’s bodies: this being the only resource available to these women to gain any measure of agency; their bodies are the tools for survival and struggle against their male-dominated reality. In the conclusion of my book, I propose that perhaps the myth has been inaccurately understood by men who have sought to use it to develop a theory that glorifies sin and transgression of boundaries. When considering the contemporary context, it is valuable, I find, to make use of psychological theories to further explain the kinds of boundary violations we see both in traditional sources and contemporary society.
Confusion of tongues
Many cases of sexual violence can be attributed to exploitative relationships that take place between teachers and their students or between older, empowered men and (usually young) women. Such, for example, was the case of Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg from Safed, who committed sex crimes against multiple women on the pretext that he was providing therapy and helping them heal (see here).
In order to explain the victims’ submission and the way in which the transition is made from enchanted, subversive thought or ideas to abuse realised in practice, I will utilize the psychological theory developed by Sandor Ferenczi. Ferenczi, a Hungarian Jewish psychoanalyst, coined the term “confusion of tongues” to describe a mechanism of exploitation in the family for application in therapeutic structures.[7] A typical way in which incestuous “seductions,” for instance, may occur is this: an adult male and a child love each other and the child nurses the playful fantasy of taking the role of the mother vis-a-vis the adult male. This play may assume erotic forms but remains, nevertheless, on the level of tenderness. It is not so, however, with pathological adults who mistake the play of children for the desires of sexually mature persons or who—irrespective of any consequences—follow their own sexual drive and consciously violate the child (Confusion of Tongues, p. 227).
According to Ferenczi, the conflict in the soul of the child between love and identification with the adult who had formerly protected them, and the assault that they experience, causes confusion, until “[their] trust in the testimony of [their] senses is broken.” This deluded and deceptive state is the key to why the victim is rendered acutely vulnerable and compliant. In this imbalanced and manipulative relationship, the child is not able to believe (or perceive) how the adult with whom they identify and to whom they direct love is the one who harms them with cruel exploitation. They are in a state of “paralyzing confusion.” The breaking of trust in the testimony of their senses may even cause them to perceive the horrific deeds done to them as somehow benevolent.
Using Ferenczi’s example of the confusion of tongues between children and adults, I can see analogies with other cases of sexual exploitation that are infrequently discussed: namely, “seduction” that relies on the confusion of tongues between Kabbalistic spirituality and lawlessness, holiness and licentiousness. Here, the theory of redemption borne of defilement may distance a person from their gloomy life and daily hardships; for some it may provide an apparent solution to the sense of guilt at their sexuality, sexual proclivities, or the weakness they feel with regard to their sexual urges, and to shame regarding acts that are perceived as taboo from a Kabbalistic perspective, such as “spilling of seed.” Glorification of the sin might provide a person with a feeling of self-mythologization and an aura of radiance, an illusion of omnipotence, a feeling of rescue from emotional suffering (however temporary), or integration into an anarchistic, nationalist and/or cosmic movement. The scope for harm when this transpires in sexual exploitation – even if confusion leads to a paralysis, a suspension of resistance, or apparent compliance – is considerable.
An example of such exploitation by a powerful religious figure is the case of the Breslov leader Eliezer Berland who fled Israel after he was arrested for sex crimes. Later, however, he continued to lead the Shuvu Banim community (having served a short time in prison to be released on a plea bargain). Some of the women who testified against Berland said that he promised “to raise them to the world of Atzilut (nobility),” and forced them into sexual relations while reading the Tikkun HaKlali of Rabbi Nachman.[8] In cases like this, spiritual concepts are weaponized by authority figures. Presumably, the abused women were steeped in the concepts and ideals related to Atzilut and Tikkun, and this helped to confound or anesthetize their opposition and to bring them into submission to a charismatic authority figure with many staunch followers.
I myself can testify that I have met rabbinic figures who claimed that they were reincarnations of Jewish heroes, Rabbi Nachman or the Baal Shem Tov, and who did what they forbade to others, adopting “messianic” customs and using concepts such as “transgression for its own sake” and hora’at sha’a (“the demands of the hour”) to explain away their subversive acts. While reading sermons that glorify the power of the sinner’s repentance, both students and teachers can be tempted to say to themselves, “I am not a regular person. The law and the limitations were intended for simple people, but not for a great and deep soul such as mine. Crossing a boundary is my way to personal redemption, and from there also to general redemption.” In such cases, there is danger both to the person who believes this and to those who might fall under their spell or force. On the one hand, within such a person there is a likely rise of narcissism, and the language of crossing boundaries and prohibitions might overcome inhibitions and transpire in transgression. On the other hand, behaviour deriving from this may become characterized by instrumentalizing and abusive conduct.
The appreciation and admiration of a student for their teacher and the charismatic aspect in a spiritual leader’s persona are constantly in the background of learning relationships, but it seems that the danger is especially prevalent in study halls (batei midrash) in which the main work is based on emotional mystical experiences, and where the learning process is built on what Emmanuel Levinas has termed “the temptation of temptation.”[9] In these cases, the preoccupation is not with the content of the Torah itself, but with the way in which it attracts a person to be tempted to follow or not follow it, transgressing the Torah’s boundaries and the individual’s boundaries.
Spiritual Harassment and Emotional Perversion
It is easy to imagine the dizzying feeling of a powerful connection with an admired and trusted teacher – especially a teacher who promises experiences of walking on the edge of the abyss, of exaltation and of excitement that intermingles holiness and sin, loftiness and erotic transgression. However, it is precisely in these liminal or extreme spaces that faithfulness to ethical and humane values is especially necessary, as is a strong grounding in the soil of the real world. Any exploration and growth from there to the domains of the infinite requires firm foundations.
Moreover, we live in an era where there have been many revelations of harm caused by systemic abuse and abuse of authority, including in religious settings. Consequently, we must be alert to appeals to spiritual ideals which could constitute a powerful person’s means to controlling those less powerful than themselves, including for the satisfaction of their own abusive desires. This can and does take the form of men coercing women to “serve” them, including with appeals to sacred sources and by claiming “devotion” or “submission” are exalted feminine ideals. It can and has also taken the form of a teacher manipulating a student into having sex so that something of the teacher’s spirit can, allegedly, be “transmitted” to the student. Another example can take a different form, of teachers appropriating and taking credit for students’ work, taking advantage of their efforts while erasing their names. This, too, can be done while using Kabbalistic terminology – such as on the pretext that this is part of the “process of repair (tikkun),” or a “descent for the sake of ascent,” or the nullification of self for the sake of the tzaddik, the great one of the generation, the unique chosen one. The history of Jewish messianic movements shows multiple instances where women’s efforts and activities, too, were appropriated by men. It shows traces of women prophets and mystics whose names are lost to us, women leaders and heroines whose labours were erased, with credit and prominence going to the men in these movements.[10]
We should listen carefully when charismatic leaders talk about “being a vessel for the infinite,” or “a conduit for the overflow” that descends from above. Sometimes these words are said in innocence, but sometimes with the power to “train” others to become accustomed to instrumentalization or subservience. Such words can prepare one to being used, excusing the matter as having spiritual, ennobling value. These instances and similar ones testify not to holiness but to perversion and/or exploitation.
Abusers get satisfaction from enslaving another to their desires. This can seem harmful not only to the victim but to the abuser’s own soul. Marie-France Hirigoyen writes about this double injury, the spiritual and the social, in her book, Moral Harassment: “This is clear, albeit hidden, violence, violence whose goal is to harm the identity of the other and to deprive him [sic.] of any trace of self. This is a process that causes real emotional destruction.” This destruction can also undermine the ability to distinguish between good and evil persons, since every abuser, sexual or narcissistic, seeks to draw others into their behavioural patterns, until they too distort the rules they used to follow. Thus, the destructive power of the abuser expands.[11]
This process is an assault on the individual, dismantling personal and moral boundaries, and implanting a fantasy of a symbiotic world without separations, prohibitions or limitations. The psychoanalyst Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel claims that the pervert-abuser seeks to deny the very concept of boundary – such as, the boundary between parents and children, and between permitted and forbidden.[12] Ruth Stein notes that perversion, “is the attempt to penetrate into the other without being penetrated” – it is a selfish act, aimed at the other’s destruction. The pervert identifies the needs of the other with their sharp senses, “and he [sic] fills them, but not in order to create a real connection …, but rather to strengthen the covenant of bondage.”[13] As Dana Amir, following Stein, emphasizes, the pervert-abuser “adopts the syntax of the other” but with the purpose of entrapping them. This allows for a “smooth” infiltration into the soul of the other and of dispossession, while their guard is down.[14]
Similarly, the Kabbalistic and Hasidic myths of “redemption through sin” express the wish to mix between the divine and the human, between fantasy and reality, and the attempt to break the boundary between self and other and to disrupt the order of existence. Consequently, there is scope for abuse, when the pseudo-spiritual messianic pervert leaves the abused other defenceless, vulnerable on account of their wish for redemption, which exposes them to brokenness and their desire for healing and repair (tikkun) unfulfilled and exploited.
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Reflection on the scope of harms currently taking place in religious community and in spiritual circles indicates multiple instances of “social confusion of tongues.” The strength of the power relations, authority and superiority of rabbis, alongside the clear hierarchy between men and women, teachers and students, lead to additional confusion of tongues: under the guise of authority, protection and holiness integrated into the discourse about repair (tikkun) of the nation and the cosmos, instances of exploitation occur under the auspices of halakha. Given the lack of institutional attention to this, the bulk of the burden remains on the victims. This is an outrage and an injustice.
It is teachers and rabbis, men and women, all of us who can, who need to take care and take responsibility where we can, including with the content of what we teach, and with the deference we extend to authority figures. We have to resist injustices, including the protection and defence of perpetrators – no matter how scholarly, influential or admired they are. We need to look out for and attend also to obscured and hidden nefarious motivations in the process of teaching and leadership well before these gather pace and inflict harm. The cost of not taking responsibility is simply too great – because of the emotional and psychological damage to the individuals who are abused and exploited, and also for the foundations of faith and holiness, and society at large.
[1] A yeshivah (from Hebrew ישיבה, literally, “sitting”) is a traditional Jewish educational institution. The plural of this word is yeshivot. Yeshivah education is focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, the Talmud and halachah (Jewish law), with Torah and Jewish philosophy studied in parallel.
[2] “Antinomian” refers to views that reject laws or legalism, often arguing (or being considered to argue) against religious, ethical or social norms and conventions.
[3] Hevruta (or chavruta or chavrusa) is a highly interactive Jewish method of studying texts in pairs that is characteristic of yeshivah education (see note 1). The word is derived from the Aramaic word for “fellowship” or “friendship” and the practice involves two partners reading, debating, and deeply analysing textual passages together. It can involve analysis both of the text and its modern meanings or applications.
[4] The Zohar is the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah (mysticism). Scholars are divided on the question of whether the book was written by Ramdal (Rabbi Moses de León) or by a group of kabbalists who worked together in Castile, around the years 1280-1300. Lurianic Kabbalah is a school of Jewish mysticism developed by Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–1572) in Safed, in the Galilee. It reshaped Jewish thought by introducing mythical concepts like tzimtzum (divine contraction) and tikkun olam (cosmic repair) to explain the origins of creation and the problem of evil.
[5] Midrash is a genre of exegesis from a word meaning “to lead out.” “The Midrash” indicates here the whole Rabbinic corpus written from 2nd to 7th centuries, both in Babylonia and Israel, by the Sages of antiquity.
[6] Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel, Holiness and Transgression: Mothers of the Messiah in the Jewish Myth (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017).
[7] Sándor Ferenczi, “Confusion of the Tongues between the Adults and the Child—The
Language of Tenderness and of Passion.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 30 (1949):
225–230.
[8] Ten psalms are arranged by R. Nachman of Breslov to atone for the sin of wasted seed. The emission of semen in vain is regarded as a particularly grave sin already in the Zohar, a matter that gave rise to many perversions and extremisms, and also fostered a sense of guilt and shame among boys growing up in religious education. See, Shilo Pachter, Shmirat habrit: the history of the prohibition of wasting seed, Phd thesis, Jerusalem, 2006.
[9] Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 30–50.
[10] Ada Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi, 1666–1816 (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011).
[11] Marie-France Hirigoyen, Moral Harassment: The Perverse Violence of Daily Life (Ramat Gan, 2022), 17-18, 129 [translated from the Hebrew].
[12] Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Creativity and Perversion (London: Free Association Books, 1985).
[13] Ruth Stein, “Why perversion? False love and the Perverse Pact.” International Journal
of Psycho-Analysis 86 (2005): 775-799.
[14] Dana Amir, Cleft Tongue: The Language of Psychic Structures (Routledge, 2014), 58.
