Mystical Midrash

Authors

• Marianne Schleicher Aarhus University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30752/nj.69604

Keywords:

Experience (Religion) -- Judaism, Midrash, Mysticism -- Judaism, Ecstasy, Torah, Bible, Old Testament, Kabbalah

Abstract

This article conceives of mystical midrash as the act of interpreting the details of a Torah verse with the purpose of entering a meditative or ecstatic state of union with God, in which the mystic by drawing down God’s insights can explain how the Torah verse mediates the micro-macrocosmic relation between God’s will and the course of history. However, since mystical midrash is such a rare phenomenon in Judaism, I have chosen to highlight the various approaches to the Torah in Jewish mysticism as a background for understanding why only one of these approaches qualifies for the epithet ‘mystical midrash’.