By Michael A. Portal
Guest Columnist
Michael A. Portal
Hello again! I am the new faculty member in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Louisville that you may have read about in an earlier issue of Community. My position at the university is as exciting as it is unique – due in large part to the generous support of the Jewish Heritage Fund, whose commitment enables me to direct the Jewish Life and Learning Initiative (JLLI) and organize Jewish Studies events at the university and beyond. I am eager to provide some insight into one of the JLLI’s ongoing programs (a reading group) and to extend an invitation to a pair of upcoming JLLI events: public lectures by Dr. Elliot R. Wolfson, one of the most important living scholars of Jewish mysticism and philosophy. Wolfson presents on March 18 at the University of Louisville and on March 19 at the Trager Family Jewish Community Center – and I hope you can make it to both.
In January JLLI hosted the first meeting of the Philosophy of Religion Reading Group, whose rather ominous theme for this academic year (“Dark Times”) is borrowed from Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the sorry state of critical thought under (and even after) Nazi dictatorship. Together with an enthusiastic group of students and faculty we have been reading Dr. Wolfson’s Nocturnal Seeing (2024), a book which concerns the importance and urgency of thinking during “dark times” or when everything seems hopelessly bleak and uncertain.
Nocturnal Seeing is an investigation into the meaning of philosophy and religion (and especially Judaism) when the natural “light” of reason no longer brightens the world as it once did (think, the Enlightenment). Under such “nocturnal” conditions, Dr. Wolfson shows, everything takes on new meaning – and, so, this text is an invitation to reevaluate and appreciate anew that meaning which may only reveal itself in dark times. It has been genuinely inspiring and illuminating
Elliot Wolfson
to meet with students and faculty who, for no other reason than the desire to think deeply and critically together, choose to gather every few weeks to wrestle with Jewish philosophy and philosophers in our increasingly uncertain world.
During this first meeting of our reading group, however, we were not yet focused on Nocturnal Seeing but, instead, on a famous parable by the Jewish Czech writer Franz Kafka entitled “Before the Law” (1915). In this parable Kafka describes a “man from the country” who seeks access to “the Law” but whose way to it appears blocked by an imposing guard. The man from the country is naturally disgruntled, after all who wants to be subject to a Law that they cannot inspect for themselves? He is nevertheless undeterred, and so he takes a seat besides the door leading to the Law and patiently waits for the guard to grant him access beyond it… Years pass in Kafka’s short parable and, after waiting his whole life, the man from the country realizes he will soon die. “His eyes grow dim,” Kafka writes, “and he no longer knows whether it’s really getting darker around him or if his eyes are merely deceiving him.” “And yet,” Kafka continues, “in the darkness he now sees a radiance that streams forth inextinguishably from the door of the Law.” As it turns out in the parable’s puzzling conclusion, the man from the country may have never in fact needed permission to access the Law for, as the guard enigmatically reveals to the dying man, the door was “meant solely” for the man from the country.
What could the guard’s words possibly mean? A door “meant solely” for one person? Does everyone get a door? And, if so, was the man’s path really blocked by the guard? And, if it was, by what right? Kafka’s mysterious text raises more questions than it answers and invites endless interpretation – an invitation which the reading group’s members readily accepted as they immediately began proposing, debating, and bringing to light the text’s many possible meanings. How much fun to be party to such a lively and enlivening conversation!
A “conversation,” we also discussed, that began long ago and remains ongoing – consider, for example, one interpretation of Kafka’s parable offered by Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), the founder of the modern academic study of Jewish mysticism and the first professor of Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For Scholem, the parable is “a kind of summary of Jewish theology,” for the light emanating from “the Law” (here, one should instead read “Torah”) is precisely that which reveals itself “inextinguishably,” even and especially in darkness. It is in this tradition that Dr. Wolfson also interprets the parable, and how the man from the country’s “insatiable” desire for the Law/Torah echoes the Jewish tradition’s commitment announced at Mount Sinai to “do” before “understanding” (naaseh v’nishma) or, in this case, to be beholden to a Law that one may only approach but may never fully access or grasp. So, to be all too brief: our reading group is learning together how to navigate the meaning of a challenging text whose whole meaning (like the Law) may be just beyond their full understanding. At the same time, we’re exploring how this or any challenge (like making sense of the necessarily uncertain meaning of a parable) ought to be understood not as a hopeless dead-end to critical thought but, instead, as an invitation for interpretation, the creation of new meaning, and thinking even and ever more critically!
It is in eager anticipation of an enriching night of thoughtful and thought-provoking parables and paradoxes that we welcome Dr. Wolfson to Louisville. His first talk, Mystical Nihilism and the Skepticism of Faith, is March 18th (doors open at 11:45 a.m.) at UofL; his second, Idolatry and the Role of Imagination in Judaism, is March 19th (doors open at 5:30 p.m.) at the Trager Family JCC. Both presentations are free and open to the public, but please RSVP by going online at tinyurl.com/35xjh54c
Michael A. Portal is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Jewish Life & Learning Initiative at the University of Louisville.