Subject: Re: Salinger and Kabbalah
From: L. Manning Vines (lmanningvines@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Jun 22 2002 - 05:21:08 EDT
Cecilia said:
<< The reason I even looked into it -- granted, this may have not been a
very
good reason -- is because not too long ago, I read a novel by Chaim Potok
called THE CHOSEN. It's about a young Jewish boy who becomes good friends
with an Hasidic Jewish boy, and Kabbalah figures rather prominently in the
book. It is set during and just after WWII, during the founding of the
Jewish state.
I don't know that it's very good evidence that Salinger would have been
aware, but Potok certainly was. >>
I believe that book was published in the late 1960s, which would be the very
beginning of the popularization of Kabbalah (it only predates the Kabbalah
Centre's opening of doors to every interested man, woman, and child by a few
years) and fits in with the general chronology I gave.
But in any case, it certainly could be. In the 1940s there was no place in
America -- probably no place in the world, outside of Palestine -- where
exposure and access to Kabbalah would have been more likely than New York
City. I'm not sure how likely, exactly, and a working knowledge of Aramaic
would be damn helpful, but it's possible. This would be especially true
with a Hasidic friend, since, as I mentioned briefly in the previous
message, the Hasidim have always taken Kabbalah as authoritative and are
strongly influenced by it. Even they, I believe, restrict its study to
adult men (or at least try to), usually those over 40 years; but its
influence is pervasive in Hasidic communities, which, taken with their
association to certain messianic movements (which also heavily involved
Kabbalah), accounts for why they met with such disapproval from the
mainstream Jewish community for so long.
-robbie
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