PREFACE

The dominant ideas in the history of religion have shifted, coinciding with profound changes within Judaism itself. These shifts have opened the path toward an unbiased view of the nature and significance of Jewish mysticism. Such a view will no longer be opened from a Christian perspective—as was the case with almost all older works, which were often profound—nor from the perspective of a polemic, no matter how historically justified it might be. Instead, it will arise from a living but sober understanding of the subject itself and the internal laws governing it. Thus, research in this field stands today at a new beginning, facing a difficult but fruitful task.

In such a situation, bibliographic research takes on special importance. Today, at the start of a new period of research, almost no one has even an approximate overview of the literature in this field. No adequate bibliographic account has yet been given, either of the existing mystical sources and texts themselves or of the descriptive and analytical studies concerning them. Two tasks naturally present themselves, the solution of which could provide fundamental help to future researchers.

The first task—a bibliography of the actual mystical literature, the Kabbalistic original: kabbalistischen; referring to the tradition of Jewish mysticism and Hasidic original: chassidischen; referring to the popular mystical movement arising in the 18th century works themselves—cannot be undertaken in Western Europe today with any prospect of success. The number of Russian-Polish and Oriental In this context, "Oriental" refers to Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa. editions that are nowhere recorded and hardly to be found in public libraries is far too high, especially those from later periods. Their importance, particularly regarding Hasidic literature, is far too great for them to be neglected. Of the estimated 2,000 titles of specifically Kabbalistic literature and 3,000 titles of Hasidic literature, only a small portion can be identified in accessible collections.¹ This is especially true since no known library possesses true special collections in this field, which was so despised during the era of the classic book collectors. Consequently, the sheer volume of this literature, particularly regarding printed material, is usually significantly underestimated. Only many years of work in Eastern Europe or the Orient, combined with knowledge of the two great American collections in New York (Jewish Theological Seminary...

¹ I base my estimate on several years of observation in Jerusalem, which is perhaps the place richest in works of this kind in the world.