אידל, משה, משה גסטר, המיסטיקה היהודית וספר הזוהר, תעודה כא-כב (תשס"ז), חידושי זוהר: מחקרים חדשים בספרות הזוהר, תל אביב, 111-127
Idel, Moshe, “Moses Gaster, Jewish Mysticism and the Zohar”, Teuda 21-22 (2006), 111-127.
A
about moshe gaster, a romanian jew, 1856-1939.
was highly educated. Had a collection of mss, some from the genizah, part of the collection was sold to the british library in london, another part was sold to the john reylends library in manchester; mss. Of the religious slovanian and romanian literature was sold to the national academy in romania.
B
he held the theory of the “stream of traditions” from the east which influenced european culture: a stream from the east in late antiquity, which reached as far as england, was parallel to the streaming in of the bible. This was innovative at the time, when scholars saw euroean culture as a mixture of greek- and roman culture and the bible, but did not like to include influence of non biblical hellenistic or oriental culture, which was carried by “secondary elites” (p. 113). He was criticized and banned at the time.
His theory did not agree with the standart folklorist approach, which sees an influence from folkoristic stratae of society into the more official and educated stratae, but he saw the influence of book from the east, not of “lower culture”.
Gaster had no students, so he was not influencial; the interest in his theories returned in the 80's of the 20th century with regard to european culture, not so with regard to jewish culture.
C
gaster also studied jewish mysticism. Here his contribution was completely forgotten, he was not mentioned by scholem, tishbi, weblowsky and others.
Gaster thought that kabbalah is ancient; he sees manichean influence on it. He wrote non-apologetically about anthropomorphism in early judaism (pp. 116-117). he was a student of Gertz, but did not accept his opinion about Ramdal as composer of the Zohar.
Gaster also thought that the Bahir was not written in Europe
Kabbalh to him was a merging of philosophy and agadah.
D
about the Zohar – gaster thought that it was a compilation of oriental texts by an unskilled editor; the zohar itself has more than one mystical approach. He held this view for 40 years.
Idel finds that there is a contradition in Gaster's method between his belief in the “midrash of shimon bar yochai” and the assumption that there was manichean influence on the zohar (medieval manichean influence, katharic or bogomillic).
New assessments about the zohar, of liebes, and ronit dishon (meroz) opened a new page (but they also don't rely on Gaster). Some of Gaster's conclusions seems to have more than a grain of truth in them (apocryphal writings embedded in the Zohar, manichean influence, the Zohar being an almost accidental collection).
E
Gaster was brave and innovative. His theory of stream of traditions is the motive behind his scientific work – his publishing of particular compositions such as the book of yerachmiel, maise-buch (yiddish) and the exempla of the rabbis.
Gaster preceded Herzl in establishing settlements in Palestine. He understood that the Ugandan proposition was a mistake, but he didn't have a good political understanding of the scholarly world, so he didn't have an academic position.
