‘Deep Secrets and Spiritual Tools’

The Secret in Contemporary Jewish Spirituality

Abstract

This paper explores the appropriation of the idea of ‘the secret’ by contemporary Jewish spirituality and the way this idea acquired the meaning of a spiritual-therapeutic technique. I trace the roots of the notion of ‘the secret’, beginning with the Western Esoteric movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and up to the development of New Age spirituality at the end of the twentieth century. While it is possible to claim that the origins of the idea of the secret of Jewish spirituality are to be found in the historical forms of Jewish esotericism, i.e., Kabbalah, I argue that they are to be located in the later, non-Jewish esoteric movements and especially in Theosophy and the New Thought. The article posits that under the influence of late capitalism, neoliberalism and the therapeutic culture, contemporary spiritualities in general and Jewish spirituality in particular came to be understood as a self-centered therapeutic technique and the notion of ‘a secret’ obtained the meaning of a therapeutic technique for spiritual development.