Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

Second Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Marks, Susan

Keywords

Hekhalot Rabbati, Jewish Texts, Psychoanalytic Dream Interpretation, Rabbinic Literature

Area of Concentration

Religion

Abstract

Hekhalot Rabbati is considered the most complete work in the Hekhalot Literature, a collection of ancient Jewish texts which detail the mystical journey to see God in the divine throne room. Yet despite its moniker of “the most complete,” Hekhalot Rabbati comes down to modern scholarship in the form of fragments. I seek to explore Hekhalot Rabbati through advances made in the related field of Rabbinic Literature and through the use of Psychoanalytic Dream Interpretation methods. First, I delve deeply into the historic scholarship of Hekhalot Rabbati and explore where the assumption of completeness in the work lead these scholars astray. Then I argue, through the use of historical methods, that Hekhalot Rabbati functioned to solve a problem for those who read it in ancient times, that of God’s inaction in the earthly world. Finally, I expand upon these gains by incorporating a discussion of fragments through the use of the ahistorical psychoanalytic dream interpretation methods. This thesis shed light on much of what we do not understand about Hekhalot Rabbati and argues for the inclusion of fragments in future analyses as meaning generating devices.

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