“Borges and the Kabbalah: Pre-Texts to a Text”

Saúl Sosnowski
University of Maryland, College Park

“Borges y la Cábala: senderos del Verbo/Borges and the Kabbalah: Paths to The Word:
images by Mirta Kupferminc, texts by Saúl Sosnowski, quotes from Jorge Luis Borges
and from Kabbalistic sources.
“This edition is limited to 25 copies printed on Archés 300 gram paper, and numbered in
both Arabic numerals and Hebrew letters. The number of copies corresponds to the 22
letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the period, comma, and the space between letters –an
interstice that may hold other languages and innumerable options.
The 29 prints were created by Mirta Kupferminc and printed in her studio. The texts
were composed and printed by Rubén Lapolla under Samuel César Palui’s supervision.”

The hand crafted and boxed edition of Borges y la Cábala: senderos del Verbo /

Borges and the Kabbalah: Paths to The Word , is not just a book, though it is also a book. To

define it, or even to describe it, as an “object” is correct, accurate and precise; but it does

not account for what it is, can be, and will be, as others agree to face the challenges it

poses and craft their own paths across images and texts.

The remote origin of this book lies in B’reshit, in the Book of Genesis, at the very

moment when the inaudible aleph of ´or, light, unleashes the big-bang. A closer origin,

one I recognized and retrieved only after a decade had passed, stems from Jerusalem,

from the master classes taught by Nehama Leibowitz, Z”L, from whom I learned to

understand Rashi’s interpretations of the Torah, as much as to inquire into the possible

reasons for his silence on other verses.

My fascination with Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1984) derives, I now believe, from

that great lesson: nothing in the Torah is gratuitous, nothing is superfluous. In addition to

addressing and fulfilling the ethical and religious order sustained by 613 mitsvoth (“acts

of loving kindness,” is its popular English-language version), we are urged to study the

Torah’s declarative statements, to interpret them within their narrative context, to know

1
their history and placement, to learn the legal code that over the centuries was to find its

place in the Mishna, in the Talmud, in the Rabbinic Responsa, in the Kabbalah…

I thought it was inevitable that, given Borges’ literary system and his personal

distance from all religious doctrines, he would allude to Kabbalistic interpretative

procedures and to their belief in an absolute text. It seemed equally inevitable that

Borges’ own texts would generate sequels that would have made John Wilkins proud.

The Kabbalah –Borges said during a lecture later included in Siete noches— is “a

sort of a metaphor of thought.” Had that been the sum total of Kabbalah, for Borges that

would have sufficed. Much earlier, in “A Vindication of the Kabbalah,” pondering how

Judaism views the God-given Torah, he wrote: “A book impenetrable by contingency, a

mechanism of infinite purposes, of infallible variations, of revelations that lie in wait, of

superimposed lights... How could one not interrogate it to the level of the absurd, to

numerical excess, as the Kabbalah has done?”

As we enter the space where “Borges” and “Kabbalah” are joined, it is imperative

to underscore fundamental differences between a literary quest and the way of life and

goals sought by Kabbalists in their numerous iterations. It is equally mandatory to accept

the distance that separates faith and theology from literature and art, the Kabbalist from

those who indulge in exercises to mark the passage of time. Then and only then, when

cognizant of the difference, human imagination may feel empowered to reveal alternate

views of the world, and make inroads into history’s sobering chronicles –chronicles that

include tracing the origins of the various schools, belief systems and practices, that are

carelessly lumped together under the single rubric of “Kabbalah.” At that point, armed

with their irreverent heterodoxy, readers and other explorers will begin to

2
question, probe, provoke, see through falsehood, reveal truths, and point to open paths

and future options that, in the end, may or may not be less atrocious (or less festive) than

those we fear or await. Or simply proceed with strands of literary merriment. The

differences are as radical as those that separate the mystic who walks a path mined with

life and death decisions and risking insanity’s depths, from the writer who revels in the

pleasure he draws from playing (simply or not) with similar motifs.

To speak of “Kabbalah” is to enter the sacred space of Jewish mysticism, rooted

and codified in principles and age-old practices; it is to launch from and to arrive at the

Text, the Torah: the origin and blueprint of the universe, a nation’s chronicle and guide,

the key to a people’s history and the hidden secret that holds within its innermost

chambers every version of every possible future. When set in a historical context, in the

shifting geographies of Jewish history, does the Kabbalah not also provide a unique way

to respond to ceaseless persecutions by creating, through its intricate explorations, a

space where hope and freedom may finally reign? Does the Kabbalah not intimate an

exodus from oppression towards the realm of the Divine? An exit from ghetto alleys to

the heights were the Word’s origins and galaxies come together to search for a desired

end?

Borges knew and practiced in literature and in his reenactment of monumental or

seemingly casual historical events, what for Kabbalists (and for other believers) is a

guiding principle: nothing just is, nothing is by chance; nothing is or can be deemed to be

only fortuitous. Discipline or a core belief that it is so, even when what we face is a

literary artifice, even when all that is left is to recognize the limits of our inevitably all

too human imagination.

3
 Borges y la Cábala: la búsqueda del Verbo is the title of a book I first published

in 1976; a revised second edition was published ten years later. It was the 1986 version

that I sent to Mirta Kupferminc in 2002. Since we decided to work together time has

responded to what we now recognize as integral to the forces unleashed at the crossroads

of art and literature; to what, for lack of rational or other reasonable explanations, we

attribute to chance. What continues to be at play are those forces that daily affect our

weaving of the tapestry of knowledge, the enrichment that is still to come from viewers-

readers-participants willing to accept and engage in what we offer with a semblance of

order. As Borges’ “The Prayer” also stated: “The plans of the universe are unknown to

us, but we do know that to reason lucidly and act justly is to contribute to those plans

which will not be revealed to us.”

In the course of our collaboration, dialogue became a “trialogue” as quotes from

Borges, from Kabbalistic and Midrashic sources prompted our own search for some

organizational principle. A chronological approach following Borges’ works was readily

discarded and the bookends became the creation of the universe and the access to

privileged knowledge as told in the story of the four who entered “PaRDeS” –an acronym

for the four levels of knowledge leading from the literal to the secret. And the book led

to several presentations and to two major exhibits that were conceived, with different

modes of implementation, as a challenge to partake of a journey through our book’s

spirit.

From the onset, a warning and a challenge for the daring to recognize and

transgress limits, each according to his/her ability and willingness to go one step beyond.

4
Facing it all, signs that weave together knowledge and hope, paths of light that glide

along the limits imposed on man’s design: limits that are an alibi that almost prevents

being, being someone else, a something-someone closer to the infinite Everything; the

Everything that indicates the access to nothing, to the No-one who remains unreachable

by man, by bodies with a stamped skin, a navel, an expiration date.

And yet: it is impossible to accept that the obvious and the revealed suffice.

Beyond the apparent, the clear and polished surface of P’shat (the literal), are the keys

that grant access to other ways. To thrust, then, into the text’s intimacy: to strive

cautiously for access through folds and crevices, and read the lines, be read by them,

reach past them. To invoke and intone the prescribed love song that interprets every

word, every name and every verse. To go across the treasure chambers that beckon our

gaze and still push ahead, move forward, inward to the innermost, to the next sphere,

through to an upheaval where sanity, faith and life are on the line. And then nothing

remains evident: P´shat-D’rash-Remez become one in the simultaneous joy of

understanding and feeling upon reaching the Sod: the most intimate, hidden Secret that

may (or may not) shed barely a Spark of the Emanations that come from and lead to Ein

Sof: to the endless infinite, to the prime Majesty that now (perhaps) acquiesces to a

dialogue, to an encounter, to joy, to a partial reading of the grammar of the universe, to

weaving love as letters feel colors and the hue of pleasure, and triumphantly show

themselves in the cosmic scheme of our shared universe.

In the essentially different (and still anchored in the same roots) exhibits held at

the Centro Cultural Recoleta (Buenos Aires) and at the University of Maryland’s Art

Gallery (College Park), we offered prints, texts, installations, lights and a video, for

5
visitors to enter a world of appearances, of truths, and of veiled secrets. A labyrinth is

usually a system designed to confuse and lose the daring in its midst; here it has an order

(of several sequences) that is both complete and open to multiple options and

interpretations. Borges though literature, and the Kabbalah through its sanctified

multiplicity of subjects and objectives, lead us to paths of never ending journeys. To

enter this universe invites the visitor to be open, to query every meaning and every

feeling, to play, to bet and risk it all; to accept that “this,” what we know and live, cannot

be all there is; that beyond our waking hours other versions of the real lurk about

and incite us to search, to grasp what must be perceived, assimilated and named (forever

and again) one more time.

Every presentation and variation on the theme, have led Mirta and I to revisit the

book that is not just a book. It continues to come across to us as a perpetual pilgrimage,

an insatiable search. Therein, sounds and letters and voices are thrown about in search of

a spatial design... Images and words will a dialogue to begin and an encounter to occur.

Respect for the word and for the art of interpretation sets the tone. The ability to affirm,

to record, and to engrave without breaking down, begins to filter through. And it all

comes together as either slowly or in a whirlwind we get closer and closer to what will be

cast open at every turn of every page.

That is, precisely, what entering this universe is all about: to open and be open, to

query every meaning and every feeling, to play, to bet and risk it all; to accept that “this,”

what we know and live, cannot be all there is; that beyond our waking hours other

versions of the real lurk about and incite us to search, to grasp what must be perceived,

6
assimilated and named one more time. Just once again, even if only just one more time,

once, again, as always.

It is about having learned to read and decipher and see the weaving’s hidden

patterns; it means to understand and enjoy (finally) beyond the ready-made levels of

comprehension and pleasure the intimacy of every letter, of every shape, of every line

that slides down the skin to find its home. It is to discover it right here: in this shared

space of paper and ink.

When asked “how did you produce such a work?” I usually respond with a

chronology (such as the one offered at the beginning). Perhaps the following paragraphs

will be more adequate to explain how image and text found themselves uttering the right

tone and crafting a nuanced verse to sustain a dialogue that extends beyond us.

Art and physics may at times come together in their attempt to capture energy, to

bring forth that which awaits and may coalesce to define an artist’s craft. Attention to

minutiae and to the infinite; a godlike desire to capture at once all that is precious, for

nothing exists without a purpose nor outside the realm of the possible. The voice from

Sinai and the screams from airtight chambers; childhood games and severe justice; the

defining signature of some figures and access to the still unknown…

Everything that is Mirta Kupferminc’s art (and persona) alludes to a creative

whirlwind, to unlimited possibilities. Stemming, perhaps, from a childlike (but knowing)

fascination with life, her prints, objects and installations, each in their own way, gallantly

enter our innermost spaces to tweak a complacent gaze, to search out the intimacy of

feeling, and challenge the preeminence of reason. As with the most provocative

7
expressions of art, we enter her world cognizant of risks. Appreciation, admiration, and

the puzzled look at how is it possible do not begin to define that experience. In time, we

learn that since gaining access to that dimension we have acquired a new and different

way to ponder knowledge and history and to celebrate (or at times bemoan) humanity’s

imprint on this scarred earth.