Strange Stories and Reverse Allegories

Through the course of my 20-year yeshiva high school teaching career, my style evolved. One change that would have been easy to identify (had anyone been watching) was how, as I got older, I consciously avoided sharing stories.

Sure, an appropriate story can be inspiring, and inspiration should be a classroom goal. But the older I got, the less I trusted both the accuracy and value of many gedolim-genre stories. I remember once chatting with a veteran of the frum publishing industry - a man who had discovered and mentored many of the very best English-language Torah writers of the 20th Century. When I brought up the name of a very early series of frum story books, he responded with his opinion that they should never have been published:

“I don’t believe any of those stories actually happened. And if they did happen, they shouldn’t have.”

Is classroom inspiration built on well-intentioned misdirection worth the cost?

Having said all that, someone recently told me a story that I initially appreciated, largely because it seemed to fit a narrative I’ve adopted in recent years. But after a few moments’ reflection the whole thing sounded a bit odd.

Here’s the story:

R’ Chaim Volozhiner once said that the kabbalistic system of R’ Yitzchak Luria (“the Ari”) was entirely a mashal (allegory) and few, if any, subsequent scholars understood the nimshal (interpretation).

That’s the whole thing I’m afraid. Now, the reason you’d think I would like the story is because, should the idea spread, fewer people might take the many difficult elements of the Ari’s teachings literally. Which, one would imagine, would lead to fewer people adopting problematic practices like directing their prayers to “sub-gods” (zeyer anpin, vs. elokim vs. ain sof).

So why am I doubtful about the account? Well for one thing, I’m unaware of any corroborating evidence. There might be a solid source out there somewhere, but I’ve never seen it.

But my real problem is that, in the context of avoiding controversy, I’m not sure it actually helps.

Why would someone create an elaborate, richly detailed map of the theological universe - complete with countless explicit claims about specific rewards and powers that ritual observance will deliver - if none of it is literally true? Worse: why would someone create a theological system that hinges on ideas that - on the surface at least sound heretical - as a cover for a system that’s (presumably) entirely loyal to historical norms?

That’s never how a meshalim work, right? The goal of every similar allegory I remember seeing is to present complex or challenging ideas in a form that’s easier for the listener to accept. The point is to help people understand things that they otherwise would have missed.

But the “mashal” proposed by this story is the exact opposite: it uses borderline-heretical ideas to mask a perfectly acceptable system that the listener isn’t supposed to ever understand! What possible good could come out of such a system?

So I think I’ll go back to the simple Hirschian approach that quietly and politely ignores modern kabbalism.