“From Time to Time I Dream Wondrous Dreams”: Esotericism and Prophecy in the Writings of Hillel Zeitlin

Abstract

This article discusses Hebrew and Yiddish writings on prophecy and visionary experience ­authored by the eastern European Jewish writer and religious thinker Hillel Zeitlin (1871–1942). These texts, written over several decades in the early twentieth century, comprise both ­theoretical ­studies of religious and visionary experience as well as detailed records of ­Zeitlin’s own ­prophetic experiences, and reflect multiple objectives, such as articulating religious ­experience, ­defending the veracity of intuitive foreknowledge, and a turn to clairvoyance in response to ­social and political crisis. They likewise demonstrate the influence of two American writers, ­William ­James and Ralph Waldo Trine, who dealt with religious experience and the ­development of inner life. Whether directly responding to James or later formulating a system of intuitive ­clairvoyance inspired by Trine, Zeitlin utilized scientific language and ­esoteric ­systems of non-Jewish ­derivation such as mesmerism, New Thought, and parapsychology, which he ­integrated with hasidic and kabbalistic concepts. This article likewise analyses his ­enthusiastic reception of attempts by other Jewish writers to formulate scientific ­understandings of ­prophecy derived from parapsychology. Collectively, Zeitlin’s writings point to the place of broader esoteric currents within Jewish intellectual life in early-twentieth-century eastern Europe, a topic not previously subject to scholarly attention.