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Eitan P. Fishbane. As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. xi, 322 pp.

the nations. Israel itself, in this account, is “figured as the primus inter pares, and its primacy resides solely in religious genius”—its mission “to disseminate the religion that will enable all peoples to rediscover their unity without losing their individuality” (57). In my view, it is impossible to support such an interpretation of traditional kabbalistic doctrine on textual grounds. Nevertheless, it is notable that such an interpretation exists and, perhaps more importantly, that this interpretation raises the question of the extent to which the particularism of Kabbalah must be seen as inseparable from other aspects of kabbalistic thought. That is, does such a reading do intrinsic violence to earlier kabbalistic thought, or does it successfully, to use a kabbalistic expression, liberate the sparks trapped in the husks? In this context, I would stress that a strength of Guetta’s work is that he avoids the temptation to lampoon Benamozegh’s readings of kabbalistic literature or dismiss them as mere apologetics. Rather, he allows them to be heard with all the sincerity that Benamozegh meant them. Indeed, the main shortcoming of this work, in my view, is that it does not allow them to be heard with sufficient detail. In numerous places, Guetta does not say enough. For example, we do not get a full picture of Benamozegh’s kabbalistic sources, which would be useful in situating him in the history of Kabbalah. Similarly, I found some of his discussions of Benamozegh’s attempts to reconcile various kabbalistic and philosophical ideas lacking in details. In the final section of the book, Guetta highlights the intellectual isolation that Benamozegh felt: “There were many who had heard of him and his works, and their compliments were occasionally hyperbolic, calling him master or genius. However, those who could truly claim to have read his books and understood them were few indeed. He was sadly deprived of dialogue” (175). The foregoing reservations not withstanding, Guetta’s work, especially now that it is available in an English translation, should go a long way toward bringing Benamozegh’s thought into contemporary dialogue.