“The Soul of Raw Materials:” Jewish Mysticism in Debora Vogel’s Modernist Poetics
Yael Levi
East European Jewish Affairs May 1, 2026 DOI: 10.1080/13501674.2026.2718821 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism |
| Key points | Argues that Debora Vogel's modernist poetry, especially her 1935 collection Akatsyes Blien, deliberately engages Jewish mystical traditions through Hebrew-derived vocabulary such as neshome (soul) and guf (body), encoding a Jewish mystical sensibility at the level of the word rather than through Jewish themes. This challenges scholarship viewing Vogel's modernism as divorced from Jewish textual traditions. |
Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper examines the literary prose of the Yiddish poet Debora Vogel (1900–1942) and shows that her modernist poetry was deeply informed by Jewish mystical traditions. Through close analysis of Vogel’s 1935 collection Akatsyes Blien (Acacias Bloom), I show that Vogel’s systematic use of Hebrew-derived terms reveals a deliberate engagement with Jewish mystical concepts. Crucially, this engagement operates not through Jewish themes but through Jewish form. Her deliberate choice of the Hebrew-derived neshome (soul) and guf (body) encodes a Jewish mystical sensibility at the level of the word itself. These finding challenges scholarship that views Vogel’s modernism as divorced from Jewish textual traditions, revealing instead how she used mystical vocabulary to create a distinctively Jewish avant-garde poetics.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mysticism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy | 1993 | Edited collection of essays | |
| Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mysticism and schizophrenia: A phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |