The Wizard Behind the Curtain: Divine Concealment, and Human Suffering in Frank Baum's American Midrash
Julian Ungar-Sargon
Abstract
This essay examines L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz
as an inadvertent American midrash that parallels kabbalistic themes of divine
concealment, exile, and the paradoxical nature of ultimate reality. Drawing
upon the heretical kabbalistic traditions associated with Rabbi Yonasan
Eybeschütz, Elliot Wolfson's scholarship on the apophatic dimensions of Jewish mysticism,
and the Lubavitcher Rebbe's teachings on atzmut (divine essence), this analysis
positions Dorothy's journey as a narrative of mystical descent and the
confrontation with divine absence. The essay contrasts this darker theological
reading with the more benevolent psychological interpretations found in works
such as those by Yonason Gershom, arguing that Baum's text unconsciously echoes
the most radical currents of Jewish mystical thought.