The Wizard Behind The Curtain
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.