<html><head><title>[Aspaqlaria] Mysticism and Rationalism: Act I</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.aishdas.org/asp/wp-content/themes/twentyeleven/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /></head><body>Aspaqlaria has posted a new item, '<a href="http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2013/06/mysticism-rationalism-1.shtml">Mysticism and Rationalism: Act I</a>'<br />
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<p>I have been exposed to many misunderstandings in online conversations that revolve around the issue of Mysticism and Rationalism as competing strains in Jewish Thought. Including the idea that these accurate describe streams of Jewish Thought altogether. But first, I want to challenge the notion that the popularization of Qabbalah is somehow a byproduct of the Maimonidian Controversy, an “equal and opposite reaction” to what some saw as the excesses of the Rambam’s Rationalism. The <em>nevi’im</em> clearly spoke and taught an esoteric aspect of Torah. Aside from the obvious evidence in places like the Maaseh haMerkavah in the beginning of Yechezqeil, the short description by Yeshaiah, or the Man in the Throne in Shemos, it is logically compelled that there be an esoteric element to the prophetic tradition. After all, the <em>nevu’ah</em> is a state of awareness not experienced by the masses. Any discussion of how to get beyond the first step
s, what it was like, etc… has to be opaque to the masses. It’s not only like describing music to the deaf by using comparison and contrasts to color, it is trying to do so in sign language. From the prophetic tradition evolved the Sifrei Heikhalos. These describe the “palaces” of heaven, guided meditations that would help someone up the various levels from earth to heaven, allowing the practitioner to approach G-d. These too are filled with physical imagery describing what most of us haven’t experienced and aren’t currently equipped to experience. So we know the descriptions are metaphoric; and yet I presume to the initiate they really capture what they’re trying to describe. One more famous example is the Shi’ur Qomah by Rabbi Yishma’el, actually self-described as being revealed by the angel Metatron to the <em>tanna</em>. This attribution is more accepted than some others. For example, Gershon Shalom (Jewish Gnosticism
, pg 40) gives it <em>tannaitic</em> or at the latest <em>amoraic</em> origins. The book describes G-d in anthropomorphic terms, describing dimensions and each of the limbs of this Divine Form. How the <em>rishonim</em> respond to the text is illustrative. The Rambam is so sure it’s heretical, he describes the <i>Shi’ur Qomah</i> as a Byzantine forgery (Teshuvos haRambam, Blau, 1:201). R’ Saadia Gaon (Egypt 882/892 – Baghdad 942) took the approach I implied above, that the book should be read in the same light as the Maaseh haMerkavah. Which means the dispute over Who is the Man in the Throne — whether it’s a symbol to represent the Divine created out of the mind of the perceiver or a created being that is the embodiment of Hashem’s Glory (the <em>Kavod Nivra</em>) — would apply to the Shi’ur Komah as well. (R’ Saadia himself holds the latter with respect to Maaseh haMerkavah. See my earlier discussion in <a hre
f="http://www.aishdas.org/mesukim/5764/mishpatim.pdf" target="_blank">Mesukim MiDevash: Mishpatim</a>.) Meanwhile, there is a second esoteric tradition that speaks an entirely different language, as found in the numbers, letters, phonetics and combinatorics of Seifer haYetzirah. Tradition attributes the book to Adam, Avraham <em>avinu</em>, or R’ Aqiva, (R’ Moshe Cordevero says the latter, although he also suggests a hybrid solution — written by Avraham, redacted to its published form by Rabbi Aqiva.) But fortunately, our discussion depends more on when the book was published and studied than on when it was written. We’re looking at streams of thought, not the birthplace of an idea in obscurity. Rabbi Aqiva’s interest in Seifer haYetzirah brings its topics to the fore, to the discussion of Jewish Thought. Rav Saadia Gaon wrote a commentary to Seifer haYetzirah using a system of Hebrew phonetics he himself devised, mapping it to concepts in a mor
e Aristotelian philosophy system. Our first hint that the mystical and rationalist perspectives on things didn’t historically stand apart. R’ Saadia Gaon sees its discussion in terms of number, geometry and form preceding actual object, and its description of the various names of G-d as applying the various Aristotelian categories to our perception of Him. In Rav Saadia Gaon’s work describing his own philosophy, Emunos veDei’os, there are no citations from Seifer haYetzirah nor references to its mode of thought. In all probability his work was published in response to public need, which in turn was caused by social pressure. The Moslems of his time were embracing an Aristotelian view of the world. Aristotle was at this point 1300 years old, and so thoroughly dominated the world of science and metaphysics it was accepted as the definitive description of how the world works. Only details were considered questionable. The Kalam arose among the Moslems, l
ike the Scholastics later to among Christians, who try to unify their religion with this knowledge of the world, unifying revealed and discovered into one complete Truth. The Jews living among them were also struggling with these questions. The first publication of what we today think of as Qabbalah is when these two streams merge in the Bahir, originally called after its author, Medrash R’ Nechunya ben Haqanah (1st cent CE). For example, that is how it is cited by the Ramban. Although, part of the work does also refer to the Teverian vowel system, which didn’t exist until the Geonic period, so this attribution doesn’t work for the entire final product. For our purposes, we merely note its publication date, Provence 1126. This is when the public becomes aware of the idea of combining the 10 <em>sefiros</em>, which from the Yetzirah are not described beyond their role as digits, with the angelology of the Heikhalot. For the first time the 10 sefiros are desc
ribed in writing as channels which conduct Divine Influence down to creation, and angels in their own right. Just 8 years after the Bahir’s revelation to the world, the Rambam was born. Notice this means the trend toward publishing the esoteric predates the Rambam. The Rambam’s philosphy, like Rav Saadia’s, derives from the surrounding culture’s acceptance of Aristotle, or more exactly an Aristotelian neoPlatonism. The “Perplexed” for whom he wrote his guide was trying to accept both <em>mesorah</em> and secular wisdom. Ibn Rushd (“Averroes” in Latin, 1126-1198), who did the canonical translation of Aristotle into Arabic, included some selections from Plotinus’s Enniads, and it’s this blend of the two that gives the Rambam his point of departure. The Moreh Nevuchim itself contains esoteric material, material the author tried to hide from the masses lest they build an imperfect understanding that is heretical and w
orse than being left uninformed. For example, the Rambam writes in the introduction:</p>
<blockquote><p>THERE are seven causes of inconsistencies and contradictions to be met with in a literary work. … The fifth cause is traceable to the use of a certain method adopted in teaching and expounding profound problems. Namely, a difficult and obscure theorem must sometimes be mentioned and assumed as known, for the illustration of some elementary and intelligible subject which must be taught beforehand the commencement being always made with the easier thing. The teacher must therefore facilitate, in any manner which he can devise, the explanation of those theorems, which have to be assumed as known, and he must content himself with giving a general though somewhat inaccurate notion on the subject. It is, for the present, explained according to the capacity of the students, that they may comprehend it as far as they are required to understand the subject. Later on, the same subject is thoroughly treated and fully developed in its right place. … Seventh ca
use: It is sometimes necessary to introduce such metaphysical matter as may partly be disclosed, but must partly be concealed: while, therefore, on one occasion the object which the author has in view may demand that the metaphysical problem be treated as solved in one way, it may be convenient on another occasion to treat it as solved in the opposite way. The author must endeavour, by concealing the fact as much as possible, to prevent the uneducated reader from perceiving the contradiction. … Any inconsistency discovered in the present work will be found to arise in consequence of the fifth cause or the seventh. Notice this, consider its truth, and remember it well, lest you misunderstand some of the chapters in this book.</p></blockquote>
<p>The book opens with a warning to the reader that some of the earlier presentations are oversimplifications that may be inaccurate in detail (5th cause) and partial explanations of something we cannot fully comprehend, each valid in its own way, but not the complete picture (7th cause).</p><br />
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