[Avodah] More Philosophy, If Anyone's Up to It

[T613K at aol.com]

From: "Ira Tick" _itick1986 at gmail.com_ (mailto:itick1986 at gmail.com) 





RIT:  >>As far as Christian nations and Kabbalah, one must  keep in mind that
Kabbalah as we know it today began in the Arab countries as  a backlash
against philosophy after the Expulsion from  Spain<<
 
TK:   Must one keep that in mind?  I don't think the  Orthodox consensus is 
that kabbalah  only started after  the Spanish Expulsion 500 years ago.  
 
 
 
 
RIT:  >>... Interestingly, much of
kabbalah shares  elements with the Greek philosophic tradition (think
Neo-platonism,  Pantheism, etc) and at the same time Oriental
mysticism.  ... (BTW, we  know that much of the discussion of mysticism in 
the Talmud
comes from  Persian and Zoroastrian mythology; Lilith for example, who
has a large role  in Kabbalah, comes from ancient Persian demonology).<<
 
>>>

 
TK:  Before you said that kabbalah "as we know it today" is  relatively 
modern and started only 500 years ago.  Now you are talking  about mysticism in the 
Talmud, which you evidently consider to be something  other than "kabbalah" 
or at least different from "kabbalah as we know it  today."
 
I would like to say that I shy away from Kabbalah, partly because I have  a 
somewhat Hirschian view of it, which I will try to articulate although it is  
not easy.  That view is a rationalistic view, a view that places more  emphasis 
on things that can be discovered with the mind or through scientific,  
empirical knowledge.  It is not that I don't believe Kabbalah is true, but  that I 
don't believe it is for us.  It's something to be studied and delved  into only 
by rare individuals who are already middle-aged and already major  talmidei 
chachamim, and for everyone else, it can easily deteriorate into a kind  of 
game-playing.  
 
Some people use what has been called "practical kabbalah" in order to get  
what they want from the universe -- what my father used to call "pushing  
buttons."  Eat garlic and almonds, wear a magnet, recite these verses,  presto you 
will have a son.  There's also a higher level of practical  kabbalah in which 
what you want and what you are trying to get is something very  idealistic and 
selfless, like world peace and the coming of Moshiach.  The  buttons you push 
might even be mitzvos, like lighting candles in order to bring  peace into the 
Higher Spheres or baking challa with forty other women in order  to bring a 
baby or a refuah sheleimah to another person in need.  It's  still "pushing 
buttons."
 
Other people play a completely different kind of game with kabbalah, and  
that is an academic, intellectual game.  These are the kind of people who  don't 
actually study kabbalah but rather read /about/ kabbalah, like people who  
really get into Gershom Scholem (full disclosure:  I have read Scholem  myself, 
out of intellectual curiosity).  The game here is to show off  academic, 
intellectual prowess.  The problem with it is that it tends to  give its 
practitioners an unwarranted sense of their own superiority to the  actual texts of 
kabbalah and to the gedolim of the past who were  mekubalim.  The books written by 
secular professors in which they identify  the ancient Egyptian and Persian 
sources of Talmudic mysticism and the medieval  Arab sources of Eastern European 
kabbalah are books that au fond reject the  truth of kabbalah at all, but 
worse, reject the truth of /everything/ in the  Talmud and in our sacred 
literature.  
 
These academics tend to reject, not just a given body of mystical  knowledge, 
but the very concept of Torah miSinai.  When you get into  academics you are 
playing with fire, because the condescending superiority of  these professors 
is simply not conducive to yiras Shamayim, but to the opposite  -- to a view 
of Chazal as somewhat mentally childish, prone to superstition and  unaware of 
the actual sources of their own beliefs.   
 
Now, there /is/ room to read and study what academics say about Kabbalah,  on 
a need-to-know basis, for da mah lehashiv and for chinuch.  But a person  who 
is not himself a talmid chacham should really read this stuff very, very  
warily if at all.  I knew myself when I was reading Scholem, for example,  that I 
lacked both knowledge of Torah and knowledge of Kabbalah, and I also  knew 
that he himself was not frum, and I therefore read him skeptically, to  satisfy 
curiosity but not to assume that I now know kabbalah or that I now  know "the 
truth" about the historical development of Kabbalah.
 
As I said before, I tend to shy away from Kabbalah altogether and I  think 
that is the best course for the vast majority of Orthodox Jews.  It's  enough 
for me to know in a very general way that our actions here below  influence the 
cosmos.  I don't need and am not interested in any more  detail than that.





--Toby  Katz
=============






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