[Avodah] Rav Saadia Gaon, Kabbalah, Gilgul, Eilu vaEilu

[Micha Berger]

Branching from the discussion: Le'ilui Nishmas an Infant

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 11:08:02PM -0600, Brent Kaufman via Avodah wrote:
> Some time after that, R. Saadia, might take you aside and tell you one of
> two things.
> Either he would say:
> "Yes, I said that because there was reason to be careful of that kind of
> spiritual Zeitgeist, at the time I wrote it...
> 
> Or he would say:
> "Yes, I did write that, and I was incorrect..."

Or, gilgul isn't a thing. It's a bit presumptuous to assume that one of
the last people who actually came quite close to being rabban shel kol
Yisrael didn't mean what he said or didn't know the topic thoroughly.

I think the machloqes needs be left open.

> "The time wouldn't come for another 600 years, that it
> would be the Ratzon HaBorei to reveal these things to a wider public. He
> did so by sending..."*

There are deep problems with the progressive revelation approach to the
origins of Qabbalah. Because once you believe that we needed further
revelations after Sinai, you are opening up a Pandora's Box.

I would faster believe it's all in the original revelation, if only
latently and requiring an accumulation of learning until it is all dug up.
Like the take on the gemara about Moshe sitting in the 8th row in Rabbi
Aqiva's halakhah shiur that says that Moshe didn't recognize what R Aqiva
taught and yet R Aqiva attributed those teaching to Moshe because Moshe
got the pieces, and it took Rabbi Aqiva and the generations of work he
built on until the conclusion was put together.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 The same boiling water
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   that softens the potato, hardens the egg.
Author: Widen Your Tent      It's not about the circumstance,
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    but rather what you are made of.