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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>From: "Ira Tick" <A
href="mailto:itick1986@gmail.com">itick1986@gmail.com</A><BR></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>RIT: >>As far as Christian nations and Kabbalah, one must
keep in mind that<BR>Kabbalah as we know it today began in the Arab countries as
a backlash<BR>against philosophy after the Expulsion from
Spain<<</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>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. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>RIT: >>... Interestingly, much of<BR>kabbalah shares
elements with the Greek philosophic tradition (think<BR>Neo-platonism,
Pantheism, etc) and at the same time Oriental<BR>mysticism. ... (BTW, we
know that much of the discussion of mysticism in the Talmud<BR>comes from
Persian and Zoroastrian mythology; Lilith for example, who<BR>has a large role
in Kabbalah, comes from ancient Persian demonology).<<</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>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."</FONT></DIV>
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size=2>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. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>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."</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>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. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>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. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>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.</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR><B>--Toby
Katz<BR>=============<BR><BR></B><BR></FONT></DIV></DIV></FONT><BR><BR><BR><DIV><FONT style="color: black; font: normal 10pt ARIAL, SAN-SERIF;"><HR style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px">Psssst...Have you heard the news? <A title="http://www.stylelist.com/trends?ncid=aolsty00050000000014" href="http://www.stylelist.com/trends?ncid=aolsty00050000000014" target="_blank">There's a new fashion blog, plus the latest fall trends and hair styles at StyleList.com</A>.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>