Kabalah? Is it for you?

I would like to defend the theses that it is better to leave the Zohar alone. But I would like to also say this with the understanding that often there are very good insights into the Torah which you can find in the Zohar and the Ari (Isaac Luria האריז''ל).
To I make my these clearer I want to say that what gentiles consider Kabbalah and what the Zohar and the Arizal [Isaac Luria] are about are two very different things. The Zohar is not about magic. It is a neo platonic explanation of the Old Testament.

And it is an explanation that is necessary  for many reasons. One is that the alternative--Maimonides [the Rambam] with his reasons for the mitzvot  based on Aristotle are not very convincing. Clearly some type of Neo -Platonic approach is necessary. [See other medieval kabbalists especially Avraham Abulafia and the Ramban (Nachmanides).] (I mean the Rambam might be right but in any case he is hard to accept and grasp.)

Yet I still have to say that my general impression of people that learn Zohar is that they start thinking they are the Messiah, and get other delusions rather quickly.

That is just one criticism of it. I have another one also. It is this. That the aspect of Torah which is Numinous and holy is not touched by the Zohar or the Ari. This is an inner holiness of Torah which has nothing to do with the things talked about in the Zohar at all.

I should say that I spent time learning Kabbalah, and I am familiar with many of the so called "kabalists" in Israel, so I am not completely ignorant about this subject. I learned the Eitz Chaim of  the Ari [Isaac Luria] several  times, and went through the other writings of the Ari at length. I read several works of the Remak (Moshe Cordovero) including the Pardes and the Reshash and prayed with the Sidur HaReshash for many years. I went through  several authors of Medieval kabbalah like Avraham Abulafia and others. A lot of this was very inspiring for me.  But still it has the tendency is to instill delusions into people.
I know the fraudulent kabbalist of the Kotel.  And I knew others that had actual insights. One fellow had virtual film going through his head showing him the life of people that came to him. [He was put into Cherem (excommunication) by Rav Ovadia Yosef]  I was close with many of the disciples and descendants of Bava Sali.

Also one odd thing was that people that learned Kabbalah also thought they knew how to learn Gemara (The Babylonian Talmud), even though they could never tell you a simple explanation in any Gemara  They seemed to believe their expertise in Kabbalah gave them expertise in everything.

So though Kabalah is a legitimate sub-section of Torah learning, still there is the problem of cults.
And the Sitra Achra that got mixed up with it also.

The main principle in terms of Kabalah is this: Sephardim are OK, Ashkenazim are not.
The Ramchal also is fine [as far as I can tell], even though Rav Hutner (Rosh Yeshiva of Chaim Berlin) is reported to have said that some aspects of his teachings come from the Shatz.] 

  So I say in general simply to learn in a kosher Lithuanian type of yeshiva.
And avoid kabbalists. [But it is still OK to go to descendants of Bava Sali for blessings and advice-not because of Kabbalah, but rather from the standpoint of being descendants of a tzadik which gives  certain kind of merit.]

I think it is common practice for nations to try to limit the ability of their enemies to launch attacks from nearby bases. From what I understand this was part the reason the the USSR absorbed different territories after WWII and the reason they demanded that American remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey and the reason that Israel took the Golan Heights.

In spite of my ignorance about American history I recently read a very nice book on the subject and it was amazing in given the basic overview with detail but not too much. From what I can tell it was not just the British but also France was taking American boats and men. The thing which triggered the war was that after both England and France had signed agreements to discontinue this practice, they kept on doing it.

Besides that England was not fighting Napoleon at the time. They were involved with an economic war with France. And this was part of the reason they impounded American boats they could trade freely with France and England. This bothered both England and France.
In the attack on Canada, America was intending to limit the ability of England to launch naval attacks against America.
I think this is common practice for nations to try to limit the ability of their enemies to launch attacks from nearby bases. From what I understand this was part the reason the the USSR absorbed different territories after WWII and the reason they demanded that American remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey and the reason that Israel took the Golan Heights.I think this was also the reason that America attacked Florida when it was owed by Spain and why it took possession of Alabama --i.e with intent to stop the attack the creek Indians.I will not even go into the reason for taking Texas.

Most people that lived in the USSR that I have encountered always have something nice to say about it. [I have been hanging around one of the former republics of the Soviet Union so when I say this it means that  everyone misses the USSR.] And they always start with: "It was not so bad." And they always include the word "stability." If you compare the USSR with what came before it and what came after it, it is hard to miss their point. Instead of free market capitalism as you used to have in the U.S.A. you have strong man tactics, or bully capitalism. [The same thing that Marx criticized in the first place]
And before the USSR there were massive pogroms in almost every Russian and Ukraine city. And Russia was fighting a completely ridiculous pointless war in the West and chaos reigned. And people concentrate on what was wrong with the USSR, but forget that the alternative was  already much worse and corrupt. and this fact continues until this very day Jan 2 2013.
I will not even get into the good aspects of Soviet Science and the massive efforts to make housing and transportation and medical care available for everyone at almost zero cost. Sure it would be better if a country had a free market system in which everyone had strong  Biblical values so that there would be an inherent sense of right and wrong. But lacking that, there is no question that the USSR was an improvement on what came before it and what came after it.

And sadly America itself is rapidly coming to the place where people are lacking all basic Biblical values and in fact need something like a strong centralized federal government to keep them even barely decent.in other words I would like Jews to be good Jews and Christians to be good Christians. But lacking that, I think you need something like a strong centralized government to keep people from hurting each other. And in America Christan are no longer good Christians and Jews either ignore the Torah and Talmud or go off into strange nightmarish Chasidic cults.
And the way the USSR dealt with Muslims is great lesson for us all. When some  Soviet citizens were taken prisoner, they send in Unit Alpha of the KGB. They caught one terrorist and sent his body parts to the other  terrorists. . Nor did they have some smart Beverly Hills lawyers arguing about Muslim Human and Civil Rights.

basic crisis of the Enlightenment.

Max Weber was the first person to see the basic crisis of the Enlightenment. [Rousseau and Jonathan Swift were the first to attack the Enlightenment but Weber saw that the whole project itself had entered a phases of crisis] (For bit of background information: The Enlightenment was political project or conspiracy to take power from princes kings and priests and give it to the intellectuals and scientists. It succeed like no movement had ever succeeded before. It said to the kings and queens: "Either you will listen to our ideas about justice and freedom or we will make you listen."]

This was a reaction against reason and a search more natural wholeness. The attack against the enlightenment had been started by Rousseau but the first one to see the actual dissatisfaction with reason and the ultra rational world of European Civilization before WWI was Weber.

This is clearly the reason for the radical movements of the twentieth century. The baal teshuva that feels the emptiness of secular America, the Communists and the Nazis-just some people went to religion to fill the emptiness and others went to secular religions like Nazism or Environmentalism or Radical Feminism.

All the above was stated clearly by Weber and later by Allen Bloom




I would like to defend the idea that problem with the Enlightenment goes back to Renaissance Italy from where the whole movement began with the Humanists and can even be traced back to Antiquity. The thing that makes me say this is the fact that even Renaissance Italy with all its glory fell into nothingness after 1500. From there it migrated to Northern Europe and eventually to the USA. But the seeds of its destruction are still there. It can't exist for any extended period without the Bible--without holiness, without a connection with numinous reality.

But this Bible [or Old Testament approach] can't work either without ancient Rome and Athens. Freedom and equality are in no way Biblical values. It's the unique combination of Athens, Rome, and the Torah that created Western Civilization.--and is needed for its continuance.
 
However there is a  problem with how many people approach the Bible. They look at it as if it is porous. They feel they can put in any interpretation that suits their fancy. For this reason for Jewish people the books of Musar [books of ethics from Jewish thinkers in the Middle Ages] are  essential. It is not that these books are so insightful into human nature  or into the Divine Realms [like Isaac Luria]. It is rather that they excel in the one thing the Middle Ages excelled in: logical rigorous thought. There is almost no way to get a self consistent logical approach to the Torah without basing yourself on some Medieval thinker. The reason is that that is what they were good at in those days. It is the same reason why no modern commentary on the Talmud comes anywhere  in lights years of one word of a Tosphot on the Talmud.

For Christian people this all would imply the need for them to learn the books of Aquinas, and Anselm and Abelard.

The modern Jewish synthesis of the medieval books of Musar are contained in the writings of the giants of the Musar movement of  Israel Salanter.
[But sadly that movement fell into the trap of frumkeit and' or the  pseudo  science of psychology.]

But the original Musar movement was definitely on the right track.

For a good example of what is wrong with that movement today a glance at the garbage written in Michtav Meeliyuah of the books of Avigdor Miller will suffice.

In conclusion: You need a balance between  Athens and the Torah. and neither one alone suffices. This was clearly the opinion of Maimonides and of Aquinas. And I would not even have to mention if if not for the problem that today the divorce between Torah and Plato and Aristotle has been completed  to the detriment of both. and this divorce was definitely against the world view of the Rambam, and the Baali Musar from the geonic school like the Chovot Levavaot. [Though I admit that this modern religious fanatic approach was in fact quite in accord with the Rashba, and others of the anti Rambam school. I can not answer this objection except to say that I think the fanatic religious approach is not for everyone. But it might very well be for some people. there was even for me a period in my life that i could not dream of tearing myself;f away from the holy words of the Torah and Talmud for even a minute.--except during the time between morning seder and afternoon seder which was the time periods that i got married in.]

The Musar movement

 The Musar movement is a movement based on the idea that people ought to learn the medieval Jewish books of ethics.] I have been critical of this because first of all those books are in fact medieval with all the good and bad that goes along with that. I.e. they are rigorous logical and powerful but highly scholastic and petty and have some false axioms upon which they base themselves..
On the other hand I had today an eye opening experience which indicates to me that Musar if fact goes along way in giving people a basic idea of the total world view of the Old Testament along with a good summary of the basic practices that the Old Testament involves. I.e. how it would apply to people in a modern framework.


Maybe I should make a quick list of the Musar I found helpful in case anyone wants it for reference.: Yesod Veshoresh Haavoda, Chovot Levavot, the 8 chapters of the Rambam on Avot, Shaari Teshuva, Maalot Hamidot, Sefer Hayashar attributed to Rabbi Tam,  Reshit Chachma. and the major disciples of  Israel Salanter: Madragat Haadam [Joseph Horwitz from Novardok, Simcha Zisel from Kelm and Isaac Blasser from Petersberg. His book, Or Israel is a masterpiece].


In some of these books there are ideas concerning science that are false. That does not make them pseudo science. Mistakes made in good faith are not pseudo science.
Catholics have their own sets of books of ethics that are similar in purpose and for Christian people it is probably a good idea to learn them.

natural law theory embodied in the Declaration of Independence of Thomas Jefferson along with the emphasis in Southern California to be an individual, and not follow the crowd.

There is a difference in natural law doctrines that have affected me growing up in the USA I definitely imbibed the natural law theory embodied in the Declaration of Independence of Thomas Jefferson along with the emphasis in Southern California to be an individual, and not follow the crowd.
This Thomas Jefferson doctrine is different than other theories of natural law.
The basic idea I should state here is that people have natural rights that they are endowed with by their Creator. These rights are natural rights, and do not owe their existence to any government. And here is the key point--governments are formed not just to preserve these rights, but also people give up a certain amount of their rights in order to form a government.

This is due to John Locke. Further the identification of Divine rights with natural rights comes from Thomas Aquinas.
There is a theory of natural law from Saadia Gaon who associates all laws of the Torah --Divine Law with laws of reason-not nature. This is a different natural law theory than Aquinas.
[That is also not necessarily the reason for the law, In the gemara itself there is the idea of reason for the laws. And teh question about what to do when the reason does not apply to a certain situation. This come up in Bava Metzia page 119. R Shimon ben Yochai said a rich widow, one can take a pledge for a loan from since the reason for the law not to take the pledge of a widow does not apply. The sages disagree. But in any case all agree the commandments are not the goal in themselves. Rather they are to lead to certain goals.

It is possible to defend the idea that one should visit at least once the grave of Nachman in Uman and say the Ten Psalms that he designated.

 While this can't be defended from the aspect of empirical knowledge, it can be defended as an aspect of a priori knowledge. This would not be a priori knowledge that comes by reason, but rather by non intuitive immediate knowledge. In this case this would be an area of all content and no form. The fact that there is no form in this area would be the reason why the faculty of reason can't perceive it.






 I admit there is a certain aspect of "faith in the wise" of this. But even the idea of faith in the wise can be defended. In general when you open a book on algebra, you have a certain amount of faith that the author knows something more than you about the subject. And you  also depend on the implicit belief that there are no errors in the book. Even the knowledge that there is one single error in the book would immediately force you to put it down. So you do depend on faith in the wise for this.


 This little essay gives an idea why I feel that the intuitionist school of philosophy missed a basic point about Kant.--that Reason can perceive universals. Once you get out of the area of universals you have to look for another source of knowledge. For instance the thing in itself. Once we are out of universals what reason do you have for thinking that reality should conform to what you think of it?
[Universals are explained by Michael Huemer: I have here two white pieces of paper. They are not the same piece of paper, but they have something in common: they are both white. What there are two of are called "particulars" - the pieces of paper are particulars. What is or can be common to multiple particulars are called "universals" - whiteness is a universal. A universal is capable of being present in multiple instances, as whiteness is present in many different pieces of paper. A particular doesn't have 'instances' and can only be present in one place at a time (distinct parts of it can be in different locations though), and particulars are not 'present in' things.]
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 Almost all ideas of the cult th Gra put into excommunication can be traced directly to Natan, the false prophet of Shabati Tzvi. The reason that most people are not aware of this is simply that they are usually not familiar with both sets of writings.

The area of non intuitive immediate knowledge is where the Intuitionists [like Prichard] are missing the point. They rightly see that reason perceives more than analytic propositions. But they do not see that still there is a limit to reason-the limit that it sees only universals.