Deus Sive Natura — The Metamorphosis of a Dictum from Maimonides to Spinoza (original) (raw)
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The relationship between the dissemination of Maimonidean thought and the emergence of Jewish mysticism still requires clarification in order to understand more fully some of the major processes in the religious and intellectual history of Judaism. In the period following the death of Maimonides, two main interpretations of Judaism surfaced exactly at the same time and competed with each other in a conspicuous way, each of them claiming to represent the correct interpretation of Judaism.! Though this competition is a crucial fact in the development of Jewish speculative literature, there is no doubt that the Kabbalists learned a lot not only from the halakhic opus of Maimonides, but also from his other works and indeed profited from a variety of themes treated by "the great eagle.,,2 Here we are concerned only with the influence of Maimonides' view of nature on Kabbalah. We will be primarily concerned with tracing the developments within certain kabbalistic circles of Maimonides' understanding of the relationship between the natural and the divine. However, before addressing our main theme, let me briefly comment on the reverberation of an interesting Maimonidean concept on Kabbalah: his view regarding the constant miracles. Cursorily presented in his Treatise on Resureclion, 3 the conception of a natural order that conforms to the biblical requirements concerning human behaviour had a long and far reaching career in a series of Kabbalistic texts, starting with Nahmanides' writings. 4 Though similar views can be detected also in the writing of Jewish thinkers preceding Maimonides,5 Nahmanides quotes him alone when elaborating on the view of hidden miracles. The basic assumption of the existence of an underlying process that is occult by definition and is therefore invisible to the contemplator of natural processes, struck a sensible chord in the Kabbalistic view of reality. However, far from becoming occasionalists, in the sense of the Mutakallimun,6 the Kabbalists used Maimonides' view concerning hidden miracles in order to propose another level of processes which regulate nature. The biblical conception of the interrelation of human behaviour and natural processes did not satisfy the religious interest that dictates now the way of understanding the
The academic study of kabbalah is a new field, growing by leaps and bounds. Because kabbalah has literary, historical, ritual, cognitive, and experiential dimensions, it crosses many disciplinary and methodological lines. The discipline must therefore graduate from its initial focus on the textual. The roundtable aims re-examine methodologies for its study. We will ask four key questions: First, How do we define the disciplinary domain of kabbalah? Second, What are the most pressing questions in the study of kabbalah? Third, have we adopted new theories or methodologies in recent years? If so why? Fourth, What are the advantages and disadvantages of your theoretical and methodological approach to the study of kabbalah? Fifth, what comes next? To reach this goal the panel will be comprised of scholars representing different approaches. Hartley Lachter will discuss kabbalistic texts whose provenance is already established. He asserts the importance of social context to their meaning. Ronit Meroz, on the other hand, emphasizes the value of literary analysis not only for its intrinsic value but also as a means for deciphering the archeology of the text and its different historical strata. Vadim Putzu will draw from the burgeoning developments in the scientific study of the human mind, brain, and psyche, to discuss how the findings and methodologies of neurocognitive and psychiatric research may contribute to a better understanding of Jewish mystical practices and experiences to place its study within broader scholarly conversations in the fields of comparative religion, Religious Studies, and beyond. Pinchas Giller will explore the role of technology in the current practice and study of kabbalah, which opens new possibilities for both scholars and practitioners. Marla Segol will discuss the importance of new approaches to understanding gender, embodiment and sexuality beyond French feminism, grounded in the mythology and the scientific lore of the period, and understood through the various lenses of queer theory. Moderator Ginsburg, given his research using many of these methodologies, will aim to focus the discussion on how the above issues impact specifically on the contemporary study of kabbalah, and how they should shape it in the future.
The Theologies of Kabbalah Research
Modern Judaism (2014) 34 (1): 3-26 http://mj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/26/mj.kjt024.extract
The article argues that the academic study of Jewish Mysticism is based on theological assumptions which are are embedded in the use of the term `mysticism` as the major analytic category for the study of Kabbalah and Hasidism. It analyses the accepted definitions of mysticism, and highlights their explicit and implicit theological assumptions. The article further examines the theological presuppositions of the Kabbalah research of Gershom Scholem as well as of his successors (including those who challenged many of his scholarly assumptions), and their affinities to the theologies of modern spiritual movements, first and foremost the New Age. Finally the article argues that a non-theological study of Kabbalah and Hasidism requires their de-mystification and the abandonment of "Jewish Mysticism" and the major foundational category of this field of study.
HIST 388: Kabbalah: Science, Religion and Nature in Western History
What is kabbalah? Most literally, it is a Hebrew word meaning "tradition." Yet this tradition was one shared and shaped by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, who sought to look forward by looking back. It was no mere conservative form of Religion, as the term might imply to us moderns, but also cutting-edge Science. As such, kabbalah inspired some of the most celebrated thinkers of the premodern West-including the heroes of the Renaissance and the so-called Scientific Revolution-to read the world as a second, mathematical scripture. Galileo may have told the western European world that the universe is written in the language of mathematics. But his Muslim and Jewish forbears knew that hundreds of years before Galileo ever gazed through a Dutch telescope into the Tuscan skies. While inherently Western, however, kabbalist cosmology is fundamentally at odds with modern scientistic materialism: God is a verb, not a noun; the universe is alive, rather than filled with dead matter; not only humans and animals have souls, and hence language-plants and minerals do, too; all these souls reincarnate within cyclical time; letters and numbers underlie everything we see around us; mind and body are two sides of the same coin; magic (aka psychophysics) simply works. In this course, we will investigate the historical branchings and cosmological implications of kabbalah as a mainstream Helleno-Judeo-Islamo-Christian system of thought-one that sur-Kabbalah:
AN ESSAY ON KABBALISM AND PHILOSOPHY (Published in 2020)
Revista Sképsis, 2020
Abstract: This paper is based on the transcription of the lecture “Introdução aopensamento de Abraham Cohen de Herrera” (“Introduction to the thinking of AbrahamCohen de Herrera”), given at the II SinaCripto, at UFS/São Cristóvão-Brazil between the 19th and the 21st of June, 2017. Our original aim was to discuss some features of Abraham Cohen de Herrera’s Puerta del Cielo (c. 1570 – c. 1635); but, as soon as we started looking for secondary bibliography, we have noted that there are many issues surrounding, as a background, the production of Herrera’s above mentioned work. On the other hand, some of these issues – as, for example, the strict endogeny of Kabbalah, the transmission of Jewish Mystic Literature, the oblivion of Jewish philosophers in the narratives of the history of philosophy – do not concern only to Herrera’s works and life, but can be found in other instances related to the History of the Jewish Thought. So, we changed our original focus and, instead of talking only on Herrera’s work, we tried to trace back the origins and perenniality of those above mentioned issues. Keywords: History of Jewish Thought. Metahistory of Philosophy. Jewish Mysticism. Kabbalah. Abraham Cohen de Herrera.
"Maimonides’ "Guide of the Perplexed" and the Kabbalah", Jewish History 18,2-3 (2004) 197-226
Medieval Jewish mysticism was a multiform project in which Maimonides played different roles, for different mystical streams, and at different times. Maimonides' impact on Kabbalah was such that understanding the histories of both medieval Jewish philosophy and mysticism requires a more integrative approach than is usually adopted. The investigation into the activities of Abraham Abulafia as Maimonidean commentator and publicist undertaken here illustrates this point.