Torah and Jewish Idea > Torah and Jewish Idea

Zohar, Log Ba'omer and Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai

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muman613:
Kabbalah is always secondary to Talmud and Torah. As was said before, Halacha should be derived from Talmud and Torah and not from the Kabbalah.

Everything in our tradition has many ways to be understood. There is the concept that there are at least 70 ways to interpret every pasuk, and even every word. I do believe that there are concepts which are encoded in the text which is one reason some words are spelled with extra or missing letters, and some letters are smaller and some larger.

One of the wonderful things about Judaism, in my opinion, is that a man can never learn it all... There is always more to learn, and more spiritual paths to follow in our growth, and our development of our middot/character traits.

edu:
 Kahane-Was-Right BT made the following point

--- Quote ---In fact it's very interesting and to me illustrative that Rabbi Emden did not just "prove them wrong" within kabbala, since if as you say, they simply distorted the zohar and kabbalah, he could easily do so.  Instead he chose a different route to combat them, namely to discredit some of the foundation of that kabbalah and bring Jews to a more realistic relationship with such texts.   He took shots at its foundation by citing proofs against tannaic authorship in order to establish the proper tier in which such texts and ideas should be placed.   The halachic hierarchy supersedes this kind of hashkafic mysticism, and that was his precise tactic to discredit the sabbateans.   There was no sense to delve into the kabbala itself because 1. their kabbala (actually, Nathan of Gaza's kabbala) was very sophisticated and reasonably evolved what came before them and 2.  It appears to me that Rabbi Emden recognized that what they were doing with the kabbalah, if indeed the kabbalistic system allows them to do such a thing, proves that this entire system is secondary and must always be secondary to halacha because no one can override the oral law and any system that "enables" us to do so is inherently flawed.   Not to say there is nothing in it, there are some deep ideas in the kabalah, and Rabbi Emden obviously did not reject kabbalah, but my point is to put it in its proper perspective, and I think THAT is how we should interpret his "criticisms" of the zohar.   Yes, a deep and wonderful text, but not everything claimed about it is true (he gives examples), and certainly it is not of tannaic authorship, (whereas mishna is!), and there is ample ground to minimize its importance or prominence in Jewish scholarship and practice.
--- End quote ---
I would just like to add the problem is not just with Sabbateans it is also a real problem even today where certain people are using Kabbala to justify Heresy
see for example http://rebbegod.blogspot.com/2006/01/rebbegod-blog-faq.html where Kabbalistic ideas are being used to justify turning Rabbi Schneerson into a new version of the Christian Jeersus

Kahane-Was-Right BT:

--- Quote from: edu on May 27, 2011, 12:31:06 AM --- Kahane-Was-Right BT made the following pointI would just like to add the problem is not just with Sabbateans it is also a real problem even today where certain people are using Kabbala to justify Heresy
see for example http://rebbegod.blogspot.com/2006/01/rebbegod-blog-faq.html where Kabbalistic ideas are being used to justify turning Rabbi Schneerson into a new version of the Christian Jeersus

--- End quote ---

Indeed I certainly don't deny that that is a real problem today.

Kahane-Was-Right BT:

--- Quote from: muman613 on May 24, 2011, 02:36:37 AM ---Kabbalah is always secondary to Talmud and Torah. As was said before, Halacha should be derived from Talmud and Torah and not from the Kabbalah.
--- End quote ---

Muman, on this I would agree with you completely 100%.  However it should be noted that this was a point of major controversy and difference of opinion over the ages whereby certain great halakhic authorities did indeed feel that kabbalah should play a role/have a say in the halachic decision making - no less than the great Rabbi Yosef Caro author of the shulchan aruch at times incorporated the opinions within the zohar to his psak halacha (as one major example, this helps to explain why sephardim do not wear tefillin on hol hamoed - the zohar says not to and he paskened according to that for that issue).  So there are multiple approaches to the halacha / kabbalah balance and these vary within the different groups of orthodox Jews and their poskim.   However I feel strongly that zohar need not be involved in halachic decisions which should be drawn from talmud.

HEBREWHONOR:
Kahane-Was-Right BT  - sorry for the delay i actually didn't saw your reply untill now.

"But at the time it was not as you say.  "
We are speaking about the post-Sabbatai Zevi era , where rabbi's like rabbi yaacov emdeen alav hashalom and others tried to prevent any other sabbatean movement from emerging , though .  

as for the claim itself that the sabbatean movement "took the zohar/kabbalah to its logical conclusions" as you put, I'm not sure that this was the case, in fact nathan of gaza went so far with his commentary it reached levels of absurdity never seen or heard before. But either way , again , we speak about the post-sabbatean era. in which rabbi's fought against the possibility of it happening again.

"and there is ample ground to minimize its importance or prominence in Jewish scholarship and practice."

Again, You cannot use rabbi emdeen position against rabbi emdeen's own position . he considered the book holy , and antique .not from the time of mishna , but most of it from the era of the Amoraim and the geonim that's a fact. what i mean to say is , Your goal wasn't his goal.

" It appears to me that Rabbi Emden recognized that what they were doing with the kabbalah, if indeed the kabbalistic system allows them to do such a thing, proves that this entire system is secondary and must always be secondary to halacha because ... "

he himself btw, used "hanhagot" (הנהגות , not sure how to write this concept in english, if someone knows ,will be appreciated)  of the zohar ,this hanhagot was even brought in his own siddur .

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