Torah and Jewish Idea > Torah and Jewish Idea
Shalom
Kahane-Was-Right BT:
--- Quote from: muman613 on August 21, 2012, 12:10:06 AM ---You have heard that the Torah was.used as a blueprint for creation...
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Of course I've "heard" this. The Torah. Not Judaism.
You made up something new here.
(by saying Judaism existed before Jews and was a religion of mysticism... or something).
Kahane-Was-Right BT:
--- Quote from: muman613 on August 21, 2012, 12:14:08 AM ---For those not familiar with these concepts let me provide some examples:
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Here we go again.
You are providing "details" of things which do not support what YOU CLAIMED.
Kahane-Was-Right BT:
--- Quote from: Ephraim on August 21, 2012, 12:17:14 AM ---I understand he was not a Jew! But G-d spoke to him! Was he a mystic or a witch? Or just a nut job?
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That's a false dichotomy. Rambam is the ultimate rationalist in Jewish history, he is the antithesis of a mystic, and he holds of the concept of prophecy.
Learn Moreh Nevuchim and get back to me.
Kahane-Was-Right BT:
--- Quote from: Dan Ben Noah on August 21, 2012, 12:20:01 AM ---In my mind, the historical circumstances don't excuse passing off something like this as mystical "secret knowledge" that was handed down from time immemorial.
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Lol, that's what almost all kabbalah/chassidus passes itself off as. But you know what? Some Torah commentaries too. They make new interpretations of existing verses and then they say that was there the whole time, it has just been 'revealed' now. That's a valid path of textual scholarship. It's referred to as Biur. It's NOT Perush.
When they say it's "from sinai" or "secret knowledge" what they mean in this context (or what a rational person should understand them as saying) is: "Our interpretation is the key one, it has always been right there in the text but it took our brand of chassidus/philosophy to tease it out of the text and realize it was there, and it fits within our overarching system of thought perfectly."
Chabad makes a lot of outlandish claims on their Torah learning - for instance I saw a video where the Lubavitcher rebbe claimed that due to chabad chassidus we "finally understand" the para aduma. At first I was shocked, but then I applied the above dictum and I can live with that very easily - I can choose to disagree or stick to other interpretations that have come over the ages from Torah scholars.
--- Quote --- What you're saying is likely the case, but then that means the doctrine was never revelation preserved within Judaism but a response to something that is outside Judaism. Their circumstances may be understandable but that doesn't mean their resulting doctrines should be seen as true or binding on all Jews.
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Like almost all hashkafic discussions (with some extreme exceptions such as belief in God's unity and some of the 13 principles elucidated by the Rambam), it's of course not necessarily true, and definitely not binding on all Jews. A loyal righteous Jew could live out a long life of many years and devote himself to Torah study and mitzvot, and if he never picked up or viewed a single page of Tanya in his lifetime, it wouldn't take anything away from him. That's true of many texts, there are so many out there you cannot possibly be bound to follow them all. And there is a clear difference between halacha and hashkafa, between what is required to follow (Jewish law) and what is intellectual/philosophical pursuits where people have freedom of thought. Of course I understand Tanya can be enriching for people but that requires a pretty deep expertise in all other areas of Jewish texts and thought, and only then can one deal properly with some of the deep kabalah in it. And mass marketing Tanya is probably destructive IMO. But that's a side point.
Kahane-Was-Right BT:
--- Quote from: Dan Ben Noah on August 21, 2012, 12:24:44 AM ---I'd like to add that this reminds me of the Nation of Islam. Because of black slavery, some blacks came up with the idea that all white people were made in a test tube by the evil scientist Yakub. Ok so maybe there was white persecution of blacks in history but that doesn't mean you pass off black supremacy as truth ordained by G-d.
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Except that chabad was using existing holy texts and reading their interpretation into the existing texts. It's very different from Dr. yakub. Of course, some of the texts they used (ie, zohar) have questionable origins to begin with, so I'm modeh bemiktzas to you a little bit on this point.
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