Jewish Rationalism vs Jewish Mysticism
Judaism appears to be a very rationalistic religion, and Tibetan Buddhism much more mystical. Why is it that again and again in our history, the rational side of the Jewish mind has triumphed? Is Judaism inherently more rationalistic, or is our current view of the Jewish spectrum distorted by the last two centuries of Jewish experience, in which we have tried to assimilate to modern and Gentile expectations?
Just after World War I, when the great scholar Gershom Scholem began his studies of kabbalah, there was almost no one in the field. German-Jewish scholarship stressed the rational heritage of Judaism and dismissed Hasidism, kabbalah, and mysticism as superstition and nonsense.
Despite that rationalist climate, one that persists in many Jewish religious circles today, Scholem succeeded, almost single-handedly, in establishing kabbalah as an essential subject of Jewish scholarship. At the end of his career, he reflected on the impulses that drove his research. He explained that the questions that motivated him in 1917 were these: “Does halakhic Judaism have enough potency to survive? Is halakhah really possible without a mystical foundation?” Scholem felt he was trying to “arrive at an understanding of what kept Judaism alive."
He clearly felt that mysticism was an essential element of the Jewish spectrum...
There has to be a way for Judaism to find the right emphasis between logic and mysticism, without one suppressing the other.
The Jew in the Lotus - Rodger Kamenetz
Judaism appears to be a very rationalistic religion, and Tibetan Buddhism much more mystical. Why is it that again and again in our history, the rational side of the Jewish mind has triumphed? Is Judaism inherently more rationalistic, or is our current view of the Jewish spectrum distorted by the last two centuries of Jewish experience, in which we have tried to assimilate to modern and Gentile expectations?
Just after World War I, when the great scholar Gershom Scholem began his studies of kabbalah, there was almost no one in the field. German-Jewish scholarship stressed the rational heritage of Judaism and dismissed Hasidism, kabbalah, and mysticism as superstition and nonsense.
Despite that rationalist climate, one that persists in many Jewish religious circles today, Scholem succeeded, almost single-handedly, in establishing kabbalah as an essential subject of Jewish scholarship. At the end of his career, he reflected on the impulses that drove his research. He explained that the questions that motivated him in 1917 were these: “Does halakhic Judaism have enough potency to survive? Is halakhah really possible without a mystical foundation?” Scholem felt he was trying to “arrive at an understanding of what kept Judaism alive."
He clearly felt that mysticism was an essential element of the Jewish spectrum...
There has to be a way for Judaism to find the right emphasis between logic and mysticism, without one suppressing the other.
The Jew in the Lotus - Rodger Kamenetz
Bhagavad Gita: Time
If you know that one single day
or one single night of Brahma
lasts more than 4 billion years,
you understand day and night.
When day comes, all things emerge
from the depths of unmanifest nature;
when night comes all things dissolve
into the unmanifest again.
These multitudes of beings,
in an endless beginningless cycle, helplessly
dissolve when Brahm’sa night comes
and emerges once more at his dawn.
But beyond this unmanifest nature
is another unmanifest state,
a primal existence that is not
destroyed when all things dissolve.
This is the eternal unmanifest
and is called the ultimate goal;
men who reach this, my supreme
dwelling are never reborn.
[8:17-21]
Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation by Stephen Mitchell
If you know that one single day
or one single night of Brahma
lasts more than 4 billion years,
you understand day and night.
When day comes, all things emerge
from the depths of unmanifest nature;
when night comes all things dissolve
into the unmanifest again.
These multitudes of beings,
in an endless beginningless cycle, helplessly
dissolve when Brahm’sa night comes
and emerges once more at his dawn.
But beyond this unmanifest nature
is another unmanifest state,
a primal existence that is not
destroyed when all things dissolve.
This is the eternal unmanifest
and is called the ultimate goal;
men who reach this, my supreme
dwelling are never reborn.
[8:17-21]
Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation by Stephen Mitchell
Jewish Thought: Time
Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, qualities, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.
Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn; a shrine that even apostasy cannot easily obliterate: the Day of Atonement. According to the ancient rabbis, it is not the observance of the Day of Atonement which, but the Day itself, the "essence of the Day," which, with man's repentance, atones for the sins of man.
The Sabbath, p. 8 - Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, qualities, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.
Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn; a shrine that even apostasy cannot easily obliterate: the Day of Atonement. According to the ancient rabbis, it is not the observance of the Day of Atonement which, but the Day itself, the "essence of the Day," which, with man's repentance, atones for the sins of man.
The Sabbath, p. 8 - Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel