...The natural authorities best equipped to clarify problems [in the Talmud] were the heads of the great Babylonian academies of Sura and Pumbedita. These scholars, known by the title of gaon..., were the heirs of the amoraim and thus a primary source for explanation of the Talmud. The geonim continued to teach the Talmud in accordance with amoraite tradition...[For] the Jewish world as a whole, their influence was embodied in the responsa of which only remnants have survived... [Their] letters were the first commentaries on the Talmud, neither systematic nor complete but composed in response to need...Gaonic literature was mostly concerned with halakhic rulings and with the practical conclusions to be drawn from the talmudic text...
By the time the Babylonian center began to decline, in the eleventh century, two important Jewish centers had developed elsewhere. One of these was in the Maghreb (North Africa and Spain) and the other in Europe (Italy, France and Germany). They constituted the nucleus of the development of the two traditions - Sephardi and Ashkenazi, respectively - that differed in many ways from the outset...The Jews of the Moslem countries were strongly influenced by Arab philosophy, science, poetry and language, which were then in full flower. In contrast, Europe was then steeped in the ignorance and gloom of the Dark Ages...
איך אטעמה את אשר אוכל ואיך יערב?
איכה אשלם נדרי ואסרי, בעוד
ציון בחבל אדום ואני בכבל ערב?
ייקל בעיני עזוב כל טוב ספרד,
כמו ייקר בעיני ראות עפרות דביר נחרב!
My heart is in the east and I am at the ends of the west
How can I taste anything I eat and how can it please
How can I fulfill my vows and my bonds, so long as
Zion is in the cords of Edom and I am in the fetters of Arabia.
Leaving all the goodness of Spain is as easy in my eyes
as it would be dear in my eyes to see the dust of the ruined shrine.
- Yehuda ha-Levi
Available at http://www.zionismontheweb.org/yehudalevi.htm
The heavenly sphere and the constellations in their positions
strayed from their paths at my birth.
If candles were my stock-in-trade, the sun would not darken until my death!
I struggle to succeed and I cannot
for the stars in my heaven have crossed me.
If I were a trader in shrouds,
people would not die for all my days!
(כ) לפעמים מטעה היצה"ר לאדם ואומר לו שעבר עבירה גדולה אע"פ שאינו אלא חומרא בעלמא או שאינה עבירה כלל. וכוונתו שיהא האדם בעצבות ומכח זה. יבוטל בעצבותו מעבודת הבורא ית' וצריך האדם להבין הרמאות הזה ויאמר להיצה"ר איני משגיח על החומרא שאתה אומר שכוונתך לבטלני מעבודתו יתב' ושקר אתה דובר. וגם אם הוא באמת קצת חטא. יותר יהי' נחת רוח לבוראי שלא אשגיח על החומרא שאתה אומר לי לגרום לי עצבות בעבודתו. אדרבא אעבוד אותו בשמחה. כי זהו כלל גדול כי אין כוונתי בעבודה לצורך עצמי רק לעשות נחת רוח לפניו יתברך וא"כ אף שלא אשגיח על החומרא שאתה אומר לא יקפיד הבורא עלי כי כל עיקר שאיני משגיח הוא מחמת שלא אבטל מעבודתו ית' ואיך אבטל מעבודתו אפילו רגע אחד. וזהו כלל גדול בעבודת הבורא ית' שיזהר מעצבות כל מה שיוכל.
...Sometimes, the evil inclination misleads the person and tells him that he has transgressed a great transgression, even though it is nothing but a general stringency or even no transgression at all. And its intent is that the person should be in sadness, and through this influence, his sadness will shunt him aside from his service of the Creator (may He be blessed). And a person needs to understand this trickiness and say to the evil inclination: "I do not observe this stringency of which you speak, for your intent is to shunt me aside from His service (may He be blessed) and you speak falsehood. And even if it is in truth a bit of a sin, it is more spiritually pleasing to my Creator that I should not observe this stringency of which you speak to me, to cause me sadness in His service. On the contrary, I will serve Him in joy. For this is a great principle - that my intention in service is not for my own need but only to provide spiritual pleasure before Him (may He be blessed). And if so, then even if I do not observe the stringency of which you speak, the Creator will not be particular with me, for every tenet that I do not observe is from the point of view that I will not be shunted aside from His service (may He be blessed). And how should I be shunted aside from His service for even a moment?! And this is a great principle in the service of the Creator (may He be blessed) - that one must be wary of sadness as much as one can.
Source: Testament of R. Yisrael Ba'al Shem (1698-1760 CE) (attributed early 19th C.)
(I:15)...State and church have for their aim the promotion by public measures of human happiness in this life and in the future life. Both act on men’s convictions and actions, on principles and their application; the state by means involving the relations between man and man, or between man and nature; and the church, the state’s religion, by means involving the relations between man and God. The state treats man as the immortal son of the earth; religion treats him as the image of his Creator. Principles are free. Convictions by their very nature can’t be affected by coercion or bribery. They have to do with man’s faculty for thinking and judging, and must be decided by the criterion of truth or untruth. Good and evil have to do with man’s faculty for approving and disapproving. Fear and hope guide his impulses. Reward and punishment direct his will, spur his energy, encourage, entice, or deter him. But if principles—·i.e. convictions·—are to make man happy, he mustn’t be scared or wheedled into adopting them. Only the judgment reached by his intellect can be accepted as valid. To let ideas of good and evil interfere with his thoughts is to put an unauthorized judge in charge. Thus, neither church nor state has any right to coerce men’s principles and convictions in any way whatsoever.
(II:20)...There are people who want to persuade you that if only we all had one faith we would no longer hate one another for reasons of faith, reasons of difference in religious opinion; that then religious hatred and the spirit of persecution would be torn up by their roots and destroyed; that the lash would be taken from the hand of hypocrisy and the sword from the hand of fanaticism, and the happy days would arrive, in which it is said that the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard beside the kid etc. –...Since your beneficent efforts have robbed fanaticism of overt power, it may be putting on the mask of meekness so as to deceive you; it puts up a show of brotherly love and human tolerance while secretly making the chains with which it intends to hold down reason, preparatory to hurling it back into the cesspool of barbarism from which you have begun to pull it up...
Brothers! If you care for true piety, let us not pretend to agree where Providence’s aim is obviously diversity. None of us thinks and feels exactly like his fellow-man; so why do we want to deceive each other with delusive words? We already do this alas! in our daily doings, in our conversations, that aren’t especially important; why would we also do it in matters concerning our temporal and eternal welfare, our whole destiny? Why in the most important concerns of our life should we put on masks to make ourselves unrecognizable to each other, given that God for his own reasons has stamped everyone with his own features?...
(Transl. Jonathan Bennett, 2017)
Available at www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/mendelssohn1782.pdf
(ד) אתה תמוד את היהדות לפי יסוד תעודת האדם, וזאת היא לדעתך "אשר והשתלמות". — אמנם גם ממני לא נבצרה השאלה: האם כה ברור הדבר, כי "האשר וההשתלמות" המה באמת תכלית תעודת האדם? אוכל לשאול: על איזה יסוד הטבעו אדושם ההשקפה הזאת? אוכל לשאול: מה תשיב לקל הדעת, לבן בליעל, אשר השכרות, תענוג בן-רגע וספות הרוה את הצמאה, חשובים בעיניהם יותר מאשר הזמני והנצחי? אשאל: אם כל אחד לפי מעלת רוחו וחפצו יכונן את מדת אשרו? כי האשר הנתן לו, מוגבל במדה חיצונית, הלא יחדל מהיות אשר.
(4) You estimate the value of Judaism by the principle of the purpose of human existence, and this, in your view, is found in happiness and perfection. I could ask: Is it so sure that happiness and perfection form the goal and object of man's being? I could ask upon what basis you found this opinion, or what could you answer to the careless pleasure-seeker or criminal, who thinks the excitement and sensual lust of the moment a greater happiness than all temporal or eternal blessings ? Every one must be permitted to be his own judge of what constitutes happiness for him, for happiness decreed in accordance with any compulsory external standard, ceases to be happiness ! And the perfecting of one's being, the mounting of the highest intellectual heights ! By how few ever attained, by how few attainable!
"Nineteen Letters", Samson Raphael Hirsch, originally publ. 1836 in German under the pseudonym "Ben Uziel" (Transl. Drachman, 1899)
...Zionism has already managed to accomplish a wondrous thing, previously thought to be impossible: the firm bond between the most modern elements of Judaism with the most conservative. Since this has occurred without the need for either side to make undignified concessions or to make mental sacrifices, it is additional proof, if such proof was needed, that the Jews are a nation. This union could only be possible against a national background....
...But if amongst the more or less just criticisms of our movement we shall be accused of lack of patriotism, this suspicious claim is prima-facie false. Nobody is considering a complete and total exodus of the Jews from anywhere. Those who wish to stay and are capable of staying and assimilating will stay where they are and assimilate. If, after the agreement is made with the authorized political powers, the exit of the Jews will begin with all due order, it will continue in each country only to the extent that that country wishes to be rid of the Jews. What will cause the exodus to stop? Quite simply by the gradual waning, and eventual disappearance of anti-Semitism...
Source: http://zionism-israel.com/hdoc/Theodor_Herzl_Zionist_Congress_Speech_1897.htm
3. We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.
4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.
5. We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.
English
Source: Encyclopedia Judaica
...These mistakes are outgrowths of the primary error made by secular Zionism when it wished to erase both the feeling of isolation and also the phenomenon of shared suffering from our history books. The beckoning of the Beloved must open the eyes of all of us, even the most confirmed secularists. The State of Israel was not and will not be able to abrogate the covenant of, “And I will take you unto Me as a people” (Exodus 6:7) and put an end to shared fate, the source of Jewish aloneness. The State of Israel is as isolated today as the community of Israel has been during the thousands of years of its existence. And perhaps the isolation of the State is more pronounced than in the past because it is so clearly revealed in the international arena...
The assumption that the State of Israel has weakened antisemitism is erroneous. On the contrary, antisemitism has grown stronger and employs false charges against the State [of Israel] in the war against us all. Who can foresee the end of this anti-Semitic hatred? The Covenant of Egypt cannot be abrogated by human hands. We remain a scattered people, nonetheless attached one to another. Our fate is the fate of the Yishuv, and conversely the fate of the Yishuv is our fate. No segment of the Jewish Nation will delude itself by “fleeing to the palace of the king more than all the Jews” (Esther 4:13). Everyone must “pray for his friends” (Job 42:10). An American Jew must not be silent and rest until the danger in which the State of Israel finds itself is removed and passes. The inhabitants of the Holy Land should not babble about the “New Jew” that has been fashioned there, one who has no connection with Diaspora Jewry. We are all obligated to listen to the “Clarion Call of the Beckoning Beloved” (Song of Songs 5:1)...
(Transl. David B. Gordon, 2006)