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Core Axioms of Judaism
- Thread starter prometheuspan
- Start date
Levite
Higher and Higher
You should know that neither of these sites deals with Jewish Kabbalah. The first site seems to have been put together by someone working with an Egyptianized variation of what is sometimes called the Western Qabalah, or the Hermetic Qabalah. This is a system of mysticism loosely based on Jewish Kabbalah, but put together largely by lapsed Christian and/or "neo-pagan" practitioners such as Eliphas Levi and Aleister Crowley. I don't know who exactly put together the second site...it looks like maybe some sort of Masonic or Mormon mysticism, or some peculiar thing of that sort. But it's not Jewish Kabbalah. I'm not, by the way, saying that there can't or shouldn't be non-Jewish forms of Qabalah, only that everyone should be clear that they are their own systems, and are unconnected to Jewish Kabbalah.
The truth is that the majority of the works of Kabbalah have never been completely translated out of Hebrew and Aramaic. That said, some significant works have been or are being translated, and you can learn more from them.
I recommend:
Sefer ha-Bahir (The Book Bahir), translated by Aryeh Kaplan
Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Formation), translated by Aryeh Kaplan
The Pritzker Edition of the Zohar, translated by Daniel Matt
All of these have substantial commentary and excellent notes provided by the translators, but even with that material, I caution you that you may find the material quite difficult to comprehend.
Kabbalah-- which most practicing Jews accept is part of the main stream of Jewish thought, even if not necessarily to their taste-- is the literary apex of a pyramid of knowledge. One cannot truly begin to comprehend the nuances of Kabbalah unless one has substantial knowledge of Tanakh, Talmud, Midrash, Jewish liturgy, and Jewish practice. And, of course, is able to read the fairly abstruse Hebrew and Aramaic in which it is written, to say nothing of being able to decode the deliberately abstruse poetic forms of the writing.
If you want more background material, Kaplan wrote numerous fine books on Kabbalah. The early 20th-century scholar Gershom Scholem also wrote several classic books on the Kabbalah, including Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, On The Kabbalah and its Symbolism, and On The Mystical Shape of the Godhead, all indispensible reads. Moshe Idel and Raphael Patai are two noted Kabbalah scholars writing today, and their works are well worth reading, although Idel writes quite densely. It is also worth noting that while Scholem, Idel, and Patai were or are scholars of Kabbalah, of those I mentioned, only Kaplan was actually a Kabbalist. And he was the great exception to the general rule that Kabbalists write in Hebrew, and their works are seldom translated, but scholars of Kabbalah may write in any language, and their works are widely available in translations.
Historically, there have been many Jews and movements in Judaism that shunned or scorned Kabbalah. But while many practicing Jews today don't study Kabbalah, and don't understand it, most consider it a legitimate part of the tradition, given that some of the undisputed masters of Jewish thought were Kabbalists as well as scholars of Jewish law and commentators on Tanakh or Talmud.
By the way, it should be noted that true, traditional Kabbalah has nothing to do with the Kabbalah Centre or Kabbalah Learning Centre, the (in)famous cult to which Madonna and many other celebrities belong. The people who run the Kabbalah Centre are charlatans and hucksters, preying on the gullible and the naive. Their organization is to Judaism what Scientology is to humanistic spirituality or humanistic psychology, or whatever the hell they claim to be sort of like.
:yes:
I remember eagerly anticipating each one, and pre-ordering them at the bookstore.
[email protected]
Yaakov's T'shuvah
Wow, it is amazing how much arrogance on this site, let me tell you. And I dont mean the arrogance of people, as those that are wanting to learn have really humbled themselves.
I mean the arrogance of the information. The only one that knows what he is talking about is the Levite. All of you have an opportunity to learn from a Jew from a Jewish perspective that seems to really know the world from the inside out. The rest of the posts on here are really badly misinformed and partly because you are not trying to learn truth as it was experienced through the Jewish people back then, but truth through your own experience of people. Not being devoutly Jewish, you couldn't possibly see the forest through the trees, because Jews have always thought differently, and have acted differently than human nature.
That is what Judaism is and has always been about. Taming the evil inside in order to experience God and carry out God's plan of making Earth a Godly place.
Now I quoted the above post just to see the silliness of misinformation. We have a Levite on this panel, I am also a Levite, and we have someone saying that the Rabbis killed off the Priests. The root of this information to be sure is very antisemitic, as it begs all kind of why questions that might fit into todays model of human nature and the way humans act, but it would be such a non Jewish act.
The business of Stoning, which by the way is not throwing rocks, but a rarely used form of capital punishment that involved molten lead poured down the throat of the criminal which would cause him to die in seconds. Much more humane than the electric chair or any other form of capital punishment today.
Back to the history. The Saduccees were Torah literalists. They did not beleive in oral tradition only in Torah scripture. So the problem the Pharisaic preists had with the Saduccees was that they were sloppy. For instance when the Torah uses terms like "Work" or " Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk" what does that mean? Well in order to perform the priestly duties, one would have to know the specifics, and yet they are not spelled out in the Tanach. So the Pharisaic preists banished the Saduccee priests, of whom we today call the "Essenes" as we have recently discovered from the Qu'umran scrolls. They were not slaughtered, just banished. Those were the ones that raised John The Baptist, and also took Jesus in at the age of 12.
Meanwhile the Pharisaic Priests endured. There were other mitigating factors as well. The Romans who were in charge allowed people to pay to become priests. You could pay, and you would go in to the holy places and usually you died soon or within the year because you were not of priestly origin. The Pharisees didnt consider the "money changers" to be as bad as the Saduccee priests, because a person that pays to become a priest is trying to connect to god and therefore respects the holiness and will perform the appropriate tasks in their proper orders. However, the Saducees disagreeing with Oral traditions, would refuse to keep the Temple Holy and that was much worse. Kind of explains Jesus getting angry with the money changers.
Now the Saducees apparently had more power in the Sanhedrin at the time, than the Pharisees. They had more draw from the wealthy as well, while the Pharisees had more appeal to the masses according to Josephus, but of course Jo Jo is a Yo Yo puppet for the Romans so who knows.
Levite
Higher and Higher
Thank you very much for the kind words about me. That is very generous of you, and I appreciate the acknowledgement. But I really do have to say that there are others here who have good knowledge, and are sharing it well-- and have been doing so since before I got here. It is also certainly true that Judaism is a spectrum of opinions, and even in the academic study of Judaism and the Bible, there are many opinions, and not all of them agree with mine, and that is okay in my book.
I certainly hope that this is at least one thing that Judaism is and has always been about!
Nice to have another levite in the house! Welcome inside, brother! Nonetheless, with all due respect, I hesitate to call the particular errors the OP may have made "anti-Semitic." I think and hope it is only ignorance, without any malicious intent. I have had to bust out the accusation of anti-Semitism several times on these forums, and so I hesitate to use it unless I am quite certain about what is going on. I surely hope that you don't take any offense at my minor differences of opinion here or following.
I am sure you mean Burning. I know you probably know this, but for the benefit of others, there were, Biblically, four permitted methods of capital punishment: skilah (stoning), serefah (burning), hereg (beheading), and chenek (strangulation). The Rabbis of the Talmud tell us that in all cases, the condemned was given alcohol and intoxicating herbs, in order that they should be either unconscious, or barely conscious when executed. They also explain that chenek was generally done by means of what we would call a garrote, serefah was done with molten lead (as you correctly explained), and skilah was done in one of two ways: either the condemned was buried up to the waist and then pelted with large stones until dead, or else they were taken to a high cliff, pushed over the side, and then a huge stone was thrown down on top of them. By today's standards, of course, these seem barbaric, but they killed very quickly, and were infinitely more humane than most of the methods that were being employed by the other nations of the ancient world. It is also important to note that many if not most of the Rabbis of the Talmud were unfond of capital punishment, and did their best to make it wellnigh impossible to execute someone: the perpetrator had to be condemned by eyewitnesses, who verbally warned him not to do the crime, as it was liable for capital punishment; he then had to verbally respond that he understood and was going to do it anyway, then do it, and to be condemned, he had to be convicted unanimously by a court of 71 judges.
I think it is less that the Saducees were "sloppy" so much as that they simply had a different theology and methodology of Torah interpretation. They were more or less literalists, but they also did have a loose oral tradition about how to interpret certain obscure verses. The chief problem of the Pharisees was that the Saducee tradition was not proper according to Pharisaic understanding; secondarily, that they were elitists (they believed in centralized religious power being confined to the priesthood, into which one had to be born; the Pharisees believed in religious power being held by rabbis, a position to which anyone could aspire-- all it took was study); and tertiarily, that the priesthood had become corrupted by money and royalist influence.
Actually, if I understand the archaeology correctly, the leadership of the Essenes and the Qumranim (it is not 100% certain that the Qumranim were Essenes, and not a different but similar sect) voluntarily left Jerusalem, because they also felt that the priesthood was becoming corrupted, but for very different reasons. They appear to have been obssessed with ritual purity, and also were apocalyptics. In any case, it was less a banishing, and more a self-imposed exile.
Maybe. Or possibly a different, but similarly ascetic sect. The end of the Second Temple period was a deeply sectarian time in Jewish history. There were a lot of fringe groups, and many messianic and apocalyptic sects, as well as politico-religious sects interested in throwing off Roman rule, in addition to the Pharisees and Saducees.
It is not clear that Pharisees ever made up a large proportion of the priesthood, although in the post-Temple period this changed, as Saduceeism dwindled, and the priesthood became a ritual office rather than a practical office. In fact, the balance of power appears to have been between the highly Saducee priesthood and the Pharisee-majority Sanhedrin, who tried to perpetuate Jewish practice in the face of the Roman overlords and their puppet kings.
Whether they died or not is debatable. The traditional Rabbinic sources say that they did, because they were heretics and ritually impure. Whether that has any basis in historical fact is highly questionable. It is certainly true that people seem to have become disenchanted with the way the priesthood wielded power, and gravitated more toward the Pharisees and the Rabbis whom they became. However, the corruption of the priesthood does seem established. The accounts I have seen, though, place the blame for this less on the Romans, and more on the monarchy. Of course, the Herodian monarchs were just Roman puppets-- most of them weren't even Jewish-- but this problem of priestly corruption extends back even into the Hasmonean monarchy, who, unfortunately, unsuccessfully attempted to unify power in the hands of priest-kings. And I think I am safe in saying that, even with the Herodians, the perpetuation of corruption in the priesthood was probably their own idea-- such small but complex internal power struggles would likely have held little interest for the Roman Imperium.
I'm not really certain that this is a fair characterization. The Rabbis of the Talmud don't have very much good to say about paying for priesthood, and the Rabbinic texts as interpreted by (for example) the Rambam (Maimonides) and Rav Ovadiah of Bartenura seem adament in their repugnance at the notion of purchasing one's way into the priesthood-- especially the High Priesthood.
You're certainly right about the Saducees having a substantial power base amongst the wealthy, and the Pharisees being more inclined to populism. But it is not actually clear that the Saducees ever wielded much authority in the Sanhedrin. In fact, while the Temple still stood, they seem to have become adept in figuring out how to make end runs around the Sanhedrin when they needed to do so.
Again, I hope you take no offense at my wishing to offer distinctions or clarifications. I really do offer you a sincere welcome to the board.
Last edited:
Deut 13:1
Well-Known Member
If you're to quote a website, how about quoting a website that people can't edit if they feel like it.
Jay's right, this thread is stupid.
On a side note....
Excellent point. Another good example is the commandment of Tefillin, no where in the Torah does it explain what the sign is that we are to bind on forehead and arm, but the Oral law does.
[email protected]
Yaakov's T'shuvah
Quote:Me
We have a Levite on this panel, I am also a Levite, and we have someone saying that the Rabbis killed off the Priests. The root of this information to be sure is very antisemitic, as it begs all kind of why questions that might fit into todays model of human nature and the way humans act, but it would be such a non Jewish act.
Quote: Levite:Nice to have another levite in the house! Welcome inside, brother! Nonetheless, with all due respect, I hesitate to call the particular errors the OP may have made "anti-Semitic." I think and hope it is only ignorance, without any malicious intent. I have had to bust out the accusation of anti-Semitism several times on these forums, and so I hesitate to use it unless I am quite certain about what is going on. I surely hope that you don't take any offense at my minor differences of opinion here or following.
Thank you Levite I stand corrected on a lot of items which clarifies alot for me, so thank you. I am also very happy to see that I got alot of it right. I wanted to note that I wasnt accusing anyone on this post of antisemitism, but that the information rang of antisemitic propoganda. This would be the type of story made up by Hitler, saying that the Rabbis killed off the Sadducees. It wouldnt surprise me if an American had heard the story and it became part of their perception of history, and so please forgive me if you felt I had called that person an antisemite.
However, I also have heard that there was a dark period of infighting and murder amongst the Jews of the day. I dont know much about it, and prefer to dwell on the positive histories.
I also apologize if my post was arrogant to say Levite was the only poster with good information. I am new to this bulletin board, and am used to posting on other types of websites, and that wasnt proper behavior.
Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a 41 yo religious Chabadnik, getting ready to go to Yeshivah and when I stumbled on this website, I was looking for the 13 axioms of Judaism and the hermeneutical laws which I wanted to learn more about. I was a religious studies minor in college in Florida taking classes with Jacob Neusner and Jim Strange. Kind of left the flock for many years and came back about a year and a half ago. Fell back in love with Judaism at a much deeper level. Thank you for the suggestion to write an introduction.
We have a Levite on this panel, I am also a Levite, and we have someone saying that the Rabbis killed off the Priests. The root of this information to be sure is very antisemitic, as it begs all kind of why questions that might fit into todays model of human nature and the way humans act, but it would be such a non Jewish act.
Quote: Levite:Nice to have another levite in the house! Welcome inside, brother! Nonetheless, with all due respect, I hesitate to call the particular errors the OP may have made "anti-Semitic." I think and hope it is only ignorance, without any malicious intent. I have had to bust out the accusation of anti-Semitism several times on these forums, and so I hesitate to use it unless I am quite certain about what is going on. I surely hope that you don't take any offense at my minor differences of opinion here or following.
Thank you Levite I stand corrected on a lot of items which clarifies alot for me, so thank you. I am also very happy to see that I got alot of it right. I wanted to note that I wasnt accusing anyone on this post of antisemitism, but that the information rang of antisemitic propoganda. This would be the type of story made up by Hitler, saying that the Rabbis killed off the Sadducees. It wouldnt surprise me if an American had heard the story and it became part of their perception of history, and so please forgive me if you felt I had called that person an antisemite.
However, I also have heard that there was a dark period of infighting and murder amongst the Jews of the day. I dont know much about it, and prefer to dwell on the positive histories.
I also apologize if my post was arrogant to say Levite was the only poster with good information. I am new to this bulletin board, and am used to posting on other types of websites, and that wasnt proper behavior.
Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a 41 yo religious Chabadnik, getting ready to go to Yeshivah and when I stumbled on this website, I was looking for the 13 axioms of Judaism and the hermeneutical laws which I wanted to learn more about. I was a religious studies minor in college in Florida taking classes with Jacob Neusner and Jim Strange. Kind of left the flock for many years and came back about a year and a half ago. Fell back in love with Judaism at a much deeper level. Thank you for the suggestion to write an introduction.
Good grief ...
