Q&A: Kabbalah – Reliability
Kabbalah – Reliability
Question
I read here and there some of the Rabbi’s answers about the esoteric tradition. I understood that the Rabbi deals with it and takes it seriously [?]. Why? Why is the evidence good enough? Two thousand years of silence, and then suddenly someone comes along and announces whole reams of reality, (especially after the stories about de Leon’s wife), and all in all, when you look into it a bit, it seems not far from a development of the Greek philosophy of the time (the four elements and the like). [Which Kabbalah was the Rabbi talking about there? The Zohar? Rabbi Chaim Vital? Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto? The Vilna Gaon? I didn’t understand.] The fact that many people dealt with it is of course no proof. (And by the way, I read notebooks of Rabbi Chaim Vital where it looks like heaven and earth were turning upside down for him every other day?? Does that sound serious??) What about all the contradictions between these topics and the Shulchan Arukh and the Babylonian Talmud, where such things are never mentioned at all? Even in Rivash (157) he brings in the name of the Ran, who said about Nachmanides that “the rabbi of blessed memory involved himself too much in that Kabbalah” (and indeed Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel challenged this, but still…) So why should the Rabbi get himself stuck into it?
Answer
You assume that in order to use it and draw on it, one has to assume that it came down from Sinai. I do not necessarily assume that. Therefore no proof is needed. I feel that this world adds a significant dimension to understanding reality, and therefore I assume that some of the kabbalists had deep and accurate spiritual intuitions, and it is worthwhile to draw on them. From that, of course, follows an attitude of “respect it, but be wary of it.” Not every detail is binding, but the general principles seem to me definitely meaningful.
Discussion on Answer
About a prophet who changes Jewish law it is said that his punishment is strangulation. Is that also the case regarding the Ari, who stated halakhot based on “divine intuition”?
I don’t see any comparison. This is interpretation like any other interpretation.
I forgot to add—for those who claim that Jewish law certainly follows the Ari’s words because his words came from Elijah the Prophet or from a heavenly revelation:
If they are right, then the Ari’s punishment is strangulation. Right?
A halakhic ruling that originates in heaven is not binding. But there is no liability of strangulation here. He does not present himself as a prophet, nor does he instruct everyone to obey him. He states his opinion, and whoever wants can listen.
In my opinion, his claim is that the principles were given to him through revelation from above, but he uses them interpretively on the Talmudic and biblical texts and thus reaches conclusions. It is not that the conclusions themselves were given to him from above. Especially if the assumption is that there is a kabbalistic tradition from Sinai, there is no problem using it and interpreting it.
I read your remarks about Kabbalah in other places on the site as well.
And following that I ask:
A. If we do not believe that this comes from divine revelation (and rightly so—why should we believe the hallucinations of Rabbi Chaim Vital, who understood it that way; anyone who looks at his Book of Visions and Book of Actions understands that the man was floating pretty high), then what is the point of dealing with such things that do not come with proofs, and are not from Sinai and not from intuition? I mean things like: before the creation of the world there was contraction, there were lights that shattered vessels, and afterwards there came to be the world of Berudim, and so on?
B. Seemingly there is also no holiness in books of Kabbalah; they are like books of mathematics, geometry, and the like.
I am not speaking, say, about Sha’ar HaKavanot or Sha’ar HaMitzvot, where words of Torah are woven in, but about passages and essays that explain that before the creation of the world there was contraction, there were lights that shattered vessels, and afterwards there came to be the world of Berudim, and so on. Why should there be holiness in that?
I don’t understand these strange questions. A person who has false visions can still have very good intuitions. If I understand that there is something in those intuitions, I will study them even if in other matters I would not take him seriously. Especially if the details are visions but the core seems sensible.
I do not see holiness in books of Kabbalah, so I do not see a question here.
What new dimension does this add?
What technological development came out of all this nonsense? Did they invent an airplane? A smartphone? What they developed was the theory of charlatanism, and instead of understanding that this is charlatan nonsense, others fell into the trap.