Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 17, 2025
There are indications also that Babylonian ideas found an entrance into the Jewish Kabbala, the strange mystic system of the middle ages, the sources of which are to be sought in the apocalyptic chapters of Ezekiel and Daniel. Christianity as well as Judaism felt the fascination of the mystic lore of Babylonia.
The latter did not appeal to pure rationalists like Ibn Daud or Maimonides, and the former seemed unconvincing, as it was employed in a lost cause. For Neo-Platonism was giving way to Aristotelianism, which was adopted by Maimonides and made the authoritative and standard philosophy. It was different with the Kabbala.
THE KABBALA. From the beginning of the fifteenth century the Renaissance was heralded by a revival of Platonism, both in philosophy and literature.
Continuous persecutions, the establishment of the Ghettoes, the rise of the Kabbala and the opposition of the pietists and mystics to the rationalism of the philosophers all tended to the neglect of scientific study and to the concentration of all attention upon the Biblical, Rabbinic and mystical literature.
Nor were the Hebrews without their secret knowledge and their Schools of Initiation. The company of prophets at Naioth presided over by Samuel formed such a School, and the oral teaching was handed down by them. The Kabbala, which contains the semi-public teaching, is, as it now stands, a modern compilation, part of it being the work of Rabbi Moses de Leon, who died A.D. 1305.
In the second half of the seventeenth century, mysticism reached its zenith in Turkey, the country in which, had stood the cradle of the "practical Kabbala." The teachings of Ari, Vital, and the school established by them spread like wildfire. Messianic extravagances intoxicated the baited and persecuted people. In Smyrna appeared the false Messiah, Sabbatai Zebi.
Thus it was that mysticism and obscurantism took the place of enlightenment as a measure of self-defence. The material walls of the Ghetto and the spiritual walls of the Talmud and the Kabbala kept the remnant from being overwhelmed and absorbed by the hostile environment of Christian and Mohammedan.
And Ulick submitted that this scientific explanation was more incredible than any spiritual one. There was much else. There was all Ulick's wonderful talk about the creation of things by thought, and his references to the mysterious Kabbala had strangely interested her.
Amsterdam became a second Cordova. The intellectual life was quickened. Freedom from restraint tended to break down the national exclusivism of the Jew, and intercourse with his liberal surroundings varied his mental pursuits. Rabbinism, the Kabbala, philosophy, national poetry they all had their prominent representatives in Holland.
At the same time he too like his father realizes the danger of too much scientific study, and hence agrees with Solomon ben Adret that the study of philosophy should be postponed to the age of maturity when the student is already imbued with Jewish learning and religious faith. He was also interested in Kabbala and placed Jewish revelation above philosophy.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking