The Romance of a People: The History of the Jews by Howard Fast & Rafaello Busoni

Author:Howard Fast & Rafaello Busoni [Fast, Howard & Busoni, Rafaello]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B002V7K42Y
Publisher: Hebrew Publishing Company
Published: 1942-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

At some point in telling the story of the Jews, one must deal with Cabala (cabala, Hebrew for “what is received”), and the point is almost arbitrary, since Cabala runs like a thread through Jewish history for two and a half thousand years, from the time of the exile to today, and has made so deep an impression on Jewish thought that even Jews who know nothing about it as Cabala are influenced by it. However, in the final two centuries of Jewish presence in Spain, Cabala was elevated and advanced and became perhaps the most important single philosophical current of the time—which provides a good reason for discussing it in the Spanish context.

Cabala is an esoteric and mystic doctrine, derived by the Jews out of the very ancient past, and like all esoteric doctrines, directed toward a limited rather than a mass group. Yet at times it permeated the thought and action of most of the Jewish people; and even when it was limited it left its residue among the masses. Cabala deals with God and the universe, their relation to each other and man’s relationship to both. It is essentially a part of Rabbinical Judaism, for it came into being as a trend after the exile and among the rabbis—possibly under the influence of eastern religion, when the way was opened from Babylon into India, and likely enough under the influence of Buddhism, with which it has many important points of identity.

In the first centuries of our era, after Hillel—who was certainly influenced by Cabala—a group of rabbis arose whose lifelong training was in Cabala, who were called ba’ale hacabala and sometimes mekubalim, and were generically known as maskilim, Hebrew for “men of wisdom.” These mekubalim have no precise equivalent in our culture or language, and I think that the only proper translation of mekubalim is in the Hindu word guru, which means a combination of teacher and religious leader, for unlike the prophets, the mekubalim did not claim divine inspiration but rather inner experience. The word itself is very ancient, and like many Hebrew words which do not yield to precise meaning, its meaning and origin are in dispute.

Cabala is a most complex subject. Taught at first as purely oral commentary, half concealed, called in Hebrew hokmah nistarah, which means “the hidden wisdom,” it was presently turned into a written literature which existed alongside the Talmud, an enormous literature finally, the most famous part of which is the Zohar. But the plain fact of the matter is that Cabala lost itself in its own complexity, immersed itself in symbolism which became meaningless without the keys to the symbols; and then, in the nineteenth century, when the European Jew burst out of the ghetto, shook off his ghetto beliefs, came by the millions to America, and gloried in the new rationalism, Cabala was relegated to the world of mumbo jumbo, magic, and assorted idiocies. Denunciation of Cabala (and of most religion) became a part of free entry into

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.