Group Members
Jeremy Buma
Nader Issa
Ember Parr
Quint Qualls
Colin Szklarski
In last session we discussed the Zohar and the Kabbalistic philosophy that was a product of it. It was in the year 1280 that Moses de Leon, a Spanish (read Sephardic) Jew, wrote the Zohar and became a co founder of the Kabbalistic tradition, along with Abraham Abulafia. De Leon formulated his vision of Kabbalah in the Zohar from having read Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed (of which he spent considerable effort and expense to have a Hebrew version made), Plotinus's Enneads, as well as having become friends with a follower of Abulafia's Kabbalism. The main seperation between de Leon's and Abulafia's Kabbalistic views was on that Abulafia's was viewed as more for a select elite, whereas de Leon's was more for the masses and more focused of the individual's participation in a grander scheme of repairing a broken world through their following of Jewish law. This idea of Kabbalah would be further championed 300 years later by Isaac Luria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Luria) from the Safed community in the Galilean region of modern day Israel. Of the utmost fundamental to the Kabbalah traditions are the ten sefirot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah#Sefirot_and_the_Divine_Feminine), or the emanations and attributes of G-d, with which He continually sustains the universe in existance and are described in the picture below.
There's much more to be learned about Kabbalah, but there isn't enough room or time for that here. In group, we finished up with discussing how the only major hang up to ANY major mystical tradition is that it most times is started by an individual that claims to have had some sort of esoteric experience and simply requires their disciples to take their word for it. We are left to judge for ourselves and use our own logic and rational to decide if we can believe their supposed enlightenment. For me personally, this is why Judaism in general and Kabbalah specifically seem to be attractive to me, for the more questions I have and the more answers I'm given the more things seem to make sense. But at the same time, in the Jewish tradition of studying Talmud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud), for every question we ask, not only are we asked a question as an answer (in order that the student might deduse their own answer), but then one has three more questions needing answered. So the learning never ceases and their is never a sense of understanding it all that we should not get lazy or prideful and cease doing the good deeds He has commanded us to do, as we mentioned earlier, to fix this broken world.
For next class:
Factual Question: What was the first book printed by the first printing press in 1453?
Answer: a Bible
Discussion Question: What was the major importance of the Renaissance and, to an opposite degree, the Reformation to the philosophical tradition?
Factual: What is The Zohar?
ReplyDeleteA: A book written by Moses de Leon which transformed cabala into the tremendous movement it became.
Discussion: How would the zohar compare to the Bible & the Talmad?