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CHAPTER VI
JEWISH MYSTICISM
'Judaism is often called the religion of reason. It is this, but it is
also the religion of the soul. It recognises the value of that mystic
insight, those indefinable intuitions which, taking up the task at the
point where the mind impotently abandons it, carries us straight into the
presence of the King. Thus it has found room both for the keen speculator
on theological problems and for the mystic who, because he feels God,
declines to reason about Him--for a Maimonides and a Mendelssohn, but also
for a Nachmanides, a Vital, and a Luria' (M. Joseph, _op. cit._,
p. 47). Used in a vague way, mysticism stands for spiritual inwardness.
Religion without mysticism, said Amiel, is a rose without perfume. This
saying is no more precise and no more informing than Matthew Arnold's
definition of religion as morality touched with emotion. Neither
mysticism nor an emotional touch makes religion. They are as often as not
concomitants of a pathological state which is the denial of religion. But
if mysticism means a personal attitude towards God in which the heart is
active as well as the mind, then religion cannot exist without mysticism.
When, however, we regard mysticism as what it very often is, as an
antithesis to institutional religion and a revolt against authority
and forms, then it may seem at first sight paradoxical to recognise
the mystic's claim to the hospitality of Judaism. That a religion which
produced the Psalter, and not only produced it, but used it with never
a break, should be a religion, with intensely spiritual possibilities,
and its adherents capable of a vivid sense of the nearness of God, with
an ever-felt and never-satisfied longing for communion with Him, is what
we should fully expect. But this expectation would rather make us look
for an expression on the lines of the 119th Psalm, in which the Law is so
markedly associated with freedom and spirituality. Judaism, after all,
allowed to authority and Law a supreme place. But the mystic relies on
his own intuitions, depends on his personal experiences. Judaism, on the
other hand, is a scheme in which personal experiences only count in so
far as they are brought into the general fund of the communal experience.
But in discussing Judaism it is always imperative to discard all
_a priori_ probabilities. Judaism is the great upsetter of
the probable. Analyse a tendency of Judaism and predict its logical
consequences, and then look in Judaism for consequences quite other than
these. Over and over again things are not what they ought to be. The
sacrificial system should have destroyed spirituality; in fact, it
produced the Psalter, 'the hymnbook of the second Temple.' Pharisaism
ought to have led to externalism; in fact, it did not, for somehow
excessive scrupulosity in rite and pietistic exercises went hand in hand
with simple faith and religious inwardness. So, too, the expression of
ethics and religion as Law ought to have suppressed individuality; in
fact, it sometimes gave an impulse to each individual to try to impose
his own concepts, norms, and acts as a Law upon the rest. Each thought
very much for himself, and desired that others should think likewise. We
have already seen that in matters of dogma there never was any corporate
action at all; in ancient times, as now, it is not possible to pronounce
definitely on the dogmatic teachings of Judaism. Though there has been and
is a certain consensus of opinion on many matters, yet neither in practice
nor in beliefs have the local, the temporal, the personal elements ever
been negligible. In order to expound or define a tenet or rite of Judaism
it is mostly necessary to go into questions of time and place and person.
Perhaps, then, we ought to be prepared to find, as in point of fact we
do find, within the main body of Judaism, and not merely as a freak of
occasional eccentrics, distinct mystical tendencies. These tendencies
have often been active well inside the sphere of the Law. Mysticism was,
as we shall see, sometimes a revolt against Law; but it was often, in
Judaism as in the Roman Catholic Church, the outcome of a sincere and
even passionate devotion to authority. Jewish mysticism, in particular,
starts as an interpretation of the Scriptures. Certain truths were arrived
at by man either intuitively or rationally, and these were harmonised
with the Bible by a process of lifting the veil from the text, and thus
penetrating to the true meaning hidden beneath the letter. Allegorical
and esoteric exegesis always had this aim: to find written what had
been otherwise found. Honour was thus done to the Scriptures, though the
latter were somewhat cavalierly treated in the process; Philo's doctrine
(at the beginning of the Christian era) and the great canonical book of
the mediaeval Cabbala, the Zohar (beginning of the fourteenth century),
were alike in this, they were largely commentaries on the Pentateuch.
Maimonides in the twelfth century followed the same method, and only
differed from these in the nature of his deductions from Scripture. This
prince of rationalists agreed with the mystics in adopting an esoteric
exegesis. But he read Aristotle into the text, while the mystics read
Plato into it. They were alike faithful to the Law, or rather to their
own interpretations of its terms.
But further than this,--a large portion of Jewish mysticism was the
work of lawyers. Some of the foremost mystics were famous Talmudists,
men who were appealed to for decisions on ritual and conduct. It is
a phenomenon that constantly meets us in Jewish theology. There were
antinomian mystics and legalistic opponents of mysticism, but many,
like Nachmanides (1195-1270) and Joseph Caro (1488-1575), doubled the
parts of Cabbalist and Talmudist. That Jewish mysticism comes to look
like a revolt against the Talmud is due to the course of mediaeval
scholasticism. While Aristotle was supreme, it was impossible for man
to conceive as knowable anything unattainable by reason. But reason must
always leave God as unknowable. Mysticism did not assert that God was
knowable, but it substituted something else for this spiritual scepticism.
Mysticism started with the conviction that God was unknowable by reason,
but it held that God was nevertheless realisable in the human experience.
Accepting and adopting various Neo-Platonic theories of emanation,
elaborating thence an intricate angelology, the mystics threw a bridge
over the gulf between God and man. Philo's Logos, the Personified Wisdom
of the Palestinian Midrash, the demiurge of Gnosticism, the incarnate
Christ, were all but various phases of this same attempt to cross an
otherwise impassable chasm. Throughout its whole history, Jewish mysticism
substituted mediate creation for immediate creation out of nothing, and
the mediate beings were not created but were emanations. This view was
much influenced by Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021-1070). God is to Gabirol
an absolute Unity, in which form and substance are identical. Hence
He cannot be attributively defined, and man can know Him only by means
of beings which emanate from Him. Nor was this idea confined to Jewish
philosophy of the Greece-Arabic school. The German Cabbala, too, which
owed nothing directly to that school, held that God was not rationally
knowable. The result must be, not merely to exalt visionary meditation
over calm ratiocination, but to place reliance on inward experience
instead of on external authority, which makes its appeal necessarily to
the reason. Here we see elements of revolt. For, as Dr. L. Ginzberg well
says, 'while study of the Law was to Talmudists the very acme of piety,
the mystics accorded the first place to prayer, which was considered
as a mystical progress towards God, demanding a state of ecstasy.' The
Jewish mystic must invent means for inducing such a state, for Judaism
cannot endure a passive waiting for the moving spirit. The mystic soul
must learn how to mount the chariot (Merkaba) and ride into the inmost
halls of Heaven. Mostly the ecstatic state was induced by fasting and
other ascetic exercises, a necessary preliminary being moral purity;
then there were solitary meditations and long night vigils; lastly,
prescribed ritual of proved efficacy during the very act of prayer. Thus
mysticism had a farther attraction for a certain class of Jews, in that
it supplied the missing element of asceticism which is indispensable to
men more austerely disposed than the average Jew.
In the sixteenth century a very strong impetus was given to Jewish
mysticism by Isaac Luria (1534-1572). His chief contributions to the
movement were practical, though he doubtless taught a theoretical
Cabbala also. But Judaism, even in its mystical phases, remains a
religion of conduct. Luria was convinced that man can conquer matter;
this practical conviction was the moving force of his whole life. His
own manner of living was saintly; and he taught his disciples that
they too could, by penitence, confession, prayer, and charity, evade
bodily trammels and send their souls straight to God even during their
terrestrial pilgrimage. Luria taught all this not only while submitting
to Law, but under the stress of a passionate submission to it. He added
in particular a new beauty to the Sabbath. Many of the most fascinatingly
religious rites connected now with the Sabbath are of his devising. The
white Sabbath garb, the joyous mystical hymns full of the Bride and of
Love, the special Sabbath foods, the notion of the 'over-Soul'--these
and many other of the Lurian rites and fancies still hold wide sway
in the Orient. The 'over-Soul' was a very inspiring conception, which
certainly did not originate with Luria. According to a Talmudic Rabbi
(Resh Lakish, third century), on Adam was bestowed a higher soul on
the Sabbath, which he lost at the close of the day. Luria seized upon
this mystical idea, and used it at once to spiritualise the Sabbath and
attach to it an ecstatic joyousness. The ritual of the 'over-Soul' was
an elaborate means by which a relation was established between heaven
and earth. But all this symbolism had but the slightest connection with
dogma. It was practical through and through. It emerged in a number of new
rites, it based itself on and became the cause of a deepening devotion to
morality. Luria would have looked with dismay on the moral laxity which
did later on intrude, in consequence of unbridled emotionalism and mystic
hysteria. There comes the point when he that interprets Law emotionally
is no longer Law-abiding. The antinomian crisis thus produced meets us in
the careers of many who, like Sabbatai Zebi, assumed the Messianic role.
Jewish mysticism, starting as an ascetic corrective to the conventional
hedonism, lost its ascetic character and degenerated into licentiousness.
This was the case with the eighteenth-century mysticism known as
Chassidism, though, as its name ('Saintliness') implies, it was
innocent enough at its initiation. Violent dances, and other emotional
and sensual stimulations, led to a state of exaltation during which
the line of morality was overstepped. But there was nevertheless,
as Dr. Schechter has shown, considerable spiritual worth and beauty
in Chassidism. It transferred the centre of gravity from thinking to
feeling; it led away from the worship of Scripture to the love of God.
The fresh air of religion was breathed once more, the stars and the open
sky replaced the midnight lamp and the college. But it was destined to
raise a fog more murky than the confined atmosphere of the study. The
man with the book was often nearer God than was the man of the earth.
The opposition of Talmudism against the neo-mysticism was thus on the
whole just and salutary. This opposition, no doubt, was bitter chiefly
when mysticism became revolutionary in practice, when it invaded the
established customs of legalistic orthodoxy. But it was also felt that
mysticism went dangerously near to a denial of the absolute Unity of
God. It was more difficult to attack it on its theoretical than on its
practical side, however. The Jewish mystic did sometimes adopt a most
irritating policy of deliberately altering customs as though for the
very pleasure of change. Now in most religious controversies discipline
counts for more than belief. As Salimbene asserts of his own day:
'It was far less dangerous to debate in the schools whether God really
existed, than to wear publicly and pertinaciously a frock and cowl of
any but the orthodox cut.' But the Talmudists' antagonism to mysticism
was not exclusively of this kind in the eighteenth century. Mysticism
is often mere delusion. In the last resort man has no other guide than
his reason. It is his own reason that convinces him of the limitations
of his reason. But those limitations are not to be overpassed by a
visionary self-introspection, unless this, too, is subjected to rational
criticism. Mysticism does its true part when it applies this criticism
also to the current forms, conventions, and institutions. Conventions,
forms, and institutions, after all, represent the corporate wisdom,
the accumulated experiences of men throughout the ages. Mysticism is the
experience of one. Each does right to test the corporate experience by
his own experience. But he must not elevate himself into a law even for
himself. That, in a sentence, would summarise the attitude of Judaism
towards mysticism. It is medicine, not a food.
CHAPTER VII
ESCHATOLOGY
That the soul has a life of its own after death was a firmly fixed
idea in Judaism, though, except in the works of philosophers and in
the liberal theology of modern Judaism, the grosser conception of a
bodily Resurrection was predominant over the purely spiritual idea of
Immortality. Curiously enough, Maimonides, who formulated the belief in
Resurrection as a dogma of the Synagogue, himself held that the world to
come is altogether free from material factors. At a much earlier period
(in the third century) Rab had said (Ber. 17 a): 'Not as this world is
the world to come. In the world to come there is no eating or drinking,
no sexual intercourse, no barter, no envy, hatred, or contention. But the
righteous sit with their crowns on their heads, enjoying the splendour
of the Shechinah (the Divine Presence).' Commenting on this in various
places, Maimonides emphatically asserts the spirituality of the future
life. In his _Siraj_ he says, with reference to the utterance of
Rab just quoted: 'By the remark of the Sages "with their crowns on their
heads" is meant the preservation of the soul in the intellectual sphere,
and the merging of the two into one.... By their remark "enjoying the
splendour of the Shechinah" is meant that those souls will reap bliss in
what they comprehend of the Creator, just as the Angels enjoy felicity in
what they understand of His existence. And so the felicity and the final
goal consists in reaching to this exalted company and attaining this high
pitch.' Again, in his philosophical _Guide_ (I. xli.), Maimonides
distinguishes three kinds of 'soul': (1) The principle of animality, (2)
the principle of humanity, and (3) the principle of intellectuality, that
part of man's individuality which can exist independently of the body,
and therefore alone survives death. Even more remarkable is the fact that
Maimonides enunciates the same opinion in his Code (Laws of Repentance,
viii. 2). For the Code differs from the other two of the three main
works of Maimonides in that it is less personal, and expresses what the
author conceives to be the general opinion of Judaism as interpreted by
its most authoritative teachers.
There can be no question but that this repeated insistence of Maimonides
has strongly affected all subsequent Jewish thought. To him, eternal
bliss consists in perfect spiritual communion with God. 'He who desires to
serve God from Love must not serve to win the future world. But he does
right and eschews wrong because he is man, and owes it to his manhood
to perfect himself. This effort brings him to the type of perfect man,
whose soul shall live in the state that befits it, viz. in the world to
come.' Thus the world to come is a state rather than a place.
But Maimonides' view was not accepted without dispute. It was indeed
quite easy to cite Rabbinic passages in which the world to come is
identified with the bodily Resurrection. Against Maimonides were produced
such Talmudic utterances as the following: 'Said Rabbi Chiya b. Joseph,
the Righteous shall arise clad in their garments, for if a grain of wheat
which is buried naked comes forth with many garments, how much more shall
the righteous arise full garbed, seeing that they were interred with
shrouds' (Kethub. 111 b). Again, 'Rabbi Jannai said to his children,
Bury me not in white garments or in black: not in white, lest I be not
held worthy (of heaven) and thus may be like a bridegroom among mourners
(in Gehenna); nor in black, lest if I am held worthy, I be like a mourner
among bridegrooms (in heaven). But bury me in coloured garments (so that
my appearance will be partly in keeping with either fate),' (Sabbath,
114 a). Or finally: 'They arise with their blemishes, and then are healed'
(Sanh. 91 b).
The popular fancy, in its natural longing for a personal existence
after the bodily death, certainly seized upon the belief in Resurrection
with avidity. It had its roots partly in the individual consciousness,
partly in the communal. For the Resurrection was closely connected with
such hopes as those expressed in Ezekiel's vision of the re-animation
of Israel's dry bones (Ezek. xxxvii.). Thus popular theology adopted
many ideas based on the Resurrection. The myth of the Leviathan hardly
belongs here, for, widespread as it was, it was certainly not regarded
in a material light. The Leviathan was created on the fifth day, and
its flesh will be served as a banquet for the righteous at the advent
of Messiah. The mediaeval poets found much attraction in this idea,
and allowed their imagination full play concerning the details of
the divine repast. Maimonides entirely spiritualised the idea, and
his example was here decisive. The conception of the Resurrection
had other consequences. As the scene of the Resurrection is to be
Jerusalem, there grew up a strong desire to be buried on the western
slope of Mount Olivet. In fact, many burial and mourning customs of
the Synagogue originated from a belief in the bodily Resurrection. But
even in the orthodox liturgy the direct references to it are vague and
idealised. Two passages of great beauty may be cited. The first is taken
from the _Authorised Daily Prayer Book_ (ed. Singer, p. 5):
'O my God, the soul which Thou gavest me is pure; Thou didst create it,
Thou didst form it, Thou didst breathe it into me; Thou preservest it
within me; and Thou wilt take it from me, but wilt restore it unto me
hereafter. So long as the soul is within me, I will give thanks unto
Thee, O Lord my God and God of my fathers, Sovereign of all works,
Lord of all souls! Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest souls unto
dead bodies.' The last phrase is also extant in another reading in the
Talmud and in some liturgies: 'Blessed art Thou, who revivest the dead,'
but the meaning of the two forms is identical. This passage, be it noted,
is ancient, and is recited every morning at prayer. The second passage is
recited even more frequently, for it is said thrice daily, and also forms
part of the funeral service. It may be found in the Prayer Book just
quoted on p. 44: 'Thou, O Lord, art mighty for ever, Thou quickenest
the dead, Thou art mighty to save. Thou sustainest the living with
loving-kindness, quickenest the dead with great mercy, supportest the
falling, healest the sick, loosest the bound, and keepest Thy faith to
them that sleep in the dust. Who is like unto Thee, Lord of mighty acts,
and who resembleth Thee, O King, who killest and quickenest, and causest
salvation to spring forth? Yea faithful art Thou to quicken the dead.'
The later history of the doctrine in the Synagogue may be best summarised
in the words of Dr. Kohler, whose theological articles in the _Jewish
Encyclopedia_ deserve grateful recognition. What follows may be
read at full length in that work, vol. vi. p. 567: 'While mediaeval
philosophy dwelt on the intellectual, moral, or spiritual nature of the
soul to prove its immortality, the Cabbalists endeavoured to explain the
soul as a light from heaven, after Proverbs xx. 27, and immortality as
a return to the celestial world of pure light. But the belief in the
pre-existence of the soul led the mystics to the adoption, with all
its weird notions and superstitions, of the Pythagorean system of the
transmigration of the soul.' Moses Mendelssohn revived the Platonic form
of the doctrine of immortality. Thenceforth the dogma of the Resurrection
was gradually discarded until it was eliminated from the Prayer Book of
the Reform congregations. Man's future was thought of as the realisation
of those 'higher expectations which are sown, as part of its very nature,
in every human soul.' The statement of Genesis that 'God made man in
His own image,' and the idea conveyed in the text (1 Samuel xxv. 29),
'May the soul ... be bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord thy
God,' which as a divine promise and a human supplication 'filled the
generations with comfort and hope, received a new meaning from this view
of man's future; and the Rabbinical saying (Ber. 64 a): "The Righteous
rest not, either in this or in the future world, but go from strength
to strength until they see God in Zion," appeared to offer an endless
vista to the hope of immortality.'
But quite apart from this indefiniteness of attitude as to the meaning
of immortality, it is scarcely possible to speak of a Jewish Eschatology
at all. The development of an Eschatology occurred in that section of
Jewish opinion which remained on the fringe. It must be sought in the
apocalyptic literature, which has been preserved in Greek. The whole
subject had but a small attraction for Judaism proper. Naturally there
was some curiosity and some speculation. The Day of the Lord, with its
combination of Retribution and Salvation, was pictured in various ways
and with some elaboration of detail. Paradise and Hell were mapped out,
and the comfortable compartments to be occupied by the saints and the
miserable quarters of sinners were specified with the precision of an
Ordnance Survey. Purgatory was an institution not limited to the Roman
Catholic Church; it had a strong hold on the mediaeval Jewish mind. The
intermediate state was a favourite escape from the theological necessity
of condemning sinners to eternal punishment. The Jewish heart could
not suffer the pain of conceiving Gehenna inevitable. So, one by one,
those who might logically be committed there were rescued on various
pretexts. In the end the number of the individual sinners who were to
suffer eternal torture could be named on the fingers of one hand.
By the preceding paragraph it is not implied that Jewish literature in
Hebrew has not its full complement of fancies, horrible and beautiful,
regarding heaven and hell. But such fancies were neither dogmatic
nor popular. They never found their way into the tenets of Judaism as
formulated by any authority; they never became a moving power in the life
of the Jewish masses. It was the poets who nourished these lurid ideas,
and poetry which has done so much for the good of religion has also done
it many a disservice. Judaism, in its prosaic form, accepted the ideas
of Immortality, Retribution, and so forth, but the real interest was in
life here, not in life hereafter.
We can see how the two were bridged over by the Jewish conviction of
human solidarity. For twelve months after the death of a father the son
recited daily the Kaddish prayer (_Authorised Daily Prayer Book_,
p. 77). This was a mere Doxology, opening: 'Magnified and sanctified
be His great name in the world which He hath created according to His
will. May He establish His kingdom during your life and during your days,
and during the life of all the house of Israel, even speedily and at a
near time, and say ye Amen.' As to the Messianic idea of the Kingdom of
God, something will be said in the next chapter. But this Doxology was
believed efficacious to save the departed soul when uttered by the living
son. The generations were thus bound together, and just as the merits of
the fathers could exert benign influence over the erring child on earth,
so could the praises of the child move the mercy of God in favour of
the erring father in Purgatory. It was a beautiful expression of the
unbreakable chain of tradition, a tradition whose links were human
hearts. In such conceptions, rather than in descriptive pictures of
Paradise and Gehenna, is the true mind of Judaism to be discerned.
That the first formal sign of grief at the death of a parent should be a
Doxology will not have escaped notice. God is the Righteous Judge. Thus,
in the Eschatology of Judaism, this idea of Judgment predominates. A
favourite passage was the Mishnic utterance (second century): 'Rabbi
Eleazar said: They that are born are destined to die, and they that
die to be brought to life again, and they that live to be judged.'
(Aboth, iv. 29). But in another sense, too, there was judgment at
death. The sorrow of the survivors, like the decease of the departed,
was to be considered as God's doing, and therefore right. Hence in the
very moment of the death of a loved one, when grief was most poignant,
the survivor stood forth before the congregation and praised God. And so
the Burial Service is named in Hebrew 'Zidduk Ha-din,' _i.e._ 'The
Justification of the Judgment.' A few sentences in it ran thus (_Prayer
Book_, p. 318): 'The Rock, His work is perfect.... He ruleth below and
above, He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up again.... Blessed be
the true Judge.' And perhaps more than all attempts to analyse beliefs
and dogmas, the following prayer, recited during the week of mourning
for the dead, will convey to the reader the real attitude of Judaism
(at least in its central variety) to some of the questions which have
occupied us in this chapter. The quotation is made from p. 323 of the
same Prayer Book that has been already cited several times above: