Judaism

1. God has an eternal will that is not bound by natural laws. Through an act of his will, he created the world in time and imposed on it the order of nature. This creation is the greatest of miracles; only if it is admitted can other miracles, which interfere with the causally determined concatenations of events, be regarded as possible. The philosophers’ God, who is not free to cut the wings of a fly, is to be rejected. This conception is in keeping with the traditional religious view of God and is avowedly adopted by Maimonides because failure to do so would undermine religion.

2. Humans are incapable of having any positive knowledge concerning God. No positive attributes—e.g., wisdom or life—can be ascribed to God. Contrary to the attributes predicated of created beings, the divine attributes are strictly negative; they state what God is not. For instance, he is not not-wise, and such a statement is not a positive assertion. Hence, only a negative theology is possible—saying what God is not. The way God acts can, however, be known. This knowledge is to be found in natural science.

3. God is an intellect. The formula used by medieval philosophers—which maintains that in God the knowing subject, the object known, and the act of intellectual knowledge are identical—derives from Aristotle’s thesis that God knows only himself. In adopting the formula, however, Maimonides interpreted it in the light of human psychology and epistemology, pointing out that, according to Aristotle, the act of human (as well as divine) cognition brings about an identity of the cognizing subject and the cognized object. The parallel drawn by Maimonides between the human and the divine intellect quite evidently implies a certain similarity between the two; in other words, it is incompatible with the negative theology of other passages of the Guide. Nor can it be reconciled with his theological doctrine that the structure of the world—created in time—came into being through the action of God’s will.

There would be no enigma in the Guide if Maimonides had believed that truth can be discovered in a suprarational way, through revelations vouchsafed to the Prophets. This, however, is not the case. Maimonides held that the Prophets (with the exception of Moses) combine great intellectual ability, which qualifies them to be philosophers, with a powerful imagination. The intellectual faculty of the philosophers and the prophets receives an overflow from the active intellect. In the case of the Prophets, this overflow not only brings about intellectual activity but also passes over into the imaginative faculty, giving rise to visions and dreams. The fact that prophets have a strong imagination gives them no superiority in knowledge over philosophers, who do not have it. Moses, who belonged to a higher category than did the other Prophets, did not have recourse to imagination.

The laws and religion as instituted by Moses are intended not only to ensure the bodily welfare and safety of the members of the community but also to facilitate the attainment of intellectual truths by individuals gifted enough to uncover the various hints embodied in religious laws and practices. This does not mean that all the beliefs inculcated by Judaism are true. Some indeed express philosophical truths—though in an inaccurate way, in a language suited to the intellectual capacity of the common people, who in general cannot grasp the import of the dogmas they are required to profess. Other beliefs, however, are false but necessary for the preservation of public order and justice—e.g., the belief that God is angry with wrongdoers.

There are two noteworthy aspects of Maimonides’ position on the Law—i.e., the religious commandments. First, he maintained that it is unique in its excellence and valid for all time. This profession of faith, at least with regard to its assumptions about the future, lacked philosophical justification; however, it could be regarded as necessary for the survival of Judaism. Second, he asserted that certain precepts of the Mosaic Law were related to specific historical situations and to the need to avoid too sharp a break with popular customs and practices—for instance, the commandments concerning sacrifice.

For at least four or five centuries, The Guide for the Perplexed exercised a very strong influence in the European centres of Jewish thought; in the 13th century, when the Guide was twice translated into Hebrew, these centres were Spain, the south of France, and Italy. Rather paradoxically, in view of the unsystematic character of Maimonides’ exposition, it was used as a standard textbook of philosophy and condemned as such when the teaching of philosophy came under attack. The Guide could be used in this way because from the 13th century onward the history of Jewish philosophy in European countries acquired a continuity it had never had before. This development seems to have resulted from the substitution of Hebrew for Arabic as the language of philosophical exposition. Because of the existence of a common and relatively homogeneous philosophical background—Hebrew texts were much less numerous and less diverse than Arabic philosophical works—and the fact that Jewish philosophers reading and writing in Hebrew read the works of their contemporaries and immediate predecessors, something like a dialogue can be discerned. In striking contrast to the immediately preceding period, European Jewish philosophers in the 13th century and later frequently devoted a very considerable part of their treatises to discussions of the opinions of other Jewish philosophers. That many of the Jewish philosophers in question wrote commentaries on the Guide undoubtedly furthered this tendency. Averroists

The influence of Maimonides’ great Islamic contemporary Averroës, many of whose commentaries and treatises were translated into Hebrew, was second only to that of Maimonides on Jewish intellectual development. Indeed, it may be argued that for philosophers (as distinct from the general reading public) it often came first. In certain cases, commentators on the Guide quote Averroës’ opinions in order to clarify those of Maimonides, despite the frequent divergences between the two.

Averroës, statue in Córdoba, Spain.© Ronald Sheridan/Ancient Art & Architecture Collection

The apparently significant influence of Christian Scholastic thought on Jewish philosophy was often not openly acknowledged by Jewish thinkers in the period beginning with the 13th century. Samuel ibn Tibbon (c. 1150–c. 1230), one of the translators of the Guide into Hebrew and a philosopher in his own right, remarked that the philosophical sciences were more widely known among Christians than among Muslims. Somewhat later, at the end of the 13th century and after, Jewish scholars in Italy translated into Hebrew various texts of St. Thomas Aquinas and other Christian representatives of Scholasticism; not infrequently, some of them acknowledged the debt they owed their Christian masters. In Spain and in the south of France, a different convention seems to have prevailed up to the second half of the 15th century. Whereas Jewish philosophers of these countries felt no reluctance about referring to Greek, Arabic, and other Jewish philosophers, they refrained from citing Christian thinkers whose views had, in all probability, influenced them. In the case of certain Jewish thinkers, this absence of reference to the Christian Scholastics served to disguise the fact that in many essentials they were representative of the philosophical trends, such as Latin Averroism, that were current among the Christian Scholastics of their time.

There is a striking resemblance between certain views of the Latin Averroists and the parallel opinions of Isaac Albalag, a Jewish philosopher who lived in the second half of the 13th century, probably in Catalonia, Spain, and who wrote a commentary in Hebrew on the Tahāfut al-falāsifah (“The Inconsistencies of the Philosophers”), an exposition of Avicenna’s doctrine written by the Muslim philosopher al-Ghazālī (1058–1111). Albalag’s assertion that both the teachings of the Bible and the truths demonstrated by reason must be believed even if they are contradictory raises the possibility that some historical connections exist between this view and the Latin Averroist doctrine that there are two sets of truths—the religious and the philosophical—which are not necessarily in accord. On most other points Albalag was a follower of the system of Averroës himself. This position is exemplified by Albalag’s rejection of the view that the world was created in time. Although he professed to believe in what he called “absolute creation in time,” this expression merely signifies that at any given moment the continued existence of the world depends on God’s existence, an opinion that is essentially in harmony with Averroës.

Joseph Caspi (1297–1340), a prolific philosopher and exegetical commentator, maintained a somewhat unsystematic philosophical position that seems to have been influenced by Averroës. He expressed the opinion that knowledge of the future, including that possessed by God himself, is probabilistic in nature. The prescience of the Prophets is the same. Caspi’s interest in this problem may well have had some connection with the debate about future contingencies in which Christian Scholastics were engaged at that time.

Moses of Narbonne, or Moses Narboni, like many other Jewish scholars of the 14th century, wrote mainly commentaries, including those on biblical books, on treatises of Averroës, and on Maimonides’ Guide. In his commentary on the Guide, Narboni often interprets the earlier philosopher’s opinions by recourse to Averroës’ views. Narboni also expounded and gave radical interpretations to certain conceptions that he understood as implied in the Guide. According to Narboni, God participates in all things, because he is the measure of all substances. God’s existence appears to be bound up with that of the world, to which he has a relation analogous to that between a soul and its body (a comparison already made in the Guide). Gersonides

Gersonides, also known as Levi ben Gershom (1288–1344), wrote the systematic philosophical work Sefer milḥamot Adonai (“The Book of the Wars of the Lord”), as well as many philosophical commentaries. Gersonides cited Greek, Arabic, and Jewish thinkers, and in many ways his system appears to have stemmed from the doctrines of Maimonides or Averroës, regardless of whether he agreed with them. For example, he explicitly rejected Maimonides’ doctrine of negative theology. Although he never explicitly mentioned Christian Scholastic philosophers, a comparison of his opinions and of the particular problems that engaged his attention with the Scholastic writings of his period suggests that he was influenced by the Latins on certain points.

Gersonides disagreed both with the Aristotelian philosophers who maintained the eternity of the world and with the religious partisans who believed in the creation of the world in time out of nothing. He argued instead that God created the world in time out of a preexistent body that lacked all form. As Gersonides conceived it, this body seems to be similar to primal matter.

The problem of human freedom of action and a particular version of the problem of God’s knowledge of future contingencies form an important part of Gersonides’ doctrine. Unlike the great Jewish and Muslim Aristotelians, Gersonides believed in astrology and held that all happenings in the world except human actions are governed by a strict determinism. God’s knowledge does not extend to individual human acts but embraces the general order of things; it grasps the laws of universal determinism but is incapable of apprehending events resulting from human freedom. Thus, the object of God’s knowledge is a totally determined world order, which differs from the real world insofar as the latter is in some measure formed according to human freedom.

Gersonides does not appear to have assigned to the prophets any political function; according to him, their role consists of predicting future events. The providence exercised by the heavenly bodies ensures the existence in a given political society of people with an aptitude for the handicrafts and professions necessary for the survival of the community. He remarked that in this way the various human activities are distributed in a manner superior to that outlined in the Republic of Plato. Thus, he explicitly rejected Plato’s political philosophy, which, because it was suitable to a society ruled through laws promulgated by a prophet (Muhammad), had been an important element of Jewish philosophy in the Arabic period. Ḥasdai Crescas

The Spanish Jewish thinker Ḥasdai ben Abraham Crescas (1340–1410), like Gersonides, had thorough knowledge of Jewish philosophy and partial knowledge of Islamic philosophy; in both areas he seems to have been influenced by Christian Scholastic thought. Moreover, in certain important respects Crescas was influenced by Gersonides himself. One of Crescas’s main works, Or Adonai (“The Light of the Lord”), was quite contrary to Gersonides in its attempt to expose the weaknesses of Aristotelian philosophy. This attitude may be placed in the wider context of the return to religion itself, as opposed to the Aristotelian rationalization of religion, and the vogue of Kabbala (esoteric Jewish mysticism), both of which were characteristic features of Spanish Jewry in Crescas’s time. This change in attitude may have been a reaction to the increasing precariousness of the position of the Jewish community in Spain.

The criticism of the extreme rationalism of some medieval Aristotelians coincided historically with a certain disintegration of and disaffection toward classical Aristotelian Scholasticism. This trend was associated with the so-called voluntarism of John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308), the nominalism of William of Ockham (c. 1285–1347/49) and other 13th–14th-century Christian Scholastics, and the development of anti-Aristotelian physics at the University of Paris and elsewhere beginning in the 14th century. Significantly, there is a pronounced resemblance between Crescas’s views and two of these trends, Scotism (the teachings of Duns Scotus and his followers) and the “new” physics.

Crescas accepted Gersonides’ view that divine attributes cannot be negative, but unlike his predecessor his explanation of the difference between the attributes of God and those of created beings centred on the contrast between an infinite being and finite beings. It is through infinitude that God’s essential attributes—wisdom, for instance—differ from the corresponding and otherwise similar attributes found in created beings. In Crescas’s doctrine, as in that of Spinoza, God’s attributes are infinite in number. The central place assigned to the doctrine of God’s infinity in Crescas’s system suggests the influence of Duns Scotus’s theology, which is similarly founded upon the concept of divine infinity.

The problem of the infinite was approached from an altogether different perspective in Crescas’s critique of Maimonides’ 25 propositions, which Maimonides had set forth in the Guide as the basis of his proof of the existence of God. Crescas’s purpose in criticizing and rejecting several of these propositions was to show that the traditional Aristotelian proofs (founded in the first place on physical doctrines) were not valid. In his critique, Crescas attempted to disprove the Aristotelian thesis that the existence of an actual infinite is impossible. He held that space is not a limit but a three-dimensional extension, that it is infinite, and that, contrary to Aristotle, the existence of a vacuum and of more worlds than one is possible. He also argued that the thesis of the Aristotelian philosophers that there exists an infinite number of causes and effects, which have order and gradation, was impossible. This thesis refers not to a temporal succession of causes and effects that have a similar ontological status but to a vertical series, descending from God to the lowest rung in creation. His attacks were likewise directed against the Aristotelians’ conceptions of time and matter.

Crescas’s fundamental opposition to Aristotelianism is perhaps most evident in his rejection of the conception of intellectual activity as the supreme state of being for humans and for God. Crescas’s God is not first and foremost an intellect, and humanity’s supreme goal is not to think but to love God with a love corresponding, as far as possible, to his infinite greatness and to rejoice in the observance of his commandments. God too loves human beings, and his love, in spite of the lowliness of its object, is proportionate to his infinity.

Crescas attacked the Aristotelian teaching of the separation of the intellect from the soul and attempted, perhaps in part under the influence of Judah ha-Levi, to refute the Aristotelian doctrine that the actualized intellect, as distinct from the soul, survives the death of the body. According to Crescas, the soul is a substance in its own right; it can be separated from the body and subsists after the body’s death. Joseph Albo

Whereas Crescas regarded the Aristotelian philosophers as adversaries, Joseph Albo (c. 1380–c. 1444), who considered Crescas his teacher, expressed a much more ambivalent attitude toward them. Albo did not eschew self-contradiction, apparently considering it a legitimate precaution on the part of a philosophical or theological author; indeed, he indulged in it in a much more obvious way than did Maimonides. But, whereas the latter’s fundamental philosophical position is fairly clear, it is much less apparent who Albo’s true masters were—Crescas and the Jewish religious tradition, or Maimonides and Averroës. Because of this perhaps deliberate failure to explain to the reader where he really stood, Albo has often been dismissed as an eclectic. Indeed, along with the authors just mentioned, Albo was strongly influenced by Saʿadia and seems to have had considerable knowledge of Christian theology, even adopting for his own purposes certain Scholastic doctrines. He differs from Crescas and to some extent resembles Maimonides in having a marked interest in political theory.

The theme of Albo’s magnum opus, Sefer ha-ʿiqqarim (“Book of Principles”), is the investigation of the theory of Jewish religious dogmas. Maimonides, in a nonphilosophical work, set the number of dogmas at 13, whereas Albo, following a doctrine that seems to go back to Averroës, limited the number to three: the existence of God, divine providence in reward and punishment, and the Torah as divine revelation. One section, usually including the philosophical and the traditional religious interpretations side by side, is devoted to each of these dogmas. Albo’s principal and relatively novel contribution to the evolution of Jewish doctrine is the classification, in his introduction, of natural, conventional, and divine law.

Natural law (the universal moral law inherent in human nature) is necessary because human beings, who are political by nature, must belong to a community, which may be restricted in size to one town or may extend over the whole earth. Natural law preserves society by promoting right and repressing injustice; thus, it restrains humans from stealing, robbing, and murdering. The positive laws instituted by the wise take into account the particular nature of the people for whose benefit they are instituted, as well as other circumstances. This means that they differ from the natural law in not being universally applicable. Neither natural law nor the more elaborate conventional laws, however, lead humans toward true spiritual happiness; this is the function of divine laws instituted by a prophet, which teach humans true theoretical opinions. Whereas Maimonides maintained that Judaism was the only divine law promulgated by a true prophet, Albo considered that the commandments given to Noah for all humankind—the Noahide Laws that Noah received after the Flood—also constitute divine law, which ensures, though to a lesser degree than does Judaism, the happiness of its adherents. This position justifies a certain universalism; in accordance with a Talmudic saying, Albo believed that the pious among the non-Jews—that is, those who observe Noah’s laws—have a share in the world to come. But he rejected the pretensions of Christianity and Islam to encompass divine laws comparable—or even superior—to Judaism. Modern philosophy The Iberian-Dutch philosophers

The expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1497, respectively, produced a new centre of Jewish thought: Holland, where many exiled Jews found a new and safer domicile; the tolerance of the regime seemed to provide guarantees against external persecution. This did not prevent, and indeed may have furthered, the establishment of an oppressive internal orthodoxy that was prepared to chastise rebellious members of the community. This was evident in the cases of Uriel Acosta (Gabriel da Costa) and Benedict de Spinoza, two 17th-century philosophers who rebelled against Jewish orthodoxy and were excommunicated for their views (Acosta twice). Uriel Acosta

Belonging to a family of Marranos in Portugal, Acosta arrived in Amsterdam after having been brought up in the Catholic faith. His philosophical position was to a great extent determined by his antagonism to the dogmatism of the traditional Judaism that he encountered in Amsterdam. His growing estrangement from generally accepted Jewish doctrine is attested by his Portuguese treatise Sobre a mortalidade da alma (“On the Mortality of the Soul”). He held that the belief in the immortality of the soul has many evil effects and that it impels people to choose an ascetic way of life and even to seek death. According to him, nothing has tormented human beings more than the belief in an inner, spiritual good and evil. At this stage, Acosta affirmed the authority of the Bible, from which, according to him, the mortality of the soul can be proved.

In his autobiography, Exemplar Humanae Vitae (“Example of a Human Life”), Acosta took a more radical position. He proclaimed the supreme excellence of the natural moral law; when arguing before Jews, he seemed to identify this law with the Noahide Laws (the commandments given to Noah), thus suggesting a correspondence with the view of Albo. Accordingly, Acosta denied the validity of the argument that natural law is inferior to Judaism and Christianity, because he believed that both these religions teach the love of one’s enemies, a precept that is not a part of natural law and is a manifest impossibility. Benedict de Spinoza

Born in Amsterdam but of Portuguese Marrano descent, Spinoza is unique in the history of modern Jewish thought. Although his work does not deal with specifically Judaic themes, he is traditionally included in this history for several reasons. First, it was through the study of Jewish philosophical texts that Spinoza was first initiated into philosophy. Second, Spinoza’s system is in part a radicalization of, or perhaps a logical corollary to, medieval Jewish doctrines, and the impact of Maimonides and of Crescas is evident. Third, a considerable portion of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus deals with problems related to Judaism. He drew from Jewish religion and history, even using the Israelite commonwealth in the Tractatus as the template for his ideal state, though he was not centrally concerned with matters of Jewish theology and ritual.

The first chapters of the Tractatus show that the doctrine of prophecy is of central importance to Spinoza’s explanation of Judaism and that, in dealing with this subject, he used Maimonides’ categories, though he applied them to different people or groups of people. Maimonides held that the prophets combined intellectual perfection, which made them philosophers, with perfection of the imaginative faculty. He also referred to a category of persons, including lawyers and statesmen, endowed with a strong imagination but possessing no extraordinary intellectual gifts. Spinoza applied this category to the prophets, whom he described as possessing vivid imaginations but as not necessarily having outstanding intellectual capacities. He denied that the biblical Prophets were philosophers and used a philosophical and historical approach to the Scriptures to show that the contrary assertion is not borne out by the texts.

Spinoza also denied Maimonides’ assertion that the prophecy of Moses was essentially different from that of the other Prophets and that this was because Moses, in prophesying, had no recourse to the imaginative faculty. According to Spinoza, Moses’ prophecy was unique because he heard the voice of God in a prophetic vision—that is, in a state in which his imagination was active. In this assertion, Spinoza employed one of Maimonides’ categories of prophecy. Maimonides thought it improbable, however, that the voice of God was ever heard in prophetic vision, and he held that this category is purely hypothetical. In his classification of Moses, Spinoza was not concerned with what really happened in history; rather, he was attempting to fashion the biblical evidence according to Maimonides’ theoretical framework so that it would further his own theological and political purpose: to show that there could be a religion superior to Judaism.

This purpose made it imperative to propound in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus a theory concerning Jesus, whom Spinoza designates as Christus. The category and the status assigned to Jesus are similar to those that Maimonides attributed to Moses. Jesus is referred to in the Tractatus as a religious teacher who makes recourse not to the imaginative faculty but to the intellect. His authority may be used to institute and strengthen the religion Spinoza called religio catholica (“universal religion”), which has little or nothing in common with any of the major manifestations of historic Christianity.

The difference between Judaism and Spinoza’s religio catholica corresponds to the difference between Moses and Jesus. After leaving Egypt, the Jews found themselves, in Spinoza’s view, in the position of people who had no allegiance to any positive law. They had, as it were, reverted to a state of nature and were faced with the need to enter into a social pact. They were also an ignorant people and very prone to superstition. Moses, a man of outstanding ability, made use of the situation and the characteristics of the people in order to make them accept a social pact and a state founded upon it that, contrary to Spinoza’s scheme for his ideal communities, were not based first and foremost upon utilitarian—that is, reasonable—consideration of the advantages of life in society over the state of nature.

According to Spinoza, the social pact concluded by the children of Israel in the desert was based upon a superstitious view of God as “King” and “Judge,” to whom the children of Israel owed their political and military successes. The children of Israel transferred political sovereignty to God rather than to the representatives of the popular will. In due course, political sovereignty was vested in Moses, God’s representative, and in his successors. In spite of Spinoza’s insistence on the superstitious foundations of the ancient Israelite state, however, his account of its regime was not wholly unsympathetic, especially regarding its ability to curb human tyranny by its doctrine of divine sovereignty. Spinoza believed that the state contained the seeds of its own destruction and that, with its extinction, the social pact devised by Moses had lapsed and all the political and religious obligations incumbent upon the Jews had become null and void.

It could be argued that, because the state conceived by Spinoza is based not on superstitious faith but on a social contract originating in rational, utilitarian considerations, it does not need to have its authority safeguarded and stabilized by means of religion. Nevertheless, Spinoza apparently believed that religion is necessary. To fulfill this need and to obviate the danger of harmful religions, he devised the religio catholica, the universal religion, which is characterized by two distinctive traits. First, its main purpose, a practical one (which is furthered by recourse to the authority of Jesus), is to impel people to act in accordance with justice and charity. Such conduct is tantamount to obedience to the laws of the state and to the orders of the magistrates, in whom sovereignty is vested. Disobedience, however, even if it springs from compassionate motives, weakens the social pact, which safeguards the welfare of all the members of the community; in consequence, its evil effects outweigh whatever good it may produce. Second, although religion, according to Spinoza, is not concerned with theoretical truth, in order to be effective the religio catholica requires dogmas, which he set forth in the Tractatus. These dogmas are formulated in terms that can be interpreted in accordance both with the philosophical conception of God that Spinoza regarded as true and with widespread superstitious ideas. It follows that if they are accepted as constituting the only creed that everybody is obliged to profess, people cannot be persecuted on account of their beliefs. Spinoza held that such persecution may lead to civil war and may thus destroy the state. Philosophers are free to engage in the pursuit of truth and to attain, if they can, the supreme goal of humanity—freedom grounded in knowledge. There can be little doubt that the furtherance of the cause of tolerance for philosophical opinions was one of Spinoza’s main objects in writing the Tractatus.

As compared with the Tractatus Theologico-Philosophicus, the Ethics, Spinoza’s major philosophical work, bears a much more ambiguous relation to Jewish medieval philosophy. In a way, Spinoza’s metaphysical system, contained in the Ethics, can be regarded as drawing aspects of medieval Aristotelianism to their logical conclusions, a step that most Jewish (and Christian and Muslim) thinkers were unwilling to take, owing to their theological conservatism. German philosophers Moses Mendelssohn

The era opened by Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86)—i.e., c. 1750 to c. 1830—is sometimes called the German period of Jewish philosophy because of the large number of works on Jewish philosophy that were written in German. The German period is also marked by the emancipation of the Jews—that is, by the abrogation of discriminatory laws directed against them—and by their partial or complete assimilation. In this time in particular, the term Jewish philosophy applied especially to works that were primarily concerned with defining Judaism and offering a justification of its existence. The second of these tasks was often conceived of as involving a confrontation with Christianity rather than with philosophy. This change from what would have been the practice in the Middle Ages seems to have resulted from the demarcation of the sphere of religion in such a way that, at least in the opinion of the philosophers, possible points of collision with philosophy no longer existed. This development was stimulated by the doctrine of Spinoza, from whom Mendelssohn and others took certain fundamental ideas concerning Judaism.

Like Spinoza, Mendelssohn held that it is not the task of Judaism to teach rational truths, though such truths may be referred to in the Bible. Contrary to what he called Athanasian Christianity—that is, the doctrine set forth in the Athanasian Creed—Judaism has no binding dogmas; it is centred on inculcating belief in certain historical events and on the observance of religious law, which includes the ceremonial commandments. Such observance is supposed to lead to happiness in this world and in the afterlife. Mendelssohn did not reject this view out of hand, as Spinoza would have done. Indeed, he seems to have been prepared to accept it, God’s mysteries being inscrutable, and the radicalism and what may be called the consistency of Spinoza being the complete antithesis of Mendelssohn’s apologetics. Non-Jews were supposed by Mendelssohn to owe allegiance to the natural moral law. Solomon Formstecher

Whereas Mendelssohn continued the medieval tradition (at least to some extent) or adapted Spinoza’s doctrine for his own purposes, the Jewish philosophers of the first half of the 19th century generally followed the teachings of the non-Jewish philosophers of their own time. In Die Religion des Geistes (“The Religion of the Spirit”), Solomon Formstecher (1808–89) may have been influenced by F.W.J. von Schelling (1775–1854) in his conception of nature and spirit as manifestations of the divine. In Formstecher’s view, there are two types of religions that correspond to these manifestations: the religion of nature, in which God is conceived as the principle of nature or as the world soul, and the religion of the spirit, in which God is understood as an ethical being. According to the religion of the spirit, God has produced the world as his manifestation in full freedom and not, as the religion of nature tends to profess, because the world was necessary for his existence.

The religion of the spirit, which corresponds to absolute religious truth, was first manifested in the Jewish people. The religious history of the world may be understood as a process of universalization of the Jewish religion, according to Formstecher. Thus, Christianity propagated Jewish conceptions among the nations; however, it combined them with pagan ideas. The pagan element is gradually being eliminated—Protestantism, in this respect, marks considerable progress. When at long last the Jewish element in Christianity is victorious, the Jews will be right to give up their isolation. The progress that will bring about this final religious union is already under way. Samuel Hirsch

The main philosophical work of Samuel Hirsch (1815–89), titled Die Religionsphilosophie der Juden (“The Philosophy of Religion of the Jews”), was decisively influenced by G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831). Hegel’s impact is most evident in Hirsch’s method and in the task that he assigned to the philosophy of religion—the transformation of religious consciousness into conceptual truth. Contrary to Hegel, however, he did not consider religious truth to be inadequate compared with philosophical truth.

In Hirsch’s view, God revealed himself in the first stages of Jewish history by means of miracles and prophecy. At present, he manifests himself in the miracle of the existence of the Jewish people. Hirsch further maintained that Christianity and Judaism were identical at the time of Jesus and that a decisive break between them was caused by Paul the Apostle. When the Pauline elements are eliminated from Christianity, it will be essentially in agreement with Judaism, though Judaism will preserve its separate existence. Nachman Krochmal

Nachman Krochmal (1785–1840), a native of Galicia (at that time part of Austria), wrote the highly influential Hebrew treatise More nevukhe ha-zman (“Guide for the Perplexed for Our Time”), on the philosophy of history and on Jewish history. Krochmal’s philosophical thought was based on the notion of spirit. He was mainly concerned with the “national spirit” that is proper to each people and that accounts for the characteristics differentiating one people from another in every domain of human activity. The national spirits of all peoples except the Jewish are, according to Krochmal, essentially particular. Hence, when the nation becomes extinct, the national spirit either disappears or, if it is powerful, is assimilated by some other nation. The perpetuity of the Jewish people, according to Krochmal, is the result of their special relation to the Universal Spirit, who is the God of Israel. Solomon Steinheim

Solomon Ludwig Steinheim (1789–1866), the author of Die Offenbarung nach dem Lehrbegriff der Synagoge (“The Revelation According to the Doctrine of the Synagogue”), was apparently influenced by the antirationalism of the German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819). His criticism of science is based on Jacobi’s work, though he did not agree with Jacobi in opposing discursive reason to the intuitive knowledge of God; Steinheim contrasted human reason with divine revelation. The main point of opposition between revelation, vouchsafed to the prophets of Israel, and reason is that the God posited by reason is subject to necessity—he can act only in accordance with laws. Moreover, reason affirms that nothing can come from nothing. Accordingly, God is free to create not a good world but only the best possible world. Revealed religion, on the other hand, affirms the freedom of God and the creation of the world out of nothing. Hermann Cohen

There seems to be little connection between the Jewish philosophers of the first half or two-thirds of the 19th century and Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), the head of the Neo-Kantian school centred at the University of Marburg. Cohen may be regarded as a rather unusual case among the Jewish philosophers of his and the preceding generations because of the dual nature of his philosophical thought—the general and the Jewish—and the uneasy equilibrium between them. Judaism was by no means the only important theme of his philosophical system; indeed, it was not even his point of departure. For most of his life, Cohen was wholly committed to his brand of Kantianism, and he displayed considerable originality in its elaboration. It has been maintained with some justification that his doctrine manifests a certain (unintentional) kinship with Hegel’s, though Cohen’s idea of God is based on an analysis and development of certain conceptions of Immanuel Kant. In Cohen’s view, reason requires that nature be conceived of as conforming to a single rational plan and that there be harmony between the domains of natural and moral teleology (ultimate purposes or ends). These two requirements in turn require the adoption of the idea of God—the word idea being used in the Kantian sense, which means that no assertion is made about the metaphysical reality of God.

Cohen’s later works increasingly emphasized generally religious and specifically Judaic elements. Some scholars, most notably his student Franz Rosenzweig, interpreted this as a major turn in Cohen’s thought. In the late 20th century, however, most scholars held that the more-pronounced Judaism in Cohen’s later works was the culmination of his overall philosophical system, not a radical departure from it. Franz Rosenzweig

Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) published his main philosophical work, Der Stern der Erlösung (The Star of Redemption), in 1921. It begins by rejecting the traditional philosophical denial of the fear of death, maintaining instead that this fear is the beginning of the cognition of the All. Humans should fear death, despite the indifference of philosophy and its predilection for accepting death. Traditional philosophy is interested exclusively in the universal, and it is monistic—its aim is to discover one principle from which everything can be derived. This tendency of philosophy, however, denatures human experience, which knows not one but three separate domains (which Kant had referred to in a different context), namely, God, the world, and humanity.

According to Rosenzweig, God (like the world and like humankind) is known through experience (the experience of revelation). In Greek religion, the most perfect manifestation of paganism, every one of these domains subsists by itself: the gods, the cosmos, and the human as the tragic, solitary, silent hero. Biblical religion is concerned with the relation between the three: the relation between God and the world, which is creation; the relation between God and human beings, which is revelation; and the relation between humans and the world, which leads to salvation. Under the influence of Schelling, whose term and concept he adopted, Rosenzweig pursued a “narrative philosophy” that renounces the ambition to find one principle for everything that exists and that follows biblical religion in focusing on the connections between the three domains and between the words and acts that bring about and develop these connections.

Biblical faith brought forth two valid religions—Christianity and Judaism. The first is described by Rosenzweig as the eternal way; the Christian peoples seek in the vicissitudes of time and history the way to salvation. In contrast to them, the existence of the stateless Jewish people is not concerned with time and history; it is—notwithstanding the hope for final salvation—already an eternal life, renewed again and again according to the rhythm of the Jewish liturgical year. Martin Buber

Among the leading thinkers of the 20th century was Martin Buber (1878–1965), whose impact was felt by both Jews and non-Jews. In his early period, Buber was led, partly through empathy with Jewish and non-Jewish mysticism, to stress unitive experience and knowledge, in which the difference between one person and another and between the individual and God tend to disappear. But in his final period he taught—following, as he claimed, a suggestion of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72)—that a human being can realize himself only in a relation with another, who may be another person or God. This conception of the “I and Thou” relationship led to the formulation of Buber’s view of the dialogical life—the mutual, responsive relation between one person and another—and accounts for the importance that he attached to the category of “encounter.”

Martin Buber.Courtesy of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, photo, courtesy of the Consulate General of Israel in New York Shlomo Pines Emmanuel Lévinas

During the late 20th century the thought of the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas (1905–95) exercised worldwide influence. In his main work, Totality and Infinity (1961), Lévinas emphasized ethics, as opposed to epistemology, as the primary means for achieving one’s relation to the “Other.” This relationship is based on the existential and material need of the other person rather than on one’s abstract knowledge of him. In this philosophical program, Lévinas drew upon rabbinic tradition as well as the philosophical anthropology of Cohen, Rosenzweig, and Buber. Jewish mysticism

This section deals with the special nature and characteristics of Jewish mysticism, the main lines of its development, and its role in present-day religion and culture. Nature and characteristics

The term mysticism applies to the attempt to establish direct contact, independently of sense perception and intellectual apprehension, with the divine—a reality beyond rational understanding and believed to be the ultimate ground of being. Since mysticism springs from an aspiration to join and grasp that which falls outside ordinary experience, it is not easily defined. There is no clear boundary line between mysticism and metaphysics, cosmology, theosophy (a system of thought claiming special insights or revelation into the divine nature), occultism, theurgy (the art of compelling or persuading divine powers), or even magic. The Judaic context

As the search for direct contact with the divine, however, mysticism seems to be in conflict with classical Judaism. Normative Judaism consists of a faith in a sole God who created the universe and who chose to reveal himself to a select group by means of a rule of life he imposed on it—Torah. According to traditional Judaic beliefs, the earthly destiny of the chosen nation, as well as the eternal salvation of the individual, depends on the observance of this rule of life, through which any relationship to God must take place. The fact is, however, that in the religious history of Judaism the quest for God goes beyond the relationship mediated by Torah without ever dispensing with it (since that would take the seeker outside Judaism), without pretending to reach the depths of the mystery of the divine, and without ending in an ontological identification with God (i.e., in the belief that God and human beings are the same in nature and being).

It must also be noted that the quest for God implies the search for solutions to problems that go beyond those of religion in the narrow sense and that arise even when there is no interest in the relationship between humankind and supernatural powers. Humans ponder the problems of their origins, their destiny, their happiness, their suffering; the presence or absence of religious institutions or dogmas is of little importance when it comes to these questions. They were all formulated within nonmystical Judaism and served as the basis and framework for the setting and solution of problems in the various forms of Jewish mysticism. This mysticism brought about profound transformations in the concepts of the world, God, and “last things” (resurrection, last judgment, messianic kingdom, etc.) set forth in biblical and rabbinical Judaism. Nevertheless, Jewish mysticism’s own set of problems—about the origins of the universe, humankind, evil, and sin; about the meaning of history; and about the afterlife and the end of time—is rooted in the very ground of Judaism and cannot be conceived outside an exegesis of revealed Scripture and rabbinical tradition. Three types of Jewish mysticism

There are three types of mysticism in the history of Judaism: the ecstatic, the contemplative, and the esoteric. Although they are distinct, they frequently overlap in practice.

The first type is characterized by the quest for God—or, more precisely, for access to a supernatural realm, which is itself infinitely remote from the inaccessible Deity—by means of ecstatic experiences. The second type is rooted in metaphysical meditation, which always bears the imprint of the cultural surroundings of the respective thinkers, who are exposed to influences from outside Judaism. Philo Judaeus of Alexandria and a few of the Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages, who drew their inspiration from Greco-Arabic Neoplatonism and sometimes also from Muslim mysticism, are examples of those who felt external influences.

The third type of mysticism claims an esoteric knowledge (hereafter called esoterism) that explores the divine life itself and its relationship to the extra-divine level of being (i.e., the natural, finite realm), a relationship that is subject to the “law of correspondences.” From this perspective, the extra-divine is a symbol of the divine; it is a reality that reveals a reality superior to itself. This form of mysticism, akin to gnosis (the secret knowledge claimed by gnosticism, a Hellenistic religious and philosophical movement) but purged—or almost purged—of the dualism that characterizes the latter, is what is commonly known as Kabbala (Hebrew: “Tradition”). By extension, this term is also used to designate technical methods, used for highly diverse ends, ranging from the conditioning of the aspirant to ecstatic experiences to magical manipulations of a superstitious character. Main lines of development

From the beginning of Jewish mysticism in the 1st century ce to the middle of the 12th century, only the ecstatic and contemplative types existed. It was not until the second half of the 12th century that esoterism became clearly discernible; from then on, Jewish mysticism developed in various forms up to very recent times. Early stages to the 6th century ce

The centuries following the return from the Babylonian Exile were marked by increasingly widespread and intense reflection on various themes: the intermediary beings between humans and God; the divine appearances, whose special place of occurrence had formerly been the most sacred part of the Jerusalem Temple; the creation of human beings; and the creation and organization of the universe. None of these themes was absent from the Bible, which was held to be divinely revealed, but each had become the object of constant theological readjustment that also involved the adoption of concepts from outside and reactions against them. The speculative taste of Jewish thinkers between the 2nd century bce and the 1st century ce took them in many different directions: angelology (doctrine about angels) and demonology (doctrine about devils); mythical geography and uranography (description of the heavens); contemplation of the divine manifestations, whose background was the Jerusalem Temple worship and the visions of the moving “throne” (merkava, “chariot”) in the prophecy of Ezekiel; reflection on the double origin of human beings, who are formed of the earth but are also the “image of God”; and speculation on the end of time (eschatology), on resurrection (a concept that appeared only toward the end of the biblical period), and on rewards and punishments in the afterlife.

This ferment was crystallized in writings such as the First Book of Enoch. Almost none of it was retained in Pharisaic (rabbinical) Judaism, which became the normative Jewish tradition after the Roman conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple. The Talmud and the Midrash (rabbinical legal and interpretative literature) touched these themes only with great reserve, often unwillingly, and more often in a spirit of negative polemic.

As early as the 1st century ce and probably even before the destruction of the Second Temple, there were sages or teachers recognized by the religious community for whom meditation on the Scriptures—especially the creation narrative, the public revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai, the Merkava vision of Ezekiel, and the Song of Solomon—and reflection on the end of time, resurrection, and the afterlife were not only a matter of the exegesis of texts recognized to be of divine origin but also a matter of inner experience. However, speculation on the invisible world and the search for the means to penetrate it were probably carried on in other circles. It is undeniable that there was a certain continuity between the apocalyptic visions (i.e., of the cataclysmic advent of God’s kingdom) and documents of certain sects (Dead Sea Scrolls) and the writings, preserved in Hebrew, of the “explorers of the supernatural world” (yorde merkava). The latter comprise ecstatic hymns, descriptions of the “dwellings” (hekhalot) located between the visible world and the ever-inaccessible Divinity, whose transcendence is paradoxically expressed by anthropomorphic descriptions consisting of inordinate hyperboles (Shiʿur qoma, “Divine Dimensions”). A few documents have been preserved that attest to the initiation of carefully chosen persons who were made to undergo tests and ordeals in accordance with psychosomatic criteria borrowed from physiognomy (the art of determining character from physical, especially facial, traits). Some theurgic efficacy was attributed to these practices, and there was some contamination from Egyptian, Hellenistic, or Mesopotamian magic. (A curious document in this respect, rich in pagan material, is the Sefer ha-razim, the “Treatise on Mysteries,” which was discovered in 1963.)

The similarities between concepts reflected in unquestionably Jewish texts and those expressed in documents of contemporary non-Jewish esoterism are so numerous that it becomes difficult, sometimes impossible, to distinguish the giver from the receiver. Two facts are certain, however. On the one hand, gnosticism never ceases to exploit biblical themes that have passed through Judaism (such as the tale of creation and the speculation on angels and demons), whatever their original source may have been; on the other hand, though Jewish esoterism may borrow this or that motif from ancient gnosis or syncretism and may even raise a supernatural entity such as the angel Metatron—also known as “little Adonai” (i.e., little Lord or God)—to a very high rank in the hierarchy of being, it still remains inflexibly monotheistic and rejects the gnostic concept of a bad or simply inferior demiurge who is responsible for the creation and governing of the visible world. Finally, during the centuries that separate the Talmudic period (2nd–5th centuries ce) from the full resurgence of Jewish esoterism in the middle of the 12th century, the texts that were preserved progressively lose their density and affective authenticity and become reduced to the level of literary exercises that are more grandiloquent than substantial. Sefer yetzira

In the ancient esoteric literature of Judaism, a special place must be given to the Sefer yetzira (“Book of Creation”), which deals with cosmogony and cosmology. Creation, it affirms with a clearly anti-gnostic insistence, is the work of the God of Israel and took place on the ideal, immaterial level and on the concrete level. This was done according to a complex process that brings in the 10 numbers (sefirot, singular sefira) of decimal notation and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The 10 numbers are not understood merely as arithmetical symbols: they are cosmological factors—the first of which, signified by the multiply ambiguous term ruaḥ, is the spirit of God, while the nine others seem to be the archetypes of the three elements (air, water, fire) and the spatial dimensions (up, down, and the four cardinal points). After having been manipulated either in their graphic representation or in combination, the letters of the alphabet, which are considered transcriptions of the sounds of the language, are in turn instruments of creation. The basic idea of all this speculation is that speech (that is, language composed of words, which are in turn composed of letters or sounds) is not only a means of communication but an operational agent destined to produce being; it has an ontological value. This value, however, does not extend to every language; it belongs to the Hebrew language alone.

The Sefer yetzira does not proceed entirely from biblical data and rabbinical reflection upon them; Greek influences are discernible, even in the vocabulary. What is important, however, is its influence on later Jewish thought, down to the present time: philosophers and esoterists have vied with one another over its meaning, pulling it in their own direction and adjusting it to their respective ideologies. Even more important is the fact that Kabbala borrowed a great deal of its terminology from the Sefer yetzira (e.g., sefira), making semantic adaptations as required.

The speculation traced above developed during the first six centuries of the Common Era, both in Palestine and in Babylonia. Babylonian Judaism had its own social and ideological characteristics, which put it in opposition to Palestinian Judaism with regard to esoterism and other manifestations of the life of the spirit. The joint doctrinal influence of the two centres spread from the mid-8th to the 11th century among the Jews of North Africa and Europe; mystical doctrines also filtered in, but very little is known about the circumstances and means of their penetration. The Arabic-Islamic influence (7th–13th century)

Arabic Islamic culture was another important influence on Jewish mystical development. A considerable part of Jewry, which had fallen under Muslim domination in the 7th and 8th centuries, participated in the new Arabic-Islamic civilization; the Jews of Asia, Africa, and Spain soon adopted Arabic, the language of culture and communication. Arabic-language culture introduced elements of Greek philosophy and Islamic mysticism into Judaism and contributed to the deepening of certain theological concepts that were of Jewish origin but had become the common property of the three religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam): affirming the divine unity, purging anthropomorphism from the idea of God, and following a spiritual path to the divine that leads through an ascetic discipline (both physical and intellectual) to a detachment from this world and a freeing of the soul from all that distracts it from God. Greek philosophy and Islamic mysticism moreover raised serious questions that threatened traditional beliefs about the creation of the world, the providential action of God, miracles, and eschatology. Even in the Christian West, where cultural contacts between the majority society and the Jewish minority were far from reaching the breadth and intensity of Judeo-Arab relations, Jewish intellectuals were unable to remain impervious to the incursions of the surrounding civilization. (Jewish biblical scholars were at times sought out by Christian theologians for help in understanding the Hebrew Scriptures.) Moreover, at the beginning of the 12th century if not earlier, European Judaism received part of the intellectual Arabic and Judeo-Arab heritage through translations or adaptations into Hebrew, its only cultural language. The making of Kabbala (c. 1150–1250)

Under these circumstances, starting around 1150, manifestations of markedly theosophic ideologies appeared in southern France (in the regions of Provence and Languedoc). The two types that can be distinguished at the outset are very different in appearance, form, and content. Sefer ha-bahir

The first type is represented in fragmentary, poorly written, and badly assembled texts that began to circulate in Provence and Languedoc during the third quarter of the 12th century. Their inspiration, however, leaves no doubt as to the community of their origin. They were in the form of a Midrash—that is, an interpretation of Scripture with the help of a particular interpretative method, full of sayings attributed to ancient rabbinical authorities. This body of texts, probably imported from the Middle East (Syria, Palestine, Iraq), is known as the “Midrash of Rabbi Nehunya ben Haqana” (from the name of a 1st-century rabbi) or Sefer ha-bahir (“Book of Brightness,” from a characteristic word of the first verse of Scripture to be elucidated in the work). The authorities cited are all inauthentic (as was often the case in late works). The content of this Midrash may be characterized as a form of gnosticism that successfully tries to escape any ontological dualism.

The object of the Sefer ha-bahir is to present the origin of things and the course of history centred on the chosen people, with vicissitudes caused in turn by obedience to God and by sin, as conditioned by the manifestation of divine powers. These “powers” are not “attributes” derived and defined by philosophical abstraction, though that is one of the terms used to designate them: they are hypostases (essences or substances). They are inseparable from God, but each one is clothed in its own personality, each operates in its own manner, leaning toward severity or mercy, in dynamic correspondence with the behaviour of human beings, especially of Jews, in the visible world. They are ranked in a hierarchy, which is not as fixed as it would become starting with the second generation of Kabbalists in Languedoc and Catalonia. The rich nomenclature used to designate the “powers” exploits the resources of both the Bible and the rabbinical tradition, of the Sefer yetzira, of some ritual observances, and also of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the signs that can be added to them to indicate the vowels.

Thus, according to the Sefer ha-bahir, the universe is the manifestation of hierarchically organized divine powers, and the power that is at the bottom of the hierarchy has special charge of the visible world. This entity is highly complex. Undoubtedly there are survivals of gnostic speculation on Sophia (“Wisdom”), who is involved, sometimes to her misfortune, in the material world. This power is also the divine “Presence” (Shekhina) of rabbinical theology, though it is profoundly transformed: it has become a hypostasis. By a bold innovation, it is characterized as a feminine being and thus finds itself, while remaining an aspect of the Divinity, in the position of a daughter or a wife, who owns nothing herself and receives all from the father or the husband. It is also identified with the “Community of Israel,” another radical innovation that was facilitated by ancient speculation based on the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Solomon, which represents the relationship of God to the chosen nation in terms of the marriage bond. Thus, a theosophical equality is established between the whole of the people chosen by God, constituted into a kind of mystical body, and an aspect of the Divinity—whence the solidarity and linked destiny of the two. A comparable relationship between the “Presence” and Israel was not totally foreign to ancient rabbinical theology. In this light, the obedience or disobedience of Israel to its particular vocation is a determining factor of cosmic harmony or disruption and extends to the inner life of the Divinity. This is the essential and definitive contribution of the Sefer ha-bahir to Jewish theosophy. The same document evinces the resurgence of a notion that older theologians had attempted to combat—that of metensōmatōsis, the reincarnation into several successive bodies of a soul that has not attained the required perfection in a previous existence. School of Isaac the Blind

Another theosophic tendency in Languedoc developed concurrently with—but independently of—the Sefer ha-bahir. The two movements would take only about 30 years to converge, constituting what may conveniently (though not quite precisely) be called classical Kabbala. The second school flourished in Languedoc during the last quarter of the 12th century and crossed the Pyrenees into Spain in the first years of the 13th century.

The most eminent spokesman of this school was Isaac ben Abraham, known as Isaac the Blind, whose extant works include a very obscure commentary on the Sefer yetzira. In the view of the eminent Kabbala scholar Gershom G. Scholem (1897–1982), Isaac’s general vision of the universe proceeds from the link he discovers between the hierarchical orders of the created world and the roots of all beings implanted in the world of the sefirot. A Neoplatonic influence is evident in the reflections of Isaac—e.g., the procession of things from the one and the corresponding return to the heart of the primordial undifferentiatedness, which is the fullness of being and at the same time every conceivable being. This return is not merely eschatological and cosmic but is realized in the life of prayer of the contemplative mystic—though it is not, indeed, a transforming union by which the human personality blends completely into the Deity or becomes one with it.

The synthesis of the themes of the Bahir and the cosmology of the Sefer yetzira, accomplished by Isaac or by others in the doctrinal environment inspired by his teachings, was and remains the foundation of Kabbala, whatever adjustments, changes of orientation, or radical modifications the composite may subsequently have undergone. The 10 sefirot

It is also in this environment that the nomenclature of the 10 sefirot became more or less fixed, though variant terminologies and even divergent conceptions of the nature of these entities may exist elsewhere—e.g., as internal powers of the divine organism (gnostic), as hierarchically ordered intermediaries between the infinite and the finite (Neoplatonic), or simply as instruments of the divine activity, neither partaking of the divine substance nor being outside it. The classical list of the sefirot is

keter ʿelyon, the supreme crown (its identity or nonidentity with the Infinite, Ein Sof, the unknowable Deity, remains problematic)

ḥokhma, wisdom, the location of primordial ideas in God

bina, intelligence, the organizing principle of the universe

ḥesed, love, the attribute of goodness

gevura, might, the attribute of severity

tif’eret, beauty, the mediating principle between the preceding two

netzaḥ, eternity

hod, majesty

yesod, foundation of all the powers active in God

malkhut, kingship, identified with the Shekhina (“Presence”) School of Gerona (Catalonia)

The gnosticizing theosophy of the Sefer ha-bahir and the contemplative mysticism of the masters of Languedoc became one in the hands of the Kabbalists in Catalonia, where the Jewish community of Gerona was a veritable seat of esoterism during the first half of the 13th century. To the school of Gerona belong, among others, masters such as Ezra ben Solomon, Azriel of Gerona, Jacob ben Sheshet, and Moses ben Naḥman (or Naḥmanides), the famous Talmudist, biblical commentator, and theologian. Their influence on the subsequent course of Jewish mysticism is of fundamental importance, though none of them left a complete synthesis of his theosophy. They expressed themselves, with more or less reserve, by means of commentaries, sermons, polemic or apologetic treatises, and brief summaries (at most) for the noninitiated. It is not impossible, however, to discover through these texts their vision of the world and to compare it with the views of the Jewish thinkers who attempted to harmonize the biblical-rabbinical tradition with Greco-Arab philosophy, whether of Neoplatonic or Aristotelian inspiration.

At the base of the Kabbalistic view of the world there is an option of faith: it is by a voluntary decision that the unknowable Deity—who is “nothing” or “nothingness” (nonfinite) because he is a fullness of being totally inaccessible to any human cognition—sets into motion the process that leads to the visible world. This concept radically separates Kabbala from the determinism from which the philosophy of the period could not, without contradiction, free the principle of being. In addition, it offers a solution consistent with faith to the problem of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing). The paradoxical reinterpretation of the concept of the “nothing” eliminates the original matter coeternal with God and solves the opposition between divine transcendence (remoteness from the world) and immanence (presence in the world); issuing from the unfathomable depth of the Deity and called to return to it, the world, visible as well as invisible, is radically separated from God, who is at the same time constantly present. The correspondence between the sefirot and all the degrees of being gives meaning to the structure of the world and to the history of humanity centred on the revelation given to the chosen people, a revelation that is a rule of life for this people and the criterion of merit and sin, or good and evil. Thus, from the top to the bottom of the ladder, there are corresponding realities that control one another. Contrary to the opinion of the philosophers, evil is also a reality since it is the rupture of the universal harmony. It is also the consequence of this rupture, in the form of punishment. From this perspective, scrupulous observance of the Torah, both in the written text and the oral tradition, is the essential factor for the maintenance of the universe. The “rational” motivation of the commandments, which raises insurmountable difficulties for the theologians of philosophical orientation, is in the eyes of the Kabbalists a false problem; the real problem is the fundamental nature of the Torah. Kabbala brings more than one solution to it, whereas philosophy has trouble providing a single coherent and comprehensive solution.

It follows from this general concept that the Jewish faith, with its implications—the conviction of holding the undiluted truth, the faithful preservation of ritual practices, and the eschatological expectation—is safeguarded from all the doubts that either philosophical speculation or the rival religious doctrines of Christianity and Islam could evoke in the minds of Jewish believers. Kabbala, already at the stage it had reached at Gerona, may be said to be a significant factor in the survival of Judaism, which was exposed everywhere in medieval society to a wide range of perils.

Besides the Gerona school and the doctrinal descendants of Isaac the Blind in Languedoc, there was another school of Jewish esoterism in southern Europe during the first half of the 13th century. Members of this school preferred to remain anonymous and therefore published their writings, such as the Sefer ha-ʿiyyun (“Book of Speculation”), either without an author’s name or with an attribution to a fictitious authority. Their speculation was directed to the highest levels of the divine world, where it discerned aspects beyond the 10 sefirot and attempted to give an idea of them by resorting to the symbolism of light, as well as to the primordial causes and the archetypes contained in the Deity or directly issuing from it. The sometimes-striking similarity between these speculations and those of the Christian theologian John Scotus Erigena (810–c. 877), whose work was revived in the 12th and 13th centuries, suggests not only a kinship of themes between this Kabbalistic current and Latin-language Christian Neoplatonism but also a concrete influence of the latter upon the former. The same may be true of Isaac the Blind and the school of Gerona, but certain knowledge is lacking. Sefer ha-temuna

The anonymous writer of the Sefer ha-temuna (“Book of the Image”) provided literary expression for another manifestation of Jewish mysticism in this period. This very obscure document claims to explain the figures of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The speculation of this treatise bears on two themes that were not foreign to the school of Gerona, but it develops them in a personal manner that decisively influenced the future of Jewish theosophy. On the one hand, it deals with a theory of the different cycles through which the world must travel from the time of its emergence to its reabsorption into the primordial unity. On the other hand, it addresses various readings that correspond to these cycles in the divine manifestation that is constituted by the Scriptures. In other words, the interpretation and consequently the message of the Torah vary according to the cycles of existence; the passage to a cycle other than that under whose governance humanity is presently living could thus entail the modification, even the abrogation, of the rule of life to which the chosen people are presently subject, an explosive notion that threatened to overthrow the Jewish tradition. Medieval German (Ashkenazic) Hasidism

The period during which Kabbala was established in the south of France and in Spain is no less important for the shaping of Jewish mysticism in the other branch of European Judaism, which was situated in northern France (and England) and in the Rhine and Danube regions of Germany. Unlike medieval Kabbala, which experienced a broad and varied development starting in the second half of the 13th century, the movement designated as German, or Ashkenazic (from a biblical place-name conventionally used to designate Germany), Hasidism hardly survived as a living and independent current beyond the second quarter of the 13th century (it has no connection with modern Hasidism). Franco-German Judaism experienced a certain continuity of mystical tradition, based on the Sefer yetzira and the hekhalot (see above Sefer yetzira); certain elements of theurgy and magic of Babylonian origin may also have reached it through Italy; and apparently the gnosticizing current that was crystallized in the Sefer ha-bahir did not pass without leaving traces in Germany. The intellectual atmosphere of Franco-German Judaism, however, differed greatly from that reigning in Spain or even Provence and Languedoc. It was characterized by an almost exclusively Talmudic culture, less intellectual contact with the non-Jewish environment than in the countries of Muslim civilization, and a very limited knowledge of Jewish theology in Arabic from the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. This situation did not change until the last third of the 12th century; until then, the “philosophical” equipment of the Franco-German Jewish scholar consisted essentially of a Hebrew paraphrase, dating perhaps from the 11th century, of the treatise Beliefs and Opinions by Saʿadia ben Joseph (the great 9th–10th-century Babylonian Jewish scholar and philosopher) and the commentary on the Sefer yetzira written in Hebrew in 946 by the Italian physician Shabbetai Donnolo (born 913). Even when the cultural influence of Spanish Judaism came to be felt more strongly in France, England, and Germany, speculative Kabbala hardly penetrated there. Franco-German Jewish thinkers who inclined toward theological speculation had their own problems—notably the persecutions that began during the First Crusade—which resulted in a mysticism strongly imbued with asceticism.

The main speculative problem for medieval Hasidic thinkers was that of the relationship between God and his manifestations in creation, including his revelation and communication with inspired men and women. Reflection on this problem led to the elaboration of various supernatural hierarchies between the inaccessible God and the created universe or the recipient of divine communication. Data on angels taken from the Bible and rabbinical and mystical traditions, as well as speculation on the Shekhina, were used as material for these hierarchies and also gave a peculiar coloration to liturgical practice. The latter was marked, moreover, by a concern for spiritual concentration by means of fixing attention on the words and even the letters of the synagogue prayers. These speculations, however, had no great repercussions on the subsequent course of Jewish esoterism; the only exception is the mysticism of prayer and demonology, which was sometimes influenced by the beliefs of the Christian environment and was fully developed in Hasidic circles. On the other hand, the ascetic morality of the movement, which was expressed in the literary works of Eleazar ben Judah of Worms (c. 1160–1238) and in the two recensions of the “Book of the Pious” (Sefer ḥasidim), was to mark Jewish spirituality, esoteric or not, from then on. The making of the Zohar (c. 1260–1492)

Once the marginal episode of German Hasidism was finished, almost all creative activity in Jewish mysticism occurred in Spain, up to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.

After the flowering of the schools described above came to an end about the year 1260, two other currents appeared. The first assumed a gnostic bent through its emphasis on the problem of evil. The texts that illustrate this tendency do not place evil in a state of dependence on the “attribute of judgment” within the structure of the sefirot set up by the previous Kabbalists but locate it outside the Divinity, constructing a parallel system of “left-hand sefirot” and a corresponding exuberant demonology. The second movement, whose main representative was the visionary and adventurer Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (born 1240), justified itself by appeal to inner “prophetic” experiences encouraged by training methods akin to those of Yoga, Byzantine Hesychasm (mystical, quietist monasticism), and Sufism. Moreover, an important place was given to speculations on the letters and vocalic signs of the Hebrew script. Unlike the protagonists of other mystical schools of Spain, Abulafia actively promoted his ideas, worrying Jewish leaders and prompting even non-Jewish authorities to pursue him. His numerous writings later stimulated a few minds among the Kabbalists.

The work of Moses de León (1250–1305) marked one of the most important turning points in the development of Jewish mysticism. He was the author of several esoteric works, which he signed with his own name. In order to better spread his ideas and to more effectively combat philosophy, which he considered a mortal danger to the Jewish faith, he composed pseudepigrapha (writings ascribed to other authors, usually in past ages) in the form of Midrashim on the Pentateuch, the Song of Solomon, the Book of Ruth, and Lamentations; only the names of the Talmudic authorities were even partially authentic, a procedure already used by the Sefer ha-bahir. In its most finished version (for there were several of them), the plot of the tales centred around Rabbi Simeon ben Yoḥai, a sage of the 2nd century, about whom the Talmud already related some curious anecdotes, most of them semilegendary. Moses de León thus produced over a period of about 30 years the Midrash ha-neʿelam (“The Mystical Midrash”), an allegorical work written mainly in Hebrew, and then the Sefer ha-zohar (“Book of Splendour”)—or, more briefly, the Zohar—a larger work written in artificial Aramaic, whose content is theosophic. The Zohar culminates in a long speech in which Simeon ben Yoḥai, on the day of his death, supposedly exposes the quintessence of his mystical doctrine. The book inspired nearly contemporary imitations that were incorporated into it or appended to it but were sometimes of a markedly different theological orientation: the Raʿya mehemana (“Faithful Shepherd”—i.e., Moses the prophet), the particular subject of which is the interpretation and theosophic justification of the precepts of the Torah; and the Tiqqune zohar, consisting of elaborations in the same vein bearing upon the first word of the book of Genesis (bereshit, “in the beginning”).

The works of Moses de León were not immediately accepted as authentic by all the esoterists and still less by scholars outside the theosophic movement. It took half a century or more for the Zohar and imitations of it to be recognized as authoritative ancient works, and even then it was not without some reluctance. Although critics were never fully silenced and the authenticity of the Zohar was already questioned in the 15th century, the myth created by Moses de León and his imitators became a spiritual reality for the majority of believing Jews, and it still retains this character among many “traditional” Jews. The Zohar, believed to be based on supernatural revelations and reinterpreted in diverse ways, served as a support and reference for all Jewish theosophies in later centuries.

In matters of doctrine, the Zohar and its appendices develop, amplify, and exaggerate speculation and tendencies that already existed rather than offer any radical innovation. The main lines of the Zohar—the springing forth of being from the depth of the divine “nothing,” the solidarity between the visible world and the world of the sefirot (complicated by the introduction of four ontological levels, at each of which the schema of the 10 sefirot is reproduced), the indispensable contribution to universal harmony by the people (i.e., the Jews) who observe the biblical and rabbinical precepts in their slightest details—were ideas that had been accepted for a long time in Jewish theosophy. But all of these themes were largely organized and enhanced by the use—or rather the unscrupulous appropriation—of materials taken from rabbinical tradition and ancient esoterism as well as from more recent currents of theological and philosophical thought (the speculations of the Sefer ha-temuna on the cosmic cycles and the “Prophetic Kabbala” of Abulafia were tacitly set aside).

Despite the lack of esteem that the writers of the Zoharic corpus felt—and sought to make others feel—toward works created by Gentiles, the method of symbolic representation used in the Zoharic writings was supported by a system of interpretation based on the originally Christian concept of the fourfold meaning of Scripture: literal, moral, allegorical (philosophical), and mystical. The symbolism that was thus established boldly made use of an exuberant anthropomorphic and even erotic imagery whose function was to convey the manifestation of the levels of the sefirot to each other and to the extra-divine world. The myth of the primordial man (Adam Qadmon), a virtually divine being, reappeared here under a new form, and it remained in the subsequent development of Kabbala.

The Zohar thus claims to provide a complete explanation of the world, humankind, history, and the situation of the Jews; on a higher level, it purports to justify the biblical revelation and rabbinical tradition down to the slightest detail, including the messianic expectation, and thereby to neutralize philosophy. But, while portraying itself as the defender of the traditional religion regulated by the Talmud and its commentaries, the Zohar places itself above tradition by boisterously proclaiming the incomparable value of the theosophic teaching of Rabbi Simeon ben Yoḥai and the superiority of the esoteric doctrine over Talmudic studies. There was in this attitude—which was more accentuated in the Raʿya mehemana than in the Zohar proper—a revolutionary potential and a threat to the primacy of Torah practice and study. The future would show that this danger was not completely unreal. The Lurianic Kabbala

After the establishment of the Zoharic corpus, no major changes took place in Jewish esoterism until the middle of the 16th century, when a religious centre of extreme importance for Judaism, mainly inspired by teachers coming from families expelled from Spain, was established in Safed (in Upper Galilee, Palestine; present-day Ẕefat, Israel). Kabbalistic literary output had been abundant in Spain until the expulsion in 1492 and in Italy and the Middle East during the following two generations, but it was primarily a matter of systematizing or even popularizing the Zohar or of extending the speculation already developed in the 13th century. There were also some attempts at reconciling philosophy and Kabbala.

The expulsion from Spain and the forced conversions to Christianity in both Spain and Portugal were profound tragedies. These events accentuated the existing pessimism caused by the dispersal of the Jews among the nations and intensified messianic expectation. This expectation most likely contributed to the beginnings of the printed transmission of Kabbala; the first two printed editions of the Zohar date from 1558. All these factors, joined with certain internal developments of speculative Kabbala in the 15th century, prepared the ground for the new theosophy inaugurated by the teaching of Isaac ben Solomon Luria (1534–72), who was born in Jerusalem, educated in Egypt, and died in Safed. Although his teaching is traditionally associated with Safed, he spent only the last three years of his life there. Luria wrote very little; his doctrine was transmitted, amplified, and probably somewhat distorted through the works of his disciples, especially Ḥayyim Vital (1543–1620), who wrote ʿEtz ḥayyim (“Tree of Life”), the standard presentation of Lurianic Kabbala.

The theosophy of Luria, whose novelty was proclaimed by its creator, was perfectly realized by the esoterists who held to the Zoharistic Kabbala, which was organized and codified precisely in Safed during the lifetime of Luria by Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (1522–70). Although its details are extremely complex, it is basically an attempt to reconcile divine transcendence with immanence and to solve the problem of evil, which the believer in the divine unity can recognize neither as a power existing independently of God nor as an integral part of him.

The vision of Luria is expressed in a vast mythical construct, which is typologically akin to certain gnostic and Manichaean (3rd-century dualistic) systems but which strives at all costs to avoid dualism. The essential elements of this myth include the withdrawal (tzimtzum) of the divine light, which originally filled all things, in order to make room for the extra-divine; the sinking, as a result of a catastrophic event that occurred during this process, of luminous particles into matter (qelippot, “shells,” a term already used in Kabbala to designate the evil powers); and the consequent need to save these particles and return them to their origin, by means of “repair” or “restoration” (tiqqun). This must be the work of the Jews who not only live in complete conformity to the religious duties imposed on them by tradition but who dedicate themselves, in the framework of a strict asceticism, to a contemplative life founded on mystical prayer and directed meditation (kawwana) on the liturgy, which is supposed to further the harmony (yiḥud, “unification”) of the innumerable attributes within the divine life. The successive reincarnations of the soul, a constant theme of Kabbala that Lurianism developed, are also invested with an important function in the work of “repair.” In short, Lurianism proclaims the absolute requirement of an intense mystical life with an unceasing struggle against the powers of evil. Thus, it presents a myth that symbolizes the world’s origin, fall, and redemption. It also gives meaning to the existence and hopes of the Jews, not merely exhorting them to a patient surrender to God but moving them to a redeeming activism, which is the measure of their sanctity. Such requirements make the ideal of Lurianism possible only for a small elite; ultimately, it is realizable only through the exceptional personage of the “just”—the ideal holy Jew. Shabbetaianism

For 60 years after the death of Luria, his version of the Kabbala, together with accretions from the other mysticisms of Safed, spread through the Jewish Diaspora and deeply permeated its spiritual life, liturgy, and devotional practices. It emphasized the need for “repair” of a world in which Jewish uneasiness continued to grow; despite certain favourable factors—the relative tolerance of the Ottoman Empire and the peaceful establishment of an important Marrano (Iberian Jewish, or Sephardic) community in Amsterdam—there was no overall solution to the problem of the conversos who had remained in the Iberian Peninsula. The Ashkenazim also experienced a serious crisis: its most prosperous and dynamic section, the Jewish population of Poland, was sorely tried, almost totally ruined, and in large part forced to move back toward the west because of the massacres and the destruction that took place during the Cossack uprising of 1648.

These ideological and historical data may provide the necessary context for understanding the astonishing though short-lived success of Rabbi Shabbetai Tzevi of Smyrna (1626–76), who proclaimed himself messiah in 1665. Although the “messiah” was forcibly converted to Islam in 1666 and ended his life in exile 10 years later, he continued to have faithful followers. A sect was thus born and survived, largely thanks to the activity of Nathan of Gaza (c. 1644–90), an unwearying propagandist who justified the actions of Shabbetai Tzevi, including his final apostasy, with theories based on the Lurian doctrine of “repair.” Tzevi’s actions, according to Nathan, should be understood as the descent of the just into the abyss of the “shells” in order to liberate the captive particles of divine light.

Shabbetai Tzevi blessing a Jewish congregation at Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (now İzmir, Turkey), c. 1665. © Photos.com/Thinkstock

The Shabbetaian crisis lasted nearly a century, and some of its aftereffects lasted even longer. It led to the formation of sects whose members were externally converted to Islam—e.g., the Dönme (Turkish: “Apostates”) of Salonika, whose descendants still live in Turkey—or to Roman Catholicism—e.g., the Polish supporters of Jacob Frank (1726–91), the self-proclaimed messiah and Catholic convert (in Bohemia-Moravia, however, the Frankists outwardly remained Jews). This crisis did not discredit Kabbala, but it did lead Jewish spiritual authorities to monitor and severely curtail its spread and to use censorship and other acts of repression against anyone—even a person of tested piety and recognized knowledge—who was suspected of Shabbetaian sympathies or messianic pretensions. Modern Hasidism

Although the messianic movement centred around Shabbetai Tzevi produced only disillusionment and could have led to the destruction of Judaism, it answered both the theosophic aspirations of a small number of visionary scholars and the affective need of the Jewish masses that was left unsatisfied by the dry intellectualism of the Talmudists and the economic and social oppression of the ruling classes (both Jewish and non-Jewish). This was the case especially in Poland, which before the partition of the Polish kingdom (1772–95) included Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian territories. It was there that the Hasidic movement originated around the middle of the 18th century (it was in no way connected with medieval German Hasidism). While maintaining the Lurian Kabbala as a theoretical basis of speculation, the movement also made adjustments and transformations that continue to the present day.

Modern Hasidism may be regarded as a mass movement having a minimum of organization and relying on itinerant teachers and preachers. According to legend, it was founded by Israel ben Eliezer (c. 1700–60), known as Baʿal Shem Ṭov (“Master of the Good Name”; that is, a possessor—he was not the only one of his kind—of the secret of the ineffable name of God, which bestows an infallible power to heal and perform other miracles). Although relatively untrained according to the norms of the rabbinical Judaism of his time, he was a spiritual person of exceptional quality and was able to win to his ideas not only the common people but also many representatives of the intellectual elite. The mist of legend that surrounds him makes it impossible to reconstruct his entire doctrine, which he probably never systematized. Inspired by the methods of the itinerant preachers whose activity was becoming more intense among eastern European Jews in the 18th century, his teaching took the form of homiletic interpretations of sacred texts based on fables and parables borrowed from daily life and from folklore. Although this method remained constant in Hasidism, it is a mistake to conclude, as did Martin Buber, that the tale and the anecdote are the most authentic expression of the doctrine and spirituality of Hasidism. Indeed, the thought of the Hasidic “rabbis” is best expressed in doctrinal works, most of which took the form of sermons on the weekly sections of the Pentateuch and other liturgical lessons. It is a very diversified thought, for there are as many bodies of doctrine in Hasidism as there were creative spirits during the first three generations of the movement. It is possible nevertheless to point to a few traits that are fundamental and common to Hasidism as a whole.

grave of Baʿal Shem ṬovThe covered burial place of Baʿal Shem Ṭov in Medzhybizh, Ukraine.Eliyahu (Eli)

In theory, Hasidism remains rooted in the Lurianic Kabbala, and nothing essential separates it at this point from the traditional Judaism of eastern Europe. It is unique, however, because it made devequt, “being-with-God,” an object of aspiration and even a constant duty for all Jews and in all circumstances of life, even those seemingly most profane. In other words, it demands a total spiritualization of Jewish existence. This requirement entails a reevaluation, less new in its principle than in its concrete application, of the speculative concepts of Kabbala. Emphasis is placed on the inner life of the believer, and it is on this level that the supercosmic drama (whose stage is in the universe of the sefirot, according to bookish theosophy) is played out. According to several teachers, the same emphasis on inwardness holds for messianic redemption. Hasidism also transforms into social reality a requirement that was part of the Lurian doctrine of “repair,” though it was unfortunately distorted by Shabbetaianism: it puts the inspired leader—an indispensable guide and unquestioned authority endowed with supernatural powers, the “just” (tzaddiq), the “miracle-working rabbi” (Wunder-rebbe)—at the centre of the group’s organization and religious life. Hasidism thus produced, wherever it triumphed, an undeniable spiritual renewal. On the other hand, it was plagued by the cult of personality, by competition between “dynasties” of “rabbis,” and by the social and economic consequences of its obstinate insistence on isolating the Hasidic community from the surrounding society.

From its very beginnings, Hasidism encountered strong resistance from official Judaism, which had been sensitized to the anarchism of the Shabbetaians and which at the same time was solicitous toward the prerogatives of the community leaders and rabbis. The behaviour of the followers of Hasidism, though irreproachable in its rigorous observance of ritual rules, displayed several traits that were distasteful to its adversaries (besides the unconditional submission to the tzaddiq, who often doubled as the rabbi of the official congregation): desertion of the general communal synagogues, meetings in small conventicles, modifications of the liturgy, excessively formal dress during prayer, and preference given to mystical meditation rather than to the dialectical study of the Talmud, which required serious intellectual concentration. Nevertheless, the conflict between the Hasidim and the “Opponents” (Mitnaggedim) did not finally degenerate into schism; after three generations, a tacit compromise was established between the two tendencies—Hasidic and Mitnaggedic—though awareness of their differences was never erased. The compromise was somewhat to the advantage of Hasidism, but not without a few concessions on its part, notably on the question of education.

The strong organization of the Hasidic groups allowed them to survive the dislocation of eastern European Judaism as a result of the events of World War II, but its vital centres are today in the United States rather than in Palestine, partly for economic reasons and partly because of the more or less reserved, and sometimes hostile, attitude of the Hasidic “rabbis” toward political Zionism and the State of Israel. The best-known of the U.S.-based groups is the very active Lubavitchers (named after Lyubavichi, Russia, seat of a famous school of Hasidism), whose headquarters are in the Crown Heights district of Brooklyn, New York. Modern Jewish mysticism

The role played by Kabbala and Hasidism in the thought and spirituality of contemporary Judaism is far from insignificant, though its importance is not as great as in former times. Although there is hardly any living Kabbalistic and Hasidic literature, the personal thought of religious writers such as Abraham Isaac Kook (c. 1865–1935)—spiritual leader, mystic, and chief rabbi of Palestine—remains influential. Furthermore, religious thought in Westernized Jewish circles between the two World Wars received a powerful stimulus from the philosopher Martin Buber, whose work is in part devoted to the propagation of Hasidic ideology as he understood it. “Neo-Orthodoxy,” the theological system founded in Germany by Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–88), was indifferent to mysticism at the outset, but it too came to be influenced by it, especially after the rediscovery of living Judaism in Poland during World War I by Western Jewish thinkers. Also significant is the work of Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–72), a Polish Jewish theologian of distinguished Hasidic background and dual culture—traditional and Western.

Kook, Abraham IsaacAbraham Isaac Kook, 1924.National Photo Company Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital File Number: LC-DIG-npcc-25595)

Jewish mysticism has exerted influence outside the Jewish community. Kabbala, distorted and deflected from its own intentions, has helped to nourish and stimulate certain currents of thought in Christian society since the Renaissance. “Christian Kabbala,” born in the 15th century under the impetus of Jewish converts from Spain and Italy, claimed to find in the Kabbalistic documents—touched up or even forged if necessary—arguments for the truths of the Christian faith. A certain number of Christian humanist scholars became interested in Jewish mysticism, and several of them acquired a fairly extensive knowledge of it on the basis of authentic texts. Among them were Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) and Gilles of Viterbo (Egidio da Viterbo; c. 1465–1532) in Italy; Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) in Germany, who wrote one of the principal expositions of Kabbala in a language accessible to the learned non-Jewish public (De arte Cabbalistica, 1517); and the visionary Guillaume Postel (1510–81) in France. The occult philosophy of the 16th century, the “natural philosophy” of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the occult and theosophic theories that are cultivated even today and that have coloured the ideology of Freemasonry—all of these continue to borrow from Kabbala, though they rarely grasp its spirit and meaning. The same is true of most of the books on Kabbala put out by publishers of occult and theosophic literature today.

The scholarly study of Jewish mysticism is a very recent phenomenon. The state of mind and the tendencies of the founders of the “science of Judaism” (the scholarly study of Jewish religion, literature, and history) in Germany during the first half of the 19th century were too permeated with rationalism to be favourable to scholarly investigation of a movement judged to be obscurantist and retrograde. Although there were some valuable early studies, research on a large scale and application of the proved methods of philology and history of religions began only with the work of Gershom G. Scholem (1897–1982) and his disciples. This research addressed all the many areas of Jewish mysticism, but in every area the gaps in knowledge remain serious. Critical editions of mystical texts are few in number; unpublished documents are cataloged incompletely; and only a few monographs on writers and particular themes exist, though these are indispensable preliminaries to a detailed and thorough synthesis. It is to be hoped that the synthesis outlined by Scholem in his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941), though exceptionally valuable in its time, will be taken up again and completed. Georges Vajda Jewish myth and legend

Jewish myth and legend comprises a vast body of stories transmitted over the past 3,000 years in Hebrew and in the vernacular dialects spoken by Jews, such as Yiddish (Judeo-German) and Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). These stories have played an important role in the history of Jewish religion and culture.Virtually all the standard types of folktales are represented. Conspicuously absent, however, are pure fairy tales, because fairies, elves, and the like are foreign to the Jewish imagination, which prefers to populate the otherworld with angels and demons subservient to God. Significance and characteristics

Apart from their intrinsic appeal, Jewish myths and legends claim attention for three special reasons: (1) Those incorporated in the Hebrew Bible are now part and parcel of the cultural heritage of the Western world and have exerted a profound influence on its literature and art. (2) During the Middle Ages, Jews were among the principal transmitters of Middle Eastern and North African tales to the West, so that many familiar Eastern stories can be traced to Jewish compilations. (3) Since these stories have been accumulated through centuries of constant migration, they provide an unrivalled body of “clinical” material for studying the processes by which popular tales in fact travel and are transformed.

Not all of the stories are of Jewish origin; many have parallels elsewhere and are derived from tales the Jews picked up from their non-Jewish neighbours in the lands of their dispersion. Even what is borrowed, however, is usually impressed with a distinctive Jewish stamp. The tales were often adapted to point up some precept of the Jewish religion, to illustrate some facet of Jewish life, or to exemplify some trait of Jewish character and temperament. The dominant feature of the stories is their religious and moral tone; most of them are told specifically as part of the homiletic exposition of Scripture. Such stories are taught to Jews from early childhood as a regular part of their religious education. To the tradition-minded Jew, therefore, they are more than mere literary fancies. Biblical characters and events are presented more in the lineaments of later legend than in their original biblical form, and popular notions about heaven and hell, reward and punishment, the coming of the messiah, and the resurrection of the dead derive mainly from these sources rather than from Scripture itself.

A distinction must be made between myth and legend. In common parlance, a myth is a story about gods or otherworldly beings. In this sense, therefore, there can be no original Jewish myths, because Judaism is a rigorously monotheistic religion. Nevertheless, from the earliest times, Jews have not disdained to borrow the myths of their pagan neighbours and adapt them to their own religious outlook. If, however, the term is interpreted in a larger sense to mean the portrayal of perennial concerns in the context of particular historical events, myth is indeed one of the essential vehicles by which Judaism conveys its message. It is only when historical happenings are translated into this wider dimension that they cease to be mere antiquarian data and acquire continuing relevance. In Judaism, for example, the Exodus from Egypt is projected mythically from something that happened at a particular time into something that is continually happening, and it comes to exemplify the situation and experience of all humans everywhere—their emergence from the bondage of obscurantism, their individual revelations at their individual Sinais, their trek through a figurative wilderness, even their death in it so that their children or children’s children may eventually reach the figurative “Promised Land.” By the same token, the historical destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem is transformed by myth into a paradigm of the continuing mutual estrangement of God and humans, their exile from one another. Legend, on the other hand, implies no more than a fanciful embroidering of purportedly historical fact. Unlike myth, it does not transcend the historical and the local. Sources and development Myth and legend in the Bible

The vast repertoire of Jewish myths and legends begins with the Hebrew Bible. Their overall purpose in Scripture is to illustrate the ways of God with humans, as exemplified both in historical events and in personal experience. The stories themselves are often derived from current popular lore and possess abundant parallels in other cultures, both ancient and modern. In each case, however, they are given a peculiar and distinctive twist. Myths

Biblical myths are found mainly in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. They are concerned with the creation of the world and the first man and woman, the origin of the current human condition, the primeval Deluge, the distribution of peoples, and the variation of languages.

The basic stories are derived from the popular lore of the ancient Middle East; parallels can be found in the extant literature of the peoples of the area. The Mesopotamians, for instance, also knew of an earthly paradise such as Eden, and the figure of the cherubim—properly griffins rather than angels—was known to the Canaanites. In the Bible, however, this mythical garden of the gods becomes the scene of man’s fall and the background of a story designed to account for the natural limitations of human life. Similarly, the Babylonians told of the formation of humankind from clay. But, whereas in the pagan tale the first man’s function is to serve as an earthly menial of the gods, in the scriptural version his role is to rule over all other creatures. The story of the Deluge, including the elements of the ark and the dispatch of the raven and dove, appears already in the Babylonian myths of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis. There, however, the hero is eventually made immortal, whereas in the Bible this detail is omitted because, to the Israelite mind, no child of woman could achieve that status. Lastly, while the story of the Tower of Babel was told originally to account for the stepped temples (ziggurats) of Babylonia, to the Hebrew writer its purpose is simply to inculcate the moral lesson that humans should not aspire beyond their assigned station.

Scattered through the Prophets and Holy Writings (the two latter portions of the Hebrew Bible) are allusions to other ancient myths—e.g., to that of a primordial combat between YHWH and a monster variously named Leviathan (Wriggly), Rahab (Braggart), or simply Sir Sea or Dragon. The Babylonians told likewise of a fight between their god Marduk and the monster Tiamat; the Hittites told of a battle between the weather god and the dragon Illuyankas; while a Canaanite poem from Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit) in northern Syria relates the discomfiture of Sir Sea by the deity Baal and the rout of an opponent named Leviathan. Originally, this myth probably referred to the annual subjugation of the floods.

Ancient myths are utilized also in the form of passing allusions or poetic “conceits,” much as modern Westerners may speak of Cupid or the Muses. In the prophetic books, for example, there are references to a celestial upstart hurled to earth on account of his brashness and to the imprisonment of certain rebellious constellations.

The prophets used myths paradigmatically to illustrate the hand of God in contemporary events or to reinforce their prophecies. Thus, to Isaiah the primeval dragon was the symbol of the continuing force of chaos and evil that will again have to be vanquished before the kingdom of God can be established on earth. Similarly, for Ezekiel the celestial upstart serves as the prototype of the prince of Tyre, destined for an imminent fall; and Habakkuk sees in the impending rout of certain invaders a repetition on the stage of history of YHWH’s mythical sortie against the monster of the sea. Legends and other tales

The Judgement of SolomonThe Judgement of Solomon, oil on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1617), in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark) in Copenhagen, Denmark.Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark); www.smk.dk (Public domain)

Moses being saved by the pharaoh's daughter, colour illustration from a Victorian-era Bible, c. 1860s.© Historical Picture Archive/CorbisLegends in the Hebrew Scriptures often embellish the accounts of national heroes with standard motifs drawn from popular lore. Thus, the Genesis story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife recurs substantially (but with other characters) in an Egyptian papyrus of the 13th century bce. The account of the infant Moses being placed in the bulrushes (in Exodus) has an earlier counterpart in a Babylonian tale about Sargon, king of Akkad (c. 2334–c. 2279 bce), and is paralleled later in legends associated with the Persian Cyrus and with Tu-Küeh, the fabled founder of the Turkish nation. Jephthah’s rash vow (in Judges), whereby he is committed to sacrifice his daughter, recalls the Classical legend of Idomeneus of Crete, who was similarly compelled to slay his own son. The motif of the letter whereby David engineers the death in battle of Bathsheba’s husband recurs in Homer’s story of Bellerophon. The celebrated judgment of Solomon concerning the child claimed by two contending women is told, albeit with variations of detail, about Buddha, Confucius, and other sages; the story of how Jonah was swallowed by a “great fish” but was subsequently disgorged intact finds a parallel in the Indian tale of the hero Shaktideva, who endured the same experience during his quest for the Golden City. On the other hand, it should be observed that many of the parallels commonly cited from the folklore of indigenous peoples may be mere repetitions of biblical material picked up from Christian missionaries.

Folktales in the Hebrew Bible sometimes serve to account for the names of places in Palestine or for the origins of traditional customs and institutions. Thus, the familiar story of the man who must struggle with the personified current of a river before he can cross it is localized (in Genesis) at the ford of Jabbok simply because that name suggests the Hebrew word abḳ (“struggle”), and Samson’s felling of 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass is placed at Ramath-leḥi because leḥi is Hebrew for “jawbone.” Similarly, a taboo against eating the thigh muscle of an animal is validated in Genesis by the legend that Jacob was struck in the hip when he fought with an otherworldly being at Penuel (“Face of God”). The custom of annually bewailing the vanished spirit of fertility is rationalized in Judges as a lamentation for the hapless daughter of Jephthah.

Samson killing PhilistinesStanding dish depicting Samson crushing the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, enamel on copper by Pierre Courteys, c. 1580; in the Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio.Photograph by Jenny O'Donnell. Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, Taft collection 1931.299

The Hebrew Bible also contains a few examples of fables (didactic tales in which animals or plants play human roles). Thus, the serpent in Eden talks to Eve, and Balaam’s ass not only speaks but also seeks to avoid an angel, unseen by Balaam, that is blocking the road, while trees compete for kingship in the celebrated parable of Jotham in Judges. Finally, in the Book of Job (38:31) there are allusions to star myths concerning the binding of Orion (called “the Fool”) and the “chaining” of the Pleiades.

BalaamBalaam with angel and donkey, copperplate engraving by William Marshall Craig.Photos.com/Thinkstock Contemporary interpretations

The tendency to interpret biblical tales and legends as authentic historical records or as allegories or as the relics of solar, lunar, and astral myths is now a thing of the past. The modern folklorist is interested in the legends because they push back to remote antiquity several tales and motifs long known from later literature. For the theologian, however, they pose the deeper problem of distinguishing clearly between the permanent message of Scripture and the form in which it is conveyed. The process of “demythologization” is one of the central concerns of modern religious thought. It recognizes that the natural language of religious truth is myth; thus, the continuing relevance of ancient scriptures depends not on the total rejection of that vehicle but rather on the expansion and remodeling of it—i.e., on “remythologization” rather than demythologization. In the final analysis, the traditional portrayal of God himself is simply a mythical representation of ultimate reality, but that reality transcends the particular images in which it happens to be expressed. At the same time, it is important to note that, whereas in the modern world scriptural myths are generally understood as metaphors, in the ancient world they were accepted as literal statements of fact. Gods, for example, were not merely “personifications” of natural phenomena but rather the effective potencies of the phenomena themselves conceived from the start as personal beings. Myth and legend in the Persian period

In 539 bce the Jews came under Persian domination and consequently absorbed a good deal of Iranian folklore about spirits and demons, the eventual dissolution of the world in a fiery ordeal, and its subsequent renewal. This introduced new elements into Jewish popular mythology: hierarchies of angels; archangels such as Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel (modeled loosely upon the six Iranian spiritual entities, the amesha spentas); and the demonic figures of Satan, Belial, and Asmodeus (corresponding to the Iranian Angra Mainyu [Ahriman], Druj, and Aēshma Daeva). There was also a preoccupation with apocalyptic visions of heaven and hell and of the Last Days. Unfortunately, no Jewish texts of this genre from the Persian period are extant, so these new elements can be recognized only inferentially from their survival in later times—notably in products of the ensuing Hellenistic Age, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The principal monument of Jewish story in the Persian period is the biblical Book of Esther, which is basically a Judaized version of a Persian novella about the shrewdness of harem queens. The story was adapted to account for Purim, a popular festival, which itself is probably a transformation of the Persian New Year. Leading elements of the tale—such as the parade of Mordecai, dressed in royal robes, through the streets, the fight between the Jews and their adversaries, and the hanging of Haman and his sons—seem to reflect customs associated with Purim, such as the ceremonial ride of a common citizen through the capital, the mock combat between two teams representing the Old Year and the New Year, and the execution of the Old Year in effigy. Myth and legend in the Hellenistic period Historiated Bibles and legendary histories

Judaism entered a new phase in 330 bce, when Alexander the Great completed his conquest of the Middle East. The dominant features of the Hellenistic Age, which began with Alexander’s death in 323, were an increasing cosmopolitanism and a fusion of ancient Middle Eastern and Greek cultures. These found expression in Jewish myth and legend in the composition (in Greek) of stories designed to link the Bible with general history, to correlate biblical and Greek legends, and to claim for the Hebrew patriarchs a major role in the development of the arts and sciences. It was asserted, for instance, that Abraham had taught astrology to the king of Egypt, that his sons and those of Keturah had aided Heracles against the giant Antaeus, and that Moses, blithely identified both with the semi-mythical Greek poet Musaeus and with the Egyptian Thoth, had been the teacher of Orpheus (the putative founder of one of the current mystery cults) and the inventor of navigation, architecture, and the hieroglyphic script. Leading writers in this vein were Artapanus, Eupolemus, and Cleodemus (all c. 100 bce), but their works are known to us only from stray quotations by the early Church Fathers Eusebius and St. Clement of Alexandria.

The Jews also adapted the current Greek literary fashion of retelling Homeric and other ancient legends in “modernized,” novelistic versions, well seasoned with romantic elaborations of their own traditions. A paraphrase of Genesis found among the Dead Sea Scrolls ornaments the biblical narrative with several familiar folklore motifs. Thus, when Noah is born, the house is filled with light, just as it is said elsewhere to have been at the birth of the Roman king Servius Tullius, of Buddha, and (later) of several Christian saints. When Abraham’s life is threatened, he dreams of a cedar about to be felled, an omen that is said to have presaged the deaths of the Roman emperors Domitian and Severus Alexander. (Although the parallels are of later date, they illustrate the persistence of age-old traditions.) The same trend toward fanciful elaboration of scriptural tales is manifested also in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (“testaments” meaning last wills), in which the virtues and weaknesses of the sons of Jacob are illustrated by moralistic legends. There is also a lengthy paraphrase of early biblical narratives, mistakenly attributed to Philo Judaeus, the famous Alexandrian Jewish philosopher of the 1st century ce. Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

The principal monuments of Jewish literature during the Hellenistic period are the works known collectively as the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. The former are certain later writings excluded by Jews from the canon of the Hebrew Bible but found in the Greek Septuagint version. The latter are other late writings not included in any authorized version of the Scriptures and spuriously attributed to biblical personalities.

The Apocrypha include several Judaized versions of tales well represented in other cultures. The book of Tobit, for instance, turns largely on the widespread motifs of grateful dead”" class="md-crosslink">the “grateful dead” and the demon in the bridal chamber. The former relates how a traveller who gives burial to a dishonoured corpse is subsequently aided by a chance companion who turns out to be the spirit of the deceased. The latter tells how a succession of bridegrooms die on the nuptial night through the presence of a demon beside the bridal bed. Similarly, in Bel and the Dragon (2nd century bce) there is the equally familiar motif of fraud that is detected by the imprint of the culprit’s foot on strewn ashes; the story reappears later in the French and Celtic romance of Tristan and Iseult. In the story of Susanna and the Elders (also 2nd century bce), a charge of unchastity levelled against a beautiful woman is refuted when a clever youngster (“Daniel come to judgment”) points out discrepancies in the testimony of her accusers. This well-worn story has a close parallel in a Samaritan tale about the daughter of a high priest in the 1st century ce; the motif of the clever youngster who surpasses seasoned judges recurs later in the Infancy Gospels and in the tale of ʿAlī Khamājah in The Thousand and One Nights.

The Pseudepigrapha also contain a number of folktales that have parallels in other traditions. The Martyrdom of Isaiah (1st century ce?) tells how the prophet, fleeing from King Manasseh, hid in a tree that opened miraculously, though he eventually perished when it was sawn asunder. Similar tales are related in the Talmud and in the later Persian epic Shāh-nāmeh (c. 1000 ce). Myth and legend in the Talmud and Midrash Midrash and Haggada

Toward the end of the 1st century ce, the canon of the Hebrew Bible was formed when certain Hebrew writings were recognized as the authoritative corpus of divine revelation. The study of the Bible became an essential element of the Jewish religion, which meant that the sacred text had to be subjected to a form of interpretation that would bring out its universal significance and permanent relevance. The process, known as Midrash (“interpretation” or “investigation”), involved the spicing of homiletic discourses with elaborative legends—a pedagogic device called Haggada (“Storytelling”). Originally transmitted orally, the legends were eventually committed to writing as part of the Talmud (the authoritative compendium of Oral Law and commentary on it), as well as in later compilations geared to particular books or sections of the Hebrew Bible, to scriptural lessons read in the services of the synagogue, or to specific biblical characters or moral themes.

The range of Haggada is virtually inexhaustible; a few representative examples must suffice. With regard to biblical characters, both Moses and David were born circumcised; Cain had a twin sister; Abraham will sit at the gate of hell to reproach the damned on Judgment Day; Aaron once locked the angel of death in the tabernacle; Solomon understood the language of animals; King Hiram, who supplied materials for the Temple, entered paradise alive; and the flesh of Leviathan will feed the righteous in the world to come.

In such fanciful elaborations of Scriptures, Haggada does not disdain to draw on Classical tales from ancient Greece and Rome. The men of Sodom, it is said, subjected itinerant strangers to the ordeal of Procrustes’ bed; the earth opened to rescue newborn Hebrew males from the pharaoh, as it did for Amphiaraus, the prophet of Argos, when he fled from Periclymenus after the attack on Thebes; Moses spoke at birth, as did Apollo; Solomon’s ring, cast into the river, was retrieved from a fish that had swallowed it, as was that of Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, in the story told by Herodotus; the Queen of Sheba had the feet of an ass, like the child-stealing witch (Onoskelis) of Greek folklore; and no rain ever fell on the altar at Jerusalem, just as none was said to have fallen on Mt. Olympus.

There are other familiar motifs. Moses qualifies as a husband for Zipporah by alone being able to pluck a rod from Jethro’s garden; David’s harp is played at night by the wind, like that of Aeolus; and Isaiah, like Achilles and Siegfried, has only one vulnerable spot in his body—in his case, his mouth.

Legends are developed also from fanciful interpretations of scriptural verses. Thus, Adam is said to have fallen only a few hours after his creation, because the Hebrew text of Psalms 49:12 can be literally rendered “Adam does not last the night in glory.” Lamech slays the wandering Cain—a fanciful interpretation of his boast in Genesis 4:23–24. Melchizedek is immortal, in view of Psalms 110:4: “You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” And the first man is a hermaphrodite (this notion has analogues elsewhere), because Genesis 1:27 says of God’s creation, “Male and female he created them.” Fables and animal stories

Midrash also uses fables paralleled in non-Jewish sources. Aesop’s fable of The Lion and the Crane is quoted by a rabbi of the 1st century ce, and the tales of The Fox in the Vineyard and of The Camel Who Got Slit Ears for Wanting Horns likewise make their appearance. Material is also drawn from medieval bestiaries (manuals on animals, real or imaginary, with symbolic or moralistic interpretations). Bears, according to the bestiaries, lack mother’s milk; hares and hyenas can change sex; only one pair of unicorns exists at a time; and there is a gigantic bird (ziz) that reaches from earth to sky. Contribution of Haggada to Christian and Islamic legends

Several of the stories related in Haggadic literature were later adapted by Christian writers. The legend that Adam was created out of virgin soil was taken to prefigure the virgin birth of the second Adam (i.e., Jesus); while the story that the soil in question was taken from the site of the future Temple was transformed into the claim that Adam had been molded out of the dust of Calvary. Similarly, the legend that, at the dedication of the Temple, the doors swung open automatically to admit the Ark of the Covenant was transferred to the consecration of a church by St. Basil (329–379); and the Talmudic tale that the bronze Nicanor gates of the Temple had floated to Jerusalem when cast overboard during their shipment from Alexandria was applied to the doors of a sacred edifice erected in honour of St. Giles (fl. 7th century).

Nor was it only the Christians who absorbed Haggadic legends. The Qurʾān, the sacred book of Islam, likewise incorporates a good deal of such material in its treatment of biblical characters such as Joseph, Moses, David, and Solomon. Myth and legend in the medieval period Jewish contributions to diffusion of folktales

The Middle Ages was a singularly productive period in the history of Jewish myth and legend. Medieval Jews played a prominent role in the transmission of Middle Eastern and Asian tales to the West and enhanced their own repertoire with a goodly amount of secular material. Especially in Spain and Italy, Arabic versions of standard collections of folktales were translated into Hebrew and then into Latin, thus enabling the stories to spread to the Christian world. The Indian collection of animal tales known as The Fables of Bidpai (Sanskrit: Panca-tantra), for example, was rendered into Hebrew from the 8th-century Arabic version of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Muqaffaʿ; and, in the 12th century, John of Capua’s Directorium humanae vitae (“Guide for Human Life”), one of the most celebrated repositories of moralistic tales (exempla) used by Christian preachers, was developed from this Hebrew translation. So too the famous Senbād-nāmeh (“Fables of Sinbad”)—one of the sources, incidentally, of Boccaccio’s Decameron—was rendered from Arabic into Hebrew and then into Latin. The renowned romance of Barlaam and Josaphat—a Christian adaptation of tales about the Buddha—found its Jewish counterpart in a compilation titled The Prince and the Dervish, adapted from an Arabic text by Abraham ben Samuel ibn Ḥisdai, a leader of Spanish Jewry in the 13th century. Hebrew versions of medieval romances

Hebrew translations were also made from Latin and other European languages. There are several Hebrew adaptations of the Alexander Romance, based mainly (though not exclusively) on a Latin rendering of the Greek original by Callisthenes (c. 360–327 bce). The central theme is the exploits of Alexander the Great, and the narrative includes fanciful accounts of his adventures in foreign lands and of the outlandish peoples he encounters. There is a Hebrew reworking of the Arthurian legend, in the form of a secular sermon in which Arthurian and biblical scenes are blithely mixed together. Finally, there is a Hebrew Ysopet (the common title for a medieval version of Aesop) that shares several of its fables with the famous collection made by Marie de France in the late 12th century. Jewish contributions to Christian and Islamic tales

Apart from these Hebrew translations of Arabic and European works, a good deal of earlier Haggadic material is embodied in the Disciplina clericalis of Peter Alfonsi (died after 1122), a baptized Jew of Aragon originally known as Moses Sephardi. This book is the oldest European collection of novellas; it served as a primary source for the celebrated Gesta Romanorum (“Deeds of the Romans”) of the same period—itself a major source for European storytellers, poets, and dramatists for many centuries.

Haggadic material was also absorbed by Arabic writers during this period. Not only does the Qurʾān incorporate such material, but the Egyptian recension of The Thousand and One Nights seems to have drawn extensively on Jewish sources. Its tales of The Sultan and His Three Sons, The Angel of Death, Alexander and the Pious Man, and the legend of Baliqiyah most likely come from a Jewish source. Major medieval Hebrew collections

From the 11th to the 13th century, comprehensive collections of tales and fables were compiled in Europe, both for entertainment and edification; standard examples are the Spanish El novellino and the aforementioned Disciplina clericalis and Gesta Romanorum. Jews, especially in Morocco and in Islamic Spain, produced similar collections. Two of the most important were The Book of Comfort by Nissim ben Jacob ben Nissim of Al-Qayrawān (11th century) and The Book of Delight by Joseph ben Meir ibn Zabara of Spain (end of the 12th century). The former, composed in Judeo-Arabic, is a collection of some 60 moralizing tales designed to comfort the author’s father-in-law on the loss of a son. Belonging to a well-known genre of Arabic literature and derived mainly from Arabic sources, it is permeated by a preoccupation with divine justice, which was typical of the Muʿtazilite school of Islamic theology. It was later translated into Hebrew. The Book of Delight consists of 15 tales, largely about the wiles of women, exchanged between two travelling companions—a form of cadre, or “enclosing tale,” later adopted on a more extensive scale in the 14th century in the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (c. 1342–1400). Typical is the tale of The Silversmith and His Wife, which relates how a craftsman, persuaded by his greedy wife to make a statue of a princess, gets his hands cut off by the king for violating the Islamic law against making images, while his wife reaps rich rewards from the flattered princess. Although most of the stories are taken from Arabic sources, some have parallels in rabbinic literature—including the famous tale of the matron of Ephesus, who, while keeping vigil over her husband’s tomb, makes love with a guard posted nearby to watch over the corpses of certain crucified robbers. When, during one of their trysts, one of the corpses is stolen and her lover therefore faces punishment, the shrewd woman exhumes the body of her husband and substitutes it. This tale is found already in the Satyricon of Petronius (died 66 ce) and was later used by Voltaire (1694–1778) in his Zadig and by the 20th-century English playwright Christopher Fry in his A Phoenix Too Frequent.

Of the same genre but deriving mainly from west European rather than Arabic sources are the Mishle shuʿalim (“Fox Fables”) of Berechiah ha-Nakdan (“the Punctuator”), who may have lived in England near the end of the 12th century. About half of these tales recur in Marie de France’s Ysopet, and only one of them is of specifically Jewish origin. Berechiah’s work was translated into Latin and thereafter became a favourite of European storytellers.

Among anonymous compendiums of this type is The Alphabet of Ben Sira, extant in two recensions, probably of the 11th century. This is basically a collection of proverbs attributed to the famous sage of the apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach). In one of the recensions the proverbs are illustrated by appropriate tales. The author is represented as an infant prodigy who performs much the same feats of sapience as are attributed to Jesus in some of the Infancy Gospels. Medieval legendary histories and Haggadic compendiums

Two other developments mark the history of Jewish myth and legend during the Middle Ages. The first was a revival of the Hellenistic predilection for large-scale compendiums in which the history of the Jews was “integrated,” in legendary fashion, with that of the world in general and especially with Classical traditions. Two major works of this kind, both composed (apparently) in Italy during the 9th century, are Josippon, by a certain Ben Gorion, which presents a fanciful record from the Creation onward and contains numerous references to foreign nations; and the Book of Jashar, a colourful account from Adam to Joshua, named for the ancient book of heroic songs and sagas mentioned in the Bible (Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18). There is also the voluminous Chronicles of Jerahmeel, written in the Rhineland in the 14th century, which draws largely on Pseudo-Philo’s earlier compilation and includes Hebrew and Aramaic versions of certain books of the Apocrypha.

The other development was the gathering of Haggadic legends and tales into comprehensive, systematic compendiums. Works of this kind are Yalquṭ Shimʿoni (“The Collection of Simeon”), attributed to Rabbi Simeon of Frankfurt am Main; Midrash ha-gadol (“The Great Midrash”), composed after the death in 1204 of Moses Maimonides, whom it quotes; and the Midrash of David ha-Nagid, named after the grandson of Maimonides. About 100 years later a similar work on the Prophets and holy writings, Yalquṭ ha-Makiri (“The Collection of Makhir”), was compiled by Makhir ben Abba Mari in Spain. It has been suggested that the production of such works was spurred by the necessity of providing “ammunition” for the public disputations with Christian ecclesiastics that the church forced upon Jewish scholars during this period. Myth and legend in the modern period Kabbalistic tales

In the 16th century, Jewish myth and legend took several new directions. The disappointment of messianic expectations through the dismal eclipse of the pretender Shabbetai Tzevi increased interest in occult speculation and in the mystical lore of the Kabbala. Important schools of Kabbala arose in Italy and at Safed, in Palestine, and tales of the miraculous Faust-like powers of masters such as Isaac Luria (1534–72) and Ḥayyim ben Joseph Vital (also known as Ḥayyim Vital Calabrese) circulated freely after their deaths.

Another reaction to the dashing of messianic hopes is represented by the beautiful story of the Kabbalist Joseph della Reyna and his five disciples, who travel through the world to oust Satan and prepare the way for the Deliverer. Warned by the spirits of such worthies as Rabbi Simeon ben Yoḥai and the prophet Elijah, they nevertheless procure their blessing and are sent on to the angel Metatron. The latter furnishes them with protective spells and spices and advises Joseph to inscribe the ineffable name of God on a metal plate. When, however, they reach the end of their journey, Satan and his wife, Lilith, attack them in the form of huge dogs. When the dogs are subdued, they beg for food, and Joseph gives them spices to revive them. At once they summon a host of devils, which causes two of the disciples to die of terror and two to go mad, leaving only Joseph and a disciple. The messiah weeps in heaven, and Elijah hides the great horn of salvation. A voice rings out telling Joseph that it is vain to attempt to hasten the footsteps of the Redeemer.

The repertoire of Jewish tales and legends was seasoned by other elements. During the 16th century—the age of the great European navigators—stories began to circulate about the discovery of the Ten Lost Tribes in remote parts of the world. Judeo-German (Yiddish) tales

In the 16th century, Judeo-German (Yiddish) came to replace Hebrew as the language of Jewish tales and legends in Europe, primarily because of the desire to render them accessible to women unschooled in the sacred tongue. The synagogal lessons from Scripture were embellished in Yiddish in the so-called Taitsh Humesh (“Yiddish Pentateuch”), in the more fancifully titled Tzeʾena u-reʾena (“Go Forth and See”; compare Song of Solomon 3:11), and in adaptations of the story of Esther designed for dramatic presentation on the feast of Purim. The Hebrew Chronicles of Josippon also assumed Yiddish dress. More-secular productions include a verse rendition of the Arthurian legend, titled Artus Hof (“The Court of King Arthur”) and based largely on Gravenberg’s medieval Wigalois, and the Bove Buch by Elijah Levita (1469–1549), which retold the romance of Sir Bevis of Southampton.

These “frivolous” productions were offset by collections of moral and ethical tales. The main examples of these are the Brantspiegel (1572; “Brant Mirro”), attributed to Moses Henoch, and the Maʿaseh Buch (1672; “Story Book”), a compendium of 254 tales compiled by Jacob ben Abraham of Meseritz and first published at Basel. The latter, drawn mainly from the Talmud, was supplemented by later legends about medieval rabbis. Jewish legends also circulated in the form of chapbooks, a large selection of which is preserved in the library of the Yiddish Scientific Institute in New York City. Judeo-Persian and Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) tales

A similar development, though on a lesser scale, took place among Jews who spoke other vernacular dialects. Major monuments of Judeo-Persian literature are poetic embellishments of biblical narratives composed by Shāhīn of Shīrāz in the 14th century and by Joseph ben Isaac Yahudi (i.e., “the Jew”) some 300 years later. These, however, are exercises in virtuosity rather than in creative storytelling. Versified elaborations of the story of Joseph appear in Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) in Coplas de Yoçef (“Song of Joseph”), composed in 1732 by Abraham de Toledo and embodying a certain amount of traditional Haggadic material. From a revival of literary activity in the 18th century comes a comprehensive “legendary Bible” called Me-ʿam LoʿḥḲ ą, “From a People of Strange Tongue” (compare Psalms 114:1), begun by Jacob Culi (died 1732) and continued by later writers, as well as several renderings of standard Hebrew collections and a number of Purim plays. Judeo-Spanish folktales were still current in Macedonia and Yugoslavia until the Nazi occupation of the early 1940s, but these stories drew more from Balkan than from Jewish sources. Hasidic tales

The rise of the Hasidic sect in eastern Europe at the end of the 18th century engendered a host of legends (circulated mainly through chapbooks) concerning the lives, wise sayings, and miracles of tzaddiqim, or masters, such as Israel ben Eliezer, “the Besht” (1700–60), and Dov Baer of Meseritz (died 1772). These tales, however, are anecdotes rather than formally structured stories and often borrow from non-Jewish sources. Droll stories

To the popular creativity of the ghetto belong also the droll tales of the Wise Men of Chełm (in Poland)—Jewish counterparts of the German noodles (“stupid people”; hence “noodle stories”) of Schildburg and of the more familiar Wise Men of Gotham (in England). These too were circulated mainly in Yiddish popular prints. A typical story is that of the two “sages” who went for a walk, one with an umbrella and the other without one. Suddenly it began to rain. “Open your umbrella,” said the one without one. “It won’t help,” answered the other, “it’s full of holes.” “Then why did you bring it?” rejoined his friend. “I didn’t think it would rain,” was the reply. Modern Israeli folktales

The gathering of Jews from many lands into the State of Israel has made that country a treasure trove for the student of Jewish folktales. Assiduous work was undertaken by Dov Noy of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, aided by enthusiastic amateurs throughout the country. Mainly, however, the stories are retellings of traditional material. Theodor H. Gaster Judaism in world perspective Relation with non-Judaic religions Exclusivist and universalist emphases

The biblical tradition out of which Judaism emerged was predominantly exclusivist (“no other gods”). The gods of the nations were regarded as “no gods” and their worshippers as deluded, while the God of Israel was acclaimed as the sole lord of history and the creator of heaven and earth. The unexpected universalist implications of this exclusivism are most forcibly expressed in an oft-quoted verse from Amos (9:7):

“Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel?” says the Lord. “Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?”

Here the universal rule of the God of Israel is unmistakably proclaimed. Yet in the same book (3:1–2), after referring to the deliverance from Egypt—an act recognized as similar to that occurring in the affairs of other peoples—the prophet, speaking for God, says: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth.” Thus, the exclusivism has two focuses: one universal, the other particularistic. The ultimate claim of the universalistic position is found in Malachi 1:11: “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations.” This, however, in no way negates the special covenantal relationship between God and his people, because this universalistic theme emphasizes that special bond. To interpret Judaism’s stance toward other religious systems in any other way is to fail to do justice to its inner dialectic. It is neither a bland latitudinarianism that admits any or all viewpoints and practices nor a fanatical intolerance but rather a subtle interplay of affirmation and rejection. The latter is directed primarily against idolatry—the basic failure of the peoples who are the objects of the same divine solicitude as is Israel. If the religions of the nations are rejected because of their failure to know God fully and truly, the peoples themselves are not. Living under the covenant with Noah, their fulfillment of such responsibilities provides for their acceptance, for they are not expected to live within the realm of Torah. Relation to Christianity

Judaism’s relation to Christianity is complicated because of the close historical interconnections between them. From a Judaic standpoint, Christianity is or was a Jewish heresy, and, as such, it may be judged somewhat differently than other religions. Christianity’s claim to be the true fulfillment of the covenant—and, thus, the true Israel—has given rise throughout the centuries to polemics of varying intensity. The rise to power of the church and the embodiment of its anti-Judaic sentiments and attitudes in the political structures and processes of Christian nations made sharply negative Jewish responses inevitable. Nevertheless, during the Middle Ages, Jewish thinkers attempted to avoid designating Christianity as idolatry; some even argued that, because Christianity was derived from Judaism, it was fulfilling—at least on a moral plane—the divine purpose.

In modern times the relation between the two religions has undergone changes necessitated by the newer situations into which the Jewish community has moved. This does not mean that the polemical-apologetic stance came to an end. The rejection of Judaism as a living religion by some Christians has continued, though it was argued less on dogmatic than on scholarly grounds. The Jewish response has often been countercriticism. Beyond this, however, there has been a growing inclination within the Jewish community to respond to the development of an affirmative theology of Judaism in both the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches by providing a theology of Christianity within Jewish thought. Occasional formulations in this direction have appeared, but some within the Jewish community have seen no need for such a movement.

Beginning in the early 1960s many Christian churches, especially the Roman Catholic Church, began to rethink their relationship to Judaism. During the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), Pope Paul VI issued the declaration Nostra aetate (“In Our Era”), which recognized the moral and historical integrity of Judaism, a remarkable reversal of centuries of Catholic teaching. Nostra aetate also acknowledged Judaism as a vibrant religion with an identity independent of its role in the formation of historical Christianity. Most mainline Protestant churches responded with a declaration similar to Nostra aetate. During his pontificate, St. John Paul II (1978–2005), who had a great theological admiration and understanding of Judaism, further improved Catholic-Jewish relations. Relation to Islam

The emergence of Islam in Arabia in the 7th century ce brought Judaism face to face with a second religious movement that derived some of its ideas and structures from the older tradition. In this case, as in that of Christianity, the new religion claimed a special relation with Judaism. Muhammad held that the faith he proclaimed was none other than the pristine religion of Abraham, the father of Ishmael (the progenitor of the Arabs) and Isaac (from whom the people of Israel descended). That religion had been distorted by both Judaism and Christianity, and Muhammad, the “seal” of the Prophets, had been called by God to restore it to its purity. The confrontation between Judaism and Islam, like that between Judaism and Christianity, was coloured by political and social considerations both before and after Islam spread beyond Arabia to other areas of the Middle East (including Palestine) and to parts of Europe. During the subsequent period, the intellectual development of the Islamic world and the emergence of theologians and philosophers of the highest order challenged Judaism and exerted considerable influence on similar thinkers within that community. Given the strong monotheism and the anti-iconic attitude of Islam, many of the questions that arose between Judaism and Trinitarian and iconic Christianity were not an issue between Judaism and Islam. Rather, the crucial point of dispute was the nature of prophecy, which arose because of Muhammad’s claim concerning his culminating role in the prophetic tradition. Thus, during the medieval period there were polemics directed against that claim, as well as expositions of the nature of prophecy that, without dealing directly with Muhammad’s claim, could be taken to undercut it—as in the case of Moses Maimonides’ The Guide for the Perplexed. Nonetheless, Islam too was understood to contribute to the fulfillment of the divine purpose. From the late medieval period onward, the intellectual engagement between the two religions diminished with the general decline in the Turkish empire that then embraced the Muslim world. In modern times it has not yet been renewed for many reasons, the most important of which has been the political and military conflict between the State of Israel and the Arab countries of the Middle East. Relations with other religions

Judaism’s encounters with religions other than Christianity and Islam have been in large measure limited to the past. In the Hellenistic world, it confronted and rejected the varieties of syncretistic cults that grew up. Within the Sāsānian empire it was forced to deal with Zoroastrianism, but the outlines of its response have not yet been entirely disentangled from the literature of the period. In the modern world, particularly in the most recent period, it has come face to face with the religions of the Middle East and Asia, but beyond a few tentative explorations nothing tangible has appeared. Because of the growing interest and exchange between East and West, however, Jewish thinkers will not be able to rest with older formulations concerning the nature of other religious systems. Without compromising its own faith or falling into an uncritical relativism, Judaism may indeed seek a new way of understanding and relating to the varieties of religious systems facing it on the world scene. The role of Judaism in Western culture and civilization Its historic role

Judaism has played a significant role in the development of Western culture because of its unique relationship with Christianity, the dominant religious force in the West. Although the Christian church drew from other sources as well, its retention of the sacred Scriptures of the synagogue (the Old Testament) as an integral part of its Bible—a decision sharply debated in the 2nd century ce—was crucial. Not only was the development of its ideas and doctrines deeply influenced, but it also received an ethical dynamism that constantly overcame an inclination to withdraw into world-denying isolation.

It was, however, not only Judaism’s heritage but its persistence that touched Western civilization. The continuing existence of the Jews, even as a pariah people, was both a challenge and a warning. Their liberation from the shackles of discrimination, segregation, and rejection at the beginning of the modern era was understood by many to be the touchstone of all human liberty. Until the final ghettoization of the Jew—it is well to remember that the term ghetto belongs in the first instance to Jewish history—at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance, intellectual contact between Judaism and Christianity, and thus between Judaism and Western culture, continued. St. Jerome translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin with the aid of Jewish scholars; the exegetical work of the scholars of the monastery of St. Victor in the 12th century borrowed heavily from Jewish scholars; and the biblical commentary of Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes) was an important source for Martin Luther (1483–1546). Jewish thinkers helped to bring the remarkable intellectual achievements of the Islamic world to Christian Europe and added their own contributions as well. Even heresies within the church, on occasion, were said to have been inspired by or modeled after Judaism. Its present role

In the modern world, while the influence of Jews has increased in almost every realm of cultural life, the impact of Judaism itself has diminished. The reason for this is not difficult to find. The Gentile leaders who extended emancipation to the Jews at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th were eager to grant political equality, but they also insisted that certain reforms of Judaism be accepted. With the transformation of Judaism into an ecclesiastical institution, largely on the model of German Protestant churches, its ideas and structures took on the cast of its environment in a way quite unlike what had ensued in its earlier confrontations with various philosophical systems. Indeed, for some, Judaism and 19th-century European thought were not merely congruent but identical. Thus, while numerous contributors to diverse aspects of Western culture and civilization are to be found among Jews of the 20th and 21st centuries—scientists, politicians, statesmen, scholars, musicians, artists—their activities cannot, except in specific instances, be considered as deriving from Judaism as it has been sketched above. Lou Hackett Silberman Future prospects

The two central events of 20th-century Jewish history were the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. The former was the great tragedy of the Jewish people, while the latter was the light of a rebirth, which promised political, cultural, and economic independence. The rest of the world has been forced to reconsider and reorient its relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people because of these two events. At the same time, the centres of Jewish life have moved almost exclusively to Israel and North America. The virtual absence of official anti-Semitism in North America allowed Jews to flourish in pursuits previously the preserve of Gentiles. Along with these developments, theological considerations and practical realities, such as interfaith marriage, have made Jewish religious culture a point of interest for many non-Jews.

In the early 21st century, Jewish religious life continued to fragment along ideological lines, but that very fragmentation animated both moral imagination and ritual life. While ultra-Orthodox Judaism grew more insular, and some varieties of Liberal Judaism moved ritual practice even farther away from traditional observance, a vital centre emerged, running from Reform Judaism to modern Orthodoxy. This centre sought to understand Judaism within a broader context of interaction with other cultures while leaving unaffected the essentials of belief and practice. Predicting the future of Judaism is not an easy or enviable task, but there is reason to hope that the world will continue to draw upon the religious and cultural traditions of Judaism, both past and present. David Novak

Citation Information

Article Title: Judaism

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 13 August 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Judaism

Access Date: August 20, 2019

Additional Reading General history

Noteworthy studies are Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed., rev. and enlarged, 18 vol. (1952–83), a comprehensive presentation of the intertwined social and religious history, with copious bibliographical information critically evaluated; Louis Finkelstein (ed.), The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion, 4th ed., 3 vol. (1970–71), critical essays by outstanding authorities on the major aspects of Jewish history and culture; and Robert M. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History (1980), a thorough account of Jewish history and civilization in one volume. Salo Wittmayer Baron Biblical Judaism

Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, from Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, trans. by Moshe Greenberg (1960; originally published in Hebrew, 1937–56), is an abridgment and translation of the work of one of the most influential Jewish biblical scholars of modern times. Dan Jacobson, The Story of the Stories: The Chosen People and Its God (1982), is a useful survey of the culture and religion of ancient Israel. Moshe Greenberg Hellenistic Judaism

Victor A. Tcherikover and Alexander Fuks (eds.), Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, 3 vol. (1957–64), contains thoroughly reliable text, translation, bibliography, and commentary on all papyri and inscriptions pertaining to Jews from 323 bce to 641 ce. Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 13 vol. (1953–68), is a magnificent, exhaustive collection of the archaeological findings, with highly insightful, if controversial, commentary. Solomon Zeitlin, The Rise and Fall of the Judaean State: A Political, Social, and Religious History of the Second Commonwealth, 3 vol. (1962–78), is a stimulating and often highly original survey of the period from 332 bce to 66 ce.Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, 2nd ed. (1965, reissued 1994), is a significant and learned illustration of the influence of Greek culture on the language and exegetical format of the Palestinian rabbis. Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (1993), is a thorough study of the chief issues confronting Hellenistic Judaism. Louis H. Feldman Rabbinic Judaism

David Weiss Halivni, Revelation Restored: Divine Writ and Critical Responses (1997, reissued 2001), is a reflective work by a great rabbinic scholar on a major theme of rabbinic theology. Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. by Israel Abrahams, 2nd ed. enlarged (1979, reissued 2001; originally published in Hebrew, 1969), is the most comprehensive treatment of rabbinic theology available. Jacob Neusner, A History of the Jews in Babylonia, 5 vol. (1965–70, reprinted 1999), is the most thorough treatment of Babylonian Jewry during the tannaitic and amoraic periods. S.D. Goitein, Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts Through the Ages, 3rd rev. ed. (1974), is a popular work by the ranking authority on all aspects of Jewish-Arabic symbiosis, particularly valuable for the medieval period. Abraham Ibn Daud, A Critical Edition with a Translation and Notes of The Book of Tradition (Sefer ha-Qabbalah), ed. and trans. by Gerson D. Cohen (1967), presents the classic medieval Hebrew chronicle with analytic essays on Spanish Jewry’s “golden age.” Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe (1977); and Kenneth R. Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (1992), are good introductions to Jewish life in the Middle Ages. Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (1959, reissued 1977), is lucid and informative and valuable on Jewish contact with Christian men of letters, though it contains little critical analysis. Gerson D. Cohen Modern Judaism

The most convenient summary for the study of modern Jewish history is Howard M. Sachar, The Course of Modern Jewish History, rev. and updated ed. (1990). Modern Jewish thought and belief are covered in Joseph L. Blau, Modern Varieties of Judaism (1966); and The Condition of Jewish Belief: A Symposium (1966, reissued 1995), a book published by the editors of Commentary Magazine. Arthur Hertzberg (ed.), The Zionist Idea (1959, reissued 1997), is a comprehensive reader in English on the issue of Zionism. An excellent exposition of Judaism from a Reform-Liberal point of view is Leo Baeck, The Essence of Judaism, trans. by Victor Grubenweiser and Leonard Pearl, rev. ed. (1948, reissued 1976; originally published in German, 1905). Conservative Judaism is well described in Jacob B. Agus, Dialogue and Tradition: The Challenges of Contemporary Judeo-Christian Thought (1971). Mordecai M. Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization, enlarged ed. (1957, reissued 1994), by the founder of Reconstructionism, is the best discussion of that movement. The standard single volume about Orthodox Judaism is Isidore Epstein, Judaism (1935). Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, trans. by Lawrence Kaplan (1983, reissued 1991; originally published in Hebrew, 1979), is a statement of the centrality of Halakha to Judaism by the most influential Orthodox theologian of the 20th century. The best discussion of Neo-Hasidism, by the movement’s greatest exponent, is Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, ed. and trans. by Maurice Friedman (1960, reissued 1988; originally published in German, 1948). Arthur Hertzberg Basic beliefs, practices, and institutions

Jacob Neusner, The Way of Torah: An Introduction to Judaism, 7th ed. (2004), is a very useful statement with a history-of-religions approach. Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: Judaism of Corporeal Election (1983), is an attempt to restore election as the most important idea in Judaism. David Novak, The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People (1995), is a theological meditation on the retrieval of the doctrine of election for contemporary Jews. Jewish ceremonies are covered in Lewis N. Dembitz, Jewish Services in Synagogue and Home (1898, reprinted 1975); Hayim Shoys (Hayyim Schauss), The Jewish Festivals: From Their Beginning to Our Own Day, trans. by Samuel Jaffe (1938; also published as The Jewish Festivals: A Guide to Their History and Observance, 1996; originally published in Hebrew, 1933); and Ismar Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History, trans. by Raymond P. Scheindlin (1993; originally published in German, 1913). Ethics and society

The rationale of Jewish ethics is discussed in David Novak, Jewish Social Ethics (1992), and Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory (2000). Art and iconography

Abraham Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music in Its Historical Development (1929; also published as Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, 1992), is a pioneering study. Cecil Roth and Bezalel Narkiss (eds.), Jewish Art: An Illustrated History, rev. and enlarged ed. (1971); and Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, Jewish Art (1997), are comprehensive surveys of Jewish art from biblical to modern times. Relations with non-Judaic religions

David Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism (1983), is a study of the Noahide Laws as the basis of Jewish interaction with Gentiles, and Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Justification (1989), is a theological rationale for a new relationship between Jews and Christians. Robert Chazan, Medieval Antisemitism and Modern Stereotypes (1997); and Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933 (1980, reissued 1997), treat the history of anti-Semitism. F.E. Peters, Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam (1982), examines differences and similarities between the three monotheistic faiths. General introductions to Jewish philosophy

Julius Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig, trans. by David W. Silverman (1964, reissued 1988; originally published in German, 1933), is the best general treatment of Jewish philosophy from the ancient to the modern period, ending with Franz Rosenzweig. Jacob B. Agus, Modern Philosophies of Judaism (1941, reissued 1970), the first critical work in English on the subject, is still highly insightful. Emil L. Fackenheim, Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy (1973, reissued 1994), presents insightful essays by an important philosopher and Jewish thinker. Lenn E. Goodman, God of Abraham (1996), is a well-argued revival of medieval Jewish rationalism. Hellenistic philosophy

Nahum N. Glatzer (ed.), The Essential Philo (1971), contains lengthy selections from the major works of Philo, with notes. Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (1947, reprinted 1968), a seminal though controversial work, portrays Alexandrian Judaism as a collateral branch of Palestinian Pharisaic Judaism and emphasizes Philo’s influence upon later philosophy. Medieval philosophy

Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1985, reissued 1990), is the best introduction to the subject. Jewish kalām

Saʿadia Ben Joseph, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. by Samuel Rosenblatt (1948; originally published in Arabic and Hebrew, 1880), his important philosophical work, deals with major topics in Jewish theology, such as faith and reason, creation, God, and reward and punishment. Leon Nemoy (ed. and trans.), A Karaite Anthology: Excerpts from the Early Literature (1952, reissued 1987), an excellent collection of the more-accessible Karaite materials, covers a wide range of themes, writers, and periods. Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (1976), is a collection of essays by a master of medieval Jewish philosophy. Jewish Neoplatonism

A. Altmann and S.M. Stern (eds. and trans.), Isaac Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century, His Works Translated with Comments and an Outline of His Philosophy (1958), contains complete translations of three of Israeli’s works and excerpts from another, together with a comprehensive essay on his philosophy. Lenn E. Goodman (ed.), Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought (1992), contains a variety of important essays on all aspects of this topic. Judah ha-Levi and other early philosophers

The Kuzari, trans. from Arabic by Hartwig Hirschfeld (1946, reissued 1971), is a complete English translation of the text and notes, with an introductory essay by Henry Slonimsky. Bahya Ibn Paquda, The Duties of the Heart, trans. by Edward Collins (1904), one of the more widely read medieval classics of Jewish philosophy, concentrates on ethics and personal piety. Abraham bar Hayya (Abraham bar Hiyya Savasorda), The Meditation of the Sad Soul, trans. by Geoffrey Wigoder (1968; originally published in Hebrew, 1860), one of the more-accessible philosophical works of this important medieval astronomer and mathematician, is devoted primarily to ethical and religious themes. Yochanan Silman, Philosopher and Prophet: Judah Halevi, the Kuzari, and the Evolution of His Thought, trans. by Lenn J. Schramm (1995; originally published in Hebrew, 1985), is a major study of the development of ha-Levi’s theology. Maimonides

The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. with an introductory essay by Shlomo Pines (1963, reprinted 1979), is an accurate and clear translation with a valuable prefatory essay by Leo Strauss. A Maimonides Reader, ed. with introduction and notes by Isadore Twersky (1972), is a fine anthology containing important material from Maimonides’ Mishne Torah and other legal writings, as well as from his shorter philosophical-theological essays and the Guide. David Hartman, Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (1976, reissued 1986), is a study of Maimonides as an integrated thinker. Averroists

Harry Austryn Wolfson (ed. and trans.), Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle: Problems of Aristotle’s Physics in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy (1929, reissued 1971), the most important study of medieval Jewish and Arabic philosophy so far written, contains a translation and critical Hebrew text of part 1 of the treatise, with a valuable introductory essay and comprehensive and detailed notes. Joseph Albo, Book of Principles, trans. and ed. by Isaac Husik, 4 vol. (1929, reissued 1946; originally published in Hebrew, 1485), is a fine translation of Albo’s treatise in Jewish dogmatics, with helpful notes. Modern Jewish philosophy

Baruch Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, vol. 1 of The Works of Spinoza, trans. by R.H.M. Elwes (1883, reprinted 1951), is the philosopher’s critique of the Bible and the Jewish religion. Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, trans. by E.M. Sinclair (1965, reissued 1997; originally published in German, 1930), is an excellent philosophical study of Spinoza’s Treatise and its relation to Maimonides, Uriel Acosta, and other Sephardic heterodox thinkers. Steven Nadler, Spinoza (1999), is an important biography of the founder of modern Jewish philosophy. German philosophers

Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem and Other Jewish Writings, trans. and ed. by Alfred Jospe (1969), contains an informative and acute introduction by the editor. Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. by Simon Kaplan (1972, reissued 1995; originally published in German, 1919), is the author’s major work dealing with his philosophy of Judaism. Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. by William W. Hallo (1971, reissued 1985; originally published in German, 1921), the author’s early but impressive statement of his “re-conversion” to Judaism, has been influential in contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish theology. Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, 3rd ed. (1998), is an excellent anthology of Rosenzweig’s writings, containing many letters that reveal important episodes in Rosenzweig’s career. Interpretive studies include Arthur A. Cohen, The Tremendum: A Theological Interpretation of the Holocaust (1981, reissued 1993). Emmanuel Lévinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. by Seán Hand (1990; originally published in French, 1963), contains reflections by a French Jewish philosopher very much in the tradition of German Jewish philosophy. Shlomo Pines Jewish mysticism

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 3rd rev. ed. (1954, reissued 1995), is the standard survey of the subject, with a chapter-by-chapter bibliography. Translations of important mystical texts include Harry Sperling (trans.) and Maurice Simon (trans.), The Zohar, 2nd ed., 5 vol. (1984); Moses Cordovero, The Palm Tree of Deborah, trans. by Louis Jacobs, 3rd ed. (1981; originally published in Hebrew, 1623); R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic, 2nd ed. (1977); and L.I. Newman (compiler and trans.), The Hasidic Anthology: Tales and Teachings of the Hasidim (1934, reissued 1987).

Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, trans. by R.J. Zwi Werblowsky (1973; originally published in Hebrew, 1956), is a penetrating and comprehensive study of the great false messiah. Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (1955, reissued 1993), is a major work by a constructive theologian heavily influenced by Jewish mysticism. Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (1998), emphasizes the experiential side of Jewish mysticism. Georges Vajda Jewish myth and legend

The legends of the Talmud and Midrash are considered in the classic by Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, trans. from German by Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (2003), also available in a 1-vol. abridgment (1961). The Midrash Rabbah has been translated and edited by H. Freedman and Maurice Simon, 3rd ed., 10 vol. in 8 (1983).

Compilations and studies of medieval myth and legend include Eleazar ben Asher ha-Levi and Jerahmeel ben Solomon, The Chronicles of Jerahmeel, trans. from Hebrew by Moses Gaster (1899, reprinted 1972); and Curt Leviant (ed. and trans.), King Artus: A Hebrew Arthurian Romance of 1279 (1969, reissued 2003). Judeo-German (Yiddish) works on the subject include Moses Gaster (trans.), Maʾaseh Book: Book of Jewish Tales and Legends, 2 vol. in 1 (1934, reissued 1981). A study of Hasidic legend is Martin Buber (ed.), Tales of the Hasidim, trans. from German by Olga Marx, 2 vol. in 1 (1947, reissued 1991). Myths and legends of the Holy Land are treated in Dov Noy (ed.), Folktales of Israel, trans. from Hebrew by Gene Baharav (1963); Zev Vilnay, The Sacred Land, 3 vol. (1973–78); and Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (1939, reissued 1987). Theodor H. Gaster