Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

The “Midrash on the Creation of the Child” relates that after its guardian angel has given it a fillip upon the nose, the newborn child forgets all the infinite knowledge acquired before its birth in the celestial houses of learning. But why, Eleazar asks, does the child forget? “Because, if it did not forget, the course of this world would drive i

As the idea is finally developed by the outstanding representatives of the new school, God is not so much the master of the universe as its first principle and prime mover.

Darkly it stood in their path, the ally of forces and tendencies in whose rejection pride was taken by a Jewry which, in Steinschneider’s words, regarded it as its chief task to make a decent exit from the world.

principles, and his character, there cannot exist any longer

It will be wiser to assume, as we shall often have occasion to do in the course of these lectures, that the religious world of the mystic can be expressed in terms applicable to rational knowledge only with the help of paradox.

For in its classical form, religion signifies the creation of a vast abyss, conceived as absolute, between God, the infinite and transcendental Being, and Man, the finite creature.

To know the stages of the creative process is also to know the stages of one’s own return to the root of all existence.

Religion’s supreme function is to destroy the dream-harmony of Man, Universe and God, to isolate man from the other elements of the dream stage of his mythical and primitive consciousness.

After all, a misunderstanding is often nothing but the paradoxical abbreviation of an original line of thought.