Ancient Jewish Scrolls Found In North Afghanistan

Looks like a week of clouds and snow, not promising for astronomy. :0(

But looks like a couple of momentous new discoveries have occurred in the worlds of ancient Judaism and Biblical studies:

Ancient Jewish scrolls found in north Afghanistan

Earliest fragment of Paul’s Letter to the Romans?

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Good reasons to study Talmud

The great Harvard medievalist Harry Austryn Wolfson described talmudic study as “the application of the scientific method to the study of texts.”

Think Again: Talmud Study and the Liberal Arts

The Talmud-related course in my Jewish Studies program is the last core course that I haven’t yet taken, and now I’m looking forward to it even more. I didn’t realize that it even included “complex calculations of the lunar cycle!” A liberal arts education, the opportunity to have my mind sharpened by Talmudic studies, I’ve got it all! Now to turn it into money somehow …

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Ben Zion Wacholder, 1924-2011

Ben Zion Wacholder, among other things, was a central figure in the “freeing” of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1991. May his memory be for a blessing.

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Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

The Israel Museum in Jerusalem now has some of the major Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts viewable online here:

http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/

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Paper on the Belief System of Ancient Israel

This essay was written in 2004 as part of the final exam for the Course entitled “The Religion of Biblical Israel” at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies. Click the thumbnails for a full-sized view of the photographed pages. See my Jewish Studies Page.

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Moon shining through the clouds 11-1-10

6:46 AM CDT 11-1-10 (11:46 UTC), 8″ f8 homebuilt reflector telescope, 25mm eyepiece, LG VX8360 cell phone camera.

It was not a good morning for astrophotography, with the sky mostly cloudy and the Moon appearing one minute, hidden by clouds the next. Nevertheless I felt like celebrating the “breaking of the clouds” as I had finished my class assignment due on November 1, a paper on the Passover Haggadah, and a great weight was lifted from my shoulders, so perhaps the Moon, partly dimmed yet shining through the clouds, is an apt symbol. Later that day the “light shone” even more brightly. I didn’t expect to hear anything about my grade for a few weeks, but the professor had emailed me, saying that he had already read my paper, liked it very much, and was giving me an A! Praise the LORD! Eventually I’ll post an edited version of the paper, which is a comparison of a Christian Haggadah (“telling” of the Passover story) with a traditional Jewish Haggadah.

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Waning Moon 10-29-10

Waning gibbous Moon (close to Third Quarter Phase), 6:19 AM CDT (11:19 UTC) October 29, 2010. 8″ f8 homebuilt reflector telescope, 25mm eyepiece, LG VX8360 cell phone camera. Click photo for larger view.

It’s great to see the Moon and other celestial objects again after six days of clouds, cold rain, and strangely strong winds driven by a record-setting low barometric reading for Minnesota. Lots of stuff happening up there – today Venus makes its closest approach to Earth during inferior conjunction, beginning the countdown until its momentous next inferior conjunction, in which it will transit the Sun! Saturn is becoming more evident in the predawn sky – but as for me, now I need to disappear into my cave and finish a paper on the Passover Haggadah that’s due on Monday! See you on the other side …

P.S.: Today is the beginning of the Great Worldwide Star Count, a chance for you to show that your observations count, by helping us record and preserve dark skies! H/T again to Raven Yu of “Journey To the Stars,” who has more info about it here.

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Do Not Trust National Geographic

On their website (click text to view the article and photo gallery):

The Dead Sea Scrolls—the oldest known surviving biblical and extra-biblical texts in the world—are slated to be scanned with high-resolution multispectral imaging equipment and shared online, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and Google announced Tuesday, when this picture was taken in an IAA lab.

Discovered in caves near the Dead Sea in the 1940s and 1950s, the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek scrolls date to between 150 B.C. and A.D. 70. They include copies of nearly every book in the Old Testament as well as others that are not part of the traditional canon, such as the Gospel of Judas (time line of early Christianity).

No! The Gospel of Judas is not part of the Dead Sea Scrolls! It was a more recent find in Egypt, which has much more in common with the Nag Hammadi Library. Considering that National Geographic themselves spearheaded the publication of an edition of the Gospel of Judas, they should know better. They should know better simply because they are, supposedly, a scholarly organization, but now I have my doubts. This is the kind of error that nonscientist journalists make when trying to make head or tail of unfamiliar subjects, and it is shameful for National Geographic to goof up in this way.

H/T to James R. Davila of Paleojudaica.

UPDATE: I emailed them about this matter shortly after posting this post, but as of today, November 21, 2010, nearly a month later, they have not fixed the error.

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Kabbalistic Themes in the Maggid Mesharim

Note: See my new “Jewish Studies” page (tab above), as well as my “Jewish Studies” category on the sidebar.

This paper was written for the course “Jewish Mysticism” which I took as an elective in the Master of Science in Jewish Studies degree program at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies during 2009 and 2010. This course was very challenging, as Kabbalah is probably the part of Judaism which is the most remote from my own personal beliefs and experiences. Nevertheless I have learned a few things. Dr. Byron Sherwin, the instructor for this course, was both complementary and blunt in his brief comments on this paper:

“The exam is very good, especially when considering that this seems to be your first exposure to the topic. I have sumitted a grade of B+.
I have no comments on Part 2, but there are some issues I want to note re Part 1:
1. Many issues on part 1 eluded you. For example: a) there are many magical themes and symbols in part 1 that seem to have eluded you, 2. The main point of the text seems to have eluded you. The occasion for this text was the mystics’ celebration of the Jewish holyday of Shavuot which celebrates the revelation at Sinai. The point of the text is that through mystical means and techniques, one can experience a revelation similar to the revelation celebrated on this occasion, i.e., revelation is not limited to biblical times, but also today. Features of what was experienced at Sinai, can be experienced today, albeit rhough mystical means.”

I was very happy and content with a B+, and if my paper can miss the main point of the text and still be “very good,” then things are OK!

Question #1
Attached, you will find an English translation of a kabbalistic text. The author of this text is Joseph Karo. Though Karo was a great kabbalist, he is more widely known as a leading authority in Jewish law (halakhah). This is because he is the author of the last authoritative code of Jewish law, the Shulhan Arukh, as well as the author of the commentary Beit Yoseif on the important Jewish legal code known as the Tur. The attached text comes from his mystical diary, Maggid Mesharim. It describes the observance of the tikkun of the night of Shavuot (called Tikkun Leyl Shavuot). According to this custom, introduced by the Lurianic kabbalists, a person should stay awake studying the entire night of Shavuot, which celebrates the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
In this text, many of the ideas, symbols, motifs, themes, issues, problems, goals, and techniques of the Jewish mystics are both explicitly discussed and implicitly alluded to. You should identify as mean of these as you can based upon class discussions and required readings. Play detective and see how much you can find. Discuss succinctly each motif, idea, theme, symbol, issue, problem, goal and technique that you can discover. Doing so should provide you with a good review of the course.“First, we read the Torah with a pleasant melody …”1

Study of the Torah was at the heart of what Rabbi Joseph Karo and his companions did to seek intimacy with God. “Through study of the Torah, a person can become an intimate of God.”2 We see this repeatedly in the Maggid Mesharim, as when the Heavenly Messenger says, through Rabbi Karo, “Cease not from studying, for a thread of mercy is stretched out over you and your Torah study is pleasant to the Holy One, blessed be He.”3 Again, Rabbi Karo’s maggid says, “First of all you must take care never to allow your thoughts to dwell on anything other than the Mishnah, the Torah, and the precepts.”4
The companions’ Torah study reflects several different aspects or models of Jewish mysticism. On one level it reflects Normal Mysticism (though they go far beyond this level), as their activity was related to observance of the festival of Shavuot, commonly celebrated by all observant Jews. According to Max Kadushin, “Normal mysticism enables a person to make normal, commonplace, recurrent situations and events occasions for worship.”5 The Maggid Mesharim records that the companions read the various Torah readings “in dread and awe,”6 reflecting that in Normal mysticism, “study of the Torah induces awareness of the immediate presence of God’s love, and hence of God.”7
The Maggid Mesharim also reflects the Mystical model of Jewish mysticism, which seeks not only awareness of God’s presence, but intimacy with God. We see this as the maggid repeatedly exhorts the companions to cleave to God:

“But you cleave to your Creator and He rejoices in you.”8

“To Me you cleave and the glory is above your heads and there extends over you a thread of mercy.”9

“The Lord be with you but only if you cleave to Me and do not separate your thoughts even for a single moment from My Mishnah.”10

“The Lord is with you wherever you go, and the Lord will prosper whatever you have done and will do, but you must cleave to Me and to My Torah and to My Mishnah at all times, not as you have done this night.”11

In the Mystical model, devekut, or cleaving to God, can take several forms, all intended to bridge the gap between humans and God, including observance of the commandments and study of the Torah.12 One example of this bridging of the gap in the case of the Maggid Mesharim is how the maggid spoke directly through Rabbi Karo’s mouth; “…our Creator smote us so that we heard a voice speaking out of the mouth of the saint, may his light shine.”13 The maggid also exhorts them to pursue union with God single-mindedly, through ascetic practices and cultivation of moral virtues. Some Jewish mystics saw the spiritual and material to be in conflict, and “From this perspective, physical pleasure is a trap that diverts one’s attention from spiritual goals. To attain a state of holiness demands mortification of the flesh, suppression of bodily needs, and submission of the body to the soul.”14 The maggid says, “Mortify your flesh with all your might and burn out all the thoughts that enter your mind during prayer and when you study the Mishnah. Burn them out with the straw of reading the Shema, with the breath of your mouth.”15 Going without sleep during the observance of Tikkun Leyl Shavuot is an example of self-mortification, and the companions resolved to set apart the fourth day of each week in remembrance of the Temple’s destruction:

“For the whole twenty-four hours of this day no meat should be eaten and no wine imbibed unless it be for such exceptional circumstances as a religious feast or when hospitality is offered to a guest or when one is on his travels and so forth.”16

Karo’s companions are also exhorted to many ascetic practices:

“4. Take care never to speak anything that leads to laughter and if you hear such, never laugh … 6. Take care to eat no meat at all for forty days. On the Sabbath you can eat a little. Do not eat horseradish. 7. Drink no wine during these days except one drink at the end of the meal … 10. Sleep in your own bed. When you have to have marital relations in order to fulfill the precept to be fruitful and multiply, rise up from her bed a half an hour after you have completed the act and return to your own bed. 11. Take care not to enjoy your eating and drinking and your marital relations. It should be as if demons were compelling you to eat that food or perform that act so that if it were at all possible for you to exist without food and drink or to fulfill the duty of procreation without having intercourse you would prefer it.”17

It is interesting to note that this ascetism in regards to marital sexual relationships is in contrast to a common theme in Jewish mysticism, namely that devekut, or cleaving to God, is often treated in unabashedly erotic terms.18 Indeed, a hint of this is seen in the Maggid Mesharim when the maggid says:

Because you do this, the Holy One, blessed be He, loves you and at the time when you arise to offer your prayers and to study, the time when the Holy One, blessed be He, delights with the saints in the Garden of Eden, namely, at midnight, He takes delight in you, too, and extends over you a thread of mercy which kisses you with loving kisses and embraces you. And the Shekhinah converses with you and you become attached in such a way never achieved by even one in a generation, nay be one in many generations.19

In the Zohar, the festival of Shavuot which they are celebrating is “taken in its entirety to symbolize the sacred intercourse between the Shekhinah and her husband … the day of Shavuot ‘is the day when the bride enters the marriage canopy.'”20

This brings us to another model of Jewish mysticism reflected in the Maggid Mesharim, which is the Theosophical-Theurgic Kabbalah. This model, the dominant form of Jewish mysticism, has as its goal to influence God; its primary focus is to address God’s needs rather than our own.21 We see in the Maggid Mesharim that God’s well-being is directly attributed to the quality of the companions’ devotion. Thus speaks Karo’s maggid, identified with the soul of the Mishnah and with the Shekhinah:22

Happy are you in this world and happy in the next that you resolved to adorn Me on this night. For these many years had My head been fallen with none to comfort Me. I was cast down to the ground to embrace the dunghills but now you have restored the crown to its former place … Through you I have become elevated this night and through the companions in the great city, a mother-city in Israel.23

Karo and his companions improved God’s disposition further when they gathered again, achieving the sacred quorum of ten: “I have become most elevated now that you are ten in number, the quorum for all sacred matters.”24 Again they are told, “For if only you knew how many worlds go to waste whenever you fail to think on the Torah you would not cease from this for even a moment.”25

In Theurgic Kabbalah, “the divine emanations, or sefirot, provide an entrée into the inner life of God:26

The ways in which the Infinite assumes the form of finite existence are called Sefirot. These are various aspects or forms of Divine action, spheres of Divine emanation. They are, as it were, the garments in which the Hidden God reveals Himself and acts in the universe, the channels through which His light is issued forth.

The names of the ten Sefirot are Keter, Hokmah, Binah, Hesed, Geburah, Tiferet, Netsah, Hod, Yesod, Malkut. The transition from Divine latency to activity takes place in Keter, the “supreme crown” of God.27

An allusion to Keter, the crown, may be seen when Karo’s maggid says, ” I was cast down to the ground to embrace the dunghills but now you have restored the crown to its former place.”28

Keter is the first of the sefirot to emanate from the Ein sof, the Deus absconditus, God in His unknowable essence; Keter, represented as the crown on the head rather than a part of the body of Adam Kadmon, is, and is not, part of the Revealed God. “This intentional ambiguity articulates the kabbalist’s attempt to deal with the mystery of the transition from the infinite to the finite.”29 About the Ein sof nothing can be said, and so the maggid says of one ascending by steps into God’s presence, “From this stage onwards permission has not been granted to describe what will transpire. Eye has seen it not …”30

The lowest of the sefirot, but the first encountered when looking heavenward from Earth, is Malkut (Kingdom), who has many names;31 in the Maggid Mesharim she is most often referred to as Shekhinah and The Community of Israel:

We all broke into tears … when we heard of the anguish of the Shekhinah because of our sins, Her voice like that of an invalid in her entreaties.32

The Holy One, blessed be He, considers it as if man had achieved the victory by his own efforts without the assistance of the Community of Israel. Consequently, the verse says: “When [=ki= Keneset Yisrael]” goes forth to battle against your enemies, and Tiferet helps her.33

Thus the Maggid Mesharim reflects the goal of Theurgic mysticism to “bring about unity and balance among the sefirot.”34

Another model of Jewish mysticism is the Affective model, whose goal is to draw down divine grace in order to improve the human condition.35 In this model, one who has achieved devekut can become a pipe or conduit for drawing down divine grace from God to those who need it. In Hasidism this person came to be known as a Tzaddik36 Rabbi Karo shows characteristics of a Tzaddik, as his visits from the maggid are a form of clairvoyance, and the maggid’s words exhort the companions to spiritual purity and detachment from physical desires and needs, all prerequisites for a Tzaddik to be a pure conduit for the divine influence.37 “For example, because the Shekhinah dwells within the Tzaddik, the Shekhinah can speak through the Tzaddik,”38 and this is exactly what is happening when the maggid speaks through Karo. Like a Tzaddik, Karo is given extraordinary spiritual insights: “Observe how many things God has wrought for me, things utterly incomprehensible to the human mind.”39 He cultivates humility and self-abnegation: “I am a fool, having no knowledge. But it was His intention, blessed be He, to show me this great thing.”40 “Never be proud.”41 He is appointed to improve the human condition through his work as a codifier of Jewish law (which is the part of his work for which he is best known): “Busy yourself constantly with rendering decisions in Jewish law and with the Talmud, the Kabbalah, the Mishnah, the Tosafot and Rashi, as you are doing.”42

Prophetic Kabbalah is also reflected in the Maggid Mesharim. In Throne mysticism, the Jewish mystic sought to experience a vision of God on his throne like the visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel, and to acquire esoteric knowledge only available in the supernal realm.43 The maggid tells Karo:

Let not your thoughts be separated for even a single moment from My Torah and the fear of me and I shall give you the merit of ascending to the highest stages … As I have said, you should also mortify your flesh in order to have the merit of seeing Elijah face to face while you are still awake. He will speak to you mouth to mouth and will greet you for he will become your teacher to teach you all the mysteries of the Torah.44

The maggid also gives Karo predictions about what great things he and his descendants will achieve, and is given a detailed account of what will happen when he ascends to Heaven.

All the saints in the Garden of Eden, the Shekhinah at their head, will come out to meet you, welcoming you with many songs and praises … I have prepared for you seven canopies, one within the other, and seven canopies, one higher than the other. Within the innermost and highest of the canopies there will be seven rivers of fragrant balsam … And there will be a golden throne with seven steps, embedded with numerous pearls and precious stones … Afterwards, all the saints will arise to accompany you, with you in the front like a groom … proclaiming: “Pay homage to the son of the Holy, Supernal King. Pay homage to the image of the King.” Thus they will sing until you arrive at the place where there are thirteen rivers of balsam. A garment will be removed from you as you immerse yourself in the first river and so on until thirteen garments will have been removed when you immerse yourself in the thirteenth river. Afterwards a river of fire will gush forth and as you immerse yourself in it the fourteenth robe will be removed. As you emerge a precious white robe will be made ready for you to wear and Michael the high priest will be ready to bring up your soul to the Holy One, blessed be He. From this stage onwards permission has not been granted to describe what will transpire. Eye has seen it not …45

The number seven, a number denoting completeness and the number of the heavens, is one of many numbers of spiritual significance in Jewish mysticism, including Throne mysticism.46

For many Jewish mystics such as Abraham Abulafia, contemplation of Hebrew letters, especially of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, the ineffable name of God, was a technique used to induce the prophetic experience.47 We see this in the Maggid Mesharim when the maggid says, “Hearken unto me, O my beloved ones, choice ones. Awake and sing you who dwell in the dust, according to the mystery of the supernal dust, the two letters he” etc.48 “Just as the letters themselves generally appear on three levels-writing, speech and thought-so do the Names of God; one must ‘recite’ the Names first in writing, then verbally, and finally mentally.”49

The world of Jewish mystical thought is one in which nothing is as it seems on the surface:

Nothing here is final. The worldly is subservient to the otherworldly. You grasp the essence of the here by conceiving its beyond. For this world is the reality of the spirit in the state of trance. The manifestation of the mystery is partly suspended, with ourselves living in lethargy. Our normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which our sensibility to the wholly real and our responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced.50
Hence, the maggid says to Karo, “The masses imagine that this world is all it appears to be …”51

The Kabbalists believed in the transmigration of souls through various bodies and forms of existence,52 and this belief is clearly reflected in the Maggid Mesharim: “If you will improve your behavior I shall reveal to you the mysteries of reincarnation. I shall show you the previous incarnations of all your friends and relatives and you will witness wondrous things and be astonished.”53

No doubt as a novice student I have missed many points of Jewish mysticism found in the Maggid Mesharim. Indeed, even the greatest Tzaddik would claim only to scratch the surface. But I hope this survey provides a good starting point for finding the Kabbalah in this diary of Karo’s, in which there truly is more than meets the eye.

1Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 99.
2Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 178.
3Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,”, 101.
4Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,”, 104.
5Max Kadushin, Worship and Ethics (Bloch Publishing Company, 1963), 168.
6Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 99.
7Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 182.
8Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 100.
9Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 102.
10Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 108.
11Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 111.
12Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 19.
13Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 100.
14Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 171.
15Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 107.
16Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 103.
17Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 104-105.
18Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 18.
19Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 115.
20Isaiah Tishbi, The Wisdom of the Zohar (Oxford University Press, 1987), 1256.
21Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 20.
22Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 98.
23Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 100.
24Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 102.
25Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 108.
26Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 20.
27Abraham J. Heschel. “The Mystical Element In Judaism,” in Louis Finkelstein, ed., The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion (Harper Collins, 1949) (2 vols.) vol. 2, 937.
28Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 100.
29Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 60.
30Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 110.
31Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 65.
32Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 101.
33Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 116.
34Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 21.
35Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 21.
36Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 120.
37Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 120-121.
38Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006),125.
39Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 104.
40Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 104.
41Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 105.
42Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 114-115.
43Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006),137-138.
44Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 112.
45Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 109-110.
46Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 140.
47Byron L. Sherwin, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), 152-153
48Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,”102.
49Moshe Idel. The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia (SUNY Press, 1998), 20.
50Abraham J. Heschel. “The Mystical Element In Judaism,” in Louis Finkelstein, ed., The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion (Harper Collins, 1949) (2 vols.) vol. 2,
51Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 106.
52Gershom Scholen. On The Mystical Shape of the Godhead (NY: Schocken, 1991), 197.
53Lewis Jacobs, ed., Jewish Mystical Testimonies, ‘The Communications of the Heavenly Mentor to Rabbi Joseph Karo,” 107.

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Earthshine; Stephen Hawking and the Bottom Turtle

Here’s the uncropped image of the waning crescent Moon at 6:08 AM CDT, September 6, 2010 (see this post):

60mm refractor, 25mm eyepiece, LG VX8360 cell phone camera. I used the small refractor instead of the usual 8″ reflector, as the lower magnification shows Earthshine more clearly. Briefly, the dark part of the Moon can be faintly but clearly seen because it is illuminated by the Earth, which is in a nearly full phase as viewed from the Moon, thus shedding much sunlight upon the Moon.

On another subject, renowned scientist and acclaimed author Stephen Hawking is in the news these days with the publication of his new book The Grand Design, co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow and currently ranked #1 on Amazon.com. I haven’t yet read it; I have no doubt that it is engaging, as was the 1988 book that made Professor Hawking’s name a household word, A Brief History of Time. ABC News reports about the new book with this provocative headline: Stephen Hawking: ‘Science Makes God Unnecessary’. The headline quote is not from the book, but from the ABC interview, in which Professor Hawking said, “One can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, But science makes God unnecessary.”

Further excerpting from the ABC article linked above:

According to Hawking, something can indeed be created from nothing. He believes our universe was created from nothing. Hawking writes in his latest book: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” Hawking, arguably the greatest scientific mind of our time, said he believes the laws of physics and not the hand of a god explain why we are here. He said that physics can explain why the Big Bang happened. He writes: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

As I said, I haven’t yet read the book, and let me be the first to warn against making judgments about what Professors Hawking and Mlodinow have to say without reading their actual words, in context, not just excerpted from a news article. The Bible says in James 1:19, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak.” I’ll tell you the question I have, though, that I will have in mind when I do read the book: how closely does gravity, or M-Theory, or any other scientific theory or natural force, bring us to the “Bottom Turtle?”

Stephen Hawking tells this version of an often-told story in A Brief History of Time:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever”, said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

I, for one, agree with the scientist that the Earth is an orbiting orb and not a plate on a turtle’s back! But ultimately both theories face the challenge of infinite regress. The “Turtle Theory” always requires yet another turtle underneath, unless there’s a Bottom Turtle that’s just floating or something, and even then there are the endless questions of “where,” “how,”, and “why.” the “Orbiting Orb Theory” does an exponentially better job of explaining the phenomena we see, yet each scientific answer still begets more questions of “why” and “how.”

I don’t doubt that Hawking and Mlodinow have some engaging, thought-provoking, and informative things to say in their new book, but as an armchair thinker and amateur scientist I doubt that a truly new chapter has been opened in the story of science and religion. I already agree with Professor Steven Dutch that “it is impossible to settle the existence of God conclusively by any achievable observation, experiment, or chain of reasoning.” It really doesn’t make any difference to me whether science can explain, without invoking God, how something could come from nothing. (By the way, nowhere in Genesis 1 or any other Bible passage does it say that God created something from nothing. That doesn’t mean He didn’t, it just means that the subject isn’t addressed in the Bible. That’s an interesting thing I learned in Jewish Studies.)

I believe in YHWH, the God of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, not because of scientific proof, but because I believe the testimony of those who saw Jesus, and because I know Him myself. I believe the central epistemological statement of the Bible is not any quasi-scientific or rational proof of God’s existence, but the principle that every matter be established by “two or three witnesses” (Deuteronomy 19:15, Matthew 18:16, etc.). Bible verses such as Psalm 19:1 and Romans 1:20 assert that YHWH’s glory and attributes may be seen in what He has created, and I believe that they are pieces of evidence of His existence, but that’s not the same thing as proving conclusively that God exists.

I believe many Christian apologists make an irrational and unbiblical leap by saying, essentially, that believing in an eternal, self-existing deity brings the search for the “Bottom Turtle” to an end. But can one not ask yet more questions? How can there be an eternal God with no beginning and no end? Why? The Bible doesn’t dig into those kinds of questions, does it? It just says that YHWH exists and has acted in history, particularly at the Exodus and in the coming of Jesus Christ, and that people were there to see it happen.

My 2 1/2-year-old grandnephew Ayden has recently discovered that powerful word and eternal question, “Why?” Only his strength and short attention span limit his capacity to ask “why” one more time, whenever an answer is given to his previous “why” question. And every question “why” is just as sensible as the last one, exasperating as his line of questioning may be. I do not believe that Ayden, or Stephen Hawking, or anyone else, has found the last possible “why,” the Bottom Turtle.

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