The triumph of the anti-Maimonideans and the subsequent spread of Kabbalah, from Catalonia to Castile (13th-15th centuries), is yet to be properly evaluated. Because of their own agenda, historians refrained from pointing out the connection between the triumph of the anti-Maimonideans, the rise of Kabbalah, the spread of pietistic doctrines, and the decay of Jewish learning and leadership, ending in mass conversions and the Expulsion in 1492. According to Baer, that Jewish apostasy was the result of ‘rationalism,’ the rise of Kabbalah and pietism should have strengthened Judaism. Yet, the opposite was the case. Soon after the ban and the spread of Kabbalah, Jewish leadership faltered, given rise to anti-Semitic riots throughout Spain. By the time of the Black Plague (1348), the most important Jewish communities in Catalonia and Aragon had been wiped out, including Gerona, the birthplace of Spanish Kabbalah, and Barcelona, where the ban against the Maimonideans was pronounced less than fifty years earlier. A short time later (1391-1412), a series of massacres decimated most of the communities in Spain. During that period many Jews were forced to convert to escape death. Some, however, converted out of sincere conviction. In this chapter we will examine the link between the spread of Kabbalah and mass conversions to Christianity. Anti-Maimonidean Kabbalah has nothing to do with the great mystic of Israel. If there is one thing that one can ascertain about Jewish mysticism is that it was a matter of supreme privacy and subjectivity—something pertaining to matters “of the heart”—not a guiding principle to be imposed on others as a matter of public policy. The great mystical figures of Israel, such as R. Moses Cordovero (1522-1570), R. Isaac Luria (1534-1572), and R. Hayyim Vital (1542-1620) did not preach their esoteric ideas, and least of all used them to persecute dissidents and cause rifts in Israel. By way of contrast, “Discord was the mother of this monstrosity” [Kabbalah], noted Graetz, “which has ever been the cause of schism.” The appropriation of the term Kabbalah (=qabbala) was designed to displace the traditional qabbala and replace it with mystical lore. By changing the content of qabbala, the anti-Maimonideans simultaneously awarded a mantle of respectability to their doctrines in the eyes of the unlettered and vacated authentic rabbinic tradition. If this was not minut, in the eyes of Old Sepharad, it was pretty close to it. The transformation was done surreptitiously, so as not to arouse the ire of the general public. Hacham José faur, Horizontal Society
Posted on: Thu, 08 May 2014 00:52:26 +0000
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