We have up till now been studying the basic structure of rabbinic Judaism as a coherent system of belief and practice. We have seen how in its practice, rabbinic Judaism stresses connections between order and holiness. In effect, the holy in rabbinic Judaism is what is separated out and clearly demarcated from the realm of impurity (kosher food, permissible sexual practices, and so on). Rabbinic Judaism seems to be an ordered universe within the all-embracing framework of the Torah.
The necessity to stress order so heavily arose from an experience of disorder, more specifically, the shocking disjunction between Israel's identity as the chosen people of God and Israel's historical condition as a nation without land, Temple, political rights in its host countries, and so on. This disjunction led the rabbis to try to escape this historic "shock" in a transcendent and eternal realm of Law and Torah. The Law defined an eternal way of life, mirroring the way God created the universe (kosher food, for example, was food that fit the framework of the "proper" animals God made for earth, air, and water). The Torah existed from all time in God's mind, and the rabbis explored this timeless world through Midrash.
But you can't escape history so easily. It faces you on a daily basis, and the Jew wanted to know, When will history change? When will the historic "shock" of our Galut be redeemed? The rabbis offered consolation in the timeless realm of Law and Torah, but some rabbis went further. They sought after the meaning of history itself. This led to midrashim about the final redemption of Israel. It also led to speculation about the End of Days, what it would be like, and when it would come.
Gershom Scholem explains the nature of this speculation in Judaism. He calls it apocalypticism. In this perspective, the End of Days will come as a radical transformation of this world, a destruction of this "evil eon" and the birth of a new one. Apocalypticism sees history as the battleground of Cosmic Good and Cosmic Evil (both are God's creations) (see page 6 for a fuller account). Apocalypticism is a theory of cosmic battle, leading to cosmic catastrophe and final recreation. This element of militancy creates a special brand of Jewish messianism. Scholem calls this utopian Messianism which has a tendency to incite individuals at certain times to take on a kind of militant fervor in the effort to participate in the Final Battle between good and and evil and thus win a share in the Kingdom of God. Such militant fervor existed among the Qumran sectarians, among the Zealots, among the believers in Sabbatai Zvi, and among some in Israel today.
Scholem's first essay discusses the nature of this kind of utopian, militant Messianism, and then it discusses the reaction of Maimonides, a rationalist rabbi of the Middle Ages, to these ideas. This leads to the first question:
1. Concentrating on pages 19-23, summarize Scholem's analysis of the causes of Maimonides' negative evaluation of apocalypticism, and describe what Maimonides himself believed about the age of the Messiah. Relate Maimonides' views to what you have so far learned (and what I summarized above) about the basic nature of rabbinic Judaism.
2. In his second essay, "The Messianic Idea in Kabbalism," Scholem reiterates his basic thesis in the first essay, namely, that Messianism in rabbinic Judaism up through the middle ages was associated with the belief that God would bring about a change in history at a time that could not be calculated, and that for the moment the Jewish people should obey the Torah and lead a life modelled after the eternal order established by God. Beside this rabbinic belief there alse existed apocalyptic tendencies, often part of the popular Jewish culture, which sometimes took on a militant tone and pushed for a change in history through direct action. The Kabbalah up until the expulsion from Spain in 1492 of all Jews basically developed the conservative rabbinic Messianism, adding perhaps to its utopian side (see page 40, the paragraph beginning with "In the last section of the *Zohar* ..." for further details). As Scholem puts the matter, rabbinic and Kabbalistic Messianism both held the view that the world as it is today and the world of the Messiah "were still separated by a chasm which history could never bridge" (page 41). This changes with the expulsion from Spain. Jews felt the need to explain this terrible event and the resulting Galut from their second homeland, Spain. The answer came from a reworking of the ideas of the Kabbalah. The answer followed the failure of the apocalyptic groundswell that immediately arose after the expulsion, when Jews believed that this terrible event would be followed by redemption. It was not. So the Kabbalists in the city of Safed in Islamic Palestine of the 16th century offered a new interpretation of Galut and Redemption, using the ideas of the earlier Kabbalah. Here, then, is the second question:
Concentrating on pages 43-48, explain how the Kabbalah of the Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed) answered the question of the meaning of Galut. Conclude your answer with an explanation of how this new Kabbalistic understanding of Galut and Redemption offered the Jewish people a way of seeing themselves as actively engaged in bringing the Messianic Age in their daily lives.