Judah Ben Samuel of Regensburg - Mysticism

Mysticism

The precise importance of Judah ben Samuel it is difficult to determine. Side by side with the official, dogmatic religion of the Church or the Synagogue there has always existed a mysticism dealing more largely and more intimately with the personal relation of the individual to God, which at times was in opposition to the religion of the Synagogue. Judah's mysticism was in such a stage of opposition; he therefore undervalued the study of the Halakhah and indulged in marked departures from the accepted religious practises. He endeavored to deepen the feeling of devotion and piety and emphasized the importance of studying the Bible as against studying the Talmud. He deals mystically with prayer, regarding it as more important than study. It was really he who introduced theosophy among the Jews of Germany. The occasional quotations from his Sefer HaKavod present the salient points of his views.

The conception of a personal relation to the Lord was long since felt by Jewish thinkers to be inconsistent with His spiritual nature. Judah and his school, therefore, though not the first ones, distinguished between the Divine Being ( 'Eẓem) and the Divine Majesty (Kavod). The Divine Being, called also Ḳedushshah, dwells in the west, invisible to men and angels. The Divine Being is superior to all human perception. When God reveals Himself to men and angels, He appears in the form of the Divine Majesty. The Divine Majesty, then, dwelling in the east and created out of divine fire, holds the divine throne, true to its nature of representing to human eyes the Divine Being. The throne is draped on the south, east, and north, while it is open to the west in order to allow the reflection of the Divine Being dwelling in the west to shine upon it. It is surrounded by the heavenly legions of angels, chanting to the glory of the Creator.

Lacking the philosophic training common among the Spanish Jews – although he was acquainted with Ibn Ezra, Saadia, some of the Karaites, and perhaps Maimonides – Judah did not reduce his mystic-theosophical theories to a system, and they are therefore difficult to survey. His intellectual importance is on the whole not clear. Zunz says of him: "To vindicate whatever is noble in human endeavors, and the highest aspirations of the Israelite, and to discover the inmost truths alluded to in the Sacred Books, seemed to be the ultimate purpose of a mind in which poetic, moral, and divine qualities were fused."