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Jewish mythology

The neutrality of this article is disputed.

Jewish mythology is the body of mythology of the Jewish people and Judaism as understood by some people. There are serious diverging views on this subject. There is a need for some definitions because what some people refer to as "mythology", other groups of Jews call Mysticism.

Followers of Hasidic Judaism and large portions Sephardic Jews refer to the subjects of mythology as mysticism and consider it part of the authoritative Oral Law of the Torah given by God to Moses, the Jewish prophets and Jewish sages. They would find calling their beliefs "mythology" as offensive. On the other hand the rationalist skeptics cannot fathom how any group of intelligent people can believe such "legends", yet they are still curious about them so they call their field of study "mythology". There is no way to really bridge this divide at this time.

Even for those who are convinced that there is such a thing as Jewish mythology, agree that while Judaism has a large body of both "law" AND "lore" contained in Torah (the "Five Books of Moses") and the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible, or "Old Testament") as interpreted by the Midrash, this is not usually considered mythology. (The Torah and Tanakh contain writings that often serve much the same function as the mythology of other religions, telling how the Earth began, what humans are supposed to do, and various historical and legendary tales, nonetheless.)

For those who look for the mythology in Judaism, they generally believe that they find it in the Talmud, Midrash literature and the later mystical works (e.g. Zohar). For them, examples of this type of mythology include the story of Lilith. However, to Orthodox Judaism's scholars of the esoteric and mysterious Kabbalah, the Zohar is one of the most Holy and Godly books, and these abstruse subjects are all legitimate sections of divine Torah within the domain of Jewish mysticism which is referred to in Hebrew as the Torah of Nistar ("The Hidden"), and so, the Lilith narrative is part of a serious spiritual interpretation of the inner meaning of the Adam and Eve and Creation narratives which are called Maaseh Breshit ("The Act of Creation") -- how God created the world ex nihilo ("out of nothingness") and the even deeper Maaseh Merkava ("The Act of the Chariot") -- meaning God's "role" in everything symbolized as "riding a chariot" through time and all the dimensions of existence.

The Jewish mythology school of thought include those who think that there are a number of stories and legends that are mythological but do not derive from sacred texts. To them for example, the concept of the golem (meaning a "dummy" or "robot", probably the source for the twisted stories of the "Frankenstein"), appears to have developed independently from Jewish religious literature and is only introduced around the 1600s. However, believers in Jewish mysticism cite examples where a golem is already mentioned much earlier in the Talmud and is in fact even given a name. The reason that the golem came to be known in the 1600s is that it was none other than the scholarly rabbinical mystic known as the Maharal of Prague Rabbi Judah Low ben Bezalel (1511-1609) who reputedly did build a golem, based on his deep knowledge of how to apply the Kabbalah and utilize the formulae of Maaseh Breshit, the "creative powers" linked to the mysteries of the first Creation. The Maharal (Rabbi Low) supposedly used his golem to fight threats against Jews due to blood libels, and when it could no longer serve its purpose he destroyed it using certain mystical incantations, and supposedly that golem is still "buried" in the main synagogue in Prague where this happened according to many people.

These tales are obviously way beyond normal rational thinking and modern western people cannot relate to such strange issues, therefore some dismiss all such "legends" or tales as mythology, whereas those who accept the importance of the same information yet put it into a different Torah believing category call it mysticism.

Terminology: Mythology versus mysticism

Whilst Jewish mythology is often a field of study for mostly secular scholars, Jewish mysticism is an inherent part of large parts of Sephardic Jews and of all Hasidic Judaism Jews as they follow the teachings of some of the greatest rabbis respected by ALL Jews. Thus, Sephardic Jews have incorporated readings from the main mystical text the Zohar into their prayers and rituals but they do view themselves as believers in mythology. All Hasidic Judaism Jews study mystical texts because the Baal Shem Tov, the father of Hasidism was a renowned mystic and Kabbalist, his ardent followers would never refer to him as a mythologist as to them he neither a teacher of myths nor teaching mythology. In Orthodox Judaism, for the most part, mysticism is part of Judaism whereas mythology is a pejorative term applied by critics of Judaism to denigrate what Orthodox Jews consider to be their faith's true teachings. Similarly, the famous Rabbi Joseph Karo, the author of the Shulkhan Arukh, which is the pillar of Jewish Law (known as halakha), was at the same time also a mystic, and he sought out the teachings of his favorite mystic of his time, Rabbi Isaac Luria. Neither of these great Jewish sages were considered to be devotees of mythology, on the contrary, they were classical rabbis who believed that Judaism incorporates within itself a whole strata of mysticism such as in the Kabbalah. Many Orthodox Jewish defenders of "mysticism" believe that Jewish mysticism has nothing to do with secular or non-religious notions of mythology. Judaism actually forbids belief in such things as Greek mythology, Roman mythology, and Norse mythology (the greatest and best known mythologies in the Western World). This prohibitive attitude is allegedly because of the mutiple deities of polytheistic religions, and what Jewish people, in general, consider to be the immoral behavior of so many of the mythological gods who Jews consider to be very far removed from the God that Jews have always worshipped, a worship rooted in the Torah and the Monotheism at its core defined by the Ten Commandments, which explicitly forbids recognizing the mythological gods. (Practicioners of Judeo-Paganism might beg to differ.) According to many observant Jews, Judaism embraces mysticism, (even though it may have its own debates about it), whereas Judaism rejects mythology of any kind.

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Last updated: 10-24-2004 05:10:45