16 February 2011

Not magnificent enough

The Rabbinic conception of God's teachings are not so much wrong as they are shallow and petulant. 
The deep wisdom of the Jewish heritage is still stored mostly in the biblical teachings. Those biblical teachings touch on the deeper understandings of consciousness and our sense of our own being, be it individual or collective. 
The problem is less that Rabbinic halakha is not as nuanced as biblical halakha than that midrash is not as nuanced and well integrated into the legal system than the avodat haqodesh. The Jewish folk tales and the wisdom contained in the midrash is not as sophisticated as the biblical symbological system. 
That's what the great innovation of Chassidut tried to correct. The Chassidic masters were story tellers, magiddim. They were magnificent. They just weren't magnificent enough. 

No comments:

Post a Comment