Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

principles, and his character, there cannot exist any longer

The ten “holy” Sefiroth have their counterparts in ten “unholy” or “impure” ones; the latter, however, are distinguished from the former in that each one has a highly personal character.

He who gains the deepest knowledge of the true essentials of reality—so he says in one place—at the same time acquires the deepest humility and modesty.42

“for it is wholly in thee and thou art wholly in it.”

“to unseal the soul, to untie the knots which bind it,”

In short, Abulafia believes that whoever succeeds in making this great Name of God, the least concrete and perceptible thing in the world, the object of his meditation, is on the way to true mystical ecstasy.48

The more genuinely and characteristically Jewish an idea or doctrine is, the more deliberately unsystematic is it.

There is, however, one important respect in which Hasidism differs sharply from its Christian contemporaries: it does not enjoin sexual asceticism. On the contrary, the greatest importance is assigned in the Sefer Hasidim to the establishment and maintenance of a normal and reasonable marital life. Nowhere is penitence extended to sexual abstinence

After all, a misunderstanding is often nothing but the paradoxical abbreviation of an original line of thought.