Do Kabbalists Have A Chelek In Olam Haba?

My answer is that I don't really care. Well, that is not so true. I care in the sense that they are fellow Jews, and would not want them to lose out on their portion of their world to come.

Rather, what I mean is that such a discussion is orthogonal to what I was discussing in posts like this previous post.

This rambles a bit, but bear with me, if you want to.

An anonymous commentator (oh, how I wish they would at least choose pseudonyms!) on my translations of Shadal's Vikuach asked on Shadal in general -- how could we possibly say that kabbalah is false and/or avodah zarah, if so many great rabbonim throughout the ages subscribed to it? To say so would be to say that they were not so great.

One answer (of many) is that truth is truth, regardless of the repercussions. That question perhaps reflects an emotional rather than rational reaction, and should not hold much sway. Of course, it does hold sway for us Orthodox Jews, anyway, for it ties this question to the more general status of the masorah, "Daas Torah," and so on and so forth. Perhaps there is just to much invested to question the status of the kabbalah. Or perhaps, there is indeed so much invested, and so we should discard not just kabbalah but all the rest as well.

But that question might not be the emotional reaction I cast it as above. Rather, to flip the question around -- we know how great a scholar the Gra was. He was a much bigger genius than me. And the same goes for Ramban, and for Rav Yosef Karo. They were unquestionably really really smart and skilled people, in disciplines we respect and appreciate. Yet they were all kabbalists. If we say that kabbalists were foolish, then these people must have been foolish as well. But we know that this is not the case! Therefore, our initial assumption must have been wrong. And thus we have a proof by contradiction for the authenticity of the kabbalah.

It was to these two facets of this question that I addressed this previous post. It was by way of mashal that I brought the gemara about king Menashe, not to say that they are entirely identical. While there are points of similarity, we should consider the points of similarity, and where and how they are similar and different.

The point I attempted to make in the previous post was as follows: People can be great, yet constrained by the sociology and / or intellectual climate of their time. That was the point of the gemara, I think, and the point of Rav Ashi's dream conversation with King Menashe. Of course King Menashe did something that was wrong. Rabbi Abahu sets this out beforehand, that 'Did they abandon [their evil course], that I should abandon [my habit of lecturing upon them]?' And even after Rav Ashi has this dream, he does not say that he will not lecture about them. Rather, he will lecture about them, but refer to them as "our teachers" rather than "our colleagues."

Depending on who you ask in the gemara, these kings did or did not have a portion in the world to come. But that is not the point I am trying to bring out, or that I think Rav Ashi was trying to bring out. Rather, it is that there were certain social influences, and it is not correct to casually dismiss them. There were indeed certain aspects of them that were positive, and furthermore, we do not know how we would react if cast into the same situation, so don't be so smug.

I don't think this is just the frummie position of making everyone in Tanach operate on a much higher plane than we operate on, but rather a peshat position on Tanach that comes out of unbiased reading. Achav is not just a bad guy. He had different religious beliefs. When you have one cult of worship and another one, how do you make a decision? Achav gives Eliyahu mussar about causing the famine. It is hard to understand him, but as a historical figure, he was human. And most humans want to think of themselves as good. The fact is, there was a whole social dynamic that we do not think of, because it is so difficult to cast ourselves into their days.

That is not to say that ultimately Achav, or Menashe, was not wrong, or deserving of Divine punishment, or were deprived of their portion in the world to come. Frankly, that is up to God, not up to me. And it is beside the point for the present discussion. It would be relevant were I learning through that perek in Sanhedrin, perhaps.

To transfer this over to the question of the kabbalists, we could use this mashal to answer those two questions, as posed.

Let us say the kabbalists were wrong. (Yes, I know the second anonymous questioner -- Dovi -- asked about idolatry, but let us push that off for now.) Let us say the kabbalists were wrong in their conception of God, and kabbalah is a forgery, or nonsense and a waste of time. Does saying that mean that we should consider them no longer great?

No. People are bound by their time. If there was a great philosopher who also wasted a lot of time engaging in alchemy, or in astrology, both sciences of the time, that does not mean that I regard all his other contributions as valueless!

Similarly, kabbalists were also great poskim, biblical commentators, ethicists, righteous people, and so on and so forth. Even if I consider their efforts in one realm to be nonsense, this need not devalue their contributions in other realms. And the fact that they did not recognize the realm of kabbalah to be nonsense or a forgery does not mean that they were not brilliant in other realms. There is the social and intellectual climate which influences things like this.

Aristotle was great, even though he believed in spontaneous generation. Isaac Newton was a great scientist and committed Christian, though I think he was wrong about Christianity. And modern scientists, even atheists, consider him a great scientist, even though they would say that he was influenced by his time and culture in this aspect.

Similarly, the few rishonim, contemporaries of Rambam, who thought that God could assume corporeal form, may have been mistaken in these beliefs. And they may even be heretics, if we follow the Rambam in this matter. And the same if we say that Rav Yaakov Emden was right about Rav Yonasan Eibeshitz being a closet Sabbatean. This does not negate his Torah insights. And if he was a closet Sabbatean, is was not out of avarice, malice, selfishness, etcetera, but rather because he thought that this was the correct and righteous path.

I think this answers the two questions I had set out to respond to. Namely, don't despair! for the greats were still greats in the areas in which you look to them most. And there is no proof by contradiction either, for we all are prisoners of our times and culture.

This is separate from the questions raised by Dovi, mentioned above. And this is where I attempt to address him.

We are different people, and what I describe are my own perspectives, and so it is quite possible that I will not convince you. That is fine. I just will delineate some of my own perspectives on the issues.

First, as I mentioned above, my concern is not who gets what in Olam haBa. That is God's concern, not my concern.

Second, my concern is even more surely not with who gets Olam haBa in the distant past. My concern is more with the here and now, and what people nowadays believe and practice.

"Can't this issue make a person evil? Like it did Achav?"
"can't this error turn them into reshaim?"
One difference of course is that Achav at least had an Eliyahu haNavi telling him he was wrong, with messages from God, and with miracles. For kabbalists through the ages, kabbalah was the tradition, taught from their teachers, and was the only game in town.

Furthermore, there is a difference between meizid, which Achav was (because of whatever social influences, etcetera, he still acted wrong bemeizid) on the one hand, and shogeg on the other. And this is less than shogeg. There is not the slightest negligence at play here. Their position is what would be arrived at by righteous, good, diligent people, who were schooled in this teaching. And it was pervasive. Even non-kabbalists simply did not engage in kabbalah, rather than thinking and trying to prove it wrong.
"If you have on the one hand someone who knows very little torah but doesn't believe in zohar and kabbalah, can't a good argument be made that he is much better than a godol who is a baki in shas and poskim but believes in kabbalah which might be avodah zorah and cause a distortion in the halachah and hashkafah as passed down from chazal?"

Are we trying to determine schar veOnesh here? What do you mean by "better?" I am not really concerned with that, or in weighing the value of one holy Jew against another, but more about how people should conduct themselves, and who and what to follow.

In terms of halacha at the least, it is a common practice to document, document, document. We know sources for many, many things. And so we know in many cases where there are kabbalistic influences. When paskening, the role of the posek is to look at all the sources all the way back the the Mishna and Gemara, see how it developed, and see what he thinks is correct. And the interaction between straightforward halacha and kabbalah is an interesting and variegated one -- one which has been dealt with in different ways, and one which I hope to address in a later post. This is an area which concerns me most, I think. I agree with you that in many ways, it is indeed a different Judaism, in terms of halacha and hashkafa, then that of Abaye and Rava.

But to attempt to answer your question, though it is not really my concern, I think:

Do you really know what is avodah zarah, and what is just nonsense?

The Zohar caused the addition of rabbosai mir vellen bentchen at the beginning of mezuman, which I argue against in this post about the proper nusach of mezuman. This is based on an assertion that every davar shebikdusha requires a hazmaza. If I say, based on Pri Megadim, that this is not so, then all we do is add something unnecessary. But is it avodah zarah? No.

If some rabbi holds false beliefs about the nature of God, does that make him a sinner? It might not be so bad if he happens to belief that there are Sefirot, but does not offer sacrifices on an altar to each of the Ten Sefirot, or if he does not pray to specific Sefirot, but rather just to Hashem.

(That said, there are people who know very little Torah but think God has a body, for how else could he put on tefillin.)

For most nowadays, it is a matter of learning chassidus, getting mussar from it, getting inspired by it. (Even Shadal, in his addendum, speaks about these benefits of kabbalah and the way people use it, such that it might not be worthy making this whole hullabaloo.) But not all the beliefs in there are avodah zarah, even if they are incorrect. And even if certain beliefs are idolatrous, that does mean that kabbalists, or gedolim who happen to study some or much kabbalah, are actively engaging in idolatry.

If so, we should certainly correct the errors and get a truer understanding of hashkafa and halacha. And my further concern is kabbalistic beliefs are the basis for still other beliefs which extend them, which cannot be effectively challenged so long as those challenged can appeal to kabbalah. But sins, and schar veOnesh, and weighing their value as people, we need not get into it.

{Update: And just to be clear, I do think they have a chelek in Olam haBa.}

I hope this clarified the context of my initial remarks, and expands upon my thought in the matter you raised.