{"title":"Martin Luther, Kabbalah, and Jewish Magic","authors":"Stephen G. Burnett","doi":"10.1163/18750214-tat00001","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Martin Luther concerned himself with Kabbalah at two points during his long career as a theologian. From 1513 to 1519, he first considered and then rejected Kabbalah as a kind of spiritual ‘ladder’ that allowed believers a fuller experience of the otherwise ‘hidden’ God. Later, in 1543, he wrote against the Jews’ ‘superstitious’ beliefs about the tetragrammaton and kabbalistic ‘magic’ generally. This essay will consider the sources of Luther’s kabbalistic knowledge, his understanding of what Jews believed about Kabbalah, and how Kabbalah fit into Luther’s own views concerning Jews and Judaism more generally. Luther believed that the devil was involved in promoting Kabbalah and Jewish magical practices both to deceive its practitioners and their followers, and as a way of redirecting worship away from the true God.</p>","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Zutot","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-tat00001","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Martin Luther concerned himself with Kabbalah at two points during his long career as a theologian. From 1513 to 1519, he first considered and then rejected Kabbalah as a kind of spiritual ‘ladder’ that allowed believers a fuller experience of the otherwise ‘hidden’ God. Later, in 1543, he wrote against the Jews’ ‘superstitious’ beliefs about the tetragrammaton and kabbalistic ‘magic’ generally. This essay will consider the sources of Luther’s kabbalistic knowledge, his understanding of what Jews believed about Kabbalah, and how Kabbalah fit into Luther’s own views concerning Jews and Judaism more generally. Luther believed that the devil was involved in promoting Kabbalah and Jewish magical practices both to deceive its practitioners and their followers, and as a way of redirecting worship away from the true God.
期刊介绍:
Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture aims to fill a gap that has become more and more conspicuous among the wealth of scholarly periodicals in the field of Jewish Studies. Whereas existing journals provide space to medium and large sized articles, they neglect the small but poignant contributions, which may be as important as the extended, detailed study. The Zutot serves as a platform for small but incisive contributions, and provides them with a distinct context. The substance of these contributions is derived from larger perspectives and, though not always presented in an exhaustive way, will have an impact on contemporary discussions. The Zutot covers Jewish culture in its broadest sense, i.e. encompassing various academic disciplines—literature, languages and linguistics, philosophy, art, sociology, politics and history—and reflects binary oppositions such as religious and secular, high and low, written and oral, male and female culture.