The Nature of God

Abstract

This chapter assesses Judah Loew's views on the nature of God. Rabbi Loew's position on this question derives from and is expressive of the idea of God as it had been developed in Jewish mystical literature until his time. What is of importance here is the question of Judah Loew's attitude toward the Jewish mystical and the Jewish philosophical traditions, as they relate to the predication of divine attributes. For Rabbi Loew, Jewish tradition is Jewish mystical tradition; that Jewish medieval philosophy, culminating for Loew in the writings of Eliezer Ashkenazi, is an unnecessary and inauthentic threat to what Loew perceived Judaism to be. He emerges as one who felt obliged to articulate the kabbalistic idea of God in the face of what he perceived as a vital threat to tradition from the philosophers. For Judah Loew, the attempt to submit religious truth to rational analysis is doomed to failure. Jewish tradition, specifically Jewish mystical tradition, is the gateway to supernal, ultimate truth. Jewish philosophy, at its best, can only hope to provide penultimate truth; at its worst, Jewish philosophy is a gateway to heresy.