{"id":43099,"date":"2012-04-15T19:57:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-16T03:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=43099"},"modified":"2012-04-15T20:10:55","modified_gmt":"2012-04-16T04:10:55","slug":"were-the-vilna-gaon-and-the-chatam-sofer-rationalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=43099","title":{"rendered":"Were The Vilna Gaon And The Chatam Sofer Rationalists?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his fourth lecture on the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moses_Sofer\">Chatam Sofer<\/a> for <A HREF=\"http:\/\/torahinmotion.org\">Torah in Motion<\/a>, historian <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marc_B._Shapiro\">Marc B. Shapiro<\/a> said: &#8220;The <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Maimonides\">Rambam<\/a> did not believe in amulets and the like. The Chatam Sofer would give out amulets. He was not a <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lithuanian_Jews\">Lithuanian<\/a> Torah scholar.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sometimes people talk about the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moses_Sofer\">Chatam Sofer<\/a> the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vilna_Gaon\">Vilna Gaon<\/a> as rationalists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although most of their time was spent on <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Talmud\">Talmud<\/a> and <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Halakha\">halacha<\/a> (Jewish law), this does not mean they did not spend any time with <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kabbalah\">kabbalah<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Until our own time, the prototypical Lithuanian Torah scholar had no involvement with kabbalah.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Today mainstream kabbalists say that kabbalah is for elites.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is basic to all religions [and philosophies]. You want to keep the masses worshiping.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Chabad is an elite group. They try to teach this [version of kabbalah] to everyone but Chabad prided itself as an intellectual movement, as the most intellectual of the Hasidim.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his fourth lecture on the Chatam Sofer for Torah in Motion, historian Marc B. Shapiro said: &#8220;The Rambam did not believe in amulets and the like. The Chatam Sofer would give out amulets. He was not a Lithuanian Torah &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=43099\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marc-b-shapiro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43104,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43099\/revisions\/43104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}