Scholem Study Questions for Chapter 1

1. When Scholem declares that "the great scholars of the past century .... had little sympathy for the Kabbalah," to which century does he refer?
2. What does he think underwrites their perspectives on Kabbalah?
3. Which method does he think contemporary scholars should apply to this field?
4. How does Rufus Jones define mysticism?
5. How does Thomas Aquinas define mysticism?
6. What is the task of all mystical speculation according to Scholem?
7. What is the mystical Nothing?
8. What is the unio mystica?
9. When did the earliest Jewish mystics write?
10. Why does Scholem tell us that "it would be a mistake to assume that the whole of what we call mysticism is identical with that personal experience which is realized in the state of ecstasy or ecstatic meditation?"
11. What is Scholem's first stage of the historical deveolopment of religion?
12. What is Scholem's second stage? What other term does he use to describe it?
13. What is Scholem's third stage? What other term does he use to describe it?
14. How do Creation, Revelation, and Redemption, relate to these three stages?
15. What is "an object of dogmatic knowledge?"
16. In the doctrine of the sefiroth, how do Jewish mystics conceive of God?
17. How do kabbalists conceive of language?
18. What analogy does Scholem draw between Jewish mysticism and Hellenic religions?
19. For the kabbalist, what is the property of the Jewish mystic?
20. Who is more than "mere negation?"
21. What ultimately is the common concern of Jewish mystics and philosophers?
22. According to Scholem, what can be regarded as a "popular mythology of the Jewish universe?"
23. What was an unfortunate consequence of philosophy's "turning its back on the primitive side of man's existence?"
24. For the kabbalists, what was "an off-spring of the feminine sphere?"
25. According to Scholem, what is the "indispensable condition of highly developed religious life?"