Plato suggested we might be best ruled by philosopher kings.
Besides adding queens, I add poets.
Politicians, scientists, all kinds of smart or not so smart people think they are the ones to lead us through our challenging times. Poets and philosophers are mostly marginalized and ignored, because they are thought to be out of touch with hard realities and useless when it comes to critical matters.
Note that it is sometimes the politicians, scientists and smart people who have created and worsened those challenging times. Poets and philosophers offer unique perspectives on those challenges and realities.
As I’ve said before, we need more poets and philosophers in our field of vision and our public lives. Ask for them to be there. And if you are one of them, be there.
Joe sits most days on the porch of his house on Main Street. Everybody knows Joe, most everybody likes him. People passing by stop and chat. They listen to Joe’s wisdom, his stories about his life, what he’s done, what he’s seen. He can get a little nostalgic, but that’s just Joe being Joe.
Don doesn’t live on Main Street. He lives in a mansion on the hill. Every day his driver brings him around. He gets out of the limo, walks around, grabbing anyone who’ll listen. He talks and talks and talks, mostly about himself or about some cockeyed vision of the town and how it’s going to hell, unless he saves it. Some people like Don, but most people are just scared of him. He seems to be getting crazier every day. He is frightening, but some say that’s just Don being Don.
Election for mayor is coming up soon. Joe and Don have both decided to run. People are sad, because they know the town has other people who could do a better job. Will Joe get off the porch? Will Don stop threatening people? Is there something wrong with the town?
What is mysticism? One of many words that can mean many things. As Humpty Dumpty said, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
In The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism, Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis tries to define it:
The term “mysticism” is one commonly applied, but imperfectly defined….
Scholars have struggled to give a precise definition to what constitutes mysticism within the Western religious traditions. Most regard it to be the impulse, ideology, and discipline to experience the unmediated presence of God or, more radically, union with divinity or a more broadly defined “Absolute.” Evelyn Underhill calls it, “… the expression of the innate tendency of the human spirit towards complete harmony with the transcendental order; whatever be the theological formula under which that order is understood.” Others see mysticism as a project of human transformation, the radical revision of human nature in relationship to the divine.
There is a substantial body of mysticism in Judaism, as there is in its younger siblings Christianity and Islam. The place of mysticism in these religions is complex and varied over time and circumstances. While mysticism might lead to fierce conflicts (“my enlightened vision is better than your enlightened vision”), the “radical revision of human nature” can also lead to followers experiencing other people and things in a more humane, open and divine way.
I don’t know of research measuring the study and adoption of mysticism among contemporary Jews. My anecdotal observation is that it might be small.
To a certain extent, materialism is the opposite of mysticism. Things are things but also transcendentally more than things. Land is land but transcendentally more than land. As religionists say, the phenomenal and the noumenal. We need and can’t avoid having and using the things, but that leads to attaching to the things, which inevitably leads to trouble, within ourselves and in the world. Mysticism, easily lost in the everyday of religions, including Judaism, and certainly lost in the turmoil, could be helpful right now.
Bob Schwartz 