Human development (Judaism)

God works His redemption through history, with final redemption for all in the dawning of the messianic age. Israel is a special people with whom God has a covenant and as such the Jew must affirm God's unity and follow the commandments of God as appear in the Bible and as taught by the rabbis. Traditional Judaism centres around the halakhic rituals which determine the individual's approach to God, to his fellow men and to the world, and which centre on the family. Detailed rules apply to all secular activity, for example the preparation of food, as a sign that God must be served in the most basic activities of life. Although orthodox Jews follow very strictly the rules set down in the [torah]

, "liberal" Jews have adopted more westernized modes of worship and "reform" Jews are less formal in worship and have modified many of the observances.

In all streams of Jewish thought, prophecy is the means by which God communicates with man, and Moses is the greatest of the prophets. It was Moses who received directly from God the law by which the Jew must live, and this is recorded in the [torah]

. The [torah]

sets down the basic moral code as well as the detailed manner in which this code is interpreted. Good and evil acts receive their rewards; one is free to make one's own choices but must accept the consequences of that choice. After death there is resurrection which is a stage prior to the disembodied bliss of the soul.

Because unmitigated experience of the oneness of God can only result in physical death, all experience of God in this life is said to be veiled, so that no experience of God can be complete. Only the very wise and learned can approach the ecstatic revelation of God through mystical experience without madness or agonizing death. Even then, the [Kiss of God]

of direct revelation ends life, but sweetly and softly. This is God as "Wholly Other". Conversely, transcendent experience of God as "Wholly the Same" arises in the normality of everyday life. The mind is fully engaged and God is seen as one with his creation. Although, again, utter oneness can only be achieved at the end of all things, the task is to work towards relating everything directly to God so that he is truly one. The material world is then a physical manifestation of the hidden or spiritual Torah. Revelation of the Torah reverses the process of Adam's rebellion and original sin; and matter is transmuted to spirit.

This balancing of wholly other and wholly the same is illustrated in prayer which is said standing in reverence at God's awesome presence but also silently because God is nearer than man's very heart. The [torah]

, God's teaching, is both the explicit, harmonious, transcendent structure of creation, whose practice represents creation as it was before the fall, and also the inner transformative process within all things, including the heart of man. Actualizing the torah enacts the will of God. Love and justice are actualized through a mysticism of the will requiring personal identity and discriminating consciousness. It is the very Name of God which is expanded through spiritual generation into the hidden and thence to the revealed torah. Separation of the material from the spiritual is the continuation of Adam's fall and the cause of darkness, opaqueness and evil. The task of the mystic is to transmute the physical to the spiritual so that the torah can shine through, breaking the casing of darkness that surrounds it.