Moses
Hayim Luzzato was born in Padua, Italy, in 1707. From an early age he ran afoul of various
Jewish authorities, most notably for his writings, which possessed a distinctly
messianic tone, and implicated him and his followers in the drama of the coming
of the messiah. In the years following the
Shabbetai Zevi heresy, these were very suspect activities indeed.
Luzzatto was
forced to recant his mystical and messianic teaching by his enemies, and his writings were
confiscated and placed in a wooden chest, never to be found again. But he could not be dissuaded from his
mission. A maggid, a divine being, compelled him to work in these suspect
areas, and he moved from Italy, constantly in search of a place that would be
more suitable for his somewhat unorthodox ideas.
Alas, you will
find none of this controversy in his The
Way of God, Derech HaShem. Here,
Luzzatto takes on some of them more middle of the road topics in Jewish
theology, spending time on such well-worn areas as The Creator, The Purpose of
Creation, the Purpose of Humans, Human responsibility, Providence, the soul, prophecy,
and other topics. He mostly sticks to prevalent
mainstream rabbinic interpretations of these topics. In one notable section on theurgy, a practice
nearly akin to magic, where the adept tries, through rites and rituals, to
manipulate divine entities, does he tread dangerous water.
Beyond
that, The Way of God is a pretty
standard presentation of a modified medieval view of Judaism, just on the cusp
of modernity. It seems Luzzatto’s most controversial
books are still in that lost chest.
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