Time and space are the defining parameters of the existence of the world, and in addition, the fundamental forms of human experience. From a philosophical point of view, they are categories of being and matter. One way or another, they are objective and independent of consciousness. Actually, the worldview of people and the underlying value system formed by historical experience qualitatively influence the formation of concepts of time.
Content
Antiquity
The biblical vector of time is directed from the moment of the creation of the world to the moment of the coming of the Messiah. The Jewish attitude toward time is determined by the desire for eternity, which implies a kind of immutability. The Hebrew view of the world included not only a rigid division into classes depending on properties, but also, as in modern man, operated on the concept of continuity, process, blurred boundaries. From the point of view of eternity, time, like space, could serve as a tool for transforming one thing into another: the ordinary into the sacred, the former in a kind of “non-existent,” and vice versa. However, the Jews did not have a complete sense of the cyclical nature of the time (the calendar of Jewish holidays, the frequency of reading the Torah, and finally Saturday every week). With the caveat that all this is not cyclical in the sense of eternal repetition, but rather is a periodic introduction to the everyday linear existence of the Eternity of the Torah . In Judaism, in philosophical, and even more in mystical Jewish literature, it is repeatedly emphasized that the meaning of the holidays is not limited to a symbolic reminder of the events of the distant past. In fact, the holiday has the authenticity of a true return, which also does not correlate well with the linear concept of the irreversibility of time and the idea of the continuity of the process of changing the world, bringing it closer to the ideal state conceived by the Creator, as it is often highlighted by medieval Jewish mystics [1] .
Middle Ages
Jewish medieval mysticism, like Christian or Greek mysticism, is a combination of specific historical phenomena. In Judaism, time does not exist separately from the material world. In the language of science, it would look like this: if space and matter “behave” as if they once appeared, then time arose with the whole world. In the language of the Torah: time is created by the One who created the whole world.
Medieval Jewry had a place to have a peculiar sacralization of "top and bottom." This is primarily about the concept of "paradise", it is above and implies, without a doubt, a positive connotation. And although the so-called “hell” is not observed in Judaism, in one way or another there is the concept of “sheol,” a kind of gloomy dark place where all the dead live, regardless of lifestyle. In general, the main distinguishing feature of Sheol is that nothing ever happens there, it is only a temporary place of residence. The worst thing that can happen there is the spirits of “ shedim ”, which, like the Tempter, test a person, constantly provoking him to evil deeds. Of interest is the state of the so-called “double”, spiritual aspiration to God in an attempt to “ascend” and get as close as possible to the Creator [2] . Examples of such sacralization, by the way, can be traced back to the Biblical era, when they descended into the unclean land of Egypt, it was perceived as a “bottom”, while the exodus from it to the holy land of Israel symbolized the ascent and the road to something higher, the road “ upstairs. "
Modernity
Both then and today, the perception of time and space in Jewish culture should be divided into three levels: everyday, ritual and sacred-historical. The everyday level is associated with everyday life (lifestyle in general, ways of earning, etc.), ritual - with the customs and rules of life established by law (space - a synagogue, a teaching house, a cemetery, etc., time - daily prayers, holidays, marked dates, etc.), sacred-historical - everything related to the perception of sacred history, based on Scripture and Talmudic literature. The importance lies directly in the complex combination of these three levels, taking into account social and political features.
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Notes:
- ↑ Articles by Asi Entova . asya.rjews.net. Date of treatment March 21, 2019.
- ↑ The main trends in Jewish mysticism are Sholem Gershom . www.e-reading.club. Date of treatment March 21, 2019.