Editing Maimonides (section)

===Maimonides and Kabbalah===
Maimonides was not known as a supporter of [[Kabbalah]], although a strong intellectual type of mysticism has been discerned in his philosophy.<ref>Abraham Heschel, ''Maimonides'' (New York: Farrar Straus, 1982), Chapter 15, "Meditation on God," pp. 157–162.</ref> In ''The Guide for the Perplexed'', Maimonides declares his intention to conceal from the average reader his explanations of {{transliteration|he|Sod}}{{efn|"Within [the Torah] there is also another part which is called 'hidden' ({{transliteration|he|mutsnaʿ}}), and this [concerns] the secrets ({{transliteration|he|sodot}}) which the human intellect cannot attain, like the meanings of the statutes ({{transliteration|he|ḥukim}}) and other hidden secrets. They can neither be attained through the intellect nor through sheer volition, but they are revealed before Him who created [the Torah]". (Rabbi Abraham ben Asher, ''The Or ha-Sekhel'')}} esoteric meanings of Torah. The nature of these "secrets" is debated. Religious Jewish rationalists, and the mainstream academic view, read Maimonides' Aristotelianism as a mutually-exclusive alternative metaphysics to [[Kabbalah]].<ref>Such as the first (religious) criticism of Kabbalah, ''Ari Nohem'', by [[Leon Modena]] from 1639. In it, Modena urges a return to Maimonidean Aristotelianism. ''The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice'', Yaacob Dweck, Princeton University Press, 2011.</ref> Some academics hold that Maimonides' project fought against the Proto-Kabbalah of his time.<ref>Menachem Kellner, ''Maimonides' Confrontation With Mysticism'', Littman Library, 2006</ref>

Maimonides employed rationalism to defend Judaism rather than limit inquiry of {{transliteration|he|Sod}} only to rationalism. His rationalism, if not taken as an opposition,{{efn|Contemporary academic views in the study of Jewish mysticism, hold that 12–13th century Kabbalists wrote down and systemised their transmitted oral doctrines in oppositional response to Maimonidean rationalism. See e.g. Moshe Idel, ''Kabbalah: New Perspectives''}} also assisted the Kabbalists, purifying their transmitted teaching from mistaken [[Anthropomorphism in Kabbalah|corporeal]] interpretations that could have been made from [[Hekhalot literature]],{{efn|The first comprehensive systemiser of Kabbalah, [[Moses ben Jacob Cordovero]], for example, was influenced by Maimonides. One example is his instruction to undercut any conception of a Kabbalistic idea after grasping it in the mind. One's intellect runs to God in learning the idea, then returns in qualified rejection of false spatial/temporal conceptions of the idea's truth, as the human mind can only think in material references. Cited in Louis Jacobs, ''The Jewish Religion: A Companion'', Oxford University Press, 1995, entry on Cordovero.}} though Kabbalists held that their theosophy alone allowed human access to Divine mysteries.<ref>Norman Lamm, ''The Religious Thought of Hasidism: Text and Commentary'', Ktav Pub, 1999: Introduction to chapter on Faith/Reason has historical overview of religious reasons for opposition to Jewish philosophy, including the Ontological reason, one Medieval Kabbalist holding that "we begin where they end".</ref>