Extension or Separate?
Published on 29 Mar 2008 at 12:57 pm.
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Is the universe an extension of God
– or separate from God ?
“If you don’t see God everywhere,
you don’t see him anywhereâ€
– the Kotzke Rebbe
(1787 – 1859)
Note the following from Wikipedia 9/23/06:
BAAL SHEM TOV
(“The Beshtâ€)
“The foundation-stone of Hasidism as laid down by Besht is a strongly marked panentheistic conception of God. He declared the whole universe, mind and matter, to be a manifestation of the Divine Being…. for nothing can be separated from God; all things are rather forms in which God reveals Himself…â€
Note the following from Encyclopedia Judaica:
BASIC IDEAS OF HASIDISM
Creator and Universe
“‘The hasidic leader R. Menahem Mendel of Lubavich observes (Derekh Mitzvotekha (1911), 123) that the disciples of the Ba’al Shem Tov gave the “very profound†turn to the doctrine of the oneness of God so that it means not alone that He is unique, as the medieval thinkers said, but that He is all that is:…there is no other existence whatsoever apart from His existence, blessed be He. This is true unification…just as there was no existence apart from Him before the world was created so it is even now.†…as a corollary of hasidic pantheism (more correctly, panentheism)…’â€
(author’s note: there are no extant writings of the Besht)
(see also Appendix F: Hasidic v. Kabbalistic)
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