The Path of the Upright: Mesillat Yesharim

Plot

Luzzatto's short book "The Path of the Upright: Mesillat Yesharim," leading the reader step by step through degrees of Holiness, beginning with basic Jewish religious practices, culminates in what is recognizably, but not too explicitly, a form of mystical experience. The title evokes the Biblical Patriarchs, "Yashar" (in English Bibles, usually Jashar) being a word regarded as their special epithet in glosses on Biblical references to a mysterious "Book of Yashar" (Sefer Ha-Yashar, Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18). But it is also intriguingly non-specific. Perhaps partly because the title implicitly attributed such deep significance to the communal norms (you too can emulate Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!), the book soon attracted favorable attention. It actually became preferred, even required, reading, in the Rabbinic schools of nineteenth-century Lithuania, which were very much in favor of the life of conscious, thought-out, obedience to Heaven, and, although not opposed to mysticism, were very much set against its public discussion.

And not just opposed to publicity for the usual "Secret Teachings of the Wise" reasons. Like Luzzatto's original opponents, they were living in the wake of the openly mystical Sabbatean ("False Messiah") movement of the seventeenth century, and its offspring of antinomian heresies, and had the popularized mystical Hasidic movement subverting their authority as well.

"Path of the Upright" was also promoted as popular reading matter by the Mussar ("Discipline") movement of moral/spiritual reformers in Eastern Europe, which gave it a broader popularity in Jewish communities as an "improving" work for a wide public -- or at least for men literate in Hebrew, an ability far more widespread than Talmudic erudition.

So it is only an addition to the paradoxes that the present English translation (generally considered the best; there are several competing versions) was the work of the likewise controversial, but very non-mystical, Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan. Originally published by the Jewish Publication Society of America in 1936 (and reprinted by them in 1966) as "A Critical Edition provided with a translation and notes," it offered the then (and apparently still) standard Hebrew text facing the translation. It was reprinted again in 1995 by Jason Aronson, Inc., and that edition may be the most readily available. I have seen it listed with the Hebrew and English in different orders in the title, and sometimes as by Kaplan alone.

(The dust jacket of the Aronson edition gives Luzzatto's first name as Moshe, a better transliteration, but not the one used inside. Some other translations are in fact listed as by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, and there are other transliterations. At least one version announces its allegiance to the Eastern European view of the book by giving the title in Ashkenazic pronunciation, as "Mesillas." The Italian-born author probably would have found that a little odd.)

Kaplan was a committed rationalist, an admirer of American Pragmatists (among others) as well as a Talmudic scholar. He is best known as the founder of the modernizing Reconstructionist movement (to re-order Jewish life and thought in America; not to be confused with Christian Reconstructionists, who appear to favor re-ordering American life on theocratic lines). Unlike many of the author's original opponents, he was entirely out of sympathy with Luzzatto's other work in principle, not just worried about suspicious trends and tendencies! Kaplan was not even a speculative theologian: his 1937 book on "The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion" was largely about the spiritual and moral values of the Jewish religious calendar, and how its symbolic system and liturgy can be understood in the scientific modern world. (It appeared the year after his translation of Luzzatto.)

Still, "Mesillat Yesharim" came to him with the seal of approval of both the Wilno (or Vilna, or Vilnius) Talmudic seminaries and the highly respected Mussar teachers, and he decided to offer it to Jews in the English-speaking world as an important part of their heritage. And Luzzatto's approach to finding new and deeper meanings in tradition-prescribed actions was recognizably compatible with his own program of re-interpreting, instead of abandoning, such practices. (His critique of early twentieth-century Reform Judaism on this issue contributed to a major re-evaluation of the place of observance and ritual within that movement.)

Kaplan's introduction slights Luzzatto's Kabbalistic interests, which, given that he was working before Scholem had laid out a recognizable history of the subject, might have been fortunate. (The less said, the fewer chances to be wrong.) But Kaplan does carefully identify in running notes the exoteric (Biblical and Rabbinic) sources, which would have been instantly recognizable to Luzzatto's expected readers. Luzzatto seems to have avoided obvious references to esoteric teachings or to Halachic (legal) codes, or theological controversies, and Kaplan did not dig out any subtle ones. (Unfortunately, there is no index of the citations; I worked out a partial one for my own purposes, and found that they were heavily weighted to well-known texts.) Although Kaplan taught Homiletics, the art of giving sermons, he scrupulously refrained from imposing his exposition on Luzzatto.

A bit dry as a translation of a much-loved work; but careful, precise, and, despite the avoidance of mystical language as such, it doesn't hide what Luzzatto is talking about in the later stages. The pursuit of Holiness begins in the experience of the material and bodily, and forms a series of steps, which Luzzatto sets forth, through increasing degrees of awareness.

Some Christianity-based terms like "the Spiritual Life" don't really translate well into traditional Jewish thought, at least on the conceptual level, because they reflect distinctions (oppositions of sacred and secular, and, sometimes, of body and soul, for example) that don't quite fit. Luzzatto's short book seems to show that the type of experience doesn't need a fixed name.

If you came to this book looking for information on Kaplan and his views, there is a large literature which will be far, far more helpful. A short, and obviously favorable, introduction is Rebecca T. Alpert and Jacob J. Staub, "Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach." Jack J. Cohn's book in Hebrew comparing Kaplan and a revered Orthodox leader, Rav Kook, has been translated as "Guides for an Age of Confusion: Studies in the Thinking of Avraham Y. Kook and Mordecai M. Kaplan." The former requires little knowledge of Judaism, the latter assumes a serious interest and a fair amount of background. Kaplan's own magnum opus was "Judaism as a Civilization: Toward a Reconstruction of American Jewish Life," originally published in 1934; most of his later works popularized, expanded, or applied his views there.
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