Jewish Salvational Visions, Utopias, and Attitudes Towards the Halacha.

The article presents the institutionalized Jewish salvational vision of the Halacha and alternative salvational visions. Jewish civilization, like the other civilizations of the Great Worm Religions, has produced, over its long history, many visions of how to achieve salvation, that is, of how to overcome the basic ontological chasm between the mundane and transcendent orders. The decisive premise of Jewish tradition is that the transmundane order is represented by a transcendent monotheistic personal God, who is radically other than any entity or aspect of mundane existence, and separated from the mundane world by an ontological chasm. In his transcendence, he is radically and absolutely good, just, and holy. All legitimate activities and social structures in medieval Jewish society were ultimately legitimated in terms of the Halacha, Its representatives and embodiment, the rabbinic elite, was the agent of this legitimation and thus the repository of ultimate authority, However, the cultural assumptions of the Halacha greatly influenced the nature and structure of these legitimizing roles.