KABBALAH AND JEWISH RELIGIOUS REFORM IN THE PARIS OF THE JULY MONARCHY: RABBI DAVID ROSENBERG’S APERÇU DE L’ORIGINE DU CULTE HÉBRAÏQUE (1841)

David Rosenberg, a Freemason rabbi, made a large Kabbalistic lithograph, accompanied by his explications, in Paris in 1841. The work, which is the subject of this paper, was conceived as a polemical piece in the controversy over Jewish religious reform that kept French Jewry busy during the July Monarchy. Although in civic questions Rosenberg shared much of the Enlightenment values with the maskilim, in religious matters he held conservative views. His Kabbalistic reasoning, however, in a debate framed by the burgeoning Science du judaïsme, grounded in source criticism and comparative historical method, was doomed to failure. In the meantime, the print had a favourable reception in Masonic circles, a fact which highlights the divergent perceptions of Kabbalah by the Jewish intelligentsia and those involved in esoteric thinking.