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On Ein Sof and Hashem

1. Is Ein Sof genuinely beyond all attributes, including goodness? If so, how is Ein Sof related to Hashem, who clearly has attributes — who favors, covenants, judges, loves? Are they the same being, or is Hashem a manifestation of Ein Sof for the purposes of relation to creation?

2. If Ein Sof is truly infinite and beyond preference, how does a covenant — which by definition involves preference and selection — originate from it? Who made the covenant at Sinai?

3. Scholem documented that the Sabbateans and Frankists held that the God of the philosophers and the God of Israel were not identical. Was this conclusion a distortion of Kabbalistic premises or a logical extension of them?

On the Sitra Achra

4. The Sitra Achra seems to have genuine positive existence — not merely an absence of holiness but an active force. If God is the source of all existence, did God create the Sitra Achra? If so, what is God's ongoing relationship to it — active opposition, passive permission, or something more complex?

5. If sparks of holiness are trapped within the kelipot and must be elevated through human action, does this mean the holy and the demonic are not ultimately separable — that the divine is distributed through both?

On the hierarchy

6. My understanding is that the Kabbalistic structure places rabbis, then Jewish believers, then righteous gentiles, then kelipot — gentiles who resist the Noahide framework — in a descending hierarchy of ontological standing. Is this accurate? And if so, what halachic restraints prevent the cosmic category from licensing differential treatment of actual people?

On the covenant

7. If the covenant is with the Jewish people collectively rather than with individual Jews, then individuals like Job are not guaranteed justice within the covenantal framework — only the people as a whole is guaranteed survival and eventual redemption. Is this correct? And if so, how does this function psychologically for the observant individual who suffers?

On belief

8. Is belief a requirement for halachic standing? Can someone who observes the mitzvot while privately doubting the divine origin of the Torah be fully within the covenant? What is the tradition's position on the Jew who practices without belief versus the Jew who believes without practicing?

9. The mitzvot are described as having cosmic efficacy — tikkun — regardless of the intention of the performer, in at least some Kabbalistic accounts. If the act produces effects independent of the inner state, then the religious system is structured around external action rather than internal transformation. How does this relate to the concept of kavanah — intention — which seems to suggest that intention does matter? Is there a tension between the theurgical view of mitzvot as cosmically effective regardless of intention and the devotional view that kavanah is essential?

10. Christianity made belief the primary axis and practice secondary — you are saved by faith, not by works. This produced a tradition deeply concerned with internal states, with doubt as spiritually threatening, with the constant examination of conscience. Judaism appears to have made practice the primary axis and belief secondary. Does this mean that the Jewish person is less concerned with the inner state than the Christian? Or does the tradition have its own equivalent of the Christian examination of conscience — some mechanism for addressing what is happening internally — that operates alongside the practice-based system?

11. The practice-based regulatory architecture seems extraordinarily robust — it has maintained community coherence across millennia of dispersion without a common territory, language, or political structure, which is historically almost unprecedented. Is this robustness a conscious design feature of the legal system, or is it something that emerged organically? Did the rabbis who developed the halachic system understand that they were building a regulatory technology that would sustain a community regardless of internal belief states?

12. If the mitzvot have efficacy regardless of belief, then a non-believer who observes all the mitzvot is producing the same cosmic effects as a believer who observes them. What then is the function of belief within the system? Is it motivational — it helps the person maintain practice — or is it something with its own independent value? Could you have a fully functioning Jewish community in which no one believed but everyone practiced?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5871015&forum_id=2]#49914540)