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Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an

esoteric Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to categorise a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas a ...

method, discipline and school of thought in

Jewish mysticism Academic study of Jewish mysticism, especially since Gershom Scholem's ''Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism'' (1941), distinguishes between different forms of mysticism across different eras of Jewish history. Of these, Kabbalah, which emerged in 1 ...

. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "receiver"). The definition of Kabbalah varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it, from its origin in medieval Judaism to its later adaptations in

Western esotericism Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to categorise a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas a ...

( Christian Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah). Jewish Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God—the mysterious ''

Ein Sof Ein Sof, or Eyn Sof (, he, '; meaning "infinite", ), in Kabbalah, is understood as God prior to any self-manifestation in the production of any spiritual realm, probably derived from Solomon ibn Gabirol's ( 1021 – 1070) term, "the Endless O ...

'' (, ''"The Infinite"'')—and the mortal, finite

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. Acc ...

(God's

creation Creation may refer to: Religion *''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing * Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it * Creationism, the belief tha ...

). It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism. Jewish Kabbalists originally developed their own transmission of

sacred texts Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual prac ...

within the realm of Jewish tradition and often use classical Jewish scriptures to explain and demonstrate its mystical teachings. These teachings are held by Kabbalists to define the inner meaning of both the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...

and traditional

rabbinic literature Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire spectrum of rabbinic writings throughout Jewish history. However, the term often refers specifically to literature from the Talmudic era, as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic writ ...

and their formerly concealed transmitted dimension, as well as to explain the significance of Jewish religious observances. Traditional practitioners believe its earliest origins pre-date world religions, forming the primordial blueprint for Creation's philosophies, religions, sciences, arts, and political systems. Historically, Kabbalah emerged from earlier forms of

, in 12th- to 13th-century Spain and Southern France, and was reinterpreted during the Jewish mystical renaissance in 16th-century

Ottoman Palestine Ottoman Syria ( ar, سوريا العثمانية) refers to divisions of the Ottoman Empire within the region of Syria, usually defined as being east of the Mediterranean Sea, west of the Euphrates River, north of the Arabian Desert and south ...

. The ''

Zohar The ''Zohar'' ( he, , ''Zōhar'', lit. "Splendor" or "Radiance") is a foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah (the five ...

'', the foundational text of Kabbalah, was composed in the late 13th century.

Isaac Luria Isaac ben Solomon Luria Ashkenazi (1534Fine 2003, p24/ref> – July 25, 1572) ( he, יִצְחָק בן שלמה לוּרְיָא אשכנזי ''Yitzhak Ben Sh'lomo Lurya Ashkenazi''), commonly known in Jewish religious circles as "Ha'ARI" (mean ...

(16th century) is considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah; Lurianic Kabbalah was popularised in the form of

Hasidic Judaism Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism (Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Judaism, Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory ...

from the 18th century onwards. During the 20th century, academic interest in Kabbalistic texts led primarily by the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem has inspired the development of historical research on Kabbalah in the field of Judaic studies.

Traditions

According to the ''

'', a foundational text for kabbalistic thought,

Torah study Torah study is the study of the Torah, Hebrew Bible, Talmud, responsa, rabbinic literature, and similar works, all of which are Judaism's Sifrei kodesh, religious texts. According to Rabbinic Judaism, the study is done for the purpose of the ''mi ...

can proceed along four levels of interpretation (

exegesis Exegesis ( ; from the Ancient Greek, Greek , from , "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation (logic), interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Bible, Biblical works. In modern usage, ...

). These four levels are called ''

pardes Pardes may refer to: Judaism * Pardes (legend), Jewish account of a Heavenly orchard * Pardes (Jewish exegesis), a Kabbalistic theory of biblical exegesis. * ''Pardès'', the European Journal of Jewish Studies, co-founded by Shmuel Trigano and ...

'' from their initial letters (PRDS he, פַּרדֵס, links=no, orchard). * '' Peshat'' ( he, פשט, links=no lit. "simple"): the direct interpretations of meaning. * ''Remez'' ( he, רֶמֶז, links=no lit. "hint ): the

allegoric As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...

meanings (through

allusion Allusion is a figure of speech, in which an object or circumstance from unrelated context is referred to covertly or indirectly. It is left to the audience to make the direct connection. Where the connection is directly and explicitly stated (as ...

). * ''Derash'' ( he, דְרָשׁ, links=no from Heb. ''darash'': "inquire" or "seek"):

midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. he, מִדְרָשׁ; ...

ic (rabbinic) meanings, often with imaginative comparisons with similar words or verses. * ''Sod'' ( he, סוֹד, links=no lit. "secret" or "mystery"): the inner, esoteric (

metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

) meanings, expressed in kabbalah. Kabbalah is considered by its followers as a necessary part of the study of

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...

– the study of Torah (the ''

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''

Merkabah mystical concepts and methods. According to this descriptive categorization, both versions of Kabbalistic theory, the medieval-Zoharic and the early-modern

Lurianic Kabbalah Lurianic Kabbalah is a school of kabbalah named after Isaac Luria (1534–1572), the Jewish rabbi who developed it. Lurianic Kabbalah gave a seminal new account of Kabbalistic thought that its followers synthesised with, and read into, the earlie ...

together comprise the ''Theosophical'' tradition in Kabbalah, while the '' Meditative-

Ecstatic Kabbalah Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia ( he, אברהם בן שמואל אבולעפיה) was the founder of the school of "Prophetic Kabbalah". He was born in Zaragoza, Spain in 1240 and is assumed to have died sometime after 1291, following a stay on the ...

'' incorporates a parallel inter-related Medieval tradition. A third tradition, related but more shunned, involves the magical aims of '' Practical Kabbalah''.

Moshe Idel Moshe Idel ( he, משה אידל; born January 19, 1947) is a Romanian-Israeli historian and philosopher of Jewish mysticism. He is Emeritus Max Cooper Professor in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and a Senior Researcher at the ...

, for example, writes that these 3 basic models can be discerned operating and competing throughout the whole history of Jewish mysticism, beyond the particular Kabbalistic background of the Middle Ages. They can be readily distinguished by their basic intent with respect to God: * The ''Theosophical'' or ''Theosophical-

Theurgic Theurgy (; ) describes the practice of rituals, sometimes seen as magical in nature, performed with the intention of invoking the action or evoking the presence of one or more deities, especially with the goal of achieving henosis (uniting wi ...

'' tradition of ''Theoretical Kabbalah'' (the main focus of the Zohar and Luria) seeks to understand and describe the divine realm using the imaginative and mythic symbols of human psychological experience. As an intuitive conceptual alternative to rationalist

Jewish philosophy Jewish philosophy () includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment) and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile ...

, particularly

Maimonides Musa ibn Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (); la, Moses Maimonides and also referred to by the acronym Rambam ( he, רמב״ם), was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah ...

' Aristotelianism, this speculation became the central stream of Kabbalah, and the usual reference of the term "kabbalah". Its

theosophy Theosophy is a religion established in the United States during the late 19th century. It was founded primarily by the Russian Helena Blavatsky and draws its teachings predominantly from Blavatsky's writings. Categorized by scholars of religion a ...

also implies the innate, centrally important theurgic influence of human conduct on redeeming or damaging the spiritual realms, as man is a divine microcosm, and the spiritual realms the divine macrocosm. The purpose of traditional theosophical kabbalah was to give the whole of normative Jewish religious practice this mystical metaphysical meaning * The '' Meditative'' tradition of ''

'' (exemplified by Abraham Abulafia and

Isaac of Acre Isaac ben Samuel of Acre ( fl. 13th–14th century) (Hebrew: יצחק בן שמואל דמן עכו, ''Yitzhak ben Shmuel d'min Akko'') was a Jewish kabbalist who fled to Spain. According to Chaim Joseph David Azulai, Isaac ben Samuel was a p ...

) strives to achieve a mystical union with God, or nullification of the meditator in God's

Active intellect The active intellect (Latin: ''intellectus agens''; also translated as agent intellect, active intelligence, active reason, or productive intellect) is a concept in classical and medieval philosophy. The term refers to the formal (''morphe'') aspec ...

. Abraham Abulafia's "Prophetic Kabbalah" was the supreme example of this, though marginal in Kabbalistic development, and his alternative to the program of theosophical Kabbalah. Abulafian meditation built upon the philosophy of Maimonides, whose following remained the rationalist threat to theosophical kabbalists * The Magico-Talismanic tradition of '' Practical Kabbalah'' (in often unpublished manuscripts) endeavours to alter both the Divine realms and the World using practical methods. While theosophical interpretations of worship see its redemptive role as harmonising heavenly forces, Practical Kabbalah properly involved white-magical acts, and was censored by kabbalists for only those completely pure of intent, as it relates to lower realms where purity and impurity are mixed. Consequently, it formed a separate minor tradition shunned from Kabbalah. Practical Kabbalah was prohibited by the Arizal until the

Temple in Jerusalem The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two now-destroyed religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusa ...

is rebuilt and the required state of ritual purity is attainable. According to Kabbalistic belief, early kabbalistic knowledge was transmitted orally by the Patriarchs, prophets, and sages, eventually to be "interwoven" into Jewish religious writings and culture. According to this view, early kabbalah was, in around the 10th century BCE, an open knowledge practiced by over a million people in ancient Israel. Foreign conquests drove the Jewish spiritual leadership of the time (the

Sanhedrin The Sanhedrin (Hebrew and Aramaic: סַנְהֶדְרִין; Greek: , ''synedrion'', 'sitting together,' hence 'assembly' or 'council') was an assembly of either 23 or 71 elders (known as "rabbis" after the destruction of the Second Temple), ap ...

) to hide the knowledge and make it secret, fearing that it might be misused if it fell into the wrong hands. It is hard to clarify with any degree of certainty the exact concepts within kabbalah. There are several different schools of thought with very different outlooks; however, all are accepted as correct. Modern

halakhic ''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws which is derived from the written and Oral Torah. Halakha is based on biblical commandm ...

authorities have tried to narrow the scope and diversity within kabbalah, by restricting study to certain texts, notably Zohar and the teachings of Isaac Luria as passed down through

Hayyim ben Joseph Vital Hayyim ben Joseph Vital ( he, רָבִּי חַיִּים בֶּן יוֹסֵף וִיטָאל; Safed, October 23, 1542 (Julian calendar) and October 11, 1542 (Gregorian Calendar) – Damascus, 23 April 1620) was a rabbi in Safed and the foremo ...

. However, even this qualification does little to limit the scope of understanding and expression, as included in those works are commentaries on Abulafian writings, ''Sefer Yetzirah'', Albotonian writings, and the ''Berit Menuhah'', which is known to the kabbalistic elect and which, as described more recently by Gershom Scholem, combined ecstatic with theosophical mysticism. It is therefore important to bear in mind when discussing things such as the '' sephirot'' and their interactions that one is dealing with highly abstract concepts that at best can only be understood intuitively.

Jewish and non-Jewish Kabbalah

From the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

onwards Jewish Kabbalah texts entered non-Jewish culture, where they were studied and translated by

Christian Hebraists A Christian Hebraist is a scholar of Hebrew who comes from a Christian family background/belief, or is a Jewish adherent of Christianity. The main area of study is that commonly known as the Old Testament to Christians (and Tanakh to Jews), but C ...

and Hermetic occultists. The syncretic traditions of Christian Cabala and Hermetic Qabalah developed independently of Judaic Kabbalah, reading the Jewish texts as universalist ancient wisdom preserved from the

Gnostic Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...

traditions of antiquity. Both adapted the Jewish concepts freely from their Jewish understanding, to merge with multiple other theologies, religious traditions and magical associations. With the decline of Christian Cabala in the

Age of Reason The Age of reason, or the Enlightenment, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 17th to 19th centuries. Age of reason or Age of Reason may also refer to: * Age of reason (canon law), ...

, Hermetic Qabalah continued as a central underground tradition in

. Through these non-Jewish associations with magic,

alchemy Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...

and divination, Kabbalah acquired some popular

occult The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism a ...

connotations forbidden within Judaism, where Jewish theurgic Practical Kabbalah was a minor, permitted tradition restricted for a few elite. Today, many publications on Kabbalah belong to the non-Jewish

New Age New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars conside ...

and occult traditions of Cabala, rather than giving an accurate picture of Judaic Kabbalah. Instead, academic and traditional Jewish publications now translate and study Judaic Kabbalah for wide readership.

History of Jewish mysticism

Origins

According to the traditional Kabbalistic understanding, Kabbalah dates from Eden.

Sefer Raziel HaMalakh ''Sefer Raziel HaMalakh'', (Hebrew:, "the book of Raziel the angel''"''), is a grimoire of Practical Kabbalah from the Middle Ages written primarily in Hebrew and Aramaic. ''Liber Razielis Archangeli'', its 13th-century Latin translation produce ...

It came down from a remote past as a revelation to elect

tzadikim Tzadik ( he, צַדִּיק , "righteous ne, also ''zadik'', ''ṣaddîq'' or ''sadiq''; pl. ''tzadikim'' ''ṣadiqim'') is a title in Judaism given to people considered righteous, such as biblical figures and later spiritual masters. The ...

(righteous people), and, for the most part, was preserved only by a privileged few. Talmudic Judaism records its view of the proper protocol for teaching secrets in the ''

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cente ...

'', Tractate ''

Hagigah Hagigah or Chagigah (Hebrew: חגיגה, lit. "Festival Offering") is one of the tractates comprising Moed, one of the six orders of the Mishnah, a collection of Jewish traditions included in the Talmud. It deals with the Three Pilgrimage Festiv ...

'', 11b-13a, "One should not teach . . . the work of Creation in pairs, nor the work of the Chariot to an individual, unless he is wise and can understand the implications himself etc." Contemporary scholarship suggests that various schools of Jewish esotericism arose at different periods of Jewish history, each reflecting not only prior forms of

mysticism Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in u ...

, but also the intellectual and cultural milieu of that historical period. Answers to questions of transmission, lineage, influence, and innovation vary greatly and cannot be easily summarised.

Terms

Originally, Kabbalistic knowledge was believed to be an integral part of the

Oral Torah According to Rabbinic Judaism, the Oral Torah or Oral Law ( he, , Tōrā šebbəʿal-pe}) are those purported laws, statutes, and legal interpretations that were not recorded in the Five Books of Moses, the Written Torah ( he, , Tōrā šebbīḵ� ...

, given by God to

Moses Moses hbo, מֹשֶׁה, Mōše; also known as Moshe or Moshe Rabbeinu (Mishnaic Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ, ); syr, ܡܘܫܐ, Mūše; ar, موسى, Mūsā; grc, Mωϋσῆς, Mōÿsēs () is considered the most important pro ...

Mount Sinai Mount Sinai ( he , הר סיני ''Har Sinai''; Aramaic: ܛܘܪܐ ܕܣܝܢܝ ''Ṭūrāʾ Dsyny''), traditionally known as Jabal Musa ( ar, جَبَل مُوسَىٰ, translation: Mount Moses), is a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. It is ...

around the 13th century BCE according to its followers; although some believe that Kabbalah began with

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

. For a few centuries the esoteric knowledge was referred to by its aspect practice—meditation

Hitbonenut Jewish meditation includes practices of settling the mind, introspection, visualization, emotional insight, contemplation of divine names, or concentration on philosophical, ethical or mystical ideas. Meditation may accompany unstructured, perso ...

( he, הִתְבּוֹנְנוּת), Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's Hitbodedut ( he, הִתְבּוֹדְדוּת), translated as "being alone" or "isolating oneself", or by a different term describing the actual, desired goal of the practice—prophecy ("''NeVu'a''" he, נְבוּאָה). Kabbalistic scholar Aryeh Kaplan traces the origins of medieval Kabbalistic meditative methods to their inheritance from orally transmitted remnants of the Biblical Prophetic tradition, and reconstructs their terminology and speculated techniques. From the 5th century BCE, when the works of the Tanakh were edited and canonised and the secret knowledge encrypted within the various writings and scrolls ("Megilot"), esoteric knowledge became referred to as '' Ma'aseh Merkavah'' ( he, מַעֲשֶׂה מֶרְכָּבָה) and '' Ma'aseh B'reshit'' ( he, מַעֲשֶׂה בְּרֵאשִׁית), respectively "the act of the Chariot" and "the act of Creation". Merkabah mysticism alluded to the encrypted knowledge, and meditation methods within the book of the prophet

Ezekiel Ezekiel (; he, יְחֶזְקֵאל ''Yəḥezqēʾl'' ; in the Septuagint written in grc-koi, Ἰεζεκιήλ ) is the central protagonist of the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Ezekiel is acknow ...

describing his vision of the "Divine Chariot". B'reshit mysticism referred to the first chapter of

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Bible * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...

( he, בְּרֵאשִׁית) in the Torah that is believed to contain secrets of the creation of the universe and forces of nature. These terms received their later historical documentation and description in the second chapter of the Talmudic tractate ''Hagigah'' from the early centuries CE. Confidence in new Prophetic revelation closed after the Biblical return from Babylon in

Second Temple Judaism Second Temple Judaism refers to the Jewish religion as it developed during the Second Temple period, which began with the construction of the Second Temple around 516 BCE and ended with the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The Second Temple pe ...

, shifting to canonisation and exegesis of Scripture after

Ezra the Scribe Ezra (; he, עֶזְרָא, '; fl. 480–440 BCE), also called Ezra the Scribe (, ') and Ezra the Priest in the Book of Ezra, was a Jewish scribe (''sofer'') and priest (''kohen''). In Greco-Latin Ezra is called Esdras ( grc-gre, Ἔσδρας ...

. Lesser level prophecy of

Ruach Hakodesh In Judaism, the Holy Spirit ( he, רוח הקודש, ''ruach ha-kodesh'') refers to the divine force, quality, and influence of God over the universe or over God's creatures, in given contexts.Maimonides, Moses. Part II, Ch. 45: "The various cla ...

remained, with angelic revelations, esoteric heavenly secrets, and eschatological deliverance from Greek and Roman oppression of

Apocalyptic literature Apocalyptic literature is a genre of prophetical writing that developed in post- Exilic Jewish culture and was popular among millennialist early Christians. '' Apocalypse'' ( grc, , }) is a Greek word meaning "revelation", "an unveiling or unf ...

among early Jewish proto-mystical circles, such as the

Book of Daniel The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th century BC setting. Ostensibly "an account of the activities and visions of Daniel, a noble Jew exiled at Babylon", it combines a prophecy of history with an eschatology (a ...

and the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the nor ...

community of Qumran. Early

Jewish mystical Academic study of Jewish mysticism, especially since Gershom Scholem's ''Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism'' (1941), distinguishes between different forms of mysticism across different eras of Jewish history. Of these, Kabbalah, which emerged in 1 ...

literature inherited the developing concerns and remnants of Prophetic and Apocalyptic Judaisms.

Mystic elements of the Torah

When read by later generations of Kabbalists, the Torah's description of the creation in the Book of Genesis reveals mysteries about God himself, the true nature of Adam and Eve, the

Garden of Eden In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan-Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the Bible, biblical paradise described in Book of Genesis, Genes ...

( he, גַּן עֵדֶן), the

Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil In Judaism and Christianity, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ( he, עֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע, ʿêṣ had-daʿaṯ ṭōḇ wā-rāʿ, label=Tiberian Hebrew, ) is one of two specific trees in the story of the Garden ...

( he, עֵץ הַדַּעַת שֶׁל טוֹב וְרַע), and the

Tree of Life The tree of life is a fundamental archetype in many of the world's mythological, religious, and philosophical traditions. It is closely related to the concept of the sacred tree.Giovino, Mariana (2007). ''The Assyrian Sacred Tree: A History ...

( he, עֵץ חַיִּים), as well as the interaction of these supernatural entities with the

Serpent Serpent or The Serpent may refer to: * Snake, a carnivorous reptile of the suborder Serpentes Mythology and religion * Sea serpent, a monstrous ocean creature * Serpent (symbolism), the snake in religious rites and mythological contexts * Serp ...

( he, נָחָשׁ), which leads to disaster when they eat the forbidden fruit ( he, פְּרִי עֵץ הַדַּעַת), as recorded in

Genesis 3 Genesis, stylized as GENESIS, is a series of annual ''Super Smash Bros.'' tournaments occurring in the San Francisco Bay Area of the US state of California. The first Genesis tournament took place in 2009 in Antioch at the Contra Costa County Fa ...

.Artson, Bradley Shavit
''From the Periphery to the Centre: Kabbalah and the Conservative Movement'', United Synagogue Review, Spring 2005, Vol. 57 No. 2 The Bible provides ample additional material for mythic and mystical speculation. The prophet

's visions in particular attracted much mystical speculation, as did

Isaiah Isaiah ( or ; he, , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "God is Salvation"), also known as Isaias, was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named. Within the text of the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah himself is referred to as "the ...

's Temple vision. Other mystical events include

Jacob Jacob (; ; ar, يَعْقُوب, Yaʿqūb; gr, Ἰακώβ, Iakṓb), later given the name Israel, is regarded as a patriarch of the Israelites and is an important figure in Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. J ...

's vision of the ladder to heaven, and

' encounters with the Burning bush and God on

. The 72 letter name of God which is used in Jewish mysticism for meditation purposes is derived from the Hebrew verbal utterance Moses spoke in the presence of an angel, while the Sea of Reeds parted, allowing the Hebrews to escape their approaching attackers. The miracle of the Exodus, which led to Moses receiving the

Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments (Biblical Hebrew עשרת הדברים \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים, ''aséret ha-dvarím'', lit. The Decalogue, The Ten Words, cf. Mishnaic Hebrew עשרת הדיברות \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְ� ...

and the Jewish Orthodox view of the acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai, preceded the creation of the first Jewish nation approximately three hundred years before King Saul.

Talmudic era

In early

Rabbinic Judaism Rabbinic Judaism ( he, יהדות רבנית, Yahadut Rabanit), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, or Judaism espoused by the Rabbanites, has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Babylonian ...

(the early centuries of the 1st millennium CE), the terms '' Ma'aseh Bereshit'' ("Works of Creation") and '' Ma'aseh Merkabah'' ("Works of the Divine Throne/Chariot") clearly indicate the

Midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. he, מִדְרָשׁ; ...

ic nature of these speculations; they are really based upon Genesis 1 and

1:4–28, while the names ''Sitrei Torah'' (Hidden aspects of the Torah) (Talmud ''Hag.'' 13a) and ''Razei Torah'' (Torah secrets) (''Ab.'' vi. 1) indicate their character as secret lore. Talmudic doctrine forbade the public teaching of esoteric doctrines and warned of their dangers. In the

Mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; he, מִשְׁנָה, "study by repetition", from the verb ''shanah'' , or "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first major written collection of the Jewish oral traditions which is known as the Oral Torah ...

(Hagigah 2:1), rabbis were warned to teach the mystical creation doctrines only to one student at a time. To highlight the danger, in one Jewish aggadic ("legendary") anecdote, four prominent rabbis of the Mishnaic period (1st century CE) are said to have visited the Orchard (that is, Paradise, ''pardes'', Hebrew: lit., ''orchard''): In notable readings of this legend, only Rabbi Akiba was fit to handle the study of mystical doctrines. The ''

Tosafot The Tosafot, Tosafos or Tosfot ( he, תוספות) are medieval commentaries on the Talmud. They take the form of critical and explanatory glosses, printed, in almost all Talmud editions, on the outer margin and opposite Rashi's notes. The auth ...

'', medieval commentaries on the Talmud, say that the four sages "did not go up literally, but it appeared to them as if they went up". On the other hand,

Louis Ginzberg Louis Ginzberg ( he, לוי גינצבורג, ''Levy Gintzburg''; russian: Леви Гинцберг, ''Levy Ginzberg''; November 28, 1873 – November 11, 1953) was a Russian-born American rabbi and Talmudic scholar of Lithuanian-Jewish desce ...

, writes in the ''

Jewish Encyclopedia ''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on th ...

'' (1901–1906) that the journey to paradise "is to be taken literally and not allegorically". In contrast to the Kabbalists, Maimonides interprets ''pardes'' as philosophy and not mysticism.

Pre-Kabbalistic schools

Early mystical literature

The mystical methods and doctrines of

Hekhalot The Hekhalot literature (sometimes transliterated Heichalot) from the Hebrew word for "Palaces", relating to visions of ascents into heavenly palaces. The genre overlaps with ''Merkabah'' or "Chariot" literature, concerning Ezekiel's chariot, so t ...

(Heavenly "Chambers") and Merkabah (Divine "Chariot") texts, named by modern scholars from these repeated motifs, lasted from the 1st century BCE through to the 10th century CE, before giving way to the documented manuscript emergence of Kabbalah. Initiates were said to "descend the chariot", possibly a reference to internal introspection on the Heavenly journey through the spiritual realms. The ultimate aim was to arrive before the transcendent awe, rather than nearness, of the Divine. The mystical protagonists of the texts are famous Talmudic Sages of Rabbinic Judaism, either

pseudepigraphic Pseudepigrapha (also anglicized as "pseudepigraph" or "pseudepigraphs") are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past.Bauckham, Richard; "Pseu ...

or documenting remnants of a developed tradition. From the 8th to 11th centuries, the Hekhalot texts, and the proto-Kabbalistic early

cosmogonic Cosmogony is any model concerning the origin of the cosmos or the universe. Overview Scientific theories In astronomy, cosmogony refers to the study of the origin of particular astrophysical objects or systems, and is most commonly used i ...

Sefer Yetzirah ''Sefer Yetzirah'' ( ''Sēp̄er Yəṣīrā'', ''Book of Formation'', or ''Book of Creation'') is the title of a book on Jewish mysticism, although some early commentators treated it as a treatise on mathematical and linguistic theory as opposed ...

'' ("Book of Creation") made their way into European Jewish circles. A controversial esoteric work from associated literature describing a cosmic Anthropos, ''

Shi'ur Qomah Shi’ur Qomah ( he, שיעור קומה, lit. Dimensions of the Body) is a midrashic text that is part of the Hekhalot literature. It purports to record, in anthropomorphic terms, the secret names and precise measurements of God's corporeal limbs ...

'', was interpreted allegorically by subsequent Kabbalists in their meditation on the Sephirot Divine Persona.

Hasidei Ashkenaz

Another, separate influential mystical, theosophical, and pious movement, shortly before the arrival there of Kabbalistic theory, was the " Hasidei Ashkenaz" (חסידי אשכנז) or Medieval German Pietists from 1150 to 1250. This ethical-ascetic movement with elite theoretical and Practical Kabbalah speculations arose mostly among a single scholarly family, the

Kalonymus family Kalonymos or Kalonymus ( he, קָלוֹנִימוּס ''Qālōnīmūs'') is a prominent Jewish family who lived in Italy, mostly in Lucca and in Rome, which, after the settlement at Mainz and Speyer of several of its members, took during many gener ...

of the French and German Rhineland. Its

Jewish ethics Jewish ethics is the ethics of the Jewish religion or the Jewish people. A type of normative ethics, Jewish ethics may involve issues in Jewish law as well as non-legal issues, and may involve the convergence of Judaism and the Western philosoph ...

of saintly self-sacrifice influenced

Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...

Jewry,

Musar literature Musar literature is didactic Jewish ethical literature which describes virtues and vices and the path towards character improvement. This literature gives the name to the Musar movement, in 19th century Lithuania, but this article considers such l ...

and later emphases of piety in Judaism.

Medieval emergence of the Kabbalah

Modern scholars have identified several mystical brotherhoods that functioned in Europe starting in the 12th century. Some, such as the "Iyyun Circle" and the "Unique Cherub Circle", were truly esoteric, remaining largely anonymous. The first documented historical emergence of Theosophical Kabbalistic doctrine occurred among Jewish Sages of Provence and Languedoc in southern France in the latter 1100s, with the appearance or consolidation of the mysterious work the '' Bahir'' (Book of "Brightness"), a

midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. he, מִדְרָשׁ; ...

describing God's sephirot attributes as a dynamic interacting hypostatic drama in the Divine realm, and the school of

Isaac the Blind Isaac the Blind ( he, רַבִּי יִצְחַק סַגִּי נְהוֹר ''Rabbī Yīṣḥaq Saggī Nəhōr'', literally "Rabbi Isaac, blind person"; c. 1160–1235 in Provence, France), was a French rabbi and a famous writer on Kabbalah (Jewi ...

(1160–1235) among critics of the rationalist influence of

. From there Kabbalah spread to

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the north ...

in north-east Spain around the central Rabbinic figure of Nahmanides (the ''Ramban'') (1194–1270) in the early 1200s, with a Neoplatonic orientation focused on the upper sephirot. Subsequently, Kabbalistic doctrine reached its fullest classic expression among Castilian Kabbalists from the latter 1200s, with the ''

'' (Book of "Splendor") literature, concerned with cosmic healing of

gnostic Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...

dualities between the lower, revealed male and female attributes of God. Rishonim ("Elder Sages") of exoteric Judaism who were deeply involved in Kabbalistic activity, gave the Kabbalah wide scholarly acceptance, including Nahmanides and

Bahya ben Asher Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa (, 1255–1340) was a rabbi and scholar of Judaism, best known as a commentator on the Hebrew Bible. He is one of two scholars now referred to as Rabbeinu Behaye, the other being philosopher Bahya ibn Paquda. Biogra ...

(''Rabbeinu Behaye'') (died 1340), whose classic commentaries on the Torah reference Kabbalistic esotericism. Many Orthodox Jews reject the idea that Kabbalah underwent significant historical development or change such as has been proposed above. After the composition known as the Zohar was presented to the public in the 13th century, the term "Kabbalah" began to refer more specifically to teachings derived from, or related to, the ''

''. At an even later time, the term began to generally be applied to Zoharic teachings as elaborated upon by

(the Arizal). Historians generally date the start of Kabbalah as a major influence in Jewish thought and practice with the publication of the Zohar and climaxing with the spread of the Lurianic teachings. The majority of Haredi Jews accept the Zohar as the representative of the ''Ma'aseh Merkavah'' and ''Ma'aseh B'reshit'' that are referred to in Talmudic texts.

Ecstatic Kabbalah

Contemporary with the Zoharic efflorescence of Spanish Theosophical-Theurgic Kabbalah, Spanish exilarch Abraham Abulafia developed his own alternative, Maimonidean system of Ecstatic-Prophetic Kabbalah

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally cal ...

, each consolidating aspects of a claimed inherited mystical tradition from Biblical times. This was the classic time when various different interpretations of an esoteric meaning to Torah were articulated among Jewish thinkers. Abulafia interpreted Theosophical Kabbalah's Sephirot Divine attributes, not as supernal

hypostases Hypostasis, hypostatic, or hypostatization (hypostatisation; from the Ancient Greek , "under state") may refer to: * Hypostasis (philosophy and religion), the essence or underlying reality ** Hypostasis (linguistics), personification of entities ...

which he opposed, but in psychological terms. Instead of influencing harmony in the divine real by theurgy, his meditative scheme aimed for mystical union with God, drawing down prophetic influx on the individual. He saw this meditation using Divine Names as a superior form of Kabbalistic ancient tradition. His version of Kabbalah, followed in the medieval eastern Mediterranean, remained a marginal stream to mainstream Theosophical Kabbalah development. Abulafian elements were later incorporated into the 16th century theosophical Kabbalistic systemisations of Moses Cordovero and

Hayim Vital Hayyim ben Joseph Vital ( he, רָבִּי חַיִּים בֶּן יוֹסֵף וִיטָאל; Safed, October 23, 1542 (Julian calendar) and October 11, 1542 (Gregorian Calendar) – Damascus, 23 April 1620) was a rabbi in Safed and the foremo ...

. Through them, later

incorporated elements of unio mystica and psychological focus from Abulafia.

Early modern era

Lurianic Kabbalah

Following the upheavals and dislocations in the Jewish world as a result of

anti-Judaism Anti-Judaism is the "total or partial opposition to Judaism as a religion—and the total or partial opposition to Jews as adherents of it—by persons who accept a competing system of beliefs and practices and consider certain genuine Judai ...

during the Middle Ages, and the national trauma of the

expulsion from Spain Expulsion from Spain may refer to: *Expulsion of Jews from Spain (1492 in Aragon and Castile, 1497–98 in Navarre) *Expulsion of the Moriscos (1609–1614) See also *Forced conversions of Muslims in Spain The forced conversions of Muslims in ...

in 1492, closing the Spanish Jewish flowering, Jews began to search for signs of when the long-awaited

Jewish Messiah The Messiah in Judaism () is a savior and liberator figure in Jewish eschatology, who is believed to be the future redeemer of the Jewish people. The concept of messianism originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible a messiah is a king or Hig ...

would come to comfort them in their painful exiles. In the 16th century, the community of

Safed Safed (known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as Tzfat; Sephardi Hebrew, Sephardic Hebrew & Modern Hebrew: צְפַת ''Tsfat'', Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation, Ashkenazi Hebrew: ''Tzfas'', Biblical Hebrew: ''Ṣǝp̄aṯ''; ar, صفد, ''Ṣafad''), i ...

in the Galilee became the centre of Jewish mystical, exegetical, legal and liturgical developments. The Safed mystics responded to the Spanish expulsion by turning Kabbalistic doctrine and practice towards a messianic focus. Moses Cordovero (The ''RAMAK'' 1522–1570) and his school popularized the teachings of the Zohar which had until then been only a restricted work. Cordovero's comprehensive works achieved the first (quasi-rationalistic) of Theosophical Kabbalah's two systemisations, harmonising preceding interpretations of the Zohar on its own apparent terms. The author of the ''

Shulkhan Arukh The ''Shulchan Aruch'' ( he, שֻׁלְחָן עָרוּך , literally: "Set Table"), sometimes dubbed in English as the Code of Jewish Law, is the most widely consulted of the various legal codes in Judaism. It was authored in Safed (today in Is ...

'' (the normative Jewish "Code of Law"), Yosef Karo (1488–1575), was also a scholar of Kabbalah who kept a personal mystical diary. Moshe Alshich wrote a mystical commentary on the Torah, and Shlomo Alkabetz wrote Kabbalistic commentaries and poems. The messianism of the Safed mystics culminated in Kabbalah receiving its biggest transformation in the Jewish world with the explication of its new interpretation from Isaac Luria (The ''ARI'' 1534–1572), by his disciples

and

Israel Sarug Israel Sarug Ashkenazi (also "Saruk" or "Srugo") (16th century; 1590–1610) was a pupil of Isaac Luria, and devoted himself at the death of his master to the propagation of the latter's Kabbalistic system, for which he gained many adherents in v ...

. Both transcribed Luria's teachings (in variant forms) gaining them widespread popularity, Sarug taking Lurianic Kabbalah to Europe, Vital authoring the latterly canonical version. Luria's teachings came to rival the influence of the Zohar and Luria stands, alongside Moses de Leon, as the most influential mystic in Jewish history. Lurianic Kabbalah gave Theosophical Kabbalah its second, complete (supra-rational) of two systemisations, reading the Zohar in light of its most esoteric sections (the ''Idrot''), replacing the broken Sephirot attributes of God with rectified Partzufim (Divine Personas), embracing reincarnation, repair, and the urgency of cosmic Jewish messianism dependent on each person's soul tasks.

Influence on non-Jewish society

From the European

on, Judaic Kabbalah became a significant influence in non-Jewish culture, fully divorced from the separately evolving Judaic tradition. Kabbalah received the interest of Christian Hebraist scholars and

ists, who freely syncretised and adapted it to diverse non-Jewish spiritual traditions and belief systems of

. Christian Cabalists from the 15th-18th centuries adapted what they saw as ancient Biblical wisdom to Christian theology, while Hermeticism lead to Kabbalah's incorporation into Western

magic Magic or Magick most commonly refers to: * Magic (supernatural), beliefs and actions employed to influence supernatural beings and forces * Ceremonial magic, encompasses a wide variety of rituals of magic * Magical thinking, the belief that unrela ...

through Hermetic Qabalah. Presentations of Kabbalah in occult and

books on Kabbalah bear little resemblance to Judaic Kabbalah.

Ban on studying Kabbalah

The Rabbinic ban on studying Kabbalah in Jewish society was lifted by the efforts of the 16th-century kabbalist

Avraham Azulai Abraham ben Mordecai Azulai (c. 1570–1643) ( he, אברהם בן מרדכי אזולאי) was a Kabbalistic author and commentator born in Fez, Morocco. In 1599 he moved to Ottoman Palestine and settled in Hebron. Biography In Hebron, Azulai wr ...

(1570–1643). The question, however, is whether the ban ever existed in the first place. Concerning the above quote by Avraham Azulai, it has found many versions in English, another is this The lines concerning the year 1490 are also missing from the Hebrew edition of ''Hesed L'Avraham'', the source work that both of these quote from. Furthermore, by Azulai's view the ban was lifted thirty years before his birth, a time that would have corresponded with Haim Vital's publication of the teaching of Isaac Luria. Moshe Isserles understood there to be only a minor restriction, in his words, "One's belly must be full of meat and wine, discerning between the prohibited and the permitted." He is supported by the Bier Hetiv, the Pithei Teshuva as well as the

Vilna Gaon Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, ( he , ר' אליהו בן שלמה זלמן ''Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman'') known as the Vilna Gaon (Yiddish: דער װילנער גאון ''Der Vilner Gaon'', pl, Gaon z Wilna, lt, Vilniaus Gaonas) or Elijah of ...

. The Vilna Gaon says, "There was never any ban or enactment restricting the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah. Any who says there is has never studied Kabbalah, has never seen PaRDeS, and speaks as an ignoramus."

Sefardi and Mizrahi

The Kabbalah of the

Sefardi Sephardic (or Sephardi) Jews (, ; lad, Djudíos Sefardíes), also ''Sepharadim'' , Modern Hebrew: ''Sfaradim'', Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm, also , ''Ye'hude Sepharad'', lit. "The Jews of Spain", es, Judíos sefardíes (or ), pt, Judeus sefa ...

(Iberian Peninsula) and

Mizrahi ''Mizrachi'' or ''Mizrahi'' ( he, מזרחי) has two meanings. In the literal Hebrew meaning ''Eastern'', it may refer to: *Mizrahi Jews, Jews from the Middle East * Mizrahi (surname), a Sephardic surname, given to Jews who got to the Iberian P ...

(Middle East, North Africa, and the Caucasus) Torah scholars has a long history. Kabbalah in various forms was widely studied, commented upon, and expanded by North African, Turkish, Yemenite, and Asian scholars from the 16th century onward. It flourished among Sefardic Jews in Tzfat (

), even before the arrival of Isaac Luria. Yosef Karo, author of the ''Shulchan Arukh'' was part of the Tzfat school of Kabbalah. Shlomo Alkabetz, author of the hymn ''

Lekhah Dodi Lekha Dodi ( he, לכה דודי) is a Hebrew-language Jewish liturgical song recited Friday at dusk, usually at sundown, in synagogue to welcome the Sabbath prior to the evening services. It is part of Kabbalat Shabbat. The refrain of ''Lekha ...

'', taught there. His disciple Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (or Cordoeiro) authored '' Pardes Rimonim'', an organised, exhaustive compilation of kabbalistic teachings on a variety of subjects up to that point. Cordovero headed the academy of Tzfat until his death, when

rose to prominence. Rabbi Moshe's disciple

Eliyahu De Vidas Eliyahu de Vidas (1518–1587, Hebron) was a 16th-century rabbi in Ottoman Palestine. He was primarily a disciple of Rabbis Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (known as the ''Ramak'') and also Isaac Luria.Fine 2003, pp81 "Cordovero was the teacher of what ...

authored the classic work, ''Reishit Chochma'', combining kabbalistic and ''mussar'' (moral) teachings. Chaim Vital also studied under Cordovero, but with the arrival of Luria became his main disciple. Vital claimed to be the only one authorised to transmit the Ari's teachings, though other disciples also published books presenting Luria's teachings. The Oriental Kabbalist tradition continues until today among Sephardi and Mizrachi Hakham sages and study circles. Among leading figures were the Yemenite

Shalom Sharabi Sar Shalom Sharabi ( he, שר שלום מזרחי דידיע שרעבי), also known as the Rashash, the Shemesh or Ribbi Shalom Mizraḥi deyedi`a Sharabi (1720–1777), was a Yemenite Rabbi, Halachist, Chazzan and Kabbalist. In later life, ...

(1720–1777) of the

Beit El Synagogue Beit El Kabbalist yeshiva (Beit El means "House of God") (also: ''Midrash Hasidim'' 'School of the Devout' or ''Yeshivat haMekubalim, Yeshiva of the Kabbalists') is a center of kabbalistic study in Jerusalem. Today it consists of two buildings, on ...

, the Jerusalemite Hida (1724–1806), the Baghdad leader

Ben Ish Chai Yosef Hayim (1 September 1835 – 30 August 1909) ( Iraqi Hebrew: Yoseph Ḥayyim; he, יוסף חיים מבגדאד) was a leading Baghdadi ''hakham'' (Sephardi rabbi), authority on ''halakha'' (Jewish law), and Master Kabbalist. He is best ...

(1832–1909), and the

Abuhatzeira Abuhatzeira (Hebrew pronunciation) or Abu Hasira (Arabic) is the surname of a family of rabbis. Notable members of the family include, chronologically: *Yaakov Abuhatzeira (1806–1880), Moroccan rabbi, son of the patriarch of the family, R. Shmue ...

dynasty.

''Maharal''

One of the most innovative theologians in early-modern Judaism was Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525–1609) known as the "Maharal of Prague". Many of his written works survive and are studied for their unusual combination of the mystical and philosophical approaches in Judaism. While conversant in Kabbalistic learning, he expresses Jewish mystical thought in his own individual approach without reference to Kabbalistic terms. The Maharal is most well known in popular culture for the legend of the

golem A golem ( ; he, , gōlem) is an animated, anthropomorphic being in Jewish folklore, which is entirely created from inanimate matter (usually clay or mud). The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th-century ...

of Prague, associated with him in folklore. However, his thought influenced Hasidism, for example being studied in the introspective Przysucha school. During the 20th century,

Isaac Hutner Yitzchak (Isaac) Hutner ( he, יצחק הוטנר; 1906–1980) was an American Orthodox rabbi and rosh yeshiva (dean). Originally from Warsaw, Hutner first studied the Torah in Slabodka. He then traveled to Mandatory Palestine where he became a ...

(1906–1980) continued to spread the Maharal's works indirectly through his own teachings and publications within the non-Hasidic yeshiva world.

Sabbatian antinomian movements

The spiritual and mystical yearnings of many Jews remained frustrated after the death of Isaac Luria and his disciples and colleagues. No hope was in sight for many following the devastation and mass killings of the

pogrom A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russia ...

s that followed in the wake of the

Chmielnicki Uprising The Khmelnytsky Uprising,; in Ukraine known as Khmelʹnychchyna or uk, повстання Богдана Хмельницького; lt, Chmelnickio sukilimas; Belarusian: Паўстанне Багдана Хмяльніцкага; russian: � ...

(1648–1654), the largest single massacre of Jews until the Holocaust, and it was at this time that a controversial scholar by the name of Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) captured the hearts and minds of the Jewish masses of that time with the promise of a newly minted messianic

Millennialism Millennialism (from millennium, Latin for "a thousand years") or chiliasm (from the Greek equivalent) is a belief advanced by some religious denominations that a Golden Age or Paradise will occur on Earth prior to the final judgment and future ...

in the form of his own personage. His charisma, mystical teachings that included repeated pronunciations of the holy

Tetragrammaton The Tetragrammaton (; ), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew language, Hebrew theonym (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are ''yodh'', ''he (l ...

in public, tied to an unstable personality, and with the help of his greatest enthusiast, Nathan of Gaza, convinced the Jewish masses that the Jewish Messiah had finally come. It seemed that the esoteric teachings of Kabbalah had found their "champion" and had triumphed, but this era of Jewish history unravelled when Zevi became an

apostate Apostasy (; grc-gre, ἀποστασία , 'a defection or revolt') is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that ...

to Judaism by converting to Islam after he was arrested by the Ottoman Sultan and threatened with execution for attempting a plan to conquer the world and rebuild the

. Unwilling to give up their messianic expectations, a minority of Zevi's Jewish followers converted to Islam along with him. Many of his followers, known as Sabbatians, continued to worship him in secret, explaining his conversion not as an effort to save his life but to recover the sparks of the holy in each religion, and most leading rabbis were always on guard to root them out. The Dönmeh movement in modern Turkey is a surviving remnant of the Sabbatian schism. Theologies developed by leaders of Sabbatian movements dealt with antinomian redemption of the realm of impurity through sin, based on Lurianic theory. Moderate views reserved this dangerous task for the divine messiah Sabbatai Zevi alone, while his followers remained observant Jews. Radical forms spoke of the messianic transcendence of Torah, and required Sabbatean followers to emulate him, either in private or publicly. Due to the chaos caused in the Jewish world, the rabbinic prohibition against studying Kabbalah established itself firmly within the Jewish religion. One of the conditions allowing a man to study and engage himself in the Kabbalah was to be at least forty years old. This age requirement came about during this period and is not Talmudic in origin but rabbinic. Many Jews are familiar with this ruling, but are not aware of its origins. Moreover, the prohibition is not halakhic in nature. According to Moses Cordovero, halakhically, one must be of age twenty to engage in the Kabbalah. Many famous kabbalists, including the ARI, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Yehuda Ashlag, were younger than twenty when they began. The Sabbatian movement was followed by that of the

Frankists Frankism was a heretical Sabbatean Jewish religious movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, centered on the leadership of the Jewish Messiah claimant Jacob Frank, who lived from 1726 to 1791. Frank rejected religious norms and said that his fol ...

, disciples of

Jacob Frank Jacob Joseph Frank ( he, יעקב פרנק; pl, Jakub Józef Frank; born Jakub Lejbowicz; 1726 – December 10, 1791) was a Polish Jews, Polish-Jewish religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbata ...

(1726–1791), who eventually became an apostate to Judaism by apparently converting to

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. Frank took the Sabbatean impulse to its nihilistic end, declaring himself part of a messianic trinity along with his daughter, and that breaking all of Torah was its fulfilment. This era of disappointment did not stem the Jewish masses' yearnings for "mystical" leadership.

Modern era

Traditional Kabbalah

Headstone of Moshe Chaim Luzzatto in Tiberias

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto Moshe Chaim Luzzatto ( he, משה חיים לוצאטו, also ''Moses Chaim'', ''Moses Hayyim'', also ''Luzzato'') (1707 – 16 May 1746 (26 ''Iyar'' 5506)), also known by the Hebrew acronym RaMCHaL (or RaMHaL, ), was a prominent Italia ...

(1707–1746), based in Italy, was a precocious Talmudic scholar who deduced a need for the public teaching and study of Kabbalah. He established a yeshiva for Kabbalah study and actively recruited students. He wrote copious manuscripts in an appealing clear Hebrew style, all of which gained the attention of both admirers and rabbinical critics, who feared another " Sabbatai Zevi" (false messiah) in the making. His rabbinical opponents forced him to close his school, hand over and destroy many of his most precious unpublished kabbalistic writings, and go into exile in the Netherlands. He eventually moved to the

Land of Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine (see also Isra ...

. Some of his most important works, such as ''

Derekh Hashem ''Derech HaShem'' (The "Way of the Name") is a philosophical text written in the early 1740s by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto. It is considered one of the quintessential handbooks of Jewish thought. The text covers a vast gamut of philosophical to ...

'', survive and serve as a gateway to the world of Jewish mysticism.

Elijah of Vilna Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, ( he , ר' אליהו בן שלמה זלמן ''Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman'') known as the Vilna Gaon (Yiddish: דער װילנער גאון ''Der Vilner Gaon'', pl, Gaon z Wilna, lt, Vilniaus Gaonas) or Elijah of ...

(Vilna Gaon) (1720–1797), based in Lithuania, had his teachings encoded and publicised by his disciples, such as Chaim Volozhin's posthumously published the mystical-ethical work ''

Nefesh HaChaim Chaim of Volozhin (also known as Chaim ben Yitzchok of Volozhin or Chaim Ickovits; January 21, 1749 – June 14, 1821)Jewish Encyclopedia Bibliography: Samuel Joseph Fuenn, Fuenn, Keneset Yisrael, pp. 347–349; idem, Kiryah Ne'emanah, pp ...

''. He staunchly opposed the new Hasidic movement and warned against their public displays of religious fervour inspired by the mystical teachings of their rabbis. Although the Vilna Gaon did not look with favor on the Hasidic movement, he did not prohibit the study and engagement in the Kabbalah. This is evident from his writings in the ''Even Shlema''. "He that is able to understand secrets of the Torah and does not try to understand them will be judged harshly, may God have mercy". (The Vilna Gaon, ''Even Shlema'', 8:24). "The Redemption will only come about through learning Torah, and the essence of the Redemption depends upon learning Kabbalah" (The Vilna Gaon, ''Even Shlema'', 11:3). In the Oriental tradition of Kabbalah, Shalom Sharabi (1720–1777) from Yemen was a major esoteric clarifier of the works of the Ari. The Beit El Synagogue, "yeshivah of the kabbalists", which he came to head, was one of the few communities to bring Lurianic meditation into communal prayer. In the 20th century, Yehuda Ashlag (1885—1954) in Mandate Palestine became a leading esoteric kabbalist in the traditional mode, who translated the Zohar into Hebrew with a new approach in Lurianic Kabbalah.

Hasidic Judaism

Yisrael ben Eliezer Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760), founder of Hasidism in the area of the Ukraine, spread teachings based on Lurianic Kabbalah, but adapted to a different aim of immediate psychological perception of Divine Omnipresence amidst the mundane. The emotional, ecstatic fervour of early Hasidism developed from previous Nistarim circles of mystical activity, but instead sought communal revival of the common folk by reframing Judaism around the central principle of devekut (mystical cleaving to God) for all. This new approach turned formerly esoteric elite kabbalistic theory into a popular social mysticism movement for the first time, with its own doctrines, classic texts, teachings and customs. From the Baal Shem Tov sprang the wide ongoing schools of Hasidic Judaism, each with different approaches and thought. Hasidism instituted a new concept of

Tzadik Tzadik ( he, צַדִּיק , "righteous ne, also ''zadik'', ''ṣaddîq'' or ''sadiq''; pl. ''tzadikim'' ''ṣadiqim'') is a title in Judaism given to people considered righteous, such as biblical figures and later spiritual masters. The ...

leadership in Jewish mysticism, where the elite scholars of mystical texts now took on a social role as embodiments and intercessors of Divinity for the masses. With the 19th-century consolidation of the movement,

leadership Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets view ...

became dynastic. Among later Hasidic schools

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov Nachman of Breslov ( he, רַבִּי נַחְמָן מִבְּרֶסְלֶב ''Rabbī'' ''Naḥmān mīBreslev''), also known as Reb Nachman of Bratslav, Reb Nachman Breslover ( yi, רבי נחמן ברעסלאווער ''Rebe Nakhmen Breslover'' ...

(1772–1810), the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, revitalised and further expanded the latter's teachings, amassing a following of thousands in Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. In a unique amalgam of Hasidic and '' Mitnaged'' approaches, Rebbe Nachman emphasised study of both Kabbalah and serious Torah scholarship to his disciples. His teachings also differed from the way other Hasidic groups were developing, as he rejected the idea of hereditary Hasidic dynasties and taught that each Hasid must "search for the ''

tzaddik Tzadik ( he, צַדִּיק , "righteous ne, also ''zadik'', ''ṣaddîq'' or ''sadiq''; pl. ''tzadikim'' ''ṣadiqim'') is a title in Judaism given to people considered righteous, such as biblical figures and later spiritual masters. The ...

'' ('saintly/righteous person')" for himself and within himself. The Habad-Lubavitch intellectual school of Hasidism broke away from General-Hasidism's emotional faith orientation, by making the mind central as the route to the internal heart. Its texts combine what they view as rational investigation with explanation of Kabbalah through articulating unity in a common Divine essence. In recent times, the messianic element latent in Hasidism has come to the fore in Habad.

Haskalah opposition to mysticism

The Jewish Haskalah () enlightenment movement from the late 1700s renewed an ideology of rationalism in Judaism, giving birth to critical Judaic scholarship. It presented Judaism in apologetic terms, stripped of mysticism and myth, in line with

Jewish emancipation Jewish emancipation was the process in various nations in Europe of eliminating Jewish disabilities, e.g. Jewish quotas, to which European Jews were then subject, and the recognition of Jews as entitled to equality and citizenship rights. It incl ...

. Many foundational historians of Judaism such as Heinrich Graetz, criticised Kabbalah as a foreign import that compromised historical Judaism. In the 20th century Gershom Scholem overturned Jewish historiography, presenting the centrality of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah to historical Judaism, and their subterranean life as the true creative renewing spirit of Jewish thought and culture. His influence contributed to the flourishing of Jewish mysticism academia today, its impact on wider intellectual currents, and the contribution of mystical spirituality in modernist

Jewish denominations Jewish religious movements, sometimes called "religious denomination, denominations", include different groups within Judaism which have developed among Jews from ancient times. Today, the most prominent divisions are between traditionalist Ortho ...

today. Traditionalist Kabbalah and Hasidism, meanwhile, continued outside the academic interest in it.

20th-century influence

Jewish mysticism has influenced the thought of some major Jewish theologians, philosophers, writers and thinkers in the 20th century, outside of Kabbalistic or Hasidic traditions. The first Chief Rabbi of Mandate Palestine,

Abraham Isaac Kook Abraham Isaac Kook (; 7 September 1865 – 1 September 1935), known as Rav Kook, and also known by the acronym HaRaAYaH (), was an Orthodox rabbi, and the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine. He is considered to be one ...

was a mystical thinker who drew heavily on Kabbalistic notions through his own poetic terminology. His writings are concerned with fusing the false divisions between sacred and secular, rational and mystical, legal and imaginative. Students of

Joseph B. Soloveitchik Joseph Ber Soloveitchik ( he, יוסף דב הלוי סולובייצ׳יק ''Yosef Dov ha-Levi Soloveychik''; February 27, 1903 – April 9, 1993) was a major American Orthodox rabbi, Talmudist, and modern Jewish philosopher. He was a scion o ...

, figurehead of American

Modern Orthodox Judaism Modern Orthodox Judaism (also Modern Orthodox or Modern Orthodoxy) is a movement within Orthodox Judaism that attempts to synthesize Jewish values and the observance of Jewish law with the secular, modern world. Modern Orthodoxy draws on sever ...

have read the influence of Kabbalistic symbols in his philosophical works.

Neo-Hasidism Neo-Hasidism, Neochassidut, or Neo-Chassidus, is an approach to Judaism in which people learn beliefs and practices of Hasidic Judaism, and incorporate it into their own lives or prayer communities, yet without formally joining a Hasidic group. O ...

, rather than Kabbalah, shaped Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue and Abraham Joshua Heschel's

Conservative Judaism Conservative Judaism, known as Masorti Judaism outside North America, is a Jewish religious movement which regards the authority of ''halakha'' (Jewish law) and traditions as coming primarily from its people and community through the generatio ...

. Lurianic symbols of Tzimtzum and Shevirah have informed Holocaust theologians. Gershom Scholem's central academic influence on reshaping Jewish historiography in favour of myth and imagination, made historical arcane Kabbalah of relevance to wide intellectual discourse in the 20th century.

traces the influences of Kabbalistic and Hasidic concepts on diverse thinkers such as

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mys ...

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

Franz Rosenzweig Franz Rosenzweig (, ; 25 December 1886 – 10 December 1929) was a German theologian, philosopher, and translator. Early life and education Franz Rosenzweig was born in Kassel, Germany, to an affluent, minimally observant Jewish family. His fa ...

Arnaldo Momigliano Arnaldo Dante Momigliano (5 September 1908 – 1 September 1987) was an Italian historian of classical antiquity, known for his work in historiography, and characterised by Donald Kagan as "the world's leading student of the writing of history i ...

Paul Celan Paul Celan (; ; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a Romanian-born German-language poet and translator. He was born as Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Cernăuți (German: Czernowitz), in the then Kingdom of Romania (now Chernivtsi, U ...

and

George Steiner Francis George Steiner, FBA (April 23, 1929 – February 3, 2020) was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator. He wrote extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the ...

. Harold Bloom has seen Kabbalistic hermeneutics as the paradigm for western literary criticism. Sanford Drob discusses the direct and indirect influence of Kabbalah on the depth psychologies of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

and

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...

, as well as modern and postmodern philosophers, in his project to develop new intellectual relevance and open dialogue for kabbalah. The interaction of Kabbalah with modern physics, as with other mystical traditions, has generated its own literature. Traditional Kabbalist Yitzchak Ginsburgh brings esoteric dimensions of advanced kabbalistic

symmetry Symmetry (from grc, συμμετρία "agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement") in everyday language refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, "symmetry" has a more precise definit ...

into relationship with mathematics and the sciences, including renaming the elementary particles of Quantum theory with Kabbalistic Hebrew names, and developing kabbalistic approaches to debates in Evolutionary theory.

Concepts

Concealed and revealed God

The nature of the divine prompted kabbalists to envision two aspects to God: (a) God in essence, absolutely transcendent, unknowable, limitless

divine simplicity In theology, the doctrine of divine simplicity says that God is simple (without parts). The general idea can be stated in this way: The being of God is identical to the "attributes" of God. Characteristics such as omnipresence, goodness, trut ...

beyond revelation, and (b) God in manifestation, the revealed persona of God through which he creates and sustains and relates to humankind. Kabbalists speak of the first as '' Ein/Ayn Sof'' (אין סוף "the infinite/endless", literally "there is no end"). Of the impersonal ''Ein Sof'' nothing can be grasped. However, the second aspect of divine emanations, are accessible to human perception, dynamically interacting throughout spiritual and physical existence, reveal the divine immanently, and are bound up in the life of man. Kabbalists believe that these two aspects are not contradictory but complement one another, emanations mystically revealing the concealed mystery from within the

Godhead Godhead (from Middle English ''godhede'', "godhood", and unrelated to the modern word "head"), may refer to: * Deity * Divinity * Conceptions of God * In Abrahamic religions ** Godhead in Judaism, the unknowable aspect of God, which lies beyo ...

. As a term describing the Infinite Godhead beyond Creation, Kabbalists viewed the ''Ein Sof'' itself as too sublime to be referred to directly in the Torah. It is not a Holy Name in Judaism, as no name could contain a revelation of the Ein Sof. Even terming it "No End" is an inadequate representation of its true nature, the description only bearing its designation in relation to Creation. However, the Torah does narrate God speaking in the first person, most memorably the first word of the

, a reference without any description or name to the simple Divine essence (termed also ''Atzmus Ein Sof'' – Essence of the Infinite) beyond even the duality of Infinitude/Finitude. In contrast, the term Ein Sof describes the Godhead as Infinite lifeforce first cause, continuously keeping all Creation in existence. The

reads the first words of Genesis, ''BeReishit Bara Elohim – In the beginning God created'', as "''With'' (the level of) ''Reishit (Beginning)'' (the Ein Sof) ''created

Elohim ''Elohim'' (: ), the plural of (), is a Hebrew word meaning "gods". Although the word is plural, in the Hebrew Bible it usually takes a singular verb and refers to a single deity, particularly (but not always) the God of Israel. At other times ...

'' (God's manifestation in creation)": The structure of emanations has been described in various ways: Sephirot (divine attributes) and Partzufim (divine "faces"), Ohr (spiritual light and flow), Names of God and the supernal

, Olamot (Spiritual Worlds), a Divine Tree and Archetypal Man, Angelic Chariot and Palaces, male and female, enclothed layers of reality, inwardly holy vitality and external Kelipot shells, 613 channels ("limbs" of the King) and the divine Souls of Man. These symbols are used to describe various levels and aspects of Divine manifestation, from the '' Pnimi'' (inner) dimensions to the '' Hitzoni'' (outer). It is solely in relation to the emanations, certainly not the

Ground of all Being, that Kabbalah uses anthropomorphic symbolism to relate psychologically to divinity. Kabbalists debated the validity of anthropomorphic symbolism, between its disclosure as mystical allusion, versus its instrumental use as allegorical metaphor; in the language of the Zohar, symbolism "touches yet does not touch" its point.

Sephirot

The ''Sephirot'' (also spelled "sefirot"; singular ''sefirah'') are the ten emanations and attributes of God with which he continually sustains the existence of the universe. The Zohar and other Kabbalistic texts elaborate on the emergence of the sephirot from a state of concealed potential in the ''Ein Sof'' until their manifestation in the mundane world. In particular, Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (known as "the Ramak"), describes how God emanated the myriad details of finite reality out of the absolute unity of Divine light via the ten sephirot, or vessels. Comparison of the Ramak's counting with Luria's, describes dual rational and unconscious aspects of Kabbalah. Two metaphors are used to describe the ''sephirot'', their

theocentric Theocentricism is the belief that God is the central aspect to existence, as opposed to anthropocentrism and existentialism. In this view, meaning and value of actions done to people or the environment are attributed to God. The tenets of theocent ...

manifestation as the Trees of Life and Knowledge, and their anthropocentric correspondence in man, exemplified as Adam Kadmon. This dual-directional perspective embodies the cyclical, inclusive nature of the divine flow, where alternative divine and human perspectives have validity. The central metaphor of man allows human understanding of the sephirot, as they correspond to the psychological faculties of the soul, and incorporate masculine and feminine aspects after Genesis 1:27 ("God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them"). Corresponding to the last ''sefirah'' in Creation is the indwelling shekhinah (Feminine Divine Presence). Downward flow of divine Light in Creation forms the supernal Four Worlds; Atziluth, Beri'ah,

Yetzirah Yetzirah (also known as ''Olam Yetsirah'', עוֹלָם יְצִירָה in Hebrew) is the third of four worlds in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, following Atziluth and Beri'ah and preceding Assiah. It is known as the "World of Formation". "Yet ...

and

Assiah Assiah (also 'Asiya'MEIJERS, L. D., and J. TENNEKES. “SPIRIT AND MATTER IN THE COSMOLOGY OF CHASSIDIC JUDAISM.” Symbolic Anthropology in the Netherlands, edited by P.E. DE JOSSELIN DE JONG and ERIK SCHWIMMER, vol. 95, Brill, 1982, pp. 200–21 ...

manifesting the dominance of successive sephirot towards action in this world. The acts of man unite or divide the Heavenly masculine and feminine aspects of the sephirot, their anthropomorphic harmony completing Creation. As the spiritual foundation of Creation, the sephirot correspond to the

names of God in Judaism Judaism considers some names of God so holy that, once written, they should not be erased: YHWH, Adonai, El ("God"), Elohim ("God," a plural noun), Shaddai ("Almighty"), and Tzevaot (" fHosts"); some also include Ehyeh ("I Will Be").This is th ...

and the particular nature of any entity.

Ten Sephirot as process of Creation

According to Lurianic cosmology, the ''sephirot'' correspond to various levels of creation (ten ''sephirot'' in each of the Four Worlds, and four worlds within each of the larger four worlds, each containing ten ''sephirot'', which themselves contain ten ''sephirot'', to an infinite number of possibilities), and are emanated from the Creator for the purpose of creating the universe. The ''sephirot'' are considered revelations of the Creator's will (''ratzon''), and they should not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways the one God reveals his will through the Emanations. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes.

Ten Sephirot as process of ethics

Divine creation by means of the Ten Sephirot is an ethical process. They represent the different aspects of Morality. Loving-Kindness is a possible moral justification found in Chessed, and Gevurah is the Moral Justification of Justice and both are mediated by Mercy which is Rachamim. However, these pillars of morality become immoral once they become extremes. When Loving-Kindness becomes extreme it can lead to sexual depravity and lack of Justice to the wicked. When Justice becomes extreme, it can lead to torture and the Murder of innocents and unfair punishment. "Righteous" humans (''tzadikim'' plural of

) ascend these ethical qualities of the ten ''sephirot'' by doing righteous actions. If there were no righteous humans, the blessings of God would become completely hidden, and creation would cease to exist. While real human actions are the "Foundation" ('' Yesod'') of this universe ('' Malchut''), these actions must accompany the conscious intention of compassion. Compassionate actions are often impossible without faith (''Emunah''), meaning to trust that God always supports compassionate actions even when God seems hidden. Ultimately, it is necessary to show compassion toward oneself too in order to share compassion toward others. This "selfish" enjoyment of God's blessings but only in order to empower oneself to assist others is an important aspect of "Restriction", and is considered a kind of golden mean in kabbalah, corresponding to the ''sefirah'' of Adornment ( Tiferet) being part of the "Middle Column". Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, wrote ''

Tomer Devorah ''Tomer Devorah'' (Hebrew: תומר דבורה, English: ''The Palm Tree of Deborah'') was written in Hebrew in the middle of the 16th century by Moses Cordovero, a Jewish kabbalist in Safed, Ottoman Syria. This short text deals mostly with the ...

'' (''Palm Tree of Deborah''), in which he presents an ethical teaching of Judaism in the kabbalistic context of the ten ''sephirot''. ''Tomer Devorah'' has become also a foundational Musar text.

Divine Feminine

Both Rationalist

and Kabbalah developed among the elite thinkers of medieval Spanish Jewry, but the austere intellectual sublimation of Judaism by the philosophers remained, by their own admission, accessible and appealing to restricted intellectually questioning circles. In contrast, while intuitive kabbalistic creativity was confined to esoteric circles, kabbalah deliberately appealed to wide reaches of the Jewish people in their popular piety, as its profoundly psychological depth theory incorporated the mythic, imaginative, sexual, and demonic in human experience. Kabbalah describes Man as the inner dimension of all Spiritual and Physical Realms (with angels the outer aspect), from the verses "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness... And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them... Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (Genesis 1:26-27, 2:7). Kabbalists equated the final Sephirah '' Malkuth'' (Kingdom) with the indwelling Feminine

Divine immanent The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, panthei ...

Presence of God throughout Creation, adapting for it the previous Rabbinic term ''Shekhinah'' (Divine Presence), but lending the concept new hypostatic and sexual interpretation (Earlier Biblical

Wisdom literature Wisdom literature is a genre of literature common in the ancient Near East. It consists of statements by sages and the wise that offer teachings about divinity and virtue. Although this genre uses techniques of traditional oral storytelling, it w ...

describes Wisdom as a feminine manifestation of God). The fallen, exiled state of Creation by man exiles the Shekhinah into captivity among the

Kelipot In the Zohar, Lurianic Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah, the ''qliphoth/qlippoth/qlifot'' or ''kelipot'' ( ''qəlīpōṯ'', originally Aramaic: ''qəlīpīn'', plural of ''qəlīpā''; literally "peels", "shells", or "husks"), are the represen ...

forces of impurity, awaiting redemption Above by man Below. Nachman of Breslov saw this archetype in fairy tales of the world, but in disordered narrative. His Kabbalistic tales rearrange the symbols to free the Divine Queen for reunion with ''The Holy One Blessed Be He''.

Partzufim

The most esoteric

Idrot The Idra, which means ''threshing floor'' in Aramaic, is a Kabbalistic work included in printings of the Zohar, and was probably written and appended to the main body of the Zohar at a later date. Contemporary scholars believe the ''Idra'' date ...

sections of the classic Zohar make reference to hypostatic male and female '' Partzufim'' (Divine Personas) displacing the Sephirot, manifestations of God in particular

Anthropomorphic Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...

symbolic personalities based on Biblical esoteric exegesis and

midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. he, מִדְרָשׁ; ...

ic narratives. Lurianic Kabbalah places these at the centre of our existence, rather than earlier Kabbalah's Sephirot, which Luria saw as broken in Divine crisis. Contemporary cognitive understanding of the Partzuf symbols relates them to

Jungian archetypes Jungian archetypes are a concept from psychology that refers to a universal, inherited idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective unconscious of all human beings. The psychic counterpart of instinct, archetypes are thoug ...

of the

collective unconscious Collective unconscious (german: kollektives Unbewusstes) refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populat ...

, reflecting a psychologised progression from youth to sage in therapeutic healing back to the infinite Ein Sof/Unconscious, as Kabbalah is simultaneously both

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

and

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

Descending spiritual worlds

Medieval Kabbalists believed that all things are linked to God through these Emanationism, emanations, making all levels in creation part of one great, gradually descending chain of being. Through this any lower creation reflects its particular roots in supernal divinity. Kabbalists agreed with the divine transcendence described by

, but as only referring to the ''

'' unknowable Godhead. They reinterpreted the Theism, theistic philosophical concept of creation from nothing, replacing God's creative act with Panentheism, panentheistic continual self-emanation by the mystical Ayin and Yesh, Ayin Nothingness/No-thing sustaining all spiritual and physical realms as successively more corporeal garments, veils and condensations of divine immanence. The innumerable levels of descent divide into Four Worlds, Four comprehensive spiritual worlds, '' Atziluth'' ("Closeness" – Divine Wisdom), ''Beri'ah, Beriah'' ("Creation" – Divine Understanding), ''

'' ("Formation" – Divine Emotions), ''

'' ("Action" – Divine Activity), with a preceding Fifth World '' Adam Kadmon'' ("Primordial Man" – Divine Will) sometimes excluded due to its sublimity. Together the whole spiritual heavens form the Divine Persona/Adam Kadmon#Gnosticism, Anthropos. Hasidic thought extends the divine immanence of Kabbalah by holding that God is all that really exists, all else being completely undifferentiated from God's perspective. This view can be defined as Acosmism, acosmic Monism, monistic panentheism. According to this philosophy, God's existence is higher than anything that this world can express, yet he includes all things of this world within his divine reality in perfect unity, so that the creation effected no change in him at all. This paradox as seen from dual human and divine perspectives is dealt with at length in Chabad philosophy, Chabad texts.

Origin of evil

Among problems considered in the Hebrew Kabbalah is the theological issue of the nature and origin of evil. In the views of some Kabbalists this conceives "evil" as a "quality of God", asserting that negativity enters into the essence of the Absolute. In this view it is conceived that the Absolute needs evil to "be what it is", i.e., to exist. Foundational texts of Medieval Kabbalism conceived evil as a demonic parallel to the holy, called the ''Sitra Achra'' (the "Other Side"), and the ''Kelipah, Kelipot/Qliphoth'' (the "Shells/Husks") that cover and conceal the holy, are nurtured from it, and yet also protect it by limiting its revelation. Scholem termed this element of the Spanish Kabbalah a "Jewish gnostic" motif, in the sense of dual powers in the divine realm of manifestation. In a radical notion, the root of evil is found within the 10 holy Sephirot, through an imbalance of Gevurah, the power of "Strength/Judgement/Severity". Gevurah is necessary for Creation to exist as it counterposes Chesed (Kabbalah), Chesed ("loving-kindness"), restricting the unlimited divine bounty within suitable vessels, so forming the Worlds. However, if man sins (actualising impure judgement within his soul), the supernal Judgement is reciprocally empowered over the Kindness, introducing disharmony among the Sephirot in the divine realm and exile from God throughout Creation. The demonic realm, though illusory in its holy origin, becomes the real apparent realm of impurity in lower Creation. In the

, the sin of Adam and Eve (who embodied Adam Kadmon below) took place in the spiritual realms. Their sin was that they separated the Tree of knowledge of good and evil, Tree of knowledge (10 sefirot within Malkuth, representing Divine immanence), from the Tree of life (biblical), Tree of life within it (10 sefirot within Tiferet, representing Divine transcendence). This introduced the false perception of duality into lower creation, an external Tree of Death nurtured from holiness, and an Adam Belial of impurity. In Lurianic Kabbalah, evil originates from a primordial shattering of the sephirot of God's Persona before creation of the Four Worlds, stable spiritual worlds, mystically represented by the 8 List of rulers of Edom, Kings of Edom (the derivative of Gevurah) "who died" before any king reigned in Israel from Vayishlach, Genesis 36. In the divine view from above within Kabbalah, emphasised in Hasidic Panentheism, the appearance of duality and pluralism below dissolves into the absolute Monism of God, psychologising evil. Though impure below, what appears as evil derives from a divine blessing too high to be contained openly. The mystical task of the Tzadik, righteous in the Zohar is to reveal this concealed Divine Oneness and absolute good, to "convert bitterness into sweetness, darkness into light".

Role of Man

Kabbalistic doctrine gives man the central role in Creation, as his soul and body correspond to the supernal divine manifestations. In the Christian Kabbalah this scheme was universalised to describe ''harmonia mundi'', the harmony of Creation within man. In Judaism, it gave a profound spiritualisation of Jewish practice. While the kabbalistic scheme gave a radically innovative, though conceptually continuous, development of mainstream Midrashic and Talmudic rabbinic notions, kabbalistic thought underscored and invigorated conservative Jewish observance. The esoteric teachings of kabbalah gave the traditional mitzvot observances the central role in spiritual creation, whether the practitioner was learned in this knowledge or not. Accompanying normative Jewish observance and worship with elite mystical kavanot intentions gave them theurgic power, but sincere observance by common folk, especially in the Hasidic popularisation of kabbalah, could replace esoteric abilities. Many kabbalists were also leading legal figures in Judaism, such as Nachmanides and Joseph Karo. Medieval kabbalah elaborates particular reasons for each Biblical mitzvah, and their role in harmonising the supernal divine flow, uniting masculine and feminine forces on High. With this, the feminine Divine presence in this world is drawn from exile to the Holy One Above. The 613 mitzvot are embodied in the organs and soul of man. Lurianic Kabbalah incorporates this in the more inclusive scheme of Jewish messianic rectification of exiled divinity. Jewish mysticism, in contrast to Divine transcendence rationalist human-centred reasons for Jewish observance, gave Divine-immanent providential cosmic significance to the daily events in the worldly life of man in general, and the spiritual role of Jewish observance in particular.

Levels of the soul

The Kabbalah posits that the human soul has three elements, the ''nefesh'', ''ru'ach'', and ''neshamah''. The ''nefesh'' is found in all humans, and enters the physical body at birth. It is the source of one's physical and psychological nature. The next two parts of the soul are not implanted at birth, but can be developed over time; their development depends on the actions and beliefs of the individual. They are said to only fully exist in people awakened spiritually. A common way of explaining the three parts of the soul is as follows: * ''Nefesh'' (נֶפֶשׁ): the lower part, or "animal part", of the soul. It is linked to instincts and bodily cravings. This part of the soul is provided at birth. * ''Ruach'' (רוּחַ): the middle soul, the "spirit". It contains the moral virtues and the ability to distinguish between good and evil. * ''Neshamah'' (נְשָׁמָה): the higher soul, or "super-soul". This separates man from all other life-forms. It is related to the intellect and allows man to enjoy and benefit from the afterlife. It allows one to have some awareness of the existence and presence of God. The Raaya Meheimna, a section of related teachings spread throughout the Zohar, discusses fourth and fifth parts of the human soul, the ''chayyah'' and ''yehidah'' (first mentioned in the Midrash Rabbah). Gershom Scholem writes that these "were considered to represent the sublimest levels of intuitive cognition, and to be within the grasp of only a few chosen individuals". The Chayyah and the Yechidah do not enter into the body like the other three—thus they received less attention in other sections of the ''Zohar''. * ''Chayyah'' (חיה): The part of the soul that allows one to have an awareness of the divine life force itself. * ''Yehidah'' (יחידה): The highest plane of the soul, in which one can achieve as full a union with God as is possible. Both rabbinic and kabbalistic works posit that there are a few additional, non-permanent states of the soul that people can develop on certain occasions. These extra souls, or extra states of the soul, play no part in any afterlife scheme, but are mentioned for completeness: * ''Ruach HaKodesh'' (רוח הקודש) ("spirit of holiness"): a state of the soul that makes prophecy possible. Since the age of classical prophecy passed, no one (outside of Israel) receives the soul of prophecy any longer. * ''Neshamah Yeseira'': The "supplemental soul" that a Jew can experience on Shabbat. It makes possible an enhanced spiritual enjoyment of the day. This exists only when one is observing Shabbat; it can be lost and gained depending on one's observance. * ''Neshamah Kedosha'': Provided to Jews at the age of maturity (13 for boys, 12 for girls) and is related to the study and fulfillment of the Torah commandments. It exists only when one studies and follows the Torah; it can be lost and gained depending on one's study and observance.

Reincarnation

Reincarnation, the transmigration of the soul after death, was introduced into Judaism as a central esoteric tenet of Kabbalah from the Medieval period onwards, called Gilgul neshamot ("cycles of the soul"). The concept does not appear overtly in the Hebrew Bible or classic rabbinic literature, and was rejected by various Medieval Jewish philosophers. However, the Kabbalists explained a number of scriptural passages in reference to Gilgulim. The concept became central to the later Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, who systemised it as the personal parallel to the cosmic process of rectification. Through Lurianic Kabbalah and Hasidic Judaism, reincarnation entered popular Jewish culture as a literary motif.

Tzimtzum, Shevirah and Tikkun

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''Tzimtzum'' (Constriction/Concentration) is the primordial cosmic act whereby God "contracted" His infinite light, leaving a "void" into which the light of existence was poured. This allowed the emergence of independent existence that would not become nullified by the pristine Infinite Light, reconciling the unity of the ''Ein Sof'' with the plurality of creation. This changed the first creative act into one of withdrawal/exile, the antithesis of the ultimate Divine Will. In contrast, a new emanation after the Tzimtzum shone into the vacuum to begin creation, but led to an initial instability called ''Tohu and Tikun, Tohu'' (Chaos), leading to a new crisis of ''Shevirah'' (Shattering) of the sephirot vessels. The shards of the broken vessels fell down into the lower realms, animated by remnants of their divine light, causing primordial exile within the Divine Persona before the creation of man. Exile and enclothement of higher divinity within lower realms throughout existence requires man to complete the ''Tikkun olam'' (Rectification) process. Rectification Above corresponds to the reorganization of the independent sephirot into relating ''Partzufim'' (Divine Personas), previously referred to obliquely in the Zohar. From the catastrophe stems the possibility of self-aware Creation, and also the ''Kelipot'' (Impure Shells) of previous Medieval kabbalah. The metaphorical Anthropomorphism in Kabbalah, anthropomorphism of the partzufim accentuates the sexual unifications of the redemption process, while Gilgul reincarnation emerges from the scheme. Uniquely, Lurianism gave formerly private mysticism the urgency of Messianic social involvement. According to interpretations of Luria, the catastrophe stemmed from the "unwillingness" of the residue imprint after the Tzimtzum to relate to the new vitality that began creation. The process was arranged to shed and harmonise the Divine Infinity with the latent potential of evil. The creation of Adam would have redeemed existence, but his sin caused new shevirah of Divine vitality, requiring the Giving of the Torah to begin Messianic rectification. Historical and individual history becomes the narrative of reclaiming exiled Divine sparks.

Linguistic mysticism and the mystical Torah

Kabbalistic thought extended Hebrew Bible, Biblical and

Midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. he, מִדְרָשׁ; ...

ic notions that God enacted Creation through the Hebrew language and through the

into a full linguistic mysticism. In this, every Hebrew letter, word, number, even accent on words of the Hebrew Bible contain Jewish mystical exegesis, Jewish mystical meanings, describing the spiritual dimensions within exoteric ideas, and it teaches the hermeneutic methods of interpretation for ascertaining these meanings. Names of God in Judaism have further prominence, though infinite meaning turns the whole Torah into a Divine name. As the Hebrew name of things is the channel of their lifeforce, parallel to the sephirot, so concepts such as "holiness" and "mitzvot" embody ontological Divine immanence, as God can be known in manifestation as well as transcendence. The infinite potential of meaning in the Torah, as in the ''Ein Sof'', is reflected in the symbol of the two trees of the Garden of Eden; the Torah of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Tree of Knowledge is the external, finite Halachic Torah, enclothed within which the mystics perceive the unlimited infinite plurality of meanings of the Torah of the

. In Lurianic terms, each of the 600,000 root souls of Israel find their own interpretation in Torah, as "God, the Torah and Israel are all One". As early as the 1st century BCE Jews believed that the Torah and other canonical texts contained encoded messages and hidden meanings. Gematria is one method for discovering its hidden meanings. In this system, each Hebrew letter also represents a number. By converting letters to numbers, Kabbalists were able to find a hidden meaning in each word. This method of interpretation was used extensively by various schools. In contemporary interpretation of kabbalah, Sanford Drob makes cognitive sense of this linguistic mythos by relating it to postmodern philosophy, postmodern philosophical concepts described by

and others, where all reality embodies narrative texts with infinite plurality of meanings brought by the reader. In this dialogue, kabbalah survives the nihilism of Deconstruction by incorporating its own Lurianic ''Shevirah'', and by the dialectical paradox where man and God imply each other.

Cognition, mysticism, or values

Kabbalists as mystics

The founder of the academic study of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem, privileged an intellectual view of the nature of Kabbalistic symbols as dialectic Theosophy (disambiguation), Theosophical speculation. In contrast, contemporary scholarship of

and Elliot R. Wolfson has opened a Phenomenology of religion, phenomenological understanding of the mysticism, mystical nature of Kabbalistic experience, based on a close reading of the historical texts. Wolfson has shown that among the closed elite circles of mystical activity, medieval Theosophical Kabbalists held that an intellectual view of their symbols was secondary to the experiential. In the context of medieval Jewish philosophy, Jewish philosophical debates on the role of imagination in Biblical prophecy, and essentialist versus instrumental kabbalistic debates about the relation of sephirot to God, they saw Jewish meditation, contemplation on the sephirot as a vehicle for prophecy. Judaism's ban on physical iconography, along with anthropomorphic metaphors for Divinity in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...

and

midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. he, מִדְרָשׁ; ...

, enabled their internal visualisation of the Divine sephirot Anthropos in imagination. Disclosure of the aniconic in iconic internal psychology, involved sublimatory revelation of Kabbalah's sexual unifications. Previous academic distinction between ''Theosophical'' versus Abulafian ''Abraham Abulafia, Ecstatic-Prophetic Kabbalah'' overstated their division of aims, which revolved around visual versus verbal/auditory views of prophecy. In addition, throughout the history of Judaic Kabbalah, the greatest mystics claimed to receive new teachings from Elijah the Prophet, the souls of earlier sages (a purpose of Yichudim, Lurianic meditation prostrated on the graves of Talmudic Tannaim, Amoraim and Kabbalists), the soul of the mishnah, ascents during sleep, heavenly messengers, etc. A tradition of parapsychology abilities, psychic knowledge, and theurgic intercessions in heaven for the community is recounted in the hagiography, hagiographic works ''Praises of Isaac Luria, the Ari'', ''Praises of the Baal Shem Tov, Besht'', and in many other Kabbalistic and Hasidic tales. Kabbalistic and Hasidic thought, Hasidic texts are concerned to apply themselves from Jewish mystical exegesis, exegesis and theory to spiritual practice, including Holy Spirit in Judaism, prophetic drawing of new mystical revelations in Torah. The mythological symbols Kabbalah uses to answer philosophical questions, themselves invite mysticism, mystical contemplation, intuition, intuitive apprehension and psychology, psychological engagement.

Paradoxical coincidence of opposites

In bringing Theosophical Kabbalah into contemporary intellectual understanding, using the tools of modern and postmodern philosophy and

, Sanford Drob shows philosophically how every symbol of the Kabbalah embodies the simultaneous dialectical paradox of mystical ''Coincidentia oppositorum'', the conjoining of two opposite dualities. Thus the Infinite

is above the duality of ''Yesh and Ayin, Yesh/Ayin Being/Non-Being'' transcending Existence/Nothingness (''Becoming'' into Existence through the souls of Man who are the inner dimension of all spiritual and physical worlds, yet simultaneously the Infinite Divine generative lifesource beyond Creation that continuously keeps everything spiritual and physical in existence); Sephirot bridge the philosophical problem of the One and the Many; Man is both Divine ( Adam Kadmon) and human (invited to project human psychology onto Divinity to understand it); Tzimtzum is both illusion and real from Divine and human perspectives; evil and good imply each other (Kelipah draws from Divinity, good arises only from overcoming evil); Existence is simultaneously partial (Tzimtzum), broken (Shevirah), and whole (Tohu and Tikun, Tikun) from different perspectives; God experiences Himself as Other through Man, Man embodies and completes (Tikun) the Divine Persona Above. In Kabbalah's reciprocal Panentheism, Theism and Atheism/Humanism represent two incomplete poles of a mutual dialectic that imply and include each other's partial validity.http://newkabbalah.com/index3.html ''Kabbalah and Postmodernism: A Dialogue'', Sanford Drob, Peter Lang publishers 2009. "Examines the convergence between Jewish mystical ideas and the thought of Jacques Derrida, the founder of deconstruction, and puts this convergence in the service of a theology that not only survives the challenges of atheism, cultural relativism, and anti-foundationalism, but welcomes and includes these ideas. Challenges certain long-held philosophical and theological beliefs, including the assumptions that the insights of mystical experience are unavailable to human reason and inexpressible in linguistic terms, that the God of traditional theology either does or does not exist, that systematic theology must provide a univocal account of God, man, and the world, that truth is absolute and not continually subject to radical revision, and that the truth of propositions in philosophy and theology excludes the truth of their opposites and contradictions." This was expressed by the Chabad Hasidic thinker Aaron HaLevi ben Moses of Staroselye, Aaron of Staroselye, that the truth of any concept is revealed only in its opposite.

Metaphysics or axiology

By expressing itself using symbols and myth that transcend single interpretations, Theosophical Kabbalah incorporates aspects of philosophy, Jewish

and unconscious depth psychology,

and meditation, Pardes (Jewish exegesis), Jewish exegesis, theurgy, and Jewish ethics, ethics, as well as overlapping with theory from Practical Kabbalah, magical elements. Its symbols can be read as questions which are their own existentialist answers (the Hebrew sephirah Chokhmah-Wisdom, the beginning of Existence, is read etymologically by Kabbalists as the question "Koach Mah?" the "Power of What?"). Alternative listings of the Sephirot start with either Keter (Unconscious Will/Volition), or Chokhmah (Wisdom), a philosophical duality between a Rational or Supra-Rational Creation, between whether the Mitzvot Judaic observances have reasons or transcend reasons in Divine Will, between whether Torah study, study or good deeds is superior, and whether the symbols of Kabbalah should be read as primarily metaphysical intellectual cognition or Axiology values. Messianic redemption requires both ethical Tikkun olam and contemplative Kavanah. Sanford Drob sees every attempt to limit Kabbalah to one fixed dogmatic interpretation as necessarily bringing its own Deconstruction (Lurianic Kabbalah incorporates its own Shevirah self shattering; the

transcends all of its infinite expressions; the infinite mystical Torah of the

has no/infinite interpretations). The infinite axiology of the Ein Sof One, expressed through the Plural Many, overcomes the dangers of nihilism, or the antinomianism, antinomian mystical breaking of Halakha, Jewish observance alluded to throughout Kabbalistic and Hasidic mysticisms.

Primary texts

Like the rest of the rabbinic literature, the texts of kabbalah were once part of an ongoing oral tradition, though, over the centuries, much of the oral tradition has been written down. Jewish forms of esotericism existed over 2,000 years ago. Ben Sira (born c. 170 BCE) warns against it, saying: "You shall have no business with secret things". Nonetheless, mystical studies were undertaken and resulted in mystical literature, the first being the

of the second and first pre-Christian centuries and which contained elements that carried over to later kabbalah. Throughout the centuries since, many texts have been produced, among them the ancient descriptions of ''Sefer Yetzirah'', the ''Heichalot'' mystical ascent literature, the ''Bahir'', ''

'' and the ''Zohar'', the main text of Kabbalistic exegesis. Classic mystical Bible commentaries are included in fuller versions of the ''Mikraot Gedolot'' (Main Commentators). Cordoveran systemisation is presented in ''Pardes Rimonim'', philosophical articulation in the works of the Maharal, and Lurianic rectification in ''Etz Chayim''. Subsequent interpretation of Lurianic Kabbalah was made in the writings of Shalom Sharabi, in ''Nefesh HaChaim'' and the 20th-century ''Sulam''. Hasidism interpreted kabbalistic structures to their correspondence in inward perception. The Hasidic development of kabbalah incorporates a successive stage of Jewish mysticism from historical kabbalistic metaphysics.

Scholarship

The first modern-academic historians of Judaism, the "Wissenschaft des Judentums" school of the 19th century, framed Judaism in solely rational terms in the emancipatory Haskalah spirit of their age. They opposed kabbalah and restricted its significance from Jewish historiography. In the mid-20th century, it was left to Gershom Scholem to overturn their stance, establishing the flourishing present-day academic investigation of Jewish mysticism, and making Heichalot, Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts the objects of scholarly critical-historical study. In Scholem's opinion, the mythical and mystical components of Judaism were at least as important as the rational ones, and he thought that they, rather than the exoteric Halakha or intellectualist

, were the living subterranean stream in historical Jewish development that periodically broke out to renew the Jewish spirit and social life of the community. Scholem's magisterial ''Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism'' (1941) among his seminal works, though representing scholarship and interpretations that have subsequently been challenged and revised within the field, remains the only academic survey studying all main historical periods of

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has been a centre of this research, including Scholem and Isaiah Tishby, and more recently Joseph Dan, Yehuda Liebes, Rachel Elior, and

. Scholars across the eras of Jewish mysticism in America and Britain have included Alexander Altmann, Arthur Green, Lawrence Fine, Elliot Wolfson, Daniel C. Matt, Daniel Matt, Louis Jacobs and Ada Rapoport-Albert. Moshe Idel has opened up research on the Ecstatic Kabbalah alongside the theosophical, and has called for new multi-disciplinary approaches, beyond the philological and historical that have dominated until now, to include Religious studies#Phenomenology, phenomenology, Religious studies#Psychology of religion, psychology, Religious studies#Anthropology of religion, anthropology and comparative studies.

Claims for authority

Historians have noted that most claims for the authority of kabbalah involve an argument of the antiquity of authority (see, e.g., Joseph Dan's discussion in his ''Circle of the Unique Cherub''). As a result, virtually all early foundational works pseudepigraphically claim, or are ascribed, ancient authorship. For example, ''Sefer Raziel HaMalach'', an astro-magical text partly based on a magical manual of late antiquity, ''Sefer ha-Razim'', was, according to the kabbalists, transmitted by the angel Raziel to Adam after he was evicted from Eden. Another famous work, the early ''

'', is dated back to the patriarch Abraham. This tendency toward pseudepigraphy has its roots in apocalyptic literature, which claims that esoteric knowledge such as magic, divination and astrology was transmitted to humans in the mythic past by the two angels, Aza and Azazel, Azaz'el (in other places, Azaz'el and Uzaz'el) who fell from heaven (see Genesis 6:4). As well as ascribing ancient origins to texts, and reception of

transmission, the greatest and most innovative Kabbalists claimed mystical reception of direct personal divine revelations, by heavenly mentors such as Elijah the Prophet, the souls of Tannaim, Talmudic sages, Holy Spirit in Judaism, prophetic revelation, soul ascents on high, etc. On this basis Arthur Green speculates, that while the ''

'' was written by a circle of Kabbalists in medieval Spain, they may have believed they were channeling the souls and direct revelations from the earlier mystic circle of Shimon bar Yochai in 2nd century Galilee depicted in the Zohar's narrative. Academics have compared the Zohar mystic circle of Spain with the romanticised wandering mystic circle of Galilee described in the text. Similarly,

gathered his disciples at the traditional Idra assembly location, placing each in the seat of their former reincarnations as students of Shimon bar Yochai.

Criticism

Dualistic cosmology

Although Kabbalah propounds the Unity of God, one of the most serious and sustained criticisms is that it may lead away from monotheism, and instead promote Dualistic cosmology, dualism, the belief that there is a supernatural counterpart to God. The dualistic system holds that there is a good power versus an evil power. There are two primary models of Gnostic-dualistic cosmology: the first, which goes back to Zoroastrianism, believes creation is ontologically divided between good and evil forces; the second, found largely in Greco-Roman metaphysics like Neo-Platonism, argues that the universe knew a primordial harmony, but that a cosmic disruption yielded a second, evil dimension to reality. This second model influenced the cosmology of the Kabbalah. According to Kabbalistic cosmology, the Ten Sephirot correspond to ten levels of creation. These levels of creation must not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways of revealing God, one per level. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes. While God may seem to exhibit dual natures (masculine-feminine, compassionate-judgmental, creator-creation), all adherents of Kabbalah have consistently stressed the ultimate unity of God. For example, in all discussions of Male and Female, the hidden nature of God exists above it all without limit, being called the Infinite or the "No End" (''Ein Sof'')—neither one nor the other, transcending any definition. The ability of God to become hidden from perception is called "Restriction" (Tzimtzum). Hiddenness makes creation possible because God can become "revealed" in a diversity of limited ways, which then form the building blocks of creation. Kabbalistic texts, including the ''Zohar'', appear to affirm dualism, as they ascribe all evil to the separation from holiness known as the Sitra Achra ("the other side") which is opposed to ''Sitra D'Kedushah'', or the Side of Holiness. The "left side" of divine emanation is a negative mirror image of the "side of holiness" with which it was locked in combat. [''Encyclopaedia Judaica'', Volume 6, "Dualism", p. 244]. While this evil aspect exists within the divine structure of the Sephirot, the ''Zohar'' indicates that the Sitra Ahra has no power over ''Ein Sof'', and only exists as a necessary aspect of the creation of God to give man free choice, and that evil is the consequence of this choice. It is not a supernatural force opposed to God, but a reflection of the inner moral combat within mankind between the dictates of morality and the surrender to one's basic instincts. David Gottlieb notes that many Kabbalists hold that the concepts of, e.g., a Heavenly Court or the Sitra Ahra are only given to humanity by God as a working model to understand His ways within our own epistemological limits. They reject the notion that a satan or angels actually exist. Others hold that non-divine spiritual entities were indeed created by God as a means for exacting his will. According to Kabbalists, humans cannot yet understand the infinity of God. Rather, there is God as revealed to humans (corresponding to Zeir Anpin), and the rest of the infinity of God as remaining hidden from human experience (corresponding to Arich Anpin). One reading of this theology is monotheistic, similar to panentheism; another reading of the same theology is that it is dualistic. Gershom Scholem writes:

Distinction between Jews and non-Jews

According to Isaac Luria (1534–72) and other commentators on the Zohar, righteous Gentiles do not have this demonic aspect and are in many ways similar to Jewish souls. A number of prominent Kabbalists, e.g., Pinchas Eliyahu of Vilna, the author of ''Sefer ha-Brit'', held that only some marginal elements in the humanity represent these demonic forces. On the other hand, the souls of Jewish heretics have much more satanic energy than the worst of idol worshippers; this view is popular in some Hasidic circles, especially Satmar (Hasidic dynasty), Satmar Hasidim. On the other hand, many prominent Kabbalists rejected this idea and believed in essential equality of all human souls. Menahem Azariah da Fano (1548–1620), in his book ''Reincarnations of souls'', provides many examples of non-Jewish Biblical figures being reincarnated into Jews and vice versa. But one point of view is represented by the Hasidic work ''Tanya (Judaism), Tanya'' (1797), in order to argue that Jews have a different character of soul: while a non-Jew, according to the author Shneur Zalman of Liadi (born 1745), can achieve a high level of spirituality, similar to an angel, his soul is still fundamentally different in character, from a Jewish one.סידור הרב, שער אכילת מצה A similar view is found in ''Kuzari'', an early medieval philosophical book by Judah Halevi, Yehuda Halevi (1075–1141 AD). Another prominent Habad rabbi, Abraham Yehudah Khein (born 1878), believed that spiritually elevated Gentiles have essentially Jewish souls, "who just lack the formal conversion to Judaism", and that unspiritual Jews are "Jewish merely by their birth documents". The great 20th-century Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag viewed the terms "Jews" and "Gentile" as different levels of perception, available to every human soul. David Halperin argues that the collapse of Kabbalah's influence among Western European Jews over the course of the 17th and 18th century was a result of the cognitive dissonance they experienced between the negative perception of Gentiles found in some exponents of Kabbalah, and their own positive dealings with non-Jews, which were rapidly expanding and improving during this period due to the influence of the Enlightenment. However, a number of renowned Kabbalists claimed the exact opposite, stressing universality of all human souls and providing universal interpretations of the Kabbalistic tradition, including its Lurianic version. In their view, Kabbalah transcends the borders of Judaism and can serve as a basis of inter-religious theosophy and a universal religion. Pinchas Elijah Hurwitz, a prominent Lithuanian-Galician Kabbalist of the 18th century and a moderate proponent of the Haskalah, called for brotherly love and solidarity between all nations, and believed that Kabbalah can empower everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, with prophetic abilities. The works of Abraham Cohen de Herrera (1570–1635) are full of references to Gentile mystical philosophers. Such approach was particularly common among the

and post-Renaissance Italian Jews. Late medieval and Renaissance Italian Kabbalists, such as Yohanan Alemanno, David Messer Leon and Abraham Yagel, adhered to humanistic ideals and incorporated teachings of various Christian and Paganism, pagan mystics. A prime representative of this humanist stream in Kabbalah was Elijah Benamozegh, who explicitly praised Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, as well as a whole range of ancient pagan mystical systems. He believed that Kabbalah can reconcile the differences between the world religions, which represent different facets and stages of the universal human spirituality. In his writings, Benamozegh interprets the New Testament, Hadith, Vedas, Avesta and pagan mysteries according to the Kabbalistic theosophy. E. R. Wolfson provides numerous examples from the 17th to the 20th centuries, which would challenge the view of Halperin as well as the notion that "modern Judaism" has rejected or dismissed this "outdated aspect" of the religion and, he argues, there are still Kabbalists today who harbor this view. He argues that, while it is accurate to say that many Jews do and would find this distinction offensive, it is inaccurate to say that the idea has been totally rejected in all circles. As Wolfson has argued, it is an ethical demand on the part of scholars to continue to be vigilant with regard to this matter and in this way the tradition can be refined from within.

Medieval views

The idea that there are ten divine '' sephirot'' could evolve over time into the idea that "God is One being, yet in that One being there are Ten" which opens up a debate about what the "correct beliefs" in God should be, according to Judaism. The early Kabbalists debated the relationship of the Sephirot to God, adopting a range of essentialist versus instrumental views. Modern Kabbalah, based on the 16th century systemisations of Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, Cordovero and

, takes an intermediate position: the instrumental vessels of the sephirot are created, but their inner light is from the undifferentiated Ohr, Ohr Ein Sof essence. The pre-Kabbalistic Saadia Gaon teaches in his book Emunoth ve-Deoth, Emunot v'Deot that Jews who believe in reincarnation have adopted a non-Jewish belief.

(12th century), celebrated by followers for his Jewish rationalism, rejected many of the pre-Kabbalistic Hekalot texts, particularly ''

'' whose starkly anthropomorphic vision of God he considered heretical. Maimonides, a centrally important medieval sage of Judaism, lived at the time of the first emergence of Kabbalah. Modern scholarship views the systemisation and publication of their historic oral doctrine by Kabbalists, as a move to rebut the threat on Halakha, Judaic observance by the populance misreading Maimonides' ideal of philosophical contemplation over ritual performance in his philosophical Guide of the Perplexed. They objected to Maimonides equating the Talmudic Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah secrets of the Torah with Aristotelian physics, Aristotelean physics and metaphysics in that work and in his legal Mishneh Torah, teaching that their own Theosophy, centred on an esoteric metaphysics of traditional Jewish practice, is the Torah's true inner meaning. The Kabbalist Rishonim, medieval rabbinic sage Nachmanides (13th century), classic debater against Maimonidean rationalism, provides background to many kabbalistic ideas. An entire book entitled ''Gevuras Aryeh'' was authored by Yaakov Yehuda Aryeh Leib Frenkel and originally published in 1915, specifically to explain and elaborate on the kabbalistic concepts addressed by Nachmanides in his classic Jewish commentaries on the Bible, commentary to the Five books of Moses. Avraham son of Rambam, Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon, in the spirit of his father Maimonides, Saadiah Gaon, and other predecessors, explains at length in his ''Milḥamot HaShem'' that God is in no way literally within time or space nor physically outside time or space, since time and space simply do not apply to his being whatsoever, emphasising the Monotheism, Monotheist Oneness of Divine transcendence unlike any worldly conception. Kabbalah's Panentheism expressed by Moses Cordovero and Hasidic thought, agrees that God's essence transcends all expression, but holds in contrast that existence is a manifestation of God's Being, descending Divine immanence, immanently through spiritual and physical condensations of the divine light. By incorporating the pluralist many within God, God's Oneness is deepened to exclude the true existence of anything but God. In Atzmus, Hasidic Panentheism, the world is Acosmism, acosmic from the Divine view, yet real from its own perspective. Around the 1230s, Rabbi Meir ben Simon of Narbonne wrote an epistle (included in his ''Milḥemet Mitzvah'') against his contemporaries, the early Kabbalists, characterizing them as blasphemers who even approach heresy. He particularly singled out the Sefer Bahir, rejecting the attribution of its authorship to the ''tanna'' Nehunya ben HaKanah, R. Neḥunya ben ha-Kanah and describing some of its content as truly heretical. Leon of Modena, Leone di Modena, a 17th-century Venice, Venetian critic of Kabbalah, wrote that if we were to accept the Kabbalah, then the Christian trinity would be compatible with Judaism, as the Trinity seems to resemble the kabbalistic doctrine of the '' sephirot''. This was in response to the belief that some European Jews of the period addressed individual ''sephirot'' in their prayers, although the practice was apparently uncommon. Apologists explained that Jews may have been praying ''for'' and not necessarily ''to'' the aspects of Godliness represented by the ''sephirot''. In contrast to Christianity, Kabbalists declare that one prays only "to Him (Atzmus, God's Essence, male solely by metaphor in Hebrew's gendered grammar), not to his attributes (sephirot or any other Divine manifestations or forms of incarnation)". Kabbalists directed their prayers to God's essence through the channels of particular sephirot using Jewish meditation, kavanot Names of God in Judaism, Divine names intentions. To pray to a manifestation of God introduces false division among the sephirot, disrupting their absolute unity, dependence and dissolving into the transcendent

; the sephirot descend throughout Creation, only appearing from man's perception of God, where God manifests by any variety of numbers. Yaakov Emden (1697–1776), himself an Orthodox Kabbalist who venerated the

,''The Jewish Religion - A Companion'', Louis Jacobs, Oxford University Press 1995, entry: Emden, Jacob concerned to battle Sabbatean misuse of Kabbalah, wrote the ''Mitpaḥath Sfarim'' (''Veil of the Books''), an astute critique of the

in which he concludes that certain parts of the Zohar contain heretical teaching and therefore could not have been written by Shimon bar Yochai. He also expressed the extremely unconventional view, contrary to all evidence, that the pious

could not have written the ''Guide of the Perplexed'', which must have been the work of an unknown heretic. Emden's Kabbalist contemporary the

(1720–1797) early modern Rabbinic sage, held the Zohar and Luria in deep reverence, critically emending classic Judaic texts from historically accumulated errors by his acute acumen and scholarly belief in the perfect unity of Kabbalah revelation and Rabbinic Judaism. Though a Lurianic Kabbalist, his commentaries sometimes chose Zoharic interpretation over Luria when he felt the matter lent itself to a more exoteric view. Although proficient in mathematics and sciences and recommending their necessity for understanding

, he had no use for canonical medieval

, declaring that

had been "misled by the accursed philosophy" in denying belief in the external Practical Kabbalah, occult matters of demons, incantations and amulets. Views of Kabbalists regarding

varied from those who appreciated Maimonidean and other classic medieval philosophical works, integrating them with Kabbalah and seeing profound human philosophical and Divine kabbalistic wisdoms as compatible, to those who polemicised against religious philosophy during times when it became overly rationalist and dogmatic. A dictum commonly cited by Kabbalists, "Kabbalah begins where Philosophy ends", can be read as either appreciation or polemic. Moses of Burgos (late 13th century) declared, "these philosophers whose wisdom you are praising end where we begin". Moses Cordovero appreciated the influence of Maimonides in his quasi-rational systemisation. From its inception, the Theosophical Kabbalah became permeated by terminology adapted from philosophy and given new mystical meanings, such as its early integration with the Neoplatonism of Ibn Gabirol and use of Aristotelian terms of Form over Matter.

Orthodox Judaism

Pinchas Giller and Adin Steinsaltz write that Kabbalah is best described as the inner part of traditional Judaism, Jewish religion, the official metaphysics of Judaism, that was essential to normative Judaism until fairly recently. With the decline of Jewish life in History of the Jews in Spain, medieval Spain, it displaced rationalist

until the modern rise of Haskalah enlightenment, receiving a revival in our postmodern age. While Judaism always maintained a minority tradition of religious rationalist criticism of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem writes that Lurianic Kabbalah was the last theology that was near predominant in Jewish life. While Lurianism represented the elite of esoteric Kabbalism, its mythic-messianic divine drama and personalisation of Gilgul, reincarnation captured the popular imagination in Jewish folklore and in the Sabbatean and Hasidic social movements. Giller notes that the former

ic-Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, Cordoverian classic Kabbalah represented a common exoteric popular view of Kabbalah, as depicted in early modern

. In contemporary Orthodox Judaism there is dispute as to the status of the Zohar's and Isaac Luria's (the Isaac Luria, Arizal) Kabbalistic teachings. While a portion of Modern Orthodox Judaism, Modern Orthodox, followers of the Dor De'ah movement, and many students of the Rambam reject Arizal's Kabbalistic teachings, as well as deny that the ''Zohar'' is authoritative or from Shimon bar Yohai, all three of these groups accept the existence and validity of the Talmudic ''Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah'' mysticism. Their disagreement concerns whether the Kabbalistic teachings promulgated today are accurate representations of those esoteric teachings to which the Talmud refers. The mainstream Haredi Judaism, Haredi (Hasidic, Lithuanian Jews, Lithuanian, Sephardic Haredim, Oriental) and Religious Zionism, Religious Zionist Jewish movements revere Luria and the Kabbalah, but one can find both rabbis who sympathize with such a view, while disagreeing with it, as well as rabbis who consider such a view heresy. The Haredi Eliyahu Dessler and Gedaliah Nadel maintained that it is acceptable to believe that the Zohar was not written by Shimon bar Yochai and that it had a late authorship. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg mentioned the possibility of Christian influence in the Kabbalah with the "Kabbalistic vision of the Messiah as the redeemer of all mankind" being "the Jewish counterpart to Christ."

, representing an inclination to rationalism, embrace of academic scholarship, and the individual's autonomy to define Judaism, embodies a diversity of views regarding Kabbalah from a Neo-Hasidic spirituality to Maimonist anti-Kabbalism. In a book to help define central theological issues in Modern Orthodoxy, Michael J. Harris writes that the relationship between Modern Orthodoxy and mysticism has been under-discussed. He sees a deficiency of spirituality in Modern Orthodoxy, as well as the dangers in a fundamentalist adoption of Kabbalah. He suggests the development of neo-Kabbalistic adaptions of Jewish mysticism compatible with rationalism, offering a variety of precedent models from past thinkers ranging from the mystical inclusivism of

to a compartmentalisation between Halakha and mysticism. Yiḥyah Qafiḥ, Yiḥyeh Qafeḥ, a 20th-century Yemenite Jewish leader and Chief Rabbi of Yemen, spearheaded the Dor Daim, Dor De'ah ("generation of knowledge") movement to counteract the influence of the Zohar and modern Kabbalah. He authored critiques of mysticism in general and Lurianic Kabbalah in particular; his magnum opus was Milḥamoth ha-Shem (''Wars of Hashem'') against what he perceived as Neoplatonism, neo-platonic and gnostic influences on Judaism with the publication and distribution of the Zohar since the 13th Century. Rabbi Yiḥyah founded yeshivot, rabbinical schools, and synagogues that featured a rationalist approach to Judaism based on the Talmud and works of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides (Rambam). Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994), an ultra-rationalist Modern Orthodox philosopher and brother of Nechama Leibowitz, publicly shared views expressed in Yiḥyeh Qafeḥ's book ''Milḥamoth HaShem'' against mysticism. For example, Leibowitz called Kabbalah "a collection of "pagan superstitions" and "idol worship" in remarks given after receiving the Yakir Yerushalayim Award (English: worthy citizen of Jerusalem) in 1990. In modern times, rationalists holding similar views as those of the Dor De'ah movement have described themselves as "talmide ha-Rambam" (disciples of Maimonides) rather than as being aligned with Dor De'ah, and are more theologically aligned with the rationalism of

than with Orthodox Hasidic Judaism, Ḥasidic or Haredi Judaism, Ḥaredi communities.

Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism

Kabbalah tended to be rejected by most Jews in the Conservative and Reform Judaism, Reform movements, though its influences were not completely eliminated. While it was generally not studied as a discipline, the Kabbalistic ''Kabbalat Shabbat'' service remained part of liberal liturgy, as did the ''Yedid Nefesh'' prayer. Nevertheless, in the 1960s, Saul Lieberman of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America is reputed to have introduced a lecture by Scholem on Kabbalah with a statement that Kabbalah itself was "nonsense", but the academic study of Kabbalah was "scholarship". This view became popular among many Jews, who viewed the subject as worthy of study, but who did not accept Kabbalah as teaching literal truths. According to Bradley Shavit Artson (Dean of the Conservative Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in the American Jewish University) However, in the late 20th century and early 21st century there has been a revival in interest in Kabbalah in all branches of liberal Judaism. The Kabbalistic 12th-century prayer ''Anim Zemirot'' was restored to the new Conservative ''Sim Shalom'' ''siddur'', as was the ''B'rikh Shmeh'' passage from the Zohar, and the mystical ''Ushpizin'' service welcoming to the ''Sukkah'' the spirits of Jewish forbearers. ''Anim Zemirot'' and the 16th-century mystical poem ''Lekhah Dodi'' reappeared in the Reform Siddur ''Gates of Prayer'' in 1975. All rabbinical seminaries now teach several courses in Kabbalah—in

, both the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles have full-time instructors in Kabbalah and ''Hasidut'', Eitan Fishbane and Pinchas Giller, respectively. In Reform Judaism, Sharon Koren teaches at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Reform rabbis like Herbert Weiner and Lawrence Kushner have renewed interest in Kabbalah among Reform Jews. At the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the only accredited seminary that has curricular requirements in Kabbalah, Joel Hecker is the full-time instructor teaching courses in Kabbalah and Hasidut. According to Artson: The Reconstructionist Judaism, Reconstructionist movement, under the leadership of Arthur Green in the 1980s and 1990s, and with the influence of Zalman Schachter Shalomi, brought a strong openness to Kabbalah and hasidic elements that then came to play prominent roles in the Kol ha-Neshamah siddur series.

Contemporary study

Teaching of classic esoteric kabbalah texts and practice remained traditional until recent times, passed on in Judaism from master to disciple, or studied by leading rabbinic scholars. This changed in the 20th century, through conscious reform and the secular openness of knowledge. In contemporary times kabbalah is studied in four very different, though sometimes overlapping, ways: * The traditional method, employed among Jews since the 16th century, continues in learned study circles. Its prerequisite is to either be born Jewish or be a convert and to join a group of kabbalists under the tutelage of a rabbi, since the 18th century more likely a Hasidic one, though others exist among Sephardi-Mizrachi, and Lithuanian rabbinic scholars. Beyond elite, historical esoteric kabbalah, the public-communally studied texts of Hasidic thought explain kabbalistic concepts for wide spiritual application, through their own concern with popular psychological perception of Divine Panentheism. * A second, new Universalism#Judaism, universalist form, is the method of modern-style Jewish organisations and writers, who seek to disseminate kabbalah to every man, woman and child regardless of race or class, especially since the Western interest in mysticism from the 1960s. These derive from various cross-denominational Jewish interests in kabbalah, and range from considered theology to popularised forms that often adopt New Age terminology and beliefs for wider communication. These groups highlight or interpret kabbalah through non-particularist, universalist aspects. * A third way are non-Jewish organisations, mystery schools, initiation bodies, fraternities and secret society, secret societies, the most popular of which are Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Golden Dawn, although hundreds of similar societies claim a kabbalistic lineage. These derive from Syncretism, syncretic combinations of Jewish kabbalah with Christian, occultist or contemporary

spirituality. As a separate spiritual tradition in Western esotericism since the Renaissance, with different aims from its Jewish origin, the non-Jewish traditions differ significantly and do not give an accurate representation of the Jewish spiritual understanding (or vice versa). * Fourthly, since the mid-20th century, History, historical-critical scholarly investigation of all eras of Jewish mysticism has flourished into an established department of university Jewish studies. Where the first academic historians of Judaism in the 19th century opposed and marginalised kabbalah, Gershom Scholem and his successors repositioned the historiography of Jewish mysticism as a central, vital component of Judaic renewal through history. Cross-disciplinary academic revisions of Scholem's and others' theories are regularly published for wide readership.

Universalist Jewish organisations

The two, unrelated organisations that translate the mid-20th-century teachings of Yehuda Ashlag into a contemporary universalist message, have given kabbalah a public cross-religious profile: * ''Bnei Baruch'' is a group of Kabbalah students, based in Israel. Study materials are available in over 25 languages for free online or at printing cost. Michael Laitman established Bnei Baruch in 1991, following the passing of his teacher, Ashlag's son Rav Baruch Ashlag. Laitman named his group Bnei Baruch (sons of Baruch) to commemorate the memory of his mentor. The teaching strongly suggests restricting one's studies to 'authentic sources', kabbalists of the direct lineage of master to disciple. * ''Kabbalah Centre, The Kabbalah Centre'' was founded in the United States in 1965 as The National Research Institute of Kabbalah by Philip Berg and Rav Yehuda Tzvi Brandwein, disciple of Yehuda Ashlag's. Later Philip Berg and his wife re-established the organisation as the worldwide Kabbalah Centre. In recent times its outreach teaching in New Age style has been "derided by critics as Hollywood's new "non-religion" and even "the McDonald's of spirituality"" after having attracted a cross-religious celebrity following (see Madonna (entertainer), Madonna) and media profile, though the organisation is led by Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Jewish teachers. Other prominent Jewish universalist organisations: * ''Kabbalah Society, The Kabbalah Society'', run by Warren Kenton, an organisation based instead on pre-Lurianic Medieval Kabbalah presented in universalist style. In contrast, traditional kabbalists read earlier kabbalah through later Lurianism and the systemisations of 16th-century Safed. * ''The New Kabbalah'', website and books by Sanford L. Drob, is a scholarly intellectual investigation of the Lurianic symbolism in the perspective of modern and postmodern intellectual thought. It seeks a "new kabbalah" rooted in the historical tradition through its academic study, but universalised through dialogue with modern philosophy and psychology. This approach seeks to enrich the secular disciplines, while uncovering intellectual insights formerly implicit in kabbalah's essential myth: * The Kabbalah of Information is described in the 2018 book ''From Infinity to Man: The Fundamental Ideas of Kabbalah Within the Framework of Information Theory and Quantum Physics'' written by Ukrainian-born professor and businessman Eduard Shifrin, Eduard Shyfrin. The main tenet of the teaching is "In the beginning He created information", rephrasing the famous saying of Nahmanides, "In the beginning He created primordial matter and He didn't create anything else, just shaped it and formed it."

Hasidic

Since the 18th century, Jewish mystical development has continued in Hasidic Judaism, turning kabbalah into a social revival with texts that internalise mystical thought. Among different schools, Chabad-Lubavitch and Breslov (Hasidic group), Breslav with related organisations, give outward looking spiritual resources and textual learning for secular Jews. The Intellectual Hasidism of Chabad most emphasises the spread and understanding of kabbalah through its explanation in Hasidic thought, articulating the Divine meaning within kabbalah through human rational analogies, uniting the spiritual and material, esoteric and exoteric in their Divine source:

Neo-Hasidic

From the early 20th century,

expressed a modernist or non-Orthodox Jewish interest in Jewish mysticism, becoming influential among Modern Orthodox Judaism, Modern Orthodox, Conservative Judaism, Conservative, Reform Judaism, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism, Reconstructionalist Jewish denominations from the 1960s, and organised through the Jewish Renewal and Chavurah movements. The writings and teachings of Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Arthur Green, Lawrence Kushner, Herbert Weiner and others, has sought a critically selective, non-fundamentalist neo- Kabbalistic and Hasidic study and Jewish mysticism, mystical spirituality among modernist Jews. The contemporary proliferation of scholarship by Jewish mysticism academia has contributed to critical adaptions of Jewish mysticism. Arthur Green's translations from the religious writings of Hillel Zeitlin conceive the latter to be a precursor of contemporary Neo-Hasidism. Reform rabbi Herbert Weiner's ''Nine and a Half Mystics, Nine and a Half Mystics: The Kabbala Today'' (1969), a travelogue among Kabbalists and Hasidim, brought perceptive insights into Jewish mysticism to many Reform Jews. Leading Reform philosopher Eugene Borowitz described the Orthodox Hasidic Adin Steinsaltz (''The Thirteen Petalled Rose'') and Aryeh Kaplan as major presenters of Kabbalistic spirituality for modernists today.

Rav Kook

The writings of Abraham Isaac Kook (1864–1935), first chief rabbi of Mandate Palestine and visionary, incorporate kabbalistic themes through his own poetic language and concern with human and divine unity. His influence is in the Religious Zionism, Religious Zionist community, who follow his aim that the legal and imaginative aspects of Judaism should interfuse:

Mandaean parallels

Nathaniel Deutsch writes: R.J. Zwi Werblowsky suggests Mandaeism has more commonality with Kabbalah than with Merkabah mysticism such as cosmogony and sexual imagery. The Thousand and Twelve Questions, Scroll of Exalted Kingship, and Alma Rišaia Rba link the alphabet with the creation of the world, a concept found in

and the Bahir. Mandaean names for uthras (angels or guardians) have been found in Jewish magical texts. Abatur appears to be inscribed inside a Jewish magic bowl in a corrupted form as "Abiṭur". Ptahil is found in Sefer HaRazim listed among other angels who stand on the ninth step of the second firmament.

Citations

General references

* Bodoff, Lippman;
Jewish Mysticism: Medieval Roots, Contemporary Dangers and Prospective Challenges
; ''The Edah Journal'' 2003 3.1 * Joseph Dan, Dan, Joseph; ''The Early Jewish Mysticism'', Tel Aviv: MOD Books, 1993. * Dan, Joseph; ''The Heart and the Fountain: An Anthology of Jewish Mystical Experiences'', New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. * Dan, Joseph; "Samael, Lilith, and the Concept of Evil in Early Kabbalah", ''AJS Review'', vol. 5, 1980. * Dan, Joseph; ''The 'Unique Cherub' Circle'', Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1999. * Dan, J. and Kiener, R.; ''The Early Kabbalah'', Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1986. * Dennis, G.; ''The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism'', St. Paul: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2007. * Fine, Lawrence, ed. ''Essential Papers in Kabbalah'', New York: NYU Press, 1995. * Fine, Lawrence; ''Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and his Kabbalistic Fellowship'', Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. * Fine, Lawrence; ''Safed Spirituality'', Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1989. * Fine, Lawrence, ed., ''Judaism in Practice'', Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001. * Green, Arthur; ''EHYEH: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow.'' Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2003. * Grözinger, Karl E., ''Jüdisches Denken Band 2: Von der mittelalterlichen Kabbala zum Hasidismus'', (Campus) Frankfurt /New York, 2005 * Hecker, Joel; ''Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah.'' Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005. * Levy, Patrick, ''HaKabbalist'', ''edi. Yael, Tel Aviv'' 201
Author's website.
* Moshe Idel, Idel, Moshe; ''Kabbalah: New Perspectives.'' New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988. * Idel, Moshe; ''The Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid'', New York: SUNY Press, 1990. * Idel, Moshe; ''Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic'', New York: SUNY Press, 1995. * Idel, Moshe; ''Kabbalistic Prayer and Color, Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times'', D. Blumenthal, ed., Chicago: Scholar's Press, 1985. * Idel, Moshe; ''The Mystica Experience in Abraham Abulafia'', New York, SUNY Press, 1988. * Idel, Moshe; ''Kabbalah: New Perspectives, New Haven'', Yale University Press, 1988. * Idel, Moshe; ''Magic and Kabbalah in the 'Book of the Responding Entity; The Solomon Goldman Lectures VI, Chicago: Spertus College of Judaica Press, 1993. * Idel, Moshe; "The Story of Rabbi Joseph della Reina"; Behayahu, M. ''Studies and Texts on the History of the Jewish Community in Safed''. * Aryeh Kaplan, Kaplan, Aryeh; ''Inner Space: Introduction to Kabbalah, Meditation and Prophecy''. Moznaim Publishing Corp 1990. * John W. McGinley, McGiney, John W.; The Written' as the Vocation of Conceiving Jewishly'' * Samuel, Gabriella; "The Kabbalah Handbook: A Concise Encyclopedia of Terms and Concepts in Jewish Mysticism". Penguin Books 2007. * Gershom Scholem, Scholem, Gershom; ''Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism'', 1941. * Scholem, Gershom; ''Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and the Talmudic Tradition'', 1960. * Scholem, Gershom; ''Sabbatai Zevi, the Mystical Messiah'', 1973. * Scholem, Gershom; ''Kabbalah'', Jewish Publication Society, 1974. * Wineberg, Yosef; ''Lessons in Tanya: The Tanya of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi'' (5 volume set). Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, 1998. * Wirszubski, Chaim; ''Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism'', Harvard University Press, 1989. * Wolfson, Elliot; ''Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism'', Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. * Wolfson, Elliot; ''Language, Eros Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination'', New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. * Wolfson, Elliot; ''Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. * Wolfson, Elliot; ''Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. * Wolfson, Elliot; ''Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings From Zoharic Literature'', London: Onworld Publications, 2007. * ''The Wisdom of The Zohar: An Anthology of Texts'', three volume set, Ed. Isaiah Tishby, translated from the Hebrew by David Goldstein, The Littman Library. *

External links

Jewish Encyclopedia: Cabala

Hermetic Kabbalah

King David Kabbalah on Mount Zion, Jerusalem

The Kabbalah Centre

Learn Kabbalah: Lurianic Kabbalah

Devekut.com
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