Kabbalist

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 dialectictheosophical speculation. In contrast, contemporary scholarship by Moshe Idel and Elliot R. Wolfson has advanced a phenomenological understanding of the mystical nature of Kabbalistic experience, grounded in close readings of 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 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 meditation upon the sephirot as a vehicle for prophecy. Judaism's ban on physical iconography, along with anthropomorphic metaphors for Divinity in the Hebrew Bible and Midrash, enabled their internal visualisation of the divine sephirotanthropos 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 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 ritual of was to prostrate at the graves of Talmudic Tannaim, Amoraim and Kabbalists), the soul of the Mishnah, ascents during sleep, heavenly messengers, etc. A tradition of parapsychological abilities, psychic knowledge, and theurgic intercessions in heaven for the community is recounted in the hagiographic works Praises of the Ari, Praises of the Besht, and in many other Kabbalistic and Hasidic tales. Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts are concerned with translating themselves from intellectual exegesis and theory into religious practice, including the prophetic drawing of new mystical revelations in the Torah. The mythological symbols Kabbalah uses to answer philosophical questions themselves invite mystical contemplation, intuitive apprehension, and psychological engagement.