Kabbalah or Qabalah ( ; , ; ) is an

esoteric Western esotericism, also known as the Western mystery tradition, is a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas and currents are united since they are largely distinct both from orthod ...

method, discipline and

school of thought A school of thought, or intellectual tradition, is the perspective of a group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social movement, economics, cultural movement, or art movement. ...

Jewish mysticism Academic study of Jewish mysticism, especially since Gershom Scholem's ''Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism'' (1941), draws distinctions between different forms of mysticism which were practiced in different eras of Jewish history. Of these, Kabbal ...

. It forms the foundation of

mystical 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 ...

religious interpretations within Judaism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal (). Jewish Kabbalists originally developed transmissions of the primary texts of Kabbalah within the realm of Jewish tradition and often use classical Jewish scriptures to explain and demonstrate its mystical teachings. Kabbalists hold these teachings to define the inner meaning of both the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' rabbinic literature Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire corpus of works authored by rabbis throughout Jewish history. The term typically refers to literature from the Talmudic era (70–640 CE), as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic ...

and their formerly concealed transmitted dimension, as well as to explain the significance of Jewish religious observances. Historically, Kabbalah emerged from earlier forms of

, in 12th- to 13th-century al-Andalus (Spain) and in Hakhmei Provence, and was reinterpreted during the Jewish mystical renaissance in 16th-century Ottoman Palestine. The , the foundational text of Kabbalah, was authored in the late 13th century, likely by Moses de León.

Isaac Luria Isaac ben Solomon Ashkenazi Luria (; #FINE_2003, Fine 2003, p24/ref>July 25, 1572), commonly known in Jewish religious circles as Ha'ari, Ha'ari Hakadosh or Arizal, was a leading rabbi and Jewish mysticism, Jewish mystic in the community of Saf ...

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

Hasidic Judaism Hasidism () or Hasidic Judaism is a religious movement within Judaism that arose in the 18th century as a Spirituality, spiritual revival movement in contemporary Western Ukraine before spreading rapidly throughout Eastern Europe. Today, most ...

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. Though minor works contribute to an understanding of the Kabbalah as an evolving tradition, the primary texts are the and . The early Hekhalot literature is acknowledged as ancestral to the sensibilities of this later flowering of the Kabbalah and more especially the is acknowledged as the antecedent from which all these books draw many of their formal inspirations. The ''Sefer Yetzirah'' is a brief document of only few pages that was written many centuries before the high and late medieval works (sometime between 200-600CE), detailing an alphanumeric vision of cosmology—may be understood as a kind of prelude to the canon of Kabbalah.

History of Jewish mysticism

The history of Jewish mysticism encompasses various forms of

and spiritual practices aimed at understanding the divine and the hidden aspects of existence. This mystical tradition has evolved significantly over millennia, influencing and being influenced by different historical, cultural, and religious contexts. Among the most prominent forms of Jewish mysticism is Kabbalah, which emerged in the 12th century and has since become a central component of Jewish mystical thought. Other notable early forms include prophetic and apocalyptic mysticism, which are evident in biblical and post-biblical texts. The roots of Jewish mysticism can be traced back to the biblical era, with prophetic figures such as

Elijah Elijah ( ) or Elias was a prophet and miracle worker who lived in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Ahab (9th century BC), according to the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah defended the worsh ...

and

Ezekiel Ezekiel, also spelled Ezechiel (; ; ), was an Israelite priest. The Book of Ezekiel, relating his visions and acts, is named after him. The Abrahamic religions acknowledge Ezekiel as a prophet. According to the narrative, Ezekiel prophesied ...

experiencing divine visions and encounters. This tradition continued into the apocalyptic period, where texts like

1 Enoch The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch; Hebrew: סֵפֶר חֲנוֹךְ, ''Sēfer Ḥănōḵ''; , ) is an ancient Jewish apocalyptic religious text, ascribed by tradition to the patriarch Enoch who was the father of Methuselah and the great-gran ...

and the

Book of Daniel The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th-century BC setting. It is ostensibly a narrative detailing the experiences and Prophecy, prophetic visions of Daniel, a Jewish Babylonian captivity, exile in Babylon ...

introduced complex angelology and eschatological themes. The Hekhalot and

Merkabah Merkabah () or Merkavah mysticism (lit. Chariot mysticism) is a school of History of Judaism, early Jewish mysticism (), centered on vision (spirituality), visions such as those found in Ezekiel 1 or in the hekhalot literature ("palaces" literat ...

literature, dating from the 2nd century to the early medieval period, further developed these mystical themes, focusing on visionary ascents to the heavenly palaces and the divine chariot. The medieval period saw the formalization of Kabbalah, particularly in southern France and Spain. Foundational texts such as the '' Bahir'' and the ''

Zohar The ''Zohar'' (, ''Zōhar'', lit. "Splendor" or "Radiance") is a foundational work of Kabbalistic literature. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah and scriptural interpretations as well as material o ...

'' were composed during this time, laying the groundwork for later developments. The Kabbalistic teachings of this era delved deeply into the nature of the divine, the structure of the universe, and the process of creation. Notable Kabbalists like Moses de León played crucial roles in disseminating these teachings, which were characterized by their profound symbolic and allegorical interpretations of the Torah. In the early modern period,

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 earli ...

, founded by

in the 16th century, introduced new metaphysical concepts such as '' Tzimtzum'' (divine contraction) and '' Tikkun'' (cosmic repair), which have had a lasting impact on Jewish thought. The 18th century saw the rise of

Hasidism Hasidism () or Hasidic Judaism is a religious movement within Judaism that arose in the 18th century as a Spirituality, spiritual revival movement in contemporary Western Ukraine before spreading rapidly throughout Eastern Europe. Today, most ...

, a movement that integrated Kabbalistic ideas into a popular, revivalist context, emphasizing personal mystical experience and the presence of the divine in everyday life.

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 (philosophy), interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Bible, Biblical works. In modern us ...

). These four levels are called from their initial letters (PRDS , 'orchard'): * ( ): the direct interpretations of meaning. * ( ): the allegoric meanings (through

allusion Allusion, or alluding, is a figure of speech that makes a reference to someone or something by name (a person, object, location, etc.) without explaining how it relates to the given context, so that the audience must realize the connection in the ...

). * ( from the Hebrew : 'inquire' or 'seek'):

midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; or ''midrashot' ...

ic (rabbinic) meanings, often with imaginative comparisons with similar words or verses. * (, ): the inner, esoteric (

metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of h ...

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

Torah The Torah ( , "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. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch () ...

– 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

together comprise the Theosophical tradition in Kabbalah, while the Meditative- Ecstatic Kabbalah incorporates a parallel inter-related Medieval tradition. A third tradition, related but more shunned, involves the magical aims of Practical Kabbalah. Moshe Idel, 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 tradition of Theoretical Kabbalah (the main focus of the 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 the modern ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment) and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconc ...

, particularly

Maimonides Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and Jewish philosophy, philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah schola ...

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

theosophy Theosophy is a religious movement established in the United States in the late 19th century. Founded primarily by the Russian Helena Blavatsky and based largely on her writings, it draws heavily from both older European philosophies such as Neop ...

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 Ecstatic Kabbalah (exemplified by Abraham Abulafia and Isaac of Acre) strives to achieve a mystical union with God, or nullification of the meditator in God's

Active intellect In medieval philosophy, the active intellect (Latin: ''intellectus agens''; also translated as agent intellect, active intelligence, active reason, or productive intellect) is the formal (''morphe'') aspect of the intellect ('' nous''), according ...

. 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 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 Jerusalem. Accord ...

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 Middle Aramaic , a loanword from , 'assembly,' 'sitting together,' hence ' assembly' or 'council') was a Jewish legislative and judicial assembly of either 23 or 70 elders, existing at both a local and central level i ...

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

Hayyim ben Joseph Vital Hayyim ben Joseph Vital (; Safed, October 23, 1542 (Julian calendar) / October 11, 1542 (Gregorian Calendar) – Damascus, 23 April 1620) was a rabbi in Safed and the foremost disciple of Isaac Luria. He recorded much of his master's teachi ...

. However, even this qualification does little to limit the scope of understanding and expression, as included in those works are commentaries on Abulafian writings, , Albotonian writings, and the , 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 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 ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

onwards Jewish Kabbalah texts entered non-Jewish culture, where they were studied and translated by Christian Hebraists 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 Ancient Greek: , romanized: ''gnōstikós'', Koine Greek: �nostiˈkos 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among early Christian sects. These diverse g ...

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 Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a European intellectual and philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained through rationalism and empiric ...

, Hermetic Qabalah continued as a central underground tradition in

Western esotericism Western esotericism, also known as the Western mystery tradition, is a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas and currents are united since they are largely distinct both from orthod ...

. Through these non-Jewish associations with magic,

alchemy Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

and divination, Kabbalah acquired some popular

occult The occult () is a category of esoteric or supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of organized religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving a 'hidden' or 'secret' agency, such as magic and mysti ...

connotations forbidden within Judaism, where Jewish 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 Spirituality, spiritual or Religion, religious practices and beliefs that rapidly grew in Western world, Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclecticism, eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise d ...

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.

Concepts

The definition of Kabbalah varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it. According to its earliest and original usage in ancient Hebrew it means 'reception' or 'tradition', and in this context it tends to refer to any sacred writing composed after (or otherwise outside of) the five books of the Torah. After the Talmud is written, it refers to the Oral Law (both in the sense of the 'Talmud' itself and in the sense of continuing dialog and thought devoted to the scripture in every generation). In the much later writings of Eleazar of Worms (c. 1350), it refers to

theurgy Theurgy (; from the Greek θεουργία ), also known as divine magic, is one of two major branches of the magical arts, Pierre A. Riffard, ''Dictionnaire de l'ésotérisme'', Paris: Payot, 1983, 340. the other being practical magic or thau ...

or the conjuring of demons and angels by the invocation of their secret names. The understanding of the word Kabbalah undergoes a transformation of its meaning in medieval Judaism, in the books which are now primarily referred to as 'the Kabbalah': the '' Bahir'', the ''

'', '' Etz Hayim'' etc. In these books the word Kabbalah is used in manifold new senses. During this major phase it refers to the continuity of revelation in every generation, on the one hand, while also suggesting the necessity of revelation to remain concealed and secret or esoteric in every period by formal requirements native to sacred truth. When the term Kabbalah is used to refer to a canon of secret mystical books by medieval Jews, these aforementioned books and other works in their constellation are the books and the literary sensibility to which the term refers. Even later the word is adapted or appropriated in

(

Christian Kabbalah Christian Kabbalah arose during the Renaissance due to Christian scholars' interest in the mysticism of Kabbalah, Jewish Kabbalah, which they interpreted according to Christian theology. Often spelled Cabala to distinguish it from the Jewish for ...

and Hermetic Qabalah), where it influences the tenor and aesthetics of European occultism practiced by gentiles or non-Jews. But above all, Jewish Kabbalah is a set of sacred and magical teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

—the mysterious '' Ein Sof'' (, 'The Infinite')—and the mortal, finite

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents. It comprises all of existence, any fundamental interaction, physical process and physical constant, and therefore all forms of matter and energy, and the structures they form, from s ...

(God's creation).

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 classical theistic and monotheistic theology, the doctrine of divine simplicity says that God is simple (without parts). God exists as one unified entity, with no distinct attributes; God's existence is identical to God's essence. Overview ...

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, 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. 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

Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments (), or the Decalogue (from Latin , from Ancient Greek , ), are religious and ethical directives, structured as a covenant document, that, according to the Hebrew Bible, were given by YHWH to Moses. The text of the Ten ...

, 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'' ( ) is a Hebrew word meaning "gods" or "godhood". Although the word is plural in form, in the Hebrew Bible it most often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement and refers to a single deity, particularly but not always the Go ...

'' (God's manifestation in creation)": The structure of emanations has been described in various ways:

Sephirot Sefirot (; , plural of ), meaning '' emanations'', are the 10 attributes/emanations in Kabbalah, through which Ein Sof ("infinite space") reveals itself and continuously creates both the physical realm and the seder hishtalshelut (the chained ...

(divine attributes) and Partzufim (divine "faces"), Ohr (spiritual light and flow),

Names of God There are various names of God, many of which enumerate the various Quality (philosophy), qualities of a Supreme Being. The English word ''God (word), god'' (and its equivalent in other languages) is used by multiple religions as a noun to ref ...

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 A man is an adult male human. Before adulthood, a male child or adolescent is referred to as a boy. Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the f ...

. 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 Ein Sof 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. These emanations are viewed as parts of God's divine nature, which reveal themselves in different ways. 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.

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

Tzadik Tzadik ( ''ṣaddīq'' , "righteous ne; also ''zadik'' or ''sadiq''; pl. ''tzadikim'' ''ṣadīqīm'') is a title in Judaism given to people considered righteous, such as biblical figures and later spiritual masters. The root of the word ...

) 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'' (''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.

Partzufim

The most esoteric Idrot 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 to ...

symbolic personalities based on Biblical esoteric exegesis and

midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; or ''midrashot' ...

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. As the psychic counterpart of instinct (i.e., archetypes a ...

of the

collective unconscious In psychology, the collective unconsciousness () is a term coined by Carl Jung, which is the belief that the unconscious mind comprises the instincts of Jungian archetypes—innate symbols understood from birth in all humans. Jung considered th ...

, 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 study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...

and

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

Descending spiritual worlds

Medieval Kabbalists believed that all things are linked to God through these 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 '' Ein Sof'' unknowable Godhead. They reinterpreted the

theistic Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of at least one deity. In common parlance, or when contrasted with '' deism'', the term often describes the philosophical conception of God that is found in classical theism—or the co ...

philosophical concept of creation from nothing, replacing God's creative act with

panentheistic Panentheism (; "all in God", from the Greek , and ) is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 (after reviewin ...

continual self-emanation by the mystical

Ayin ''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician ''ʿayin'' 𐤏, Hebrew ''ʿayin'' , Aramaic ''ʿē'' 𐡏, Syriac ''ʿē'' ܥ, and Arabic ''ʿayn'' (where it is si ...

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 comprehensive spiritual worlds, '' Atziluth'' ("Closeness" – Divine Wisdom), '' Beriah'' ("Creation" – Divine Understanding), '' Yetzirah'' ("Formation" – Divine Emotions), '' Assiah'' ("Action" – Divine Activity), with a preceding Fifth World ''

Adam Kadmon In Kabbalah, Adam Kadmon (, ''ʾāḏām qaḏmōn'', "Primordial Man") also called Adam Elyon (, ''ʾāḏām ʿelyōn'', "Most High Man"), or Adam Ila'ah (, ''ʾāḏām ʿīllāʾā'' "Most High Adam" in Aramaic), sometimes abbreviated as A ...

'' ("Primordial Man" – Divine Will) sometimes excluded due to its sublimity. Together the whole spiritual heavens form the Divine Persona/ 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 acosmic 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 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 '' qlippoth'' (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 ("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

below) took place in the spiritual realms. Their sin was that they separated the Tree of knowledge (10

sefirot Sefirot (; , plural of ), meaning '' emanations'', are the 10 attributes/emanations in Kabbalah, through which Ein Sof ("infinite space") reveals itself and continuously creates both the physical realm and the seder hishtalshelut (the chained ...

within Malkuth, representing Divine immanence), from the

Tree of life The tree of life is a fundamental archetype in many of the world's mythology, mythological, religion, religious, and philosophy, philosophical traditions. It is closely related to the concept of the sacred tree.Giovino, Mariana (2007). ''The ...

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 stable spiritual worlds, mystically represented by the 8 Kings of Edom (the derivative of Gevurah) "who died" before any king reigned in Israel from Genesis 36. In the divine view from above within Kabbalah, emphasised in

Hasidic Hasidism () or Hasidic Judaism is a religious movement within Judaism that arose in the 18th century as a spiritual revival movement in contemporary Western Ukraine before spreading rapidly throughout Eastern Europe. Today, most of those aff ...

Panentheism Panentheism (; "all in God", from the Greek , and ) is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 (after reviewin ...

, the appearance of duality and pluralism below dissolves into the absolute

Monism Monism attributes oneness or singleness () to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished: * Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonis ...

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 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 In its primary meaning, the Hebrew language, Hebrew word (; , ''mīṣvā'' , plural ''mīṣvōt'' ; "commandment") refers to a commandment Divine law, from God to be performed as a religious duty. Jewish law () in large part consists of disc ...

, 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 According to Jewish tradition, the Torah contains 613 commandments (). Although the number 613 is mentioned in the Talmud, its real significance increased in later medieval rabbinic literature, including many works listing or arranged by the . Th ...

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. * ''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.

Reincarnation

Reincarnation Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the Philosophy, philosophical or Religion, religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new lifespan (disambiguation), lifespan in a different physical ...

, 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

PikiWiki Israel 11324 The city wore white

'' 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'' (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 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 ...

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 Adam is the name given in Genesis 1–5 to the first human. Adam is the first human-being aware of God, and features as such in various belief systems (including Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism and Islam). According to Christianity, 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

Biblical The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) biblical languages ...

and

Midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; or ''midrashot' ...

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 meanings, describing the spiritual dimensions within exoteric ideas, and it teaches the

hermeneutic Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. As necessary, hermeneutics may include the art of understanding and communication. ...

methods of interpretation for ascertaining these meanings.

Names of God in Judaism Judaism has different names given to God in Judaism, God, which are considered sacred: (), (''Adonai'' ), (''El (deity), El'' ), ( ), (''El Shaddai, Shaddai'' ), and ( ); some also include I Am that I Am.This is the formulation of Josep ...

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 In its primary meaning, the Hebrew word (; , ''mīṣvā'' , plural ''mīṣvōt'' ; "commandment") refers to a commandment from God to be performed as a religious duty. Jewish law () in large part consists of discussion of these commandments ...

" 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 Knowledge is the external, finite Halachic Torah, enclothed within which the mystics perceive the unlimited infinite plurality of meanings of the Torah of the

Tree of Life The tree of life is a fundamental archetype in many of the world's mythology, mythological, religion, religious, and philosophy, philosophical traditions. It is closely related to the concept of the sacred tree.Giovino, Mariana (2007). ''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".Moshe Cordovero, ''Or Ha-Hammah'' on Zohar III, 106a As early as the 1st century BCE Jews believed that the Torah and other canonical texts contained encoded messages and hidden meanings.

Gematria In numerology, gematria (; or , plural or ) is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word, or phrase by reading it as a number, or sometimes by using an alphanumeric cipher. The letters of the alphabets involved have standar ...

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 philosophical concepts described by

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

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 In philosophy, deconstruction is a loosely-defined set of approaches to understand the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from ...

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 A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise different concep ...

dialectic Dialectic (; ), also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. Dialectic resembles debate, but the ...

Theosophical speculation. In contrast, contemporary scholarship of Moshe Idel and Elliot R. Wolfson has opened a phenomenological understanding of the

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 philosophical debates on the role of imagination in Biblical prophecy, and essentialist versus instrumental kabbalistic debates about the relation of

sephirot Sefirot (; , plural of ), meaning '' emanations'', are the 10 attributes/emanations in Kabbalah, through which Ein Sof ("infinite space") reveals itself and continuously creates both the physical realm and the seder hishtalshelut (the chained ...

to God, they saw 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"
. '' midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; or ''midrashot' ...

, 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 '' 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 Lurianic meditation prostrated on the graves of Talmudic

Tannaim ''Tannaim'' ( Amoraic Hebrew: תנאים "repeaters", "teachers", singular ''tanna'' , borrowed from Aramaic) were the rabbinic sages whose views are recorded in the Mishnah, from approximately 10–220 CE. The period of the Tannaim, also refe ...

Amoraim ''Amoraim'' ( , singular ''Amora'' ; "those who say" or "those who speak over the people", or "spokesmen") refers to Jewish scholars of the period from about 200 to 500 CE, who "said" or "told over" the teachings of the Oral Torah. They were p ...

and Kabbalists), the soul of the

mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; , from the verb ''šānā'', "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. Having been collected in the 3rd century CE, it is ...

, ascents during sleep, heavenly messengers, etc. A tradition of

parapsychology Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, teleportation, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry (paranormal), psychometry) and other paranormal cla ...

abilities,

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use powers rooted in parapsychology, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance; or who performs acts that a ...

knowledge, and theurgic intercessions in heaven for the community is recounted in the

hagiographic A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an wiktionary:adulatory, adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religi ...

works ''Praises of the Ari'', ''Praises of the Besht'', and in many other Kabbalistic and

tales. Kabbalistic and

texts are concerned to apply themselves from

and theory to spiritual practice, including prophetic drawing of new mystical revelations in Torah. The mythological symbols Kabbalah uses to answer philosophical questions, themselves invite

contemplation, intuitive apprehension and

psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

engagement.

Paradoxical coincidence of opposites

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

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and

, Sanford Drob shows philosophically how every symbol of the Kabbalah embodies the simultaneous

dialectical Dialectic (; ), also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. Dialectic resembles debate, but the c ...

paradox of mystical '' Coincidentia oppositorum'', the conjoining of two opposite dualities. Thus the Infinite Ein Sof is above the duality of '' 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);

bridge the philosophical problem of the One and the Many; Man is both Divine (

) 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 ( Tikun) from different perspectives; God experiences Himself as Other through Man, Man embodies and completes (Tikun) the Divine Persona Above. In Kabbalah's reciprocal

Theism Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of at least one deity. In common parlance, or when contrasted with '' deism'', the term often describes the philosophical conception of God that is found in classical theism—or the co ...

and

Atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the Existence of God, existence of Deity, deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the ...

Humanism Humanism is a philosophy, philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and Agency (philosophy), agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The me ...

represent two incomplete poles of a mutual dialectic that imply and include each other's partial validity. This was expressed by the

Chabad Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch (; ; ), is a dynasty in Hasidic Judaism. Belonging to the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) branch of Orthodox Judaism, it is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, as well as one of ...

Hasidic thinker Aaron of Staroselye, that the truth of any concept is revealed only in its opposite.

Metaphysics or axiology

By expressing itself using

and

myth Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

that transcend single interpretations, Theosophical Kabbalah incorporates aspects of

, Jewish

and unconscious

depth psychology Depth psychology (from the German term ''Tiefenpsychologie'') refers to the practice and research of the science of the unconscious, covering both psychoanalysis and psychology. It is also defined as the psychological theory that explores the rel ...

mysticism Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute (philosophy), Absolute, but may refer to any kind of Religious ecstasy, ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or Spirituality, spiritual meani ...

and

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique to train attention and awareness and detach from reflexive, "discursive thinking", achieving a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state, while not judging the meditat ...

, Jewish exegesis,

, and

ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

, as well as overlapping with theory from magical elements. Its symbols can be read as questions which are their own

existentialist Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that explore the human individual's struggle to lead an authentic life despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of existence. In examining meaning, purpose, and value ...

answers (the Hebrew sephirah Chokmah-Wisdom, the beginning of Existence, is read etymologically by Kabbalists as the question "Koach Mah?" the "Power of What?"). Alternative listings of the

start with either Keter (Unconscious Will/Volition), or Chokmah (Wisdom), a philosophical duality between a Rational or Supra-Rational Creation, between whether the

Mitzvot In its primary meaning, the Hebrew word (; , ''mīṣvā'' , plural ''mīṣvōt'' ; "commandment") refers to a commandment from God to be performed as a religious duty. Jewish law () in large part consists of discussion of these commandments ...

Judaic observances have reasons or transcend reasons in Divine Will, between whether study or good deeds is superior, and whether the symbols of Kabbalah should be read as primarily

intellectual cognition or

Axiology Value theory, also called ''axiology'', studies the nature, sources, and types of values. It is a branch of philosophy and an interdisciplinary field closely associated with social sciences such as economics, sociology, anthropology, and psychol ...

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

(Lurianic Kabbalah incorporates its own Shevirah self shattering; the Ein Sof 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 antinomian mystical breaking of 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 Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication in which knowledge, art, ideas and culture are received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another.Jan Vansina, Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (19 ...

, 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 ) 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

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'' () is a Greek word meaning "revelation", "an unveiling or unfolding o ...

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'', '' Sefer Raziel HaMalakh'' 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 ''Halakha'' ( ; , ), also Romanization of Hebrew, transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Judaism, Jewish religious laws that are derived from the Torah, Written and Oral Torah. ''Halakha'' is ...

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 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

has been a centre of this research, including Scholem and

Isaiah Tishby Isaiah ( or ; , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "Yahweh is salvation"; also known as Isaias or Esaias from ) was the 8th-century BC Israelite Biblical prophet, prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named. The text of the Book of Isaiah refers to Isaiah ...

, and more recently Joseph Dan, Yehuda Liebes, Rachel Elior, and Moshe Idel. Scholars across the eras of Jewish mysticism in America and Britain have included Alexander Altmann, Arthur Green, Lawrence Fine, Elliot Wolfson, 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

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839� ...

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

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. 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 ''

Sefer Yetzirah ''Sefer Yetzirah'' ( ''Sēp̄er Yəṣīrā'', ''Book of Formation'', or ''Book of Creation'') is a work of Jewish mysticism. Early commentaries, such as the ''Kuzari'', treated it as a treatise on mathematical and linguistic theory, as opposed t ...

'', is dated back to the patriarch

Abraham Abraham (originally Abram) is the common Hebrews, Hebrew Patriarchs (Bible), patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father who began the Covenant (biblical), covenanta ...

. 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 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

Oral Torah According to Rabbinic Judaism, the Oral Torah or Oral Law () are statutes and legal interpretations that were not recorded in the Five Books of Moses, the Written Torah (), and which are regarded by Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Jews as prescriptive ...

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 Talmudic sages, 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

Distinction between Jews and non-Jews

One point of view is represented by the Hasidic work '' 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 Shneur Zalman of Liadi, (; September 4, 1745 – December 15, 1812 O.S. / 18 Elul 5505 – 24 Tevet 5573) commonly known as the Alter Rebbe or Baal Hatanya, was a rabbi and the founder and first Rebbe of Chabad, a branch of Hasidic Judaism. He ...

(1745–1812), can achieve a high level of spirituality, similar to an angel, his soul is still fundamentally different in character, from a Jewish one. A similar view is found in '' Kuzari'', an early medieval philosophical book by Yehuda Halevi (1075–1141). Another rabbi, Abraham Yehudah Khein (1878–1957), 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". 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 In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. Being confronted by situations that challenge this dissonance may ultimately result in some ...

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 The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a European intellectual and philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained through rationalism and empirici ...

. Pinchas Elijah Hurwitz, a 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 Italian Jews (; ) or Roman Jews (; ) can be used in a broad sense to mean all Jews living in or with roots in Italy, or, in a narrower sense, to mean the Italkim, an ancient community living in Italy since the Ancient Roman era, who use the It ...

. 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

pagan Paganism (, later 'civilian') is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Christianity, Judaism, and Samaritanism. In the time of the ...

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's religions, which represent different facets and stages of the universal human spirituality. In his writings, Benamozegh interprets the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

Hadith Hadith is the Arabic word for a 'report' or an 'account f an event and refers to the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle ...

Vedas FIle:Atharva-Veda samhita page 471 illustration.png, upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the ''Atharvaveda''. The Vedas ( or ; ), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of relig ...

Avesta The Avesta (, Book Pahlavi: (), Persian language, Persian: ()) is the text corpus of Zoroastrian literature, religious literature of Zoroastrianism. All its texts are composed in the Avestan language and written in the Avestan alphabet. Mod ...

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 ''

'' 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 Cordovero and

, takes an intermediate position: the instrumental vessels of the sephirot are created, but their inner light is from the undifferentiated

Ohr Ein Sof Ohr (, plural: ''ʾoroṯ'') is a central Kabbalistic term in Jewish mysticism. The analogy to physical light describes divine emanations. Shefa "flow" ( ''šep̄aʿ'') and its derivative, hashpaʾa "influence" ( ''hašpāʿā''), are someti ...

essence.

(12th century), celebrated by followers for his Jewish rationalism, rejected many of the pre-Kabbalistic Hekalot texts, particularly '' Shi'ur Qomah'' 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 Judaic observance by the populance misreading Maimonides' ideal of philosophical contemplation over ritual performance in his philosophical ''

Guide for the Perplexed ''The Guide for the Perplexed'' (; ; ) is a work of Jewish theology by Maimonides. It seeks to reconcile Aristotelianism with Rabbinical Jewish theology by finding rational explanations for many events in the text. It was written in Judeo-Arabi ...

''. They objected to Maimonides equating the Talmudic Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah secrets of the Torah with Aristotelean physics and metaphysics in that work and in his legal

Mishneh Torah The ''Mishneh Torah'' (), also known as ''Sefer Yad ha-Hazaka'' (), is a code of Rabbinic Jewish religious law (''halakha'') authored by Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon/Rambam). The ''Mishneh Torah'' was compiled between 1170 and 1180 CE ( ...

, teaching that their own Theosophy, centred on an esoteric metaphysics of traditional Jewish practice, is the Torah's true inner meaning. The Kabbalist medieval rabbinic sage

Nachmanides Moses ben Nachman ( ''Mōše ben-Nāḥmān'', "Moses son of Nachman"; 1194–1270), commonly known as Nachmanides (; ''Nakhmanídēs''), and also referred to by the acronym Ramban (; ) and by the contemporary nickname Bonastruc ça Porta (; l ...

(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 commentary to the Five books of Moses. Abraham Maimonides (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, emphasizing the

Monotheist Monotheism is the belief that one God is the only, or at least the dominant deity.F. L. Cross, Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. A ...

Oneness of Divine transcendence unlike any worldly conception. Kabbalah's

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 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 Hasidic Panentheism, the world is 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'' R. Neḥunya ben ha-Kanah and describing some of its content as truly heretical. Kabbalistic Prayer Book

Leon of Modena, a 17th-century 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 ''

''. 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 ( 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 kavanot 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 Ein Sof; 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

,. 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.

Vilna Gaon Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, ( ''Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman''), also known as the Vilna Gaon ( ''Der Vilner Goen''; ; or Elijah of Vilna, or by his Hebrew acronym Gr"a ("Gaon Rabbenu Eliyahu": "Our great teacher Elijah"; Sialiec, April 23, 172 ...

(1720–1797) 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

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

, he had no use for canonical medieval

, declaring that

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

varied from those who appreciated

Maimonidean Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ag ...

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 Jewish religion, the official

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...

of Judaism, that was essential to normative Judaism until fairly recently. With the decline of Jewish life in

medieval Spain Spain in the Middle Ages is a period in the history of Spain that began in the 5th century following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ended with the beginning of the early modern period in 1492. The history of Spain is marked by waves o ...

, it displaced rationalist

until the modern rise of Haskalah enlightenment, receiving a revival in our

postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...

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

reincarnation Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the Philosophy, philosophical or Religion, religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new lifespan (disambiguation), lifespan in a different physical ...

captured the popular imagination in Jewish folklore and in the Sabbatean and

social movements. Giller notes that the former

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

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 ...

. In contemporary

Orthodox Judaism Orthodox Judaism is a collective term for the traditionalist branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Torah, Written and Oral Torah, Oral, as literally revelation, revealed by God in Ju ...

there is dispute as to the status of the Zohar's and Isaac Luria's (the Arizal) Kabbalistic teachings. While a portion of 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 Haredi Judaism (, ) is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that is characterized by its strict interpretation of religious sources and its accepted (Jewish law) and traditions, in opposition to more accommodating values and practices. Its members are ...

(

, Lithuanian,

Oriental The Orient is a term referring to the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of the term ''Occident'', which refers to the Western world. In English, it is largely a meto ...

) and

Religious Zionist Religious Zionism () is a religious denomination that views Zionism as a fundamental component of Orthodox Judaism. Its adherents are also referred to as ''Dati Leumi'' (), and in Israel, they are most commonly known by the plural form of the fi ...

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."

Modern Orthodox Judaism Modern Orthodox Judaism (also Modern Orthodox or Modern Orthodoxy) is a movement within Orthodox Judaism that attempts to Torah Umadda#Synthesis, synthesize Jewish principles of faith, Jewish values and the halakha, observance of Jewish law with t ...

, 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

Abraham Isaac Kook Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook (; 7 September 1865 – 1 September 1935), known as HaRav Kook, and also known by the Hebrew-language acronym Hara'ayah (), was an Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox rabbi, and the first Ashkenazi Jews, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbina ...

to a compartmentalisation between Halakha and mysticism. Yiḥyeh Qafeḥ, a 20th-century Yemenite Jewish leader and Chief Rabbi of Yemen, spearheaded the 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

neo-platonic Neoplatonism is a version of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a series of thinkers. Among the common id ...

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). In recent years, 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 Ḥasidic or Ḥaredi communities. Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994), an ultra-rationalist Modern Orthodox philosopher, referred to Kabbalah "a collection of "pagan superstitions" and "idol worship" in remarks given in 1990.

Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism

Kabbalah tended to be rejected by most Jews in the Conservative and

Reform Reform refers to the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The modern usage of the word emerged in the late 18th century and is believed to have originated from Christopher Wyvill's Association movement, which ...

movements, though its influences were not 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 The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) is a Conservative Jewish education organization in New York City, New York. It is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism as well as a hub for academic scholarship in Jewish studies ...

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): 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 forebears. ''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

Conservative Judaism Conservative Judaism, also known as Masorti Judaism, is a Jewish religious movements, Jewish religious movement that regards the authority of Jewish law and tradition as emanating primarily from the assent of the people through the generations ...

, both the

and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the

American Jewish University American Jewish University (AJU) is a Private university, private Jewish university in Los Angeles, California. It was formed in 2007 from the merger of the University of Judaism and Brandeis-Bardin Institute. AJU's academic division includes ...

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, Joel Hecker is the full-time instructor teaching courses in Kabbalah and Hasidut. According to Artson: The 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.

Antinomian Kabbalah

Antinomian strands of Kabbalah reject or invert normal religious principles as a way of attempting purification. In these frameworks, transgression or sin itself is viewed as a spiritual necessity, capable of unleashing hidden divine sparks trapped in impure realms. The most prominent antinomian movements within Judaism were the Sabbateans and the Frankists. Followers of Sabbatai Zevi believed that the coming of the messiah rendered Jewish commandments obsolete, with some sects engaging in ritualistic violations of the Law. Many of his adherents continued to view his actions as part of a hidden divine plan. In the 18th century, Jacob Frank pushed this theology further, advocating explicitly for "redemption through sin," such as ritualized orgies and

incest Incest ( ) is sexual intercourse, sex between kinship, close relatives, for example a brother, sister, or parent. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by lineag ...

. Eventually, the Frankists were encouraged to mass convert into

Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. These movements were widely condemned as heretical but demonstrate the extent to which mystical ideas could support radical or subversive, reinterpretations of Jewish life.

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 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 is non-Jewish organisations, mystery schools, initiation bodies, fraternities and

secret societies A secret society is an organization about which the activities, events, inner functioning, or membership are concealed. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence a ...

, 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 a wide readership.

Universalist Jewish organisations

In recent decades, Kabbalah has seen a resurgence of interest, with several modern groups and individuals exploring its profound teachings. These contemporary interpretations of Kabbalah offer a fresh perspective on this ancient mystical tradition, often bridging the gap between traditional wisdom and modern thought. Some of these interpretations emphasize universalist and philosophical approaches, seeking to enrich secular disciplines through the lens of Kabbalistic insights. Others have gained attention for their unique blends of spirituality and popular culture, attracting followers from diverse backgrounds. These modern expressions of Kabbalah showcase its enduring appeal and relevance in today's world. ''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. 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. The organization's leaders "vehemently reject" Orthodox Jewish identity. 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, Neo-Hasidism expressed a modernist or non-Orthodox Jewish interest in Jewish mysticism, becoming influential among Modern Orthodox, Conservative Judaism, Conservative,

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 List of Jewish mysticism scholars, 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

community, who follow his aim that the legal and imaginative aspects of Judaism should interfuse:

Cathar and Mandaean parallels

In several important areas of his history of the Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem investigates and considers the evidence of an interactivity of influence between the medieval Kabbalists of Provence and the Catharism, Cathar heresy which was also prevalent in the region at the same time that the earliest works of medieval Kabbalah were written. In ''Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements'', Louis Israel Newman, Louis I. Newman concluded, "Point by point, parallels can be found between Catharist views and the Kabbalah, and it may well be that at times there was an exchange of opinions between Jewish and Gentile mystics." Earlier in the same book, Newman observed:

…that the powerful Jewish culture in Languedoc, which had acquired sufficient strength to assume an aggressive, propagandist policy, created a milieu wherefrom movements of religious independence arose readily and spontaneously. Contact and association between Christian princes and their Jewish officials and friends stimulated the state of mind which facilitated the banishment of orthodoxy, the clearing away of the debris of Catholic theology. Unwilling to receive Jewish thought, the princes and laity turned towards Catharism, then being preached in their domains.

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.

Notes

References

Citations

Works cited

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * 5 volume set. * *

External links

Jewish Encyclopedia: Cabala

King David Kabbalah on Mount Zion, Jerusalem

Learn Kabbalah: Lurianic Kabbalah

{{Authority control Kabbalah, Esotericism Jewish culture Jewish mysticism Jewish theology Language and mysticism Panentheism Theurgy