Kabbalah
Kabbalah or Qabalah is an esoteric method, discipline, and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. It forms the foundation of mystical 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 and traditional rabbinic literature and their formerly concealed transmitted dimension, as well as to explain the significance of Jewish religious observances.
Kabbalah emerged from earlier forms of Jewish mysticism in 12th- to 13th-century Occitania, specifically in Languedoc, among Hakhmei Provence. Following the movement of Jews from Southern France and Spain, it was found in the Rhineland school of Judah the Pious, al-Andalus 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 is considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah; Lurianic Kabbalah was popularised in the form of Hasidic Judaism 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 of the major lineage in medieval Jewish tradition 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 document has striking similarities to a possible antecedent from the Lesser Hekhalot, the Alphabet of Rabbi Akiva, which in turn seems to recall a style of responsa by students that arose in the classroom of Joshua ben-Levi in Tractate Shabbat. The Sefer Yetzirah is a brief document of only a few pages that was written many centuries before the high and late medieval works, detailing an alphanumeric vision of cosmology and may be understood as a kind of prelude to the major phase of Kabbalah.
History of Jewish mysticism
The history of Jewish mysticism encompasses various forms of esoteric 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 and Ezekiel experiencing divine visions and encounters. This tradition continued into the apocalyptic period, where texts like 1 Enoch and the Book of Daniel introduced complex angelology and eschatological themes. The Hekhalot and Merkabah 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/Occitania and Spain. Foundational texts such as the Bahir and the Zohar 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, founded by Isaac Luria in the 16th century, introduced new metaphysical concepts such as Tzimtzum and Tikkun, which have had a lasting impact on Jewish thought. The 18th century saw the rise of Hasidism, 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 can proceed along four levels of interpretation. These four levels are called from their initial letters :- : the direct interpretations of meaning.
- : the allegoric meanings.
- : midrashic meanings, often with imaginative comparisons with similar words or verses.
- : the inner, esoteric meanings, expressed in kabbalah.
Modern academic-historical study of Jewish mysticism reserves the term kabbalah to designate the particular, distinctive doctrines that textually emerged fully expressed in the Middle Ages, as distinct from the earlier Merkabah mystical concepts and methods. According to this descriptive categorization, both versions of Kabbalistic theory, the medieval-Zoharic and the early-modern Lurianic Kabbalah 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 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, particularly Maimonides' Aristotelianism, this speculation became the central stream of Kabbalah, and the usual reference of the term kabbalah. Its theosophy 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 strives to achieve a mystical union with God, or nullification of the meditator in God's Active intellect. 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 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 is rebuilt and the required state of ritual purity is attainable.
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. 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.