Article Outline
Kabbalah (Hebrew, “received tradition”), generically, Jewish mysticism in all its forms; specifically, the esoteric theosophy that crystallized in 13th-century Spain and Provence, France, around Sefer ha-zohar (The Book of Splendor), referred to as the Zohar, and generated all later mystical movements in Judaism. See Mysticism; Theosophy.
The earliest known form of Jewish mysticism dates from the first centuries ad and is a variant on the prevailing Hellenistic astral mysticism, in which the adept, through meditation and the use of magic formulas, journeys ecstatically through and beyond the seven astral spheres. In the Jewish version, the adept seeks an ecstatic version of God's throne, the chariot (merkava) beheld by Ezekiel (see Ezekiel 1).
Medieval Spanish Kabbalah, the most important form of Jewish mysticism, is less concerned with ecstatic experience than with esoteric knowledge about the nature of the divine world and its hidden connections with the world of creation. Medieval Kabbalah is a theosophical system that draws on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and is expressed in symbolic language. The system is most fully articulated in the Zohar, written between 1280 and 1286 by the Spanish Kabbalist Moses de León, but attributed to the 2nd-century rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. The Zohar depicts the Godhead as a dynamic flow of force composed of numerous aspects. Above and beyond all human contemplation is God as he is in himself, the unknowable, immutable En Sof (Infinite). Other aspects or attributes, knowable through God's relation to the created world, emanate (see Emanation) from En Sof in a configuration of ten sefirot (realms or planes), through which the divine power further radiates to create the cosmos. Zoharic theosophy concentrates on the nature and interaction of the ten sefirot as symbols of the inner life and processes of the Godhead. Because the sefirot are also archetypes for everything in the world of creation, an understanding of their workings can illuminate the inner workings of the cosmos and of history. The Zohar thereby provides a cosmic-symbolic interpretation of Judaism and of the history of Israel in which the Torah and commandments, as well as Israel's life in exile, become symbols for events and processes in the inner life of God. Thus interpreted, the proper observance of the commandments assumes a cosmic significance.
This cosmic aspect of the Zohar is developed dramatically and with great consequence in 16th-century Lurianic Kabbalah (named for its formulator, Isaac ben Solomon Luria). The Lurianic system represents a response to the cataclysmic experience of Jewish exiles expelled from Iberia in the 1490s; it projects this experience onto the divine world. In this system, the En Sof withdraws into itself (tzimtzum) at the outset of creation, making room for the world, but also for evil. A cosmic catastrophe occurs during emanation when vessels of the divine light shatter and the sparks are imprisoned in the world in shards of evil (qelippot). The human task, through prayer and proper observance of the commandments, becomes nothing less than the redemption (tiqqun) of the world and the reunification of the Godhead. The Kabbalah was thus transformed into a popular messianic movement, which later generated Sabbatian messianism and 18th-century Polish Hasidism (see Sabbatai Zevi).
Hotmail
Messenger
My MSN
MSN Directory
