Kabbalah is an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, which attempts to reveal hidden mystical insights in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). It offers mystical insight into divine nature.
The term "Kabbalah" was originally used in Talmudic texts, among the Geonim (early medieval rabbis) and by Rishonim (later medieval rabbis) as a reference to the full body of publicly available Jewish teaching. In this sense Kabbalah was used in referring to all of Judaism's oral law. Over time this term became connected with doctrines of esoteric knowledge concerning God, God's creation of the universe and the laws of nature, reasons for the commandments in the Torah and the ways by which God administers the existence of the universe.
According to Jewish tradition dating from the 13th century, this knowledge has come down as a revelation to elect saints from a remote past, and preserved only by a privileged few. It is considered part of the Jewish oral law by the majority of religious Jews in modern times, although this was not agreed upon by many Talmudic and medieval scholars, as well as many modern liberal rabbis and a minority of Orthodox rabbis.
Origin of Jewish Mysticism
According to adherents of Kabbalah, the origin of Kabbalah begins with secrets that God revealed to Adam. According to a rabbinic midrash (citation needed) God created the universe through the ten sefirot. When read by later generations of Kabbalists, the Torah's description of the creation in the Book of Genesis reveals mysteries about the godhead itself, the true nature of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life, as well as the interaction of these supernal entities with the Serpent which leads to disaster when they eat the forbidden fruit, as recorded in Genesis 2.
The Bible provides ample additional material for mythic and mystical speculation. The prophet Ezekiel's visions in particular attracted much mystical speculation, as did Isaiah's Temple vision (Chapter 6). Jacob's vision of the ladder to heaven is another text providing an example of a mystical experience. Moses' experience with the Burning bush and his encounters with God on Mount Sinai, are all evidence of mystical events in the Tanakh, and form the origin of Jewish mystical beliefs.
According to historians, the authority of Kabbalah is based on an argument of authority based on antiquity. As a result, virtually all 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 to Adam (after being evicted) by the angel Raziel. Another famous work, the Sefer Yetzirah, supposedly dates back to the patriarch Abraham. This tendency toward pseudepigraphia has its roots in Apocalyptic literature, which claims 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).
This appeal to antiquity has also shaped modern theories of influence in reconstructing the history of Jewish mysticism. The oldest versions of the Jewish mysticism have been theorized to extend from Assyrian theology and mysticism. Dr. Simo Parpola, a researcher (of what?) at the University of Helsinki, remarks on the general similarity between the Sefirot of Kabbalah and the Tree of Life of Assyria. He reconstructed what an Assyrian antecendent to the Sepiroth might look like. He matched the characteristics of En Sof on the nodes of the Sepiroth to the gods of Assyria. In his view, there are parallels between these Assyrian gods and the characteristics of God in Kabbalah. The Assyrians assigned specific numbers to their gods, similar to how the Sepiroth assigns numbers to its nodes. However, the Assyrians use a sexagesimal number system, whereas the Sepiroth is decimal. With the Assyrian numbers, additional layers of meaning and mystical relevance appear in the Sepiroth. Normally, floating above the Assyrian Tree of Life was the god Assur, this corresponds to En Sof, which is also, via a series of transformations, derived from the Assyrian word Assur.
Paropla re-interpreted various Assyrian tablets in the terms of this primitive Sefirot, such as the Epic Of Gilgamesh. He claims that the scribes had been writing philosophical-mystical tracts, rather than mere adventure stories. He concludes that traces of this Assyrian mode of thought and philosophy eventually makes reappearances in Greek Philosophy and the Kabbalah.
Skeptical scholars find attempts to read Kabbalah back into the pre-Israelite Ancient Near East, as Paropla does, to be implausible. They point out that the doctrine of the Sefirot only saw serious development starting in the 12th Century CE with the publication of the Bahir. To argue that the concept of the sefirot existed undocumented within Judaism from the time of the Assyrian empire (which fell from cultural hegemony in the 7th Cent. BCE) until it "surfaced" 17-18 centuries later strikes some scholars as far-fetched. A plausible alternative, based in the research of Gershom Scholem, the pre-eminent scholar of Kabbalah in the 20th Century, is to see the sefirot as a theosophical doctrine that emerges out of Jewish late antiquity word-mythology (as exemplified in Sefer Yetzirah) and the angelic-palace mysticism found in Hekalot literature being fused to the Neo-Platonic notion of creation through progressive divine emanations.
Mystic Doctrines in Talmudic Times
In Talmudic times the terms Ma'aseh Bereshit ("Works of Creation") and Ma'aseh Merkabah ("Works of the Divine Throne/Chariot") clearly indicate the Midrashic nature of these speculations; they are really based upon Genesis 1 and Book of Ezekiel 1:4-28; while the names Sitrei Torah (Talmud Hag. 13a) and Razei Torah (Ab. vi. 1) indicate their character as secret lore. In contrast to the explicit statement of the Hebrew Bible that God created not only the world, but also the matter out of which it was made, the opinion is expressed in very early times that God created the world from matter He found ready at hand — (according to some, this is an opinion probably due to the influence of the Platonic-Stoic cosmogony).
Eminent rabbinic teachers in the Land of Israel held the doctrine of the preexistence of matter (Midrash Genesis Rabbah i. 5, iv. 6), in spite of the protest of Gamaliel II. (ib. i. 9).
In dwelling upon the nature of God and the universe, the mystics of the Talmudic period asserted, in contrast to the transcendentalism evident in some parts of the Bible, that "God is the dwelling-place of the universe; but the universe is not the dwelling-place of God". Possibly the designation ("place") for God, so frequently found in Talmudic-Midrashic literature, is due to this conception, just as Philo, in commenting on Genesis 28:11 says, "God is called ha makom (המקום "the place") because God encloses the universe, but is Himself not enclosed by anything" (De Somniis, i. 11). This type of theology, in modern terms, is known as either pantheism or panentheism. Whether a text is truly pantheistic or panentheistic is often hard to understand; mainstream Judaism generally rejects pantheistic interpretations of Kabbalah, and instead accepts panentheistic interpretations.
Even in very early times of the Land of Israel as well as Alexandrian theology recognized the two attributes of God, middat hadin (the "attribute of justice"), and middat ha-rahamim (the "attribute of mercy") (Midrash Sifre, Deuteronomy 27); and so is the contrast between justice and mercy a fundamental doctrine of the Kabbalah. Other hypostasizations are represented by the ten "agencies" (the Sefirot) through which God created the world; namely, wisdom, insight, cognition, strength, power, inexorableness, justice, right, love, and mercy.
While the Sefirot are based on these ten creative "potentialities", it is especially the personification of wisdom which, in Philo, represents the totality of these primal ideas; and the Targ. Jerusalem Talmud i., agreeing with him, translates the first verse of the Bible as follows: "By wisdom God created the heaven and the earth." Genesis Rabbah equates "Wisdom" with "Torah."
So, also, the figure of the Sar Metatron passed into mystical texts from the Talmud. In the Heichalot literature Metatron sometimes approximates the role of the demiurgos (see Gnosticism), being expressly mentioned as a "lesser" God. One text, however, identifies Metatron as Enoch transubstantiated (III Enoch). Mention may also be made of other pre-existent things enumerated in an old baraita (an extra-mishnaic teaching); namely, the Torah, repentance, paradise and hell, the throne of God, the Heavenly Temple, and the name of the Messiah (Talmud Pesahim 54a). Although the origin of this doctrine must be sought probably in certain mythological ideas, the Platonic doctrine of preexistence has modified the older, simpler conception, and the preexistence of the seven must therefore be understood as an "ideal" preexistence, a conception that was later more fully developed in the Kabbalah
The attempts of the mystics to bridge the gulf between God and the world are evident in the doctrine of the preexistence of the soul, and of its close relation to God before it enters the human body — a doctrine taught by the Hellenistic sages (Wisdom viii. 19) as well as by the Palestinian rabbis. The mystics also latch on to the phrase from Isaiah, as expounded by the Rabbinic Sages, "The whole world is filled with his glory," to justify a panentheistic understanding of the universe.
In the 17th century, Baruch Spinoza may have had this passage in mind when he said that the ancient Jews did not separate God from the world. This conception of God may be pantheistic or panentheistic. It also postulates the union of man with God; both these ideas were further developed in the later Kabbalah. (Spinoza was excommunicated from the main Jewish community by the rabbis at the time for publicly espousing these views, more likely out of fear of Christian reaction then out of their own outrage).
The Modern World
Two of the most influential sources spreading Kabbalistic teachings have come from the growth and spread of Hasidic Judaism, as can be seen by the growth of the Lubavitch movement, and from the influence of the writings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1864-1935) who inspired the followers of Religious Zionism with mystical writings and hopes that interpreted the rise of modern day Zionism as the onset of the atchalta dege'ula - the "beginning of the redemption" of the Jewish people from their exile, in expectation of the arrival of the "final redemption" of the Jewish Messiah. The varied Hasidic works (sifrei chasidus) and Rabbi Kook's voluminous writings drew heavily on the long chain of Kabbalistic thought and methodology.
Renewed interest in Kabbalah has appeared among non-traditional Jews, and even among non-Jews. Neo-Hasidism and Jewish Renewal have been the most influential groups in this trend.
