Kabbalah

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KABBALAH

Kabbalah (literally "tradition") is used both as a general name for Jewish mysticism and as the specific designation for its major medieval variety. Mystical awareness is to be found in the biblical and rabbinic tradition and had literary expression in some of the prophetic writings, psalms, and apocalypses. More characteristically, however, what is referred to as Kabbalah is a type of occult theosophical formulation of the doctrines of the Jewish religion, particularly those concerned with creation, revelation, and redemption. This occult system structures and, in part, fossilizes individual intuitions of divine reality in terms of the culture in which it arose. Typically, the purpose of the complicated structuring of these formulated intuitions is to supply a focus in contemplation by which the Kabbalist can recover the untarnished brightness of direct mystical awareness.

Besides the sources of Kabbalah in the doctrines and literature of the Jewish tradition, a wide variety of other sources has been noted, which have introduced elements from the various cultures with which the Jewish people have come in contact in their dispersion. Among these influences should be included some Persian elements, both Parsi and Zoroastrian, and Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean elements which entered during the Hellenistic period; Christian influences and Gnostic themes added at a somewhat later time; and borrowings from Muslim sectarianism after the emergence of Islam. This mixture of elements explains the difficulty that scholars have found in disentangling the sources of Kabbalah. It should be said, however, that the pursuit of sources has less relevance here than it may have for other subjects, because what is essential is not the materials out of which the Kabbalistic theosophical system was created, but rather the use that was made of the materials.

Major Doctrines

creation

All Jewish mysticism has seen the need for reinterpretation of the literal account of creation given in the book of Genesis. As it stands, the account does not sufficiently emphasize the transcendence of God. God is too close to humankind and the world to be the Supreme Mystery that the mystical temper insists He must be. The reinterpretation has generally taken form as a demiurgic theory. In such a theory, God Himself, the Boundless, the Infinite, the Transcendent, did not perform the material act of creating the world. This was the work of a lesser spirit, or demiurge, who was brought into existence by God in order to do this specific job. As the conception of God's transcendence developed, one demiurge seemed insufficient to express the sense of awesome distance between divinity and the material world. The remoteness of God from the world was heightened, therefore, by adding other intermediaries and thus forming a chain from God to matter whose links were of increasing materiality.

A second problem in the biblical account of creation concerns matter. If we accept God as infinite, all must be contained in Him. Where, then, is there a place for matter outside of God? This issue was finally resolved by a theory that combined the idea of God's voluntary self-contraction with the concept of emanation. In this account, God, prior to creation, was actually infinite. To make room for creation, however, He voluntarily contracted or limited Himself. Some excess of spiritual substance overflowed into the space from which God had removed Himself, and this excess, or emanation, provided both the demiurgic intermediaries described above and the matter out of which the world was created. Because all substance is thus ultimately an overflowing of God's substance, Kabbalah is a pantheistic doctrine. The completed series of emanations served the additional purpose of providing the road by which humanity's aspiring spirit might reach the heights of divinity; thus, it served both as the mechanism of creation and as the "itinerary of the mind to God" (to borrow an expression from St. Bonaventure).

revelation

After the first destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, and even more after its second destruction, the Scriptures served as a focus for the religious devotion of the Jews. Their state was no more; their cultus was no more; all that was left to them was their belief in God and His Word. For the continuance of the Jewish religion, it came to seem necessary that not only the content of revelation, but even its physical form, should be considered sacrosanct and unchangeable. In all types of Judaism this regard for the letter of Scripture made necessary the development of exegetic techniques for raising the level of significance of much that is trivial in the Scriptures. For the mystics the problem was particularly difficult, because the level on which they had to interpret revelation to make it serve their purpose was highly symbolical. To make this reinterpretation possible, the Kabbalists developed letter and number symbolisms of great variety and complexity.

redemption

The Kabbalists maintained and even intensified the traditional Jewish view of redemption. In the Kabbalistic view salvation of the individual was little considered; it entered only as a means to the greater end of the salvation of humankind. This would come about through the agency of a Messiah of the Davidic line, who would lead the Jews in triumph to the Holy Land and inaugurate a reign of truth, justice, and mercy. The ideal of salvation is thus the establishment of an earthly paradise of human life, raised to its highest humanity. Other elements clouded this doctrine at various times in the history of mystical Messianism. For example, in the sixteenth century Isaac Luria introduced the idea that this regeneration could not take place until all preexisting souls had satisfactorily completed their earthly existence and that, since some souls were too weak to go unaided through life to perfection, other superior souls might coexist with them in one body to ensure their success. Although Luria's doctrine of transmigration found followers, it was exceptional rather than typical; in general, the Kabbalistic view of redemption was an extreme form of traditional Messianism. Attempts to calculate the exact date of the coming of the Messiah were widespread; the coincidence of various calculations in fixing on dates close to each other was sufficient to start a wave of Messianic movements and even to touch off a major explosion like the widespread impassioned support of Sabbatai Zevi, the so-called Messiah of Ismir (1626–1676).

Historical Expressions

While a number of smaller groups, such as the Essenes of Palestine, the Therapeutae of whom Philo wrote, and the eighth-century Persian "Men of the Caves" whom the tenth-century Karaite historian Joseph ben Jacob al-Kirkisani described, maintained views similar in part to those that have been presented, these groups do not lie in the mainstream of Jewish mysticism. The main development is rather to be traced from the Jewish Gnosticism of the first millennium of the common era, with its concentration on the glory of God as manifested in His throne, supposedly located in the innermost of seven heavenly mansions, into the parallel forms of the medieval European developments of the Kabbalah—the practical, ethical, and sometimes magical mysticism of the German Jews and the speculative mysticism of the French and Spanish Jews. Thence the movement became enmeshed in the morbidity of seventeenth-century Messianism, before the two strains of mystical speculation and socioethical piety were reunited, in eastern Europe, in the still-flourishing movement of Hasidism.

The German pietist movement developed during the century between 1150 and 1250. Its chief formulators were Samuel the Hasid (fl. 1150), his son Judah the Hasid (d. 1217), and a relative, Eleazar of Worms (fl. 1220). The chief literary expression of the movement is the Book of the Pious (Hebrew, Sefer Hasidim ), a collection of the literary remains of the three founders, with special emphasis on Judah the Hasid, whose character and influence recall those of his Christian contemporary, St. Francis of Assisi, and, perhaps, remind one also of Paracelsus, who lived in the sixteenth century and who also combined genuine piety with magic. In addition to its concern with the doctrinal elements that have already been discussed as characteristic of all forms of Jewish mysticism, German Hasidism defined an ideal human type and a way of life-devoutness, rather than learning or traditionalism. The three chief elements in this devoutness were mental serenity, ascetic renunciation, and extreme altruism, leading to heights of devotion in which true fear of God and love of God became one. At these heights, the Hasid was thought to achieve a creative power of a magical nature.

In southern France, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, a more speculative Kabbalistic development began, under the sponsorship of Isaac the Blind (fl. 1200) and his disciples Ezra and Azariel. Their chief concern was the elaboration of emanation theory; they also suggested a doctrine of metempsychosis, although they did not develop it fully. In Spain, Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (1240–c. 1292) combined this speculation with the development of number and letter symbolism and thus became one of the central figures in the development of Kabbalah. His disciple, Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilia (c. 1247–1305), presented both the techniques for symbolic interpretation and the doctrine of the ten emanations (Hebrew, sephiroth ) in systematically interrelated form. About 1290 the Spanish Kabbalist Moses ben Shemtob de Leon (d. 1305) produced the work that, for many, represents the Kabbalah in its entirety: the lush compendium of esoteric doctrines in the form of a commentary on the Pentateuch known as The Book of Splendor (Hebrew, Sefer Ha-Zohar ). From the time of its composition, this work has been the chief source of inspiration for later Jewish mystics and for Jewish mysticism. Of later Kabbalistic leaders, two in particular should be mentioned: Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (1522–1570), whose book, A Garden of Pomegranates (Hebrew, Pardes Rimmonim ), is the most systematic and philosophical exposition of the doctrines of the Kabbalah up to his time; and his pupil, Isaac Luria (1534–1572), who left no written legacy, but whose disciples have made it clear that he developed the theosophic doctrines of creation and redemption far beyond his predecessors.

There are still Kabbalistic groups in existence, chiefly in Israel, but they are for the most part outgrowths of eighteenth-century Polish Hasidism, a movement akin to, though by no means identical with, earlier German pietism. Among major Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), approached most closely the spirit of the Kabbalah in his mystical awareness of the Messianic role of the Jewish people and in his Lurianic and Hasidic stress on the spark of holiness that is veiled by the material shell of things perceived by the senses. Martin Buber, whose reinterpretations of the Hasidic view of life are profound and suggestive, may also be named here and, among younger thinkers, Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose thought has clear kinship with Hasidic social ethics.

Bibliography

texts

Of the primary Kabbalistic literature, only the chief sections of the Zohar are available, in an English translation by Harry Sperling, Maurice Simon, and Paul P. Levertoff. 5 vols. (London: Soncino Press, 1931–1934). Other segments of the Zohar in inferior translations are included in S. L. MacGregor Mathers, The Kabbalah Unveiled (London, 1887). A theosophized version of Sefer Yetzirah is Knut Stenring, The Book of Formation (London, 1923). The Hebrew texts have not been critically edited.

Among recent writers of a mystical bent, the works of Martin Buber are readily available in English translations. None of Abraham Isaac Kook's works have been translated; however, there are good discussions of his life and thought in Jacob Agus, Banner of Jerusalem (New York: Bloch, 1946) and Isidore Epstein, Abraham Kook, His Life and Works (London, 1951). A. J. Heschel is best represented by God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. (New York: Farrar Straus, 1955).

history of kabbalah

See Joshua Abelson, Jewish Mysticism (London, 1913); Christian D. Ginsburg, The Kabbalah: Its Doctrine, Development, and Literature (London, 1920); Adolph Franck, The Kabbalah: or, the Religious Philosophy of the Hebrews (New York: Kabbalah, 1926); Abba Hillel Silver, A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel from the First through the Seventeenth Centuries (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959); Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1946; and Joseph L. Blau, The Story of Jewish Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1962).

J. L. Blau (1967)

Encyclopedia of Philosophy