KABBALAH

MYSTERYBEAUTYMAGIC

The Hebrew word, Kabbalah from the verb root k-b-l, "to receive," means literally, "[oral] received [tradition]." Although there are thousands of extant kabbalistic texts (and many more which haven't survived), the primary method of teaching Kabbalah until recently was by means of oral transmission from teacher to disciple. Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, a contemporary Israeli Kabbalist, suggests another meaning of the term: "parallelization" (hakbalah in modern Hebrew), in that Kabbalah teaches, among other things, how Creation parallels the Creator.

"Kabbalah" is the most commonly-used term for the Jewish mystical tradition, especially the kind which originated in twelfth-century France and spread through Europe, the Middle East and eventually world-wide, to this day. The two main varieties of pre-kabbalistic Jewish mysticism are called Maaseh Merkavah and Maaseh Bereshit (more on these below), and the particular variety emerging in eighteenth-century Eastern Europe and continuing among Ashkenazic Jews until today is called Hasidism.

According to Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (Meditation and Kabbalah, 1), there are three types of Kabbalah: theoretical, meditative and practical. Theoretical Kabbalah concerns the dynamics of how God reveals the divine self through different channels of divinity and different levels of reality. Meditative Kabbalah is the practice of connecting with God by means of these channels and/or worlds. Practical Kabbalah is a more controversial variety, as it involves the permutation of mystical divine names for magical purposes. This third type gave birth in turn to various non-Jewish forms of occult and hermetic Kabbalah.

Ancient Jewish Mysticism

How and when did Jewish mysticism begin? Although Judaism has probably had its mystical side from the very start, the first distinct Jewish forms of mysticism emerged during the last two centuries B.C.E. (before the Christian or Common Era), and continuing for several centuries afterward, in what is now Israel and in neighbouring lands. This era of Western religion was much like our own, featuring widespread religious pluralism, syncretism (the free combining of beliefs and practices from various spiritual traditions), apocalypse (speculations on the heavenly realms, angels, creation and the end of history) and gnosticism (the attempt to transcend the material world and reach true knowledge [gnosis] of God).

Out of all these trends there gradually developed a body of Jewish speculation and meditative practice known as Maaseh Merkavah, "the Matter of the Chariot," based on the divine chariot vision in Ezekiel 1. Practitioners studied Torah and Jewish law thoroughly, maintained scrupulous moral and ritual purity, and then undertook an inner meditative journey through seven heavenly halls (Hekhalot). Striving to ignore the often dazzling and terrifying visions along the way, they eventually attained an ecstatic vision of God's glory "seated" on a throne in "human" form and learned the "secrets of the Torah." The most well-known text describing this journey is the Hekhalot Rabbati, "Great [Book of] Halls," from the early medieval period.

During roughly the same period, a second form of Jewish mysticism developed, known as Maaseh Bereshit, "the Matter of Creation." This involved speculations on God's method of creation and on the different "heavens" and "earths" which make up the universe. The best-known text of this sort is the Sefer Yetzirah ("Book of Formation,") probably written between the third and sixth centuries.

Little is known about how exactly these forms of Jewish mysticism became the Kabbalah. It seems that as the Middle Ages progressed, Jewish mystics became less interested in the Merkavah journey with all its bizarre angelic names, magical seals and incantations, and more interested in the divine itself and in how to bridge the gap between God and humanity. Thus the Merkavah traditions, together with the Maaseh Bereshit speculations, coalesced into a body of knowledge that incorporated them but also went beyond them: the Kabbalah.

This page is dedicated with love to my Father, Arthur Klein.

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