Kabbalah

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 (divine contraction) and Tikkun (cosmic repair), 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 of exegesis are called the , a Hebrew abbreviation created from their initial letters (PRDS ): • ( ): the direct interpretations of meaning. • ( ): the allegoric meanings (through allusion). • ( from the Hebrew : 'inquire' or 'seek'): midrashic (rabbinic) meanings, often with imaginative comparisons with similar words or verses. • (, ): the inner, esoteric (metaphysical) meanings, expressed in kabbalah. Kabbalah is considered by its followers as a necessary part of the study of Torah – the study of Torah (the Tanakh and rabbinic literature) being an inherent duty of observant Jews. 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 mysticism 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-Practical tradition of Theoretical Kabbalah (the main focus of the and Luria) 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, central theurgic influence of human conduct on the redemption or corruption of 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 normative Judaism as a whole this mystical, metaphysical meaning. • The meditative tradition of the Kabbalah exemplified by Abraham Abulafia and Isaac ben Samuel of Acre 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 (in often unpublished manuscripts) 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 by Kabbalah. Practical Kabbalah was prohibited by the Arizal until the Third Temple is built and the required state of ritual purity is attainable. According to Kabbalistic belief, early Kabbalistic knowledge was transmitted orally by the Patriarchs, Prophets, and Sages, eventually becoming "interwoven" into Jewish religious writings and culture. According to this view, early kabbalah was, around the 10th century BCE, an open knowledge practiced by over a million people in ancient Israel, according to Megillah 14a, Shir HaShirim Rabbah 4:22, Ruth Rabbah 1:2. Foreign conquests drove the spiritual leadership of the time, the Sanhedrin, to hide the knowledge and make it secret, fearing that it might be misused if it fell into the wrong hands. 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. Jewish and non-Jewish Kabbalah From the Renaissance onwards Jewish Kabbalah texts entered non-Jewish culture, where they were studied and translated by Christian Hebraists and Hermetic occultists. The syncretic traditions of Christian Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah developed independently of Judaic Kabbalah, reading the Jewish texts as universalist ancient wisdom preserved from Gnosticism of antiquity. Both adapted Jewish concepts freely from their Jewish understanding to merge with multiple other theologies, religious traditions, and magical associations. With the decline of Christian Kabbalah in the Age of Enlightenment, Hermetic Kabbalah continued as a central underground tradition in Western esotericism. Through these non-Jewish associations with magic, alchemy and divination, Kabbalah acquired some popular occult connotations forbidden within Judaism, where Jewish Practical Kabbalah was a minor, permitted tradition restricted to a few elite. Today, many publications on Kabbalah belong to the non-Jewish New Age and occult traditions of Cabala, rather than giving an accurate picture of Judaic Kabbalah. Instead, academic and traditional Jewish publications now translate and study Judaic Kabbalah for a wide readership. == Concepts ==

The definition of Kabbalah varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it. According to its earliest and original usage in ancient Hebrew it means 'reception' or 'tradition', and in this context it tends to refer to any sacred writing composed after (or otherwise outside of) the five books of the Torah. After the Talmud is written, it refers to the Oral Law (both in the sense of the 'Talmud' itself and in the sense of continuing dialog and thought devoted to the scripture in every generation). In the much later writings of Eleazar of Worms (c. 1350), it refers to theurgy or the conjuring of demons and angels by the invocation of their secret names. The understanding of the word Kabbalah undergoes a transformation of its meaning in medieval Judaism, in the books which are now primarily referred to as 'the Kabbalah': the Bahir, the Zohar, Etz Hayim etc. In these books the word Kabbalah is used in manifold new senses. During this major phase it refers to the continuity of revelation in every generation, on the one hand, while also suggesting the necessity of revelation to remain concealed and secret or esoteric in every period by formal requirements native to sacred truth. When the term Kabbalah is used to refer to a canon of secret mystical books by medieval Jews, these aforementioned books and other works in their constellation are the books and the literary sensibility to which the term refers. Even later the word is adapted or appropriated in Western esotericism (Christian Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah), where it influences the tenor and aesthetics of European occultism practiced by gentiles or non-Jews. But above all, Jewish Kabbalah is a set of sacred and magical teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God—the mysterious Ein Sof (, 'The Infinite')—and the mortal, finite universe (God's creation). The structure of emanations has been described in various ways: Sephirot (divine attributes) and Partzufim (divine "faces"), Ohr (spiritual light and flow), Names of God and the supernal Torah, Olamot (Spiritual Worlds), a Divine Tree and Archetypal Man, Angelic Chariot and Palaces, male and female, enclothed layers of reality, inwardly holy vitality and external Kelipot shells, 613 channels ("limbs" of the King) and the divine Souls of Man. These symbols are used to describe various levels and aspects of Divine manifestation, from the Pnimi (inner) dimensions to the Hitzoni (outer). It is solely in relation to the emanations, certainly not the Ein Sof Ground of all Being, that Kabbalah uses anthropomorphic symbolism to relate psychologically to divinity. Kabbalists debated the validity of anthropomorphic symbolism, between its disclosure as mystical allusion, versus its instrumental use as allegorical metaphor; in the language of the Zohar, symbolism "touches yet does not touch" its point. Sephirot in three columns, as a tree with roots above and branches below The Sephirot (also spelled "sefirot"; singular sefirah) are the ten emanations and attributes of God with which he continually sustains the existence of the universe. These emanations are viewed as parts of God's divine nature, which reveal themselves in different ways. The Zohar and other Kabbalistic texts elaborate on the emergence of the sephirot from a state of concealed potential in the Ein Sof until their manifestation in the mundane world. In particular, Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (known as "the Ramak"), describes how God emanated the myriad details of finite reality out of the absolute unity of Divine light via the ten sephirot, or vessels. Ten sephirot as process of creation According to Lurianic cosmology, the sephirot correspond to various levels of creation (ten sephirot in each of the Four Worlds, and four worlds within each of the larger four worlds, each containing ten sephirot, which themselves contain ten sephirot, to an infinite number of possibilities), and are emanated from the Creator for the purpose of creating the universe. The sephirot are considered revelations of the Creator's will (ratzon), and they should not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways the one God reveals his will through the Emanations. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes. Ten Sephirot as process of ethics Divine creation through the Ten Sephirot is an ethical process. They represent the different aspects of Morality. Loving-Kindness is a possible moral justification found in Chessed, and Gevurah is the Moral Justification of justice, and both are mediated by Mercy, which is Rachamim. However, these pillars of morality become immoral when taken to extremes. When Loving-Kindness becomes extreme, it can lead to sexual depravity and lack of Justice to the wicked. When Justice becomes extreme, it can lead to torture and the Murder of innocents and unfair punishment. The tzadikim or 'righteous' ascend these ethical qualities of the ten sephirot through righteous action. If there were no tsadikim, the blessings of God would become completely hidden, and Creation would cease to exist. While real human actions are the "Foundation" (Yesod) of this universe (Malkuth), they must be accompanied by the conscious intention of compassion. Compassionate actions are often impossible without faith (Emunah), meaning trusting that God always supports them, even when God seems hidden. Ultimately, it is necessary to show compassion toward oneself as well in order to share compassion with others. This "selfish" enjoyment of God's blessings but only in order to empower oneself to assist others is an important aspect of "Restriction", and is considered a kind of golden mean in kabbalah, corresponding to the sefira of Adornment (Tiferet) being part of the "Middle Column". Moses ben Jacob Cordovero wrote the Tomer Devorah 'Date palm of Deborah', in which he presents an ethical teaching of Judaism in the kabbalistic context of the ten sephirot. The Tomer Devora became a foundational Musar text. Partzufim The most esoteric Idrot sections of the classic Zohar make reference to hypostatic male and female Partzufim (Divine Personas) displacing the Sephirot, manifestations of God in particular Anthropomorphic symbolic personalities based on pardes and midrashic narratives. Lurianic Kabbalah places these at the centre of our existence, rather than earlier Kabbalah's Sephirot, which Luria saw as broken in Divine crisis. In light of contemporary cognitive perspectives, the Partzuf symbols could be seen as representing Jungian archetypes of the collective unconscious, reflecting a psychologised progression from youth to sage in therapeutic healing back to the infinite Ein Sof/Unconscious. Descending spiritual worlds Medieval Kabbalists believed that all things are linked to God through these emanations, making all levels in creation part of one great, gradually descending chain of being. Through this any lower creation reflects its particular roots in supernal divinity. Kabbalists agreed with the divine transcendence described by Jewish philosophy, but as only referring to the Ein Sof unknowable Godhead. They reinterpreted the theistic philosophical concept of creation from nothing, replacing God's creative act with panentheistic continual self-emanation by the mystical Ayin Nothingness/No-thing sustaining all spiritual and physical realms as successively more corporeal garments, veils and condensations of divine immanence. The innumerable levels of descent divide into Four comprehensive spiritual worlds, Atziluth ("Closeness" – Divine Wisdom), Beriah ("Creation" – Divine Understanding), Yetzirah ("Formation" – Divine Emotions), Assiah ("Action" – Divine Activity), with a preceding Fifth World Adam Kadmon ("Primordial Man" – Divine Will) sometimes excluded due to its sublimity. Together the whole spiritual heavens form the Divine Persona/Anthropos. Hasidic thought extends the divine immanence of Kabbalah by holding that God is all that really exists, all else being completely undifferentiated from God's perspective. This view can be defined as acosmic monistic panentheism. According to this philosophy, God's existence is higher than anything that this world can express, yet he includes all things of this world within his divine reality in perfect unity, so that the creation effected no change in him at all. This paradox as seen from dual human and divine perspectives is dealt with at length in Chabad texts. Origin of evil from the 15th century. Theosophical kabbalists, especially Luria, censored contemporary Practical Kabbalah, but allowed amulets by Sages Among problems considered in the Hebrew Kabbalah is the theological issue of the nature and origin of evil. In the views of some Kabbalists this conceives "evil" as a "quality of God", asserting that negativity enters into the essence of the Absolute. In this view it is conceived that the Absolute needs evil to "be what it is", i.e., to exist. Foundational texts of Medieval Kabbalism conceived evil as a demonic parallel to the holy, called the Sitra Achra (the "Other Side"), and the qlippoth (the "shells/husks") that cover and conceal the holy, are nurtured from it, and yet also protect it by limiting its revelation. Scholem termed this element of the Spanish Kabbalah a "Jewish gnostic" motif, in the sense of dual powers in the divine realm of manifestation. In a radical notion, the root of evil is found within the 10 holy Sephirot, through an imbalance of Gevurah, the power of "Strength/Judgement/Severity". Gevurah is necessary for Creation to exist as it counterposes Chesed ("loving-kindness"), restricting the unlimited divine bounty within suitable vessels, so forming the Worlds. However, if man sins (actualising impure judgement within his soul), the supernal Judgement is reciprocally empowered over the Kindness, introducing disharmony among the Sephirot in the divine realm and exile from God throughout Creation. The demonic realm, though illusory in its holy origin, becomes the real apparent realm of impurity in lower Creation. In the Zohar, the sin of Adam and Eve (who embodied Adam Kadmon below) took place in the spiritual realms. Their sin was that they separated the Tree of knowledge (10 sefirot within Malkuth, representing Divine immanence), from the Tree of life within it (10 sefirot within Tiferet, representing Divine transcendence). This introduced the false perception of duality into lower creation, an external Tree of Death nurtured from holiness, and an Adam Belial of impurity. In Lurianic Kabbalah, evil originates from a primordial shattering of the sephirot of God's Persona before creation of the stable spiritual worlds, mystically represented by the 8 Kings of Edom (the derivative of Gevurah) "who died" before any king reigned in Israel from Genesis 36. In the divine view from above within Kabbalah, emphasised in Hasidic Panentheism, the appearance of duality and pluralism below dissolves into the absolute Monism of God, psychologising evil. Though impure below, what appears as evil derives from a divine blessing too high to be contained openly. The mystical task of the righteous in the Zohar is to reveal this concealed Divine Oneness and absolute good, to "convert bitterness into sweetness, darkness into light". Role of Man 's role as both legalist and mystic underscores Kabbalah's spiritualisation of normative Jewish observance Kabbalistic doctrine gives man the central role in Creation, as his soul and body correspond to the supernal divine manifestations. In the Christian Kabbalah this scheme was universalised to describe harmonia mundi, the harmony of Creation within man. In Judaism, it gave a profound spiritualisation of Jewish practice. While the kabbalistic scheme gave a radically innovative, though conceptually continuous, development of mainstream Midrashic and Talmudic rabbinic notions, kabbalistic thought underscored and invigorated conservative Jewish observance. The esoteric teachings of kabbalah gave the traditional mitzvot observances the central role in spiritual creation, whether the practitioner was learned in this knowledge or not. Accompanying normative Jewish observance and worship with elite mystical kavanot intentions gave them theurgic power, but sincere observance by common folk, especially in the Hasidic popularisation of kabbalah, could replace esoteric abilities. Many kabbalists were also leading legal figures in Judaism, such as Nachmanides and Joseph Karo. Medieval kabbalah elaborates particular reasons for each Biblical mitzvah, and their role in harmonising the supernal divine flow, uniting masculine and feminine forces on High. With this, the feminine Divine presence in this world is drawn from exile to the Holy One Above. The 613 mitzvot are embodied in the organs and soul of man. Lurianic Kabbalah incorporates this in the more inclusive scheme of Jewish messianic rectification of exiled divinity. Jewish mysticism, in contrast to Divine transcendence rationalist human-centred reasons for Jewish observance, gave Divine-immanent providential cosmic significance to the daily events in the worldly life of man in general, and the spiritual role of Jewish observance in particular. Levels of the soul 's meditations included the "inner illumination of" the human form The Kabbalah posits that the human soul has three elements: the nefesh, ''ru'ach, and neshamah. The nefesh'' is found in all humans, and enters the physical body at birth. It is the source of one's physical and psychological nature. The next two parts of the soul are not implanted at birth, but can be developed over time; their development depends on the actions and beliefs of the individual. They are said to only fully exist in people awakened spiritually. A common way of explaining the three parts of the soul is as follows: • Nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ): the lower part, or "animal part", of the soul. It is linked to instincts and bodily cravings. This part of the soul is provided at birth. • Ruach (רוּחַ): the middle soul, the "spirit". It contains the moral virtues and the ability to distinguish between good and evil. • Neshamah (נְשָׁמָה): the higher soul, or "super-soul". This separates man from all other life-forms. It is related to the intellect and allows man to enjoy and benefit from the afterlife. It allows one to have some awareness of the existence and presence of God. • Chayyah (חיה): The part of the soul that allows one to have an awareness of the divine life force itself. • Yehidah (יחידה): The highest plane of the soul, in which one can achieve as full a union with God as is possible. Reincarnation Reincarnation, the transmigration of the soul after death, was introduced into Judaism as a central esoteric tenet of Kabbalah from the Medieval period onwards, called Gilgul neshamot ("cycles of the soul"). The concept does not appear overtly in the Hebrew Bible or classic rabbinic literature, and was rejected by various Medieval Jewish philosophers. However, the Kabbalists explained a number of scriptural passages in reference to Gilgulim. The concept became central to the later Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, who systemised it as the personal parallel to the cosmic process of rectification. Through Lurianic Kabbalah and Hasidic Judaism, reincarnation entered popular Jewish culture as a literary motif. Tzimtzum, Shevirah and Tikkun , Galilee. The messianic focus of its mystical renaissance culminated in Lurianic thought. Tzimtzum (Constriction/Concentration) is the primordial cosmic act whereby God "contracted" His infinite light, leaving a "void" into which the light of existence was poured. This allowed the emergence of independent existence that would not become nullified by the pristine Infinite Light, reconciling the unity of the Ein Sof with the plurality of creation. This changed the first creative act into one of withdrawal/exile, the antithesis of the ultimate Divine Will. In contrast, a new emanation after the Tzimtzum shone into the vacuum to begin creation, but led to an initial instability called Tohu (Chaos), leading to a new crisis of Shevirah (Shattering) of the sephirot vessels. The shards of the broken vessels fell down into the lower realms, animated by remnants of their divine light, causing primordial exile within the Divine Persona before the creation of man. Exile and enclothement of higher divinity within lower realms throughout existence requires man to complete the Tikkun olam (Rectification) process. Rectification Above corresponds to the reorganization of the independent sephirot into relating Partzufim (Divine Personas), previously referred to obliquely in the Zohar. From the catastrophe stems the possibility of self-aware Creation, and also the Kelipot (Impure Shells) of previous Medieval kabbalah. The metaphorical anthropomorphism of the partzufim accentuates the sexual unifications of the redemption process, while Gilgul reincarnation emerges from the scheme. Uniquely, Lurianism gave formerly private mysticism the urgency of Messianic social involvement. According to interpretations of Luria, the catastrophe stemmed from the "unwillingness" of the residue imprint after the Tzimtzum to relate to the new vitality that began creation. The process was arranged to shed and harmonise the Divine Infinity with the latent potential of evil. The creation of Adam would have redeemed existence, but his sin caused new shevirah of Divine vitality, requiring the Giving of the Torah to begin Messianic rectification. Historical and individual history becomes the narrative of reclaiming exiled Divine sparks. Linguistic mysticism and the mystical Torah Kabbalistic thought extended Biblical and Midrashic notions that God enacted Creation through the Hebrew language and through the Torah into a full linguistic mysticism. In this, every Hebrew letter, word, number, even accent on words of the Hebrew Bible contain Jewish mystical meanings, describing the spiritual dimensions within exoteric ideas, and it teaches the hermeneutic methods of interpretation for ascertaining these meanings. Names of God in Judaism have further prominence, though infinite meaning turns the whole Torah into a Divine name. As the Hebrew name of things is the channel of their lifeforce, parallel to the sephirot, so concepts such as "holiness" and "mitzvot" embody ontological Divine immanence, as God can be known in manifestation as well as transcendence. The infinite potential of meaning in the Torah, as in the Ein Sof, is reflected in the symbol of the two trees of the Garden of Eden; the Torah of the Tree of Knowledge is the external, finite Halachic Torah, enclothed within which the mystics perceive the unlimited infinite plurality of meanings of the Torah of the Tree of Life. In Lurianic terms, each of the 600,000 root souls of Israel find their own interpretation in Torah, as "God, the Torah and Israel are all One". As early as the 1st century BCE Jews believed that the Torah and other canonical texts contained encoded messages and hidden meanings. Gematria is one method for discovering its hidden meanings. In this system, each Hebrew letter also represents a number. By converting letters to numbers, Kabbalists were able to find a hidden meaning in each word. This method of interpretation was used extensively by various schools. In contemporary interpretation of kabbalah, Sanford Drob makes cognitive sense of this linguistic mythos by relating it to postmodern philosophical concepts described by Jacques Derrida and others, where all reality embodies narrative texts with infinite plurality of meanings brought by the reader. In this dialogue, kabbalah survives the nihilism of Deconstruction by incorporating its own Lurianic Shevirah, and by the dialectical paradox where man and God imply each other. == Cognition, mysticism, or values ==

composed of Hebrew letters as a mystical symbol from the Jewish Kabbalistic work Parashat Eliezer, from the 18th century or earlier Kabbalists as mystics The founder of the academic study of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem, privileged an intellectual view of the nature of Kabbalistic symbols as dialectic Theosophical speculation. In contrast, contemporary scholarship of Moshe Idel and Elliot R. Wolfson has opened a phenomenological understanding of the mystical nature of Kabbalistic experience, based on a close reading of the historical texts. Wolfson has shown that among the closed elite circles of mystical activity, medieval Theosophical Kabbalists held that an intellectual view of their symbols was secondary to the experiential. In the context of medieval Jewish philosophical debates on the role of imagination in Biblical prophecy, and essentialist versus instrumental kabbalistic debates about the relation of sephirot to God, they saw contemplation on the sephirot as a vehicle for prophecy. Judaism's ban on physical iconography, along with anthropomorphic metaphors for Divinity in the Hebrew Bible and midrash, enabled their internal visualisation of the Divine sephirot Anthropos in imagination. Disclosure of the aniconic in iconic internal psychology, involved sublimatory revelation of Kabbalah's sexual unifications. Previous academic distinction between Theosophical versus Abulafian Ecstatic-Prophetic Kabbalah overstated their division of aims, which revolved around visual versus verbal/auditory views of prophecy. In addition, throughout the history of Judaic Kabbalah, the greatest mystics claimed to receive new teachings from Elijah the Prophet, the souls of earlier sages (a purpose of Lurianic meditation prostrated on the graves of Talmudic Tannaim, Amoraim and Kabbalists), the soul of the mishnah, ascents during sleep, heavenly messengers, etc. A tradition of parapsychology abilities, psychic knowledge, and theurgic intercessions in heaven for the community is recounted in the hagiographic works Praises of the Ari, Praises of the Besht, and in many other Kabbalistic and Hasidic tales. Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts are concerned to apply themselves from exegesis and theory to spiritual practice, including prophetic drawing of new mystical revelations in Torah. The mythological symbols Kabbalah uses to answer philosophical questions, themselves invite mystical contemplation, intuitive apprehension and psychological engagement. Paradoxical coincidence of opposites In bringing Theosophical Kabbalah into contemporary intellectual understanding, using the tools of modern and postmodern philosophy and psychology, Sanford Drob shows philosophically how every symbol of the Kabbalah embodies the simultaneous dialectical paradox of the mystical unity of opposites. Thus the Ein Sof is above the duality of Ayin and Yesh 'Being and Non-Being'; the sephirot bridge the philosophical problem of the One and the Many; Man is both Divine (Qadmon) and human; Tzimtzum is both illusion and real from divine and human perspectives; evil and good imply each other (the qlippoth draw from divinity, good arises only from overcoming evil); Existence is simultaneously partial (Tzimtzum) in the World of Chaos and the World of Rectification; God self-experiences as the Other through humanity, humanity embodies and completes the Partsufim. In Kabbalah's reciprocal Panentheism, Theism, and Atheism/Humanism represent two incomplete poles of a mutual dialectic that imply and include each other's partial validity. The Chabad Hasidic thinker Aaron HaLevi ben Moses of Staroselye expressed that the truth of any concept is revealed only in its opposite. Metaphysics or axiology By expressing itself using symbols and myth that transcend single interpretations, Theosophical Kabbalah incorporates aspects of philosophy, Jewish theology, psychology and unconscious depth psychology, mysticism and meditation, Jewish exegesis, theurgy, and ethics, as well as overlapping with theory from magical elements. Its symbols can be read as questions which are their own existentialist answers (the Hebrew sephirah Chokmah-Wisdom, the beginning of Existence, is read etymologically by Kabbalists as the question "Koach Mah?" the "Power of What?"). Alternative listings of the Sephirot start with either Keter (Unconscious Will/Volition), or Chokmah (Wisdom), a philosophical duality between a Rational or Supra-Rational Creation, between whether the Mitzvot Judaic observances have reasons or transcend reasons in Divine Will, between whether study or good deeds is superior, and whether the symbols of Kabbalah should be read as primarily metaphysical intellectual cognition or Axiology values. Messianic redemption requires both ethical Tikkun olam and contemplative Kavanah. Sanford Drob sees every attempt to limit Kabbalah to one fixed dogmatic interpretation as necessarily bringing its own Deconstruction (Lurianic Kabbalah incorporates its own Shevirah self shattering; the Ein Sof transcends all of its infinite expressions; the infinite mystical Torah of the Tree of Life has no/infinite interpretations). The infinite axiology of the Ein Sof One, expressed through the Plural Many, overcomes the dangers of nihilism, or the antinomian mystical breaking of Jewish observance alluded to throughout Kabbalistic and Hasidic mysticisms. == Primary texts ==

, main sourcebook of Kabbalah, from Mantua, Italy in 1558 Like the rest of the rabbinic literature, the texts of kabbalah were once part of an ongoing oral tradition, though, over the centuries, much of the oral tradition has been written down. Jewish forms of esotericism existed over 2,000 years ago. Ben Sira (born ) warns against it, saying: "You shall have no business with secret things". Nonetheless, mystical studies were undertaken and resulted in mystical literature, the first being the Apocalyptic literature of the second and first pre-Christian centuries and which contained elements that carried over to later kabbalah. Throughout the centuries since, many texts have been produced, among them the ancient descriptions of Sefer Yetzirah, the Heichalot mystical ascent literature, the Bahir, Sefer Raziel HaMalakh and the Zohar, the main text of Kabbalistic exegesis. Classic mystical Bible commentaries are included in fuller versions of the Mikraot Gedolot (Main Commentators). Cordoveran systemisation is presented in Pardes Rimonim, philosophical articulation in the works of the Maharal, and Lurianic rectification in Etz Chayim. Subsequent interpretation of Lurianic Kabbalah was made in the writings of Shalom Sharabi, in Nefesh HaChaim and the 20th-century Sulam. Hasidism interpreted kabbalistic structures to their correspondence in inward perception. The Hasidic development of kabbalah incorporates a successive stage of Jewish mysticism from historical kabbalistic metaphysics. == Scholarship ==

The first modern-academic historians of Judaism, the "Wissenschaft des Judentums" school of the 19th century, framed Judaism in solely rational terms in the emancipatory Haskalah spirit of their age. They opposed kabbalah and restricted its significance from Jewish historiography. In the mid-20th century, it was left to Gershom Scholem to overturn their stance, establishing the flourishing present-day academic investigation of Jewish mysticism, and making Heichalot, Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts the objects of scholarly critical-historical study. In Scholem's opinion, the mythical and mystical components of Judaism were at least as important as the rational ones, and he thought that they, rather than the exoteric Halakha or intellectualist Jewish philosophy, were the living subterranean stream in historical Jewish development that periodically broke out to renew the Jewish spirit and social life of the community. Scholem's magisterial Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) among his other seminal works, remains the major historical standard survey covering all main historical periods of Jewish mysticism. Though the work has sometimes been subject to criticism of various particularities , and proposals of a hermeneutical revision in emphasis were introduced, the encompassing sweep and depth of historical analysis in Major Trends remains without equal almost one hundred years later despite voluminous clarifying scholarship on the subject produced in the meantime expanding and deepening thd terrain. Scholars across the eras of Jewish mysticism in America and Britain have included Alexander Altmann, Arthur Green, Lawrence Fine, Elliot Wolfson, Daniel Matt, Louis Jacobs and Ada Rapoport-Albert. Moshe Idel has opened up research on the Ecstatic Kabbalah alongside the theosophical, and has called for new multi-disciplinary approaches, beyond the philological and historical that have dominated until now, to include phenomenology, psychology, anthropology and comparative studies. Claims for authority Scholem provides a map of how authority is determined within the tradition in the document Revelation & Tradition as Religious Categories, first sent as the postscript to a letter from Jerusalem to Berlin in the early hours of 1933. The letter is addressed to Walter Benjamin. This postscript was published with minimal alterations as a chapter in Scholem’s anthology of miscellaneous, longer articles some forty years later. The document resists summary encapsulation but, taken according to its own terms (and especially considering the context of its composition), it can scarcely be argued with even by rigorous atheists outside the tradition. This explanation is intended for the modern reader, ensconced in a secular world (in point of fact, it is literally intended for the reader Walter Benjamin). and an account in yet another work explains that the Kabbalists themselves expressively describe the nomination of authority as proceeding from conversations with the Prophet Elijah. Scholem writes: “Since the beginnings of Rabbinical Judaism the Prophet Elijah has been a figure profoundly identified with the central preoccupations of Jewry: it is he who carries the divine message from generation to generation, he who at the end of time will reconcile all the conflicting opinions, traditions, and doctrines manifested in Judaism. Men of true piety meet him in the market place no less than in visions. Since he was conceived as the vigilant custodian of the Jewish religious ideal, the Messianic guardian and guarantor of the tradition, it was impossible to suppose that he would ever reveal or communicate anything that was in fundamental contradiction with the tradition. Thus by its very nature the interpretation of mystical experience as a revelation of the Prophet Elijah tended far more to confirm than to question the traditional authority [of the Torah and its acknowledged library of commentaries].” As a result the foundational works in the main phase of Kabbalah as a literature, from Bahir to the Zohar, 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 by the angel Raziel to Adam after he was evicted from Eden. Another famous work, the early Sefer Yetzirah, is dated back to the patriarch Abraham. Most (in fact, to our knowledge, all) of the earliest extant versions of the Sefer Yetzirah do not internally claim authorship by Abraham, but this attribution grows up as a tradition or rumor following the text. This tendency toward pseudepigraphy has its roots in apocalyptic literature, which claims that 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 tendency relates to a phase so early that it can scarcely be called Kabbalah, according to the trend in historiography, but relates to the twin traditions referred to as the way of the chariot and the account of creation. The book of Enoch (in which conversations between angels and sn antediluvian patriarch are recorded), for example, may be almost as old as our extant version of the Book of Daniel if ascriptions of the Aramaic Fragment of Enoch are found to be reliable. As well as ascribing ancient origins to texts, and reception of Oral Torah transmission, the greatest and most innovative Kabbalists claimed mystical reception of direct personal divine revelations, by heavenly mentors such as Elijah the Prophet, the souls of Talmudic sages, prophetic revelation, soul ascents on high, etc. On this basis Arthur Green speculates, that while the Zohar was written by a circle of Kabbalists in medieval Spain, they may have believed they were channeling the souls and direct revelations from the earlier mystic circle of Shimon bar Yochai in 2nd century Galilee depicted in the Zohar's narrative. Academics have compared the Zohar mystic circle of Spain with the romanticised wandering mystic circle of Galilee described in the text. Similarly, Isaac Luria gathered his disciples at the traditional Idra assembly location, placing each in the seat of their former reincarnations as students of Shimon bar Yochai. == Criticism ==

Distinction between Jews and non-Jews One point of view is represented by the Chabad Hasidic work Tanya (1797), in order to argue that Jews have a different character of soul: while a non-Jew, according to its, author Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812), can achieve a high level of spirituality, similar to an angel, his soul is still fundamentally different in character from a Jewish one. A similar view is found in Kuzari, an early medieval philosophical book by Judah Halevi (1075–1141). Another rabbi, Abraham Yehudah Khein (1878–1957), believed that spiritually elevated Gentiles have essentially Jewish souls, "who just lack the formal conversion to Judaism", and that unspiritual Jews are "Jewish merely by their birth documents". David Halperin argues that the collapse of Kabbalah's influence among Western European Jews over the course of the 17th and 18th century was a result of the cognitive dissonance they experienced between the negative perception of Gentiles found in some exponents of Kabbalah, and their own positive dealings with non-Jews, which were rapidly expanding and improving during this period due to the influence of the Haskala. Pinchas Elijah Hurwitz, a Lithuanian-Galician Kabbalist of the 18th century and a moderate proponent of the Haskalah, called for brotherly love and solidarity between all nations, and believed that Kabbalah can empower everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, with prophetic abilities. The works of Abraham Cohen de Herrera (1570–1635) are full of references to Gentile mystical philosophers. Such an approach was particularly common among the Renaissance and post-Renaissance Italian Jews. Late medieval and Renaissance Italian Kabbalists, such as Yohanan Alemanno, David Messer Leon and Abraham Yagel, adhered to humanistic ideals and incorporated teachings of various Christian and pagan mystics. A prime representative of this humanist stream in Kabbalah was Elijah Benamozegh, who explicitly praised Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and a wide range of ancient pagan mystical systems. He believed that Kabbalah could reconcile the differences among the world's religions, which represent different facets and stages of universal human spirituality. In his writings, Benamozegh interprets the New Testament, Hadith, Vedas, Avesta and pagan mysteries according to the Kabbalistic theosophy. Elliot R. Wolfson provides numerous examples from the 17th to the 20th centuries that challenge the notion that "modern Judaism" has rejected or dismissed this "outdated aspect" of the religion; he argues that there are still Kabbalists today who harbour this view. He argues that, while it is accurate to say that many Jews do and would find this distinction offensive, it is inaccurate to say that the idea has been totally rejected in all circles. As Wolfson has argued, it is an ethical demand on the part of scholars to continue to be vigilant with regard to this matter, and in this way the tradition can be refined from within. Medieval views on the Knesset Menorah, Maimonides holding Aristotle's work , which shared some similarities of theory with Jewish Neoplatonists The idea that there are ten divine sephirot could evolve over time into the idea that "God is One being, yet in that One being there are Ten" which opens up a debate about what the "correct beliefs" in God should be, according to Judaism. The early Kabbalists debated the relationship of the Sephirot to God, adopting a range of essentialist versus instrumental views. Modern Kabbalah, based on the 16th century systemisations of Cordovero and Isaac Luria, takes an intermediate position: the instrumental vessels of the sephirot are created, but their inner light is from the undifferentiated Ohr Ein Sof essence. Maimonides (12th century), celebrated by followers for his Jewish rationalism, rejected many of the pre-Kabbalistic Hekalot texts, particularly ''Shi'ur Qomah'' whose starkly anthropomorphic vision of God he considered heretical. Maimonides, a centrally important medieval sage of Judaism, lived at the time of the first emergence of Kabbalah. Modern scholarship views the systemisation and publication of their historic oral doctrine by Kabbalists, as a move to rebut the threat on Judaic observance by the populance misreading Maimonides' ideal of philosophical contemplation over ritual performance in his philosophical Guide for the Perplexed. They objected to Maimonides equating the Talmudic Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah secrets of the Torah with Aristotelean physics and metaphysics in that work and in his legal Mishneh Torah, teaching that their own Theosophy, centred on an esoteric metaphysics of traditional Jewish practice, is the Torah's true inner meaning. The Kabbalist medieval rabbinic sage Nachmanides (13th century), classic debater against Maimonidean rationalism, provides background to many kabbalistic ideas. An entire book entitled Gevuras Aryeh was authored by Yaakov Yehuda Aryeh Leib Frenkel and originally published in 1915, specifically to explain and elaborate on the kabbalistic concepts addressed by Nachmanides in his classic commentary to the Five books of Moses. Abraham Maimonides (in the spirit of his father Maimonides, Saadiah Gaon, and other predecessors) explains at length in his Milḥamot HaShem that God is in no way literally within time or space nor physically outside time or space, since time and space simply do not apply to his being whatsoever, emphasizing the Monotheist Oneness of Divine transcendence unlike any worldly conception. Kabbalah's Panentheism expressed by Moses Cordovero and Hasidic thought, agrees that God's essence transcends all expression, but holds in contrast that existence is a manifestation of God's Being, descending immanently through spiritual and physical condensations of the divine light. By incorporating the pluralist many within God, God's Oneness is deepened to exclude the true existence of anything but God. In Hasidic Panentheism, the world is acosmic from the Divine view, yet real from its own perspective. Around the 1230s, Rabbi Meir ben Simon of Narbonne wrote an epistle (included in his Milḥemet Mitzvah) against his contemporaries, the early Kabbalists, characterizing them as blasphemers who even approach heresy. He particularly singled out the Sefer Bahir, rejecting the attribution of its authorship to the tanna R. Neḥunya ben ha-Kanah and describing some of its content as truly heretical. from Italy, 1803. Jewish Museum of Switzerland, Basel Leon of Modena, a 17th-century Venetian critic of Kabbalah, wrote that if we were to accept the Kabbalah, then the Christian trinity would be compatible with Judaism, as the Trinity seems to resemble the kabbalistic doctrine of the sephirot. This was in response to the belief that some European Jews of the period addressed individual sephirot in their prayers, although the practice was apparently uncommon. Apologists explained that Jews may have been praying for and not necessarily to the aspects of Godliness represented by the sephirot. In contrast to Christianity, Kabbalists declare that one prays only "to Him (God's Essence, male solely by metaphor in Hebrew's gendered grammar), not to his attributes (sephirot or any other Divine manifestations or forms of incarnation)". Kabbalists directed their prayers to God's essence through the channels of particular sephirot using kavanot Divine names intentions. To pray to a manifestation of God introduces false division among the sephirot, disrupting their absolute unity, dependence and dissolving into the transcendent Ein Sof; the sephirot descend throughout Creation, only appearing from man's perception of God, where God manifests by any variety of numbers. Yaakov Emden (1697–1776), himself an Orthodox Kabbalist who venerated the Zohar, concerned to battle Sabbatean misuse of Kabbalah, wrote the Mitpaḥath Sfarim (Veil of the Books), an astute critique of the Zohar in which he concludes that certain parts of the Zohar contain heretical teaching and therefore could not have been written by Shimon bar Yochai. With the decline of Jewish life in medieval Spain, it displaced rationalist Jewish philosophy until the modern rise of Haskalah enlightenment, receiving a revival in our postmodern age. While Judaism always maintained a minority tradition of religious rationalist criticism of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem writes that Lurianic Kabbalah was the last theology that was near predominant in Jewish life. While Lurianism represented the elite of esoteric Kabbalism, its mythic-messianic divine drama and personalisation of reincarnation captured the popular imagination in Jewish folklore and in the Sabbatean and Hasidic social movements. Giller notes that the former Zoharic-Cordoverian classic Kabbalah represented a common exoteric popular view of Kabbalah, as depicted in early modern Musar literature. In contemporary Orthodox Judaism there is dispute as to the status of the Zohar's and Isaac Luria's (the Arizal) Kabbalistic teachings. While a portion of Modern Orthodox, followers of the Dor De'ah movement, and many students of the Rambam reject Arizal's Kabbalistic teachings, as well as deny that the Zohar is authoritative or from Shimon bar Yohai, all three of these groups accept the existence and validity of the Talmudic Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah mysticism. Their disagreement concerns whether the Kabbalistic teachings promulgated today are accurate representations of those esoteric teachings to which the Talmud refers. The mainstream Haredi (Hasidic, Lithuanian, Oriental) and Religious Zionist Jewish movements revere Luria and the Kabbalah, but one can find both rabbis who sympathize with such a view, while disagreeing with it, as well as rabbis who consider such a view heresy. The Haredi Eliyahu Dessler and Gedaliah Nadel maintained that it is acceptable to believe that the Zohar was not written by Shimon bar Yochai and that it had a late authorship. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg mentioned the possibility of Christian influence in the Kabbalah with the "Kabbalistic vision of the Messiah as the redeemer of all mankind" being "the Jewish counterpart to Christ." Modern Orthodox Judaism, representing an inclination to rationalism, embrace of academic scholarship, and the individual's autonomy to define Judaism, embodies a diversity of views regarding Kabbalah from a Neo-Hasidic spirituality to Maimonist anti-Kabbalism. German Neo-Orthodoxy, the movement pioneered by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, also proposed more nuanced views on Kabbalah, arguably stressing its ethical, rather than external-theurgic dimension. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch did utilise the Zohar in his monumental legal work, Horeb. In a book to help define central theological issues in Modern Orthodoxy, Michael J. Harris writes that the relationship between Modern Orthodoxy and mysticism has been under-discussed. He sees a deficiency of spirituality in Modern Orthodoxy, as well as the dangers in a fundamentalist adoption of Kabbalah. He suggests the development of neo-Kabbalistic adaptions of Jewish mysticism compatible with rationalism, offering a variety of precedent models from past thinkers ranging from the mystical inclusivism of Abraham Isaac Kook to a compartmentalisation between Halakha and mysticism. Yiḥyeh Qafeḥ, a 20th-century Yemenite Jewish leader and Chief Rabbi of Yemen, spearheaded the Dor De'ah ("generation of knowledge") movement to counteract the influence of the Zohar and modern Kabbalah. He authored critiques of mysticism in general and Lurianic Kabbalah in particular; his magnum opus was Milḥamoth ha-Shem (Wars of Hashem) against what he perceived as neo-platonic and gnostic influences on Judaism with the publication and distribution of the Zohar since the 13th Century. Rabbi Yiḥyah founded yeshivot, rabbinical schools, and synagogues that featured a rationalist approach to Judaism based on the Talmud and works of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides (Rambam). In recent years, rationalists holding similar views as those of the Dor De'ah movement have described themselves as "talmide ha-Rambam" (disciples of Maimonides) rather than as being aligned with Dor De'ah, and are more theologically aligned with the rationalism of Modern Orthodox Judaism than with Orthodox Ḥasidic or Ḥaredi communities. Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994), an ultra-rationalist Modern Orthodox philosopher, referred to Kabbalah "a collection of "pagan superstitions" and "idol worship" in remarks given in 1990. Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism song to welcome the Shabbat, a cross denomination Jewish custom from Kabbalah Kabbalah tended to be rejected by most Jews in the Conservative and Reform movements, though its influences were not eliminated. While it was generally not studied as a discipline, the Kabbalistic Kabbalat Shabbat service remained part of liberal liturgy, as did the Yedid Nefesh prayer. Nevertheless, in the 1960s, Saul Lieberman of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America is reputed to have introduced a lecture by Scholem on Kabbalah with a statement that Kabbalah itself was "nonsense", but the academic study of Kabbalah was "scholarship". This view became popular among many Jews, who viewed the subject as worthy of study, but who did not accept Kabbalah as teaching literal truths. According to Bradley Shavit Artson (Dean of the Conservative Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies): However, in the late 20th century and early 21st century there has been a revival in interest in Kabbalah in all branches of liberal Judaism. The Kabbalistic 12th-century prayer Anim Zemirot was restored to the new Conservative Sim Shalom siddur, as was the ''B'rikh Shmeh passage from the Zohar, and the mystical Ushpizin service welcoming to the Sukkah the spirits of Jewish forebears. Anim Zemirot and the 16th-century mystical poem Lekhah Dodi reappeared in the Reform Siddur Gates of Prayer in 1975. All rabbinical seminaries now teach several courses in Kabbalah—in Conservative Judaism, both the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles have full-time instructors in Kabbalah and Hasidut'', Eitan Fishbane and Pinchas Giller, respectively. In Reform Judaism, Sharon Koren teaches at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Reform rabbis like Herbert Weiner and Lawrence Kushner have renewed interest in Kabbalah among Reform Jews. At the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Joel Hecker is the full-time instructor teaching courses in Kabbalah and Hasidut. According to Artson: The Reconstructionist movement, under the leadership of Arthur Green in the 1980s and 1990s, and with the influence of Zalman Schachter Shalomi, brought a strong openness to Kabbalah and hasidic elements that then came to play prominent roles in the Kol ha-Neshamah siddur series. Antinomian Kabbalah Antinomian strands of Kabbalah reject or invert normal religious principles as a way of attempting purification. In these frameworks, transgression or sin itself is viewed as a spiritual necessity, capable of unleashing hidden divine sparks trapped in impure realms. The most prominent antinomian movements within Judaism were the Sabbateans and the Frankists. Followers of Sabbatai Zevi believed that the coming of the messiah rendered Jewish commandments obsolete, with some sects engaging in ritualistic violations of the Law. Many of his adherents continued to view his actions as part of a hidden divine plan. In the 18th century, Jacob Frank pushed this theology further, advocating explicitly for "redemption through sin," such as ritualized orgies and incest. Eventually, the Frankists were encouraged to mass convert into Catholicism. These movements were widely condemned as heretical but demonstrate the extent to which mystical ideas could support radical or subversive, reinterpretations of Jewish life. == Contemporary study ==

Teaching of classic esoteric kabbalah texts and practice remained traditional until recent times, passed on in Judaism from master to disciple, or studied by leading rabbinic scholars. This changed in the 20th century, through conscious reform and the secular openness of knowledge. In contemporary times kabbalah is studied in four very different, though sometimes overlapping, ways. The traditional method, employed among Jews since the 16th century, continues in learned study circles. Its prerequisite is to either be born Jewish or be a convert and to join a group of kabbalists under the tutelage of a rabbi, since the 18th century more likely a Hasidic one, though others exist among Sephardi-Mizrachi, and Lithuanian rabbinic scholars. Beyond elite, historical esoteric kabbalah, the public-communally studied texts of Hasidic thought explain kabbalistic concepts for wide spiritual application, through their own concern with popular psychological perception of Divine Panentheism. A second, new universalist form, is the method of modern-style Jewish organisations and writers, who seek to disseminate kabbalah to every man, woman and child regardless of race or class, especially since the Western interest in mysticism from the 1960s. These derive from various cross-denominational Jewish interests in kabbalah, and range from considered theology to popularised forms that often adopt New Age terminology and beliefs for wider communication. These groups highlight or interpret kabbalah through non-particularist, universalist aspects. A third way is non-Jewish organisations, mystery schools, initiation bodies, fraternities and secret societies, the most popular of which are Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and the Golden Dawn, although hundreds of similar societies claim a kabbalistic lineage. These derive from syncretic combinations of Jewish kabbalah with Christian, occultist or contemporary New Age spirituality. As a separate spiritual tradition in Western esotericism since the Renaissance, with different aims from its Jewish origin, the non-Jewish traditions differ significantly and do not give an accurate representation of the Jewish spiritual understanding (or vice versa). Fourthly, since the mid-20th century, historical-critical scholarly investigation of all eras of Jewish mysticism has flourished into an established department of university Jewish studies. Where the first academic historians of Judaism in the 19th century opposed and marginalised kabbalah, Gershom Scholem and his successors repositioned the historiography of Jewish mysticism as a central, vital component of Judaic renewal through history. Cross-disciplinary academic revisions of Scholem's and others' theories are regularly published for a wide readership. Universalist Jewish organisations In recent decades, Kabbalah has seen a resurgence of interest, with several modern groups and individuals exploring its profound teachings. These contemporary interpretations of Kabbalah offer a fresh perspective on this ancient mystical tradition, often bridging the gap between traditional wisdom and modern thought. Some of these interpretations emphasize universalist and philosophical approaches, seeking to enrich secular disciplines through the lens of Kabbalistic insights. Others have gained attention for their unique blends of spirituality and popular culture, attracting followers from diverse backgrounds. These modern expressions of Kabbalah showcase its enduring appeal and relevance in today's world. Bnei Baruch is a group of Kabbalah students, based in Israel. Study materials are available in over 25 languages for free online or at printing cost. Michael Laitman established Bnei Baruch in 1991, following the passing of his teacher, Ashlag's son Rav Baruch Ashlag. Laitman named his group Bnei Baruch (sons of Baruch) to commemorate the memory of his mentor. The teaching strongly suggests restricting one's studies to 'authentic sources', kabbalists of the direct lineage of master to disciple. The Kabbalah Centre was founded in the United States in 1965 as The National Research Institute of Kabbalah by Philip Berg and Rav Yehuda Tzvi Brandwein, disciple of Yehuda Ashlag's. Later Philip Berg and his wife re-established the organisation as the worldwide Kabbalah Centre. The organization's leaders "vehemently reject" Orthodox Jewish identity. The Kabbalah Society, run by Warren Kenton, an organisation based instead on pre-Lurianic Medieval Kabbalah presented in universalist style. In contrast, traditional kabbalists read earlier kabbalah through later Lurianism and the systemisations of 16th-century Safed. The New Kabbalah, website and books by Sanford L. Drob, is a scholarly intellectual investigation of the Lurianic symbolism in the perspective of modern and postmodern intellectual thought. It seeks a "new kabbalah" rooted in the historical tradition through its academic study, but universalised through dialogue with modern philosophy and psychology. This approach seeks to enrich the secular disciplines, while uncovering intellectual insights formerly implicit in kabbalah's essential myth: The Kabbalah of Information is described in the 2018 book From Infinity to Man: The Fundamental Ideas of Kabbalah Within the Framework of Information Theory and Quantum Physics written by Ukrainian-born professor and businessman Eduard Shyfrin. The main tenet of the teaching is "In the beginning He created information", rephrasing the famous saying of Nahmanides, "In the beginning He created primordial matter and He didn't create anything else, just shaped it and formed it." Hasidic Since the 18th century, Jewish mystical development has continued in Hasidic Judaism, turning kabbalah into a social revival with texts that internalise mystical thought. Among different schools, Chabad-Lubavitch and Breslav with related organisations, give outward looking spiritual resources and textual learning for secular Jews. The Intellectual Hasidism of Chabad most emphasises the spread and understanding of kabbalah through its explanation in Hasidic thought, articulating the Divine meaning within kabbalah through human rational analogies, uniting the spiritual and material, esoteric and exoteric in their Divine source: Neo-Hasidic From the early 20th century, Neo-Hasidism expressed a modernist or non-Orthodox Jewish interest in Jewish mysticism, becoming influential among Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionalist Jewish denominations from the 1960s, and organised through the Jewish Renewal and Chavurah movements. The writings and teachings of Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Arthur Green, Lawrence Kushner, Herbert Weiner and others, has sought a critically selective, non-fundamentalist neo- Kabbalistic and Hasidic study and mystical spirituality among modernist Jews. The contemporary proliferation of scholarship by Jewish mysticism academia has contributed to critical adaptions of Jewish mysticism. Arthur Green's translations from the religious writings of Hillel Zeitlin conceive the latter to be a precursor of contemporary Neo-Hasidism. Reform rabbi Herbert Weiner's Nine and a Half Mystics: The Kabbala Today (1969), a travelogue among Kabbalists and Hasidim, brought perceptive insights into Jewish mysticism to many Reform Jews. Leading Reform philosopher Eugene Borowitz described the Orthodox Hasidic Adin Steinsaltz (The Thirteen Petalled Rose) and Aryeh Kaplan as major presenters of Kabbalistic spirituality for modernists today. Rav Kook The writings of Abraham Isaac Kook (1864–1935), first chief rabbi of Mandate Palestine and visionary, incorporate kabbalistic themes through his own poetic language and concern with human and divine unity. His influence is in the Religious Zionist community, who follow his aim that the legal and imaginative aspects of Judaism should interfuse: == Cathar and Mandaean parallels ==

In several important areas of his history of the Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem investigates and considers the evidence of an interactivity of influence between the medieval Kabbalists of Provence and the Cathar heresy which was also prevalent in the region at the same time that the earliest works of medieval Kabbalah were written. In Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements, Louis I. Newman concluded, "Point by point, parallels can be found between Catharist views and the Kabbalah, and it may well be that at times there was an exchange of opinions between Jewish and Gentile mystics." Earlier in the same book, Newman observed: …that the powerful Jewish culture in Languedoc, which had acquired sufficient strength to assume an aggressive, propagandist policy, created a milieu wherefrom movements of religious independence arose readily and spontaneously. Contact and association between Christian princes and their Jewish officials and friends stimulated the state of mind which facilitated the banishment of orthodoxy, the clearing away of the debris of Catholic theology. Unwilling to receive Jewish thought, the princes and laity turned towards Catharism, then being preached in their domains. apparently a variant of Ptahil in Mandaeism, is found in the Sefer HaRazim, listed among other angels who stand on the ninth step of the second firmament. == See also ==