kabbalah, a medieval tradition and its contemporary appeal

© 2008 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

History Compass 6/2 (2008): 552–587, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00501.x

Kabbalah: A Medieval Tradition and Its Contemporary Appeal

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson*Arizona State University

AbstractPopular culture today is suffused with kabbalah, an elitist, intellectual strand ofmedieval Judaism that claimed to disclose the esoteric meaning of the rabbinictradition. While rooted in esoteric speculations in late antiquity, kabbalah emergedin the tenth century as an internal debate among Jewish theologians about theontological status of divine attributes. At the end of the twelfth century speculationsabout the nature of God emerged among the Pietists of Germany and the ‘mastersof kabbalah’ in Provence. During the thirteenth century kabbalah flourished inSpain where its self-understanding as redemptive activity was expressed in twoparadigms – the ‘theosophy-theurgic’ and the ‘ecstatic-prophetic’. Kabbalah con-tinued to evolve in the early modern period, shaping both Jewish and Europeancultures. The modern period saw the rise of the academic study of kabbalah, butit was employed in two conflicting manners: in the nineteenth century scholarsassociated with the Enlightenment used historical analysis of kabbalah to debunkJewish traditionalism, but in the first half of the twentieth century, the academic studyof kabbalah was used to generate a secular, collective Zionist identity. Althoughscholarship on kabbalah has flourished in the twentieth century, kabbalah hasbecome a variant of New-Age religions, accessible to all, regardless of ethnicidentity or spiritual readiness.

Introduction: What is Kabbalah?

Kabbalah is a distinctive intellectual strand within Judaism that functionedas a self-conscious program for the interpretation of rabbinic Judaism.Rooted in esoteric speculations of the rabbinic period, kabbalah emergedin the Middle Ages as the theory and praxis of Jewish life that fathomedthe depth of divine mysteries, charted the paths for interaction with God,including a mystical union with God, and harnessed divine energy for theredemption of the world. Although kabbalah viewed its doctrines as timelesstruths, kabbalah was a cultural product. As such, it was neither monolithicnor static; rather, kabbalah spoke in many voices and its doctrines andpractices evolved overtime in response to changes within Jewish cultureand through interaction with non-Jewish culture.

© 2008 The Author History Compass 6/2 (2008): 552–587, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00501.xJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Kabbalah: A Medieval Tradition and Its Contemporary Appeal 553

Today kabbalah is a feature of popular culture. Hollywood celebrities(most notably Madonna) dabble in it and promote it; block-buster movies(e.g., The Matrix) are inspired by it; Jewish and non-Jewish students takecourses on kabbalah in secular universities of North America, Europe, andIsrael, or study it on their own through various venues of web-basedlearning; books that explain the principles of kabbalah to the uninitiatedare best sellers sold in the millions; hundreds of Web sites offer all sortsof kabbalah-related merchandise (e.g., audiotapes, T-Shirts, bottled water,amulets, and red strings); and artists use kabbalistic motifs to express them-selves be it in the representational arts or in music. In short, in the global,transnational market of late capitalism, kabbalah has become a commodityaccessible to all, regardless of ethnic identity, prior knowledge of Judaism,or spiritual readiness. How did this happen? Why now? What does itsignify for Jews and for non-Jews? To answer these questions, this articlewill provide a short historical exposition of kabbalah, discuss the academicstudy of kabbalah, and explore the cultural forces that have contributedto the popularization of kabbalah today.

The Origins and Emergence of Kabbalah

The Hebrew word ‘kabbalah’ means ‘reception’ and in the context ofrabbinic Judaism the term refers to the reception of divine instruction,namely, to revealed knowledge. According to rabbinic Judaism (i.e., thereinterpretation of the Judaic belief system after the destruction of theSecond Temple in 70 CE), God revealed to the People of Israel a dualTorah: a Written Torah and an Oral Torah. In the Middle Ages,kabbalists saw themselves as recipients of Oral Torah par excellence, sincekabbalah for them constituted the inner, esoteric meaning of therevealed Written Torah. As such, kabbalah pertained to mysteries aboutGod, the universe, and the Torah that exceed the ken of ordinaryhuman apprehension and cognition. These secrets had to be disclosedonly to the initiated few who were spiritually prepared to receive theprivileged information and deserve to benefit from it.1 Ordinary Jews,let alone non-Jews, were not to have access to this restricted informationlest they be led to insanity, reach mistaken conclusion about God (i.e.,idolatry), or even risk death. To ensure that esoteric content be transmittedonly to those who deserve it, kabbalah was originally transmitted orallyfrom authorized teachers to worthy disciples within the confines ofrabbinic academies and specific kinship groups.

The intellectual roots of kabbalah can be traced to rabbinic esoterica oflate antiquity, one strand of which was the Hekhalot and Merkabah literature.2

The extant texts were ascribed to known rabbinic figures (e.g., RabbiAkiba, Rabbi Ishmael, and Rabbi Nehunya ben ha-Qannah), but there isno way to prove that these historical individuals actually underwent the expe-riences ascribed to them or that members of the rabbinic class cultivated

554 Kabbalah: A Medieval Tradition and Its Contemporary Appeal


these practices; it is very likely that the texts reflect activities of Jewsoutside rabbinic circles and that the reports about the experience wereco-opted into the rabbinic program in a long editorial process. Composedbetween the first and sixth centuries, these texts depicted ascents to heaven,namely, out-of-body experiences, in which the protagonists traveledthrough heavenly palaces (hekhalot) until they reached the seventh palacewhere they envisioned the beauty of God seated on a throne. The ecstaticexperiences were believed to be very dangerous and could be enduredonly because the mystic was protected by magical formulas, known as‘seals’ (hotamot) that contained the power of the Divine Name. The mystic’ssuccessful journeys to the divine palace culminated in a vision of God’sluminous, non-corporeal body. Hence the corpus contains a literary unitknown as Measurement of the [Divine] Stature (Shiur Qomah) whichconsists of information about God’s body.

When rabbinic esoterica was edited (about the eighth century), mostJews were living under the rule of Islam and had to contend with the riseof Islamic rationalism. Rabbinic theology had to be explained in inter-religious debates, and rabbinic legal norms had to be defended against thecriticism of sectarians, known as Karaites (i.e., Scripturalists). Challengingthe rabbinic ideology of dual Torahs, the Karaites considered only writtenScriptures to be valid sources of Jewish norms and rejected the authorityof rabbinic leaders of the academies of Baghdad (known as Geonim).Given the Karaite rationalist outlook, they found the blatant anthropo-morphism of some rabbinic midrashim and the speculations about God’sluminous body to be intellectually untenable.3 The rational defense ofrabbinic Judaism gave rise to medieval Jewish philosophy whose historywas closely intertwined with the history of kabbalah.4

The revival of science in Islam during the ninth century led Jewishintellectuals to express interest in yet another ancient, esoteric text – SeferYetzirah (The Book of Creation). The precise time and place of compo-sition of Sefer Yetzirah are still disputed among scholars.5 In all likelihoodthe earliest versions of the text belonged to the Hellenistic period, but itwas edited in the Islamic East in the ninth century when Islamic intellectualsknown as Ikhwan al-Safa articulated a philosophy of nature based on thenumber symbolism and linguistic ontology. Sefer Yetzirah is pseudo-epigraphic,ascribing its teaching to the Patriarch Abraham. The ancient text is extanttwo distinct variants,6 and as Peter Hyman showed, it is the later variantthat depicts Abraham as a prototypical creative artist, analogous to theCreator of the universe, who created the world by means of 32 paths ofwisdom: ten Sefirot and twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Whilethe depiction of the Sefirot in Sefer Yetzirah is rather opaque, they can beunderstood to express the paradoxality of the creative process.7 On theone hand, the Sefirot manifest unlimited, creative energy of God, but onthe other hand, the creative energy is shaped through the limit of thenumber ten. Reminiscent of the Neo-Pythagorean conception of numbers,8



the Sefirot of Sefer Yetzirah can be understood either as ideal numbers oras powers that govern the creation of the physical cosmos. Sefer Yetzirahwould become a foundational text of medieval kabbalah and reflectionson the ontological status and function of the Sefirot constituted the kabbalisticdiscourse.

The first phase of medieval kabbalah comprised reflections by Jewishtheologians about the process of creation and the attributes of the Creatorby commenting on Sefer Yetzirah.9 The first philosophical commentary onSefer Yetzirah was written by Saadia Gaon (d. 942), the leader of a rabbinicacademy in Baghdad, who championed the cause of rabbinic Judaismagainst the Karaite critique and provided rational arguments to supportthe tenets of rabbinic Judaism, especially the belief that God created theworld ex-nihilo.10 Written in Judeo-Arabic, Saadia’s commentary attemptedto show that Sefer Yetzirah is compatible with rationalist philosophy becauseGod, the Sefirot, and the Hebrew letters were not creative forces in themselvesbut abstract principles that describe mathematical relations between existingentities in the physical world.11 After Saadia Gaon, Jewish theologians inNorth Africa, Italy, and Spain continued to reflect about the Sefirot intheir attempt to understand the process of creation, and those who regardedthe Sefirot as powers within God (i.e., intra-deical) laid the foundation forkabbalistic theosophy.12

From the tenth to the twelfth centuries Jewish philosophical theologywas cultivated in Muslim Spain. Some of these philosophical speculations,which had a strong Neoplatonic coloring, became known in Jewish com-munities of the Rhine Valley. There a small circle of Jewish Pietists (knownas Hasidei Ashkenaz) articulated esoteric theology that combined theteachings of the ancient Hekhalot and Merkabah corpus with commentarieson Sefer Yetzirah, especially a non-philosophical Hebrew translation of SaadiaGaon’s commentary. The group viewed itself as the latest link in a chainof esoteric, oral tradition about the correct meaning of Scripture, andappropriate methods of prayer. According to the German Pietists, the oraltradition revealed at Sinai pertained to the hidden meaning of the Torahwhich was revealed on different levels for the masses, for rabbinic scholars,and for the spiritual elite. Developing their own systematic theory of Hebrewlanguage as the grammar of reality, the German Pietists approached SeferYetzirah as a set of instruction for the creation of a humanoid (Golem), apractice found already in the rabbinic corpus.13 By engaging in magic onthe basis of Sefer Yetzirah, they actually reversed the rationalist intent ofSaadia Gaon’s commentary and recovered magical theories and practicesof antiquity.

The theological speculations of the German Pietists focused on theGlory of God (Kavod ), an incorporeal entity that emanated from God towhich human prayers are directed. They distinguished between the UpperGlory – an amorphous light called the ‘Presence’ or ‘Great Splendor’ – andthe Lower Glory, which was an aspect that assumed different forms within



the prophetic or mystical imagination.14 The major symbol of the divinerealm was the Nut (egoz) which was understood to possess androgynousqualities. The feminine quality of the Glory was identified with the Shek-hinah (the standard Talmudic term for the divine Presence) and was imagedas crown, prayer, the divine voice, the king’s daughter, the bride who sitsto the left of the groom, God. To interact with God, the German Pietistsdeveloped a highly ascetic program that added many restrictions to thenormative tradition in order to prevent them from sinning.15 Through theirspiritual practices, which were probably influenced by contemporaryChristian spirituality, the German Pietists attempted to decipher the hiddenWill of God in order to serve God selflessly, sacrificially, and totally.

The ideas of the German Pietists contributed to the emergence ofkabbalah in the late twelfth century in Provence. There several individualsassociated with Rabbi Abraham ben David (d. 1198) began to call them-selves ‘masters of the kabbalah’ (ba’aley ha-kabbalah) and to challenge aparticular variant that has come to dominate Jewish rationalist philosophy– Aristotelianism – toward the end of the twelfth century. Moses Maimo-nides (d. 1204) advocated Aristotelianism as the inner, esoteric meaningof rabbinic Judaism, even though on certain crucial issues, such as creationof the universe, Maimonides deviated markedly from Aristotle in order toaccommodate the Jewish belief in creation ex-nihilo. The polemicalresponse to Maimonides’s intellectualist reinterpretation of rabbinic Judaismgave rise to the second phase in the emergence of medieval kabbalah. In theearly thirteenth century kabbalah emerged as a self-conscious program for theinterpretation of Judaism to counter Maimonides’s theology.16

It was no coincidence that Provençal kabbalah emerged in the circle ofR. Abraham ben David, since he was the first scholar to challenge theauthoritative status of Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah (Code of Jewish Law).The Provençal scholar rejected Maimonides’s rationalist interpretation ofJudaism, including his rationalization of the commandments and his denialthat humans can have positive knowledge of God. Unlike Maimonideswho held that humans can only know what God does (i.e., attributes ofaction) rather than who God is (i.e., essential attributes), the ‘masters ofthe kabbalah’ in Provence claimed to possess deep knowledge about God’sessence and about the processes by which God reveals His Will throughthe emanation of the ten Sefirot. A few of these kabbalists also claimed toreceive direct revelation from Elijah, the symbol of the Jewish tradition,which disclosed to them the inner meaning of the liturgy by orientingeach section of the prayer to a particular aspect of the Sefirotic world.17

During the first third of the thirteenth century kabbalistic symbolic discourseemerged on the basis of earlier commentaries on Sefer Yetzirah, contem-porary Jewish Neoplatonic philosophic, creative interpretation of Scriptureand rabbinic homilies. Contrary to the remote and uninvolved God ofMaimonidean philosophy, kabbalistic symbolism emphasized the immanenceof God and the ability of human to impact God.18 This symbolic discourse



was now carried out in writing, ending the oral transmission of kabbalahand making it accessible to Jews outside specific kinship groups.

It is very likely that the early kabbalists in Provence were also respon-sible for the editing and circulation of yet another foundational text in thehistory of kabbalah – Sefer ha-Bahir (Book of Brightness).19 We do not knowwho composed the Bahir, when or where, but many scholars followedScholem assuming, albeit without firm proof, that the text was composedin the academies of Babylonia perhaps in the eighth or ninth centuriesand only received its final editing in the twelfth century in Provencewhere it began to circulate. Like Sefer Yetzirah, this text too is pseudo-epigraphic, attributing its views to the second century rabbi who was thehero of the Hekhalot and Merkabah corpus, Rabbi Nehunya ben Ha-Qanah.Written in Hebrew with occasional Aramaic phrases, the Bahir uses theliterary form of parable to teach esoteric truths about an earthly king, hisroyal family, his loyal and disloyal subjects, and his majestic palace. Thelanguage is often symbolic; some of the symbols are taken for grantedwithout further exposition, while others lead to an extended narrative.

Sefer Ha-Bahir expresses kabbalistic theosophy, albeit in rather opaqueand enigmatic manner. God is understood as a unity within plurality often forces, the Sefirot, and the system pulsates with divine energy that isthe source of vitality of all levels of existence organized hierarchically.20

The Sefirot manifest, or reveal, the concealed identity of the divine personality,as much as they function as the blueprint, or model, for all the processesin the physical world. Because the Bahir is not a philosophical text, it doesnot explain precisely how the Sefirot relate to the concealed aspect of God,the Ein Sof (literally, ‘No-End’ or ‘Without Limit’). Later kabbalists woulddo so with the help of philosophical vocabulary. Some would argue thatthe Sefirot are only ‘instruments’ of divine activity, while others (representingthe dominant view) would hold that the Sefirot are the essence of God.21

A dynamic system, the Sefirotic world affects all creative processes in thematerial world and in turn is affected by non-divine reality. In particular,human deeds, especially the deeds of Jews, affect the well-being of theSefirotic realm, precisely because humans, and especially Jews mirror God,being created in the image of God. When Jews perform the commandmentsproperly, they empower the deity, and when they commit sins, theydiminish the power of God. Kabbalistic theosophy was thus inherentlylinked to theurgy.

The Bahir’s speculations about the ten divine potencies, the Sefirot,express a mythical conception of God, because the Sefirot are viewed ascharacter traits of the divine personality. Unlike the philosophers whoviewed God as an intellect that thinks itself, the people who studied theBahir delved into the inner life of God’s personality, perhaps reflecting theso-called ‘emergence of the individual’ that medievalists associate withthe Renaissance of the twelfth century. Endowing human beings with powerand agency, the Bahir maintains that human deeds affect the well-being of



the tenth and last Sefirah, Malkhut, which is the feminine aspect of God.The symbolism of the Bahir (and thereafter all of theosophic-theurgickabbalah) is gendered: God is an androgynous deity.22 While the uppernine Sefirot constitute the male aspect of the deity, the Shekhinah isdepicted as ‘queen’, ‘bride’, ‘sister’, ‘wife’, ‘daughter’, and ‘matron’ thatstands at the side of the masculine, divine power, usually the King. She issometimes portrayed in terms reminiscent of the Gnostic terminology asthe ‘daughter of light’ who came ‘from a far away country’, who residesin the world. She has receptive quality, functioning as a vessel, or a containerfor the energy that she receives form the powers above her. Because theShekhinah contains the energy of all the divine potencies above her, sheis symbolized as an ocean, a passive symbol, but in relationship to theextra-divine world she functions as an active force. Hence she is depictedas a mother who takes care of her children, functioning as the presenceof God that never leaves Israel. The Shekhinah is most vulnerable to thetemptation of evil, which in the Bahir is understood as a separate realitythat can pollute the Deity.

What led the authors of the Bahir to develop symbolic theosophy is amatter of scholarly dispute. According to Gershom Scholem, the symbolismreflects the work of ‘medieval Jewish Gnostics’ ‘perhaps as parallel to Chris-tianity’s notion of the Church as Corpus Christi, the body of Christ’.23

Scholem conjectures that the rise of Catharism in the twelfth centurystimulated this development. Arthur Green and Peter Schäfer also see theChristian context as paramount and link feminine symbolism of the Shek-ihnah and the spread of the cult of Mary in the twelfth century.24 MosheIdel, by contrast, considers the development of feminine symbolism anelaboration of mythic paradigms within rabbinic sources,25 while for ElliotR. Wolfson these ideas can be traced to Judeo-Christian motifs absorbedby Jewish thinkers in Spain whose works were known to the authors andeditors of the Bahir.26 Regardless of its sources, by the end of the twelfthcentury, the contours of kabbalistic theosophy, sexual symbolism, andtheurgy (i.e., human impact on God) were in place in Sefer ha-Bahir,which became a foundational text for kabbalah in Christian Spain.

In the first decades of the thirteenth century, kabbalistic speculations,now available in writing, began to disseminate in the Jewish communitiesin Catalonia, to the chagrin of some kabbalists who wanted to protectkabbalistic esotericism. In the town of Girona a small coterie of Jewishintellectuals who were at home with Neoplatonic philosophy developedthe teachings of Provençal masters further through commentaries on Tal-mudic homilies, the Song of Song, Sefer Yetzirah, the Hebrew alphabet, andGenesis, indicating that kabbalistic discourse was decidedly traditional.27

The fact that Nahmanides (d. 1272), the leader of Catalonian Jewry, wasassociated with the group endowed kabbalah with authority as an alternativeto Maimonidean rationalism.28 Nahmanides, who also composed a kabbalisticcommentary on Sefer Yetzirah, defined kabbalah very narrowly as a received



knowledge about the esoteric meaning of specific Scriptures. He rejectedthe use of creative imagination in Scriptural interpretation and limited thedissemination of kabbalah to the initiated few.29

During the thirteenth century, Jews in Spain and Provence debated thelegacy of Maimonides focusing on the correct interpretation of Scripture,especially the creation narrative of Genesis. The followers of Maimonidesunderstood the biblical text in accord with Aristotle’s physics and cosmology,whereas the kabbalists claimed that the creation narrative pertains to processeswithin God. At stake were not only the exegesis of the Scripture but thenature and observance of the commandments. Maimonides’s historicizedinterpretation of the commandments rendered them as a means to an end,whereas the kabbalists offered a sacramental view of Jewish rituals: eachcommandment is linked to an aspect of God so that performing a givencommandment with the proper intention empowers God. Despite thesedifferences, rationalist philosophers and kabbalists had much in common:both groups were elitists and believed that their privileged knowledgeshould be known by the few; both claimed to possess knowledge ofultimate truth which they regarded as salvific; both assumed the biblicaltext is esoteric and offered their way to decode the text; both were opento non-Jewish strands of thought although the rationalist philosopherswere Aristotelian, whereas the kabbalists perpetuated Neoplatonic, Ismaili,and Sufi paradigms.

In the second half of the thirteenth century, the rationalist philosophersrelaxed their elitism that characterized the teachings of Maimonides andbegan to popularize philosophy through the translations of Averroes’scommentaries on Aristotle into Hebrew, commentaries on Maimonides’sGuide of the Perplexed,30 philosophical encyclopedias and philosophicalnovels.31 The philosophically informed interpretation of Judaism could thusbecome official Jewish theology for Spanish Jewry. That prospect compelledkabbalists to take a public stand and to present their alternative torationalist philosophy. Between 1270 and 1290 kabblists experienced unusualcreativity,32 leaving behind the cautious posture of Nahmanides. In thethird phase of the consolidation of kabbalah the tradition developed twodistinctive types: the kabbalah of the Sefirot and the kabbalah of thedivine names. Scholars refer to the first type as ‘theosophic-theurgickabbalah’ and to the second type as ‘ecstatic-prophetic kabbalah’. Seferha-Zohar (Book of Splendor) is the major example of the first type, andthe kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia (d. 1293) is the major example of thesecond type.

Two Types of Kabbalistic Redemptive Activities

The uniqueness of Sefer ha-Zohar, the most important product of medievalkabbalah, lies in the literary structure. The Zohar presents itself as a com-mentary on the Torah articulated by the second-century Rabbi Shimon



bar Yohai in his conversations with his companions while they were strollingthrough the Holy Land.33 Whereas traditional Jews to this day uphold theclaims of the Zohar to be a second-century Midrash, modern scholarshipmade clear that Zohar could not have been written in the second century.Rather, it was a product of mystical fraternity in Castile,34 the mostcreative member of which was Moses de Leon (d. 1305), an author whowrote several kabbalistic texts in Hebrew.35 The Zohar, by contrast, iswritten in Aramaic, and it is also full of neologisms and words that do nothave lexical meaning in any known language, but which function astechnical terminology in the charged mental world of the Zohar.

The homilies of Zohar focus on the unique personality of its protagonist,Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai.36 Endowed with supernatural powers, he is arighteous person, a perfect mystic, a master teacher, and a shaman who isable to impact the supernal world of the Sefirot as well as transform thephysical world through miracles. He brings about rain, overcomes demonicpowers, and even the angel of death is afraid of him. As a mediator betweenthe corporeal and supernal realms, a channel of divine energy, RabbiShimon Bar Yohai is represented in the Sefirah Yesod (Foundation), theconduit of the sexual energy of the Sefirotic world, as well as by Malkhut,the feminine aspect of God, with whom Shimon bar Yohai’s soul unitesat his death. While the ancient rabbi is not himself a messiah, he is clearlydepicted as a messianic figure engaged in redemptive activity that sustainsthe Jewish people.

The primary activity of the Zoharic group is Torah study, a redemptiveactivity that is depicted in highly sexual overtones. The mystics of theZohar love God and love Torah and the erotic nature of their constantstudy of Torah is expressed through the love poetry of the Song of Song,the text most associated with the ancient text of Shiur Qomah. The majorfocus of the Zoharic group is the feminine aspect of God, the Shekhinah,whose precarious existence is threatened by the powers of evil, ruled bythe arch-demon, Samael. The Jewish scholars of Torah symbolically rescuethe Shekhinah from the clutches of Evil (referred to in the Zohar as theSitra Ahrah, literally ‘the Other Side’) not through acts of chivalry, asmedieval knights do, but by protecting her through words of Torah whichultimately subdue the powers of evil. The mystical goal of the Zoharicgroup is to identify with the Shekhinah, surrender themselves to her, andultimately unite with her.

The mystics of the Zohar are depicted as itinerant scholars whose eroticenergy is devoted to Torah. To some extent, this portrayal was meant tooffer an alternative to the spread of philosophy in the Jewish intelligentsiaof Christian Spain. But it is also possible, although this view is not yetuniversally accepted among the scholars of kabbalah, that the portrayal ofthe Zoharic heroes as lovers of Torah was intended as an anti-Christianpolemics. After the Barcelona debate in 1263, where Nahmandies admittedthat Jews do not consider all rabbinic homilies as authoritative, Jews in



Spain lost some of their political power to the Dominicans.37 They wereforced to listen to conversionary sermons by Dominicans, and Jewishbooks were examined for potential blasphemies of Christianity. Jews couldactually do little to counter the anti-Jewish campaign of the Dominicans,except perhaps to present a Jewish alternative to the itinerant Christianpreachers and their ideals. The Zohar was such a Jewish answer, an elaborate,didactic drama that takes place not on stages in public squares, as didmedieval mystery dramas, but in the imagination of the readers.38 In theZoharic didactic drama, the esoteric meaning of the homilies, taught byRabbi Shimon bar Yohai through rich and textured symbolism, have salvificvalue: those who grasp the inner, esoteric meaning of the Zohar that referto the Sefirot attain immortality in the afterlife. Since the spiritual truthsof the Zohar truly enlighten those who know them, it is no coincidencethat Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai is referred to as ‘the light of the entireworld’ (butzina de-khol ar’aa) and as ‘holy luminary’ (butzina qadisha) whosedeath and union with the Shekhinah brings about the repair of imperfectreality.39 In other words, the anti-Christian message of the Zohar wasshaped by the very Christian cultural context.40

The Zohar’s artistry, rich symbolism and eroticism made it an irresistibleliterary text, worthy of imitation, translation and commentary. In thefourteenth century, kabbalists imitated the style of the Zohar, composeddictionaries to its Aramaic language, generated lists of kabbalistic symbolsto decode the Zohar, and began to write commentaries on the Zohar. Inthe late middle ages, Jews took the Zohar to be an authentic ancientMidrash and that assumption, which contributed to the positive receptionof the Zohar in the pre-modern period, would eventually be contested byscholars of kabbalah in the modern period.41 Yet as much as the dis-semination of kabbalah in the early modern period was tied to the receptionof the Zohar,42 critique of kabbalah in the modern period involved achallenge to the Zohar’s claim for antiquity.

No less than the Zohar, the writings of Abulafia, who illustrates thesecond paradigm of kabbalah, were suffused with messianism, but themessianic import was inseparable from the philosophy of Maimonides.43

For Abulafia, kabbalah meant first and foremost an uninterrupted trans-mission of the innermost truths of Judaism from ancient times. Alongwith Maimonides, Abulafia held that Jews have forgotten these ancienttruths and therefore their redemption tarries. To bring about redemption,it was necessary to disclose the hidden truths of the Torah so as to enlightenthe Jewish people, urgency shared by rationalist philosophers and theo-sophical kabbalists as well. Abulafia understood mystical enlightenmentprecisely as did Maimonides: it is a state of cognitive perfection in whichthe human intellectual unites with the Active Intellect and receives fromit divine overflow. This exalted cognitive state was attained by the prophetMoses, and apparently Abulafia believed that he too had reached cognitiveperfection, experiencing union with God.44



Within the received tradition, Abulafia distinguished between two setsof teachings: the kabbalah of the Sefirot and the kabbalah of divine names.45

In several works Abulafia spoke quite harshly and critically against thosewho believe that the Sefirot are hypostatic potencies that do not compromisethe unity of God. Abulafia adhered to the philosophic conception of divinesimplicity and regarded the theosophic position as tantamount to heresyand analogous to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Abulafia wasfamiliar with theosophic kabbalah and accepted some of its symbolism andmode of disclosure, but he did not regard the Sefirot as the essence of God.Rather, Abulafia identified them with the Separate Intellects: they areideal, intelligible forms that function as the conduit of the divine overflow.46

The last of the ten Sefirot, Malkhut, contains all the Sefirot about it and isidentified with the Active Intellect, the Intellect in charge of all processesin the sublunar world and the source of all knowledge.

The identification of the Sefirot with the Separate Intellects, all ofwhich contained within the Active Intellect, was the key of Abulafiaanthropocentric interpretation of the doctrine, on the one hand, and hisintellectual mysticism, on the other hand. Abulafia took the philosophicdoctrine of the Separate Intellects and gave it an anthropological or psy-chological interpretation: the Sefirot are internal states of human experi-ence; they are part of the human psyche, since the human is a microcosmof the macrocosm. Knowledge of the Sefirot is a form of self-knowledge,a process that requires the acquisition of moral and intellectual virtues andthat culminates in the conjunction between the human intellect and theActive Intellect. This cognitive union is prophecy, a reception of divineefflux from God through the Active Intellect, precisely as Maimonidesexplained. The kabbalah of the Sefirot, anthropologically or psychologicallyinterpreted is thus the highest example of the philosophic maxim ‘KnowThyself ’.

The main obstacle to self-knowledge is the corporeal body itself, especiallythe power of imagination. However, the Jewish tradition itself, accordingto Abulafia, also reveals the way to break through human embodimentand to free oneself form the errors of human imagination. This is the highestform of kabbalah, ‘the path of the [divine] names’ (derekh ha-shemot), whichis religiously superior to the knowledge of the Sefirot.47 Building on thelinguistic theory of Sefer Yetzirah and the mystical practices of the GermanPietists, Abulafia articulated exegetical, meditative and contemplativetechniques that supposedly resulted in a mystical union with God. How-ever, like the theosophic kabbalists, Abulafia rooted the mystical path inthe Hebrew language itself, which he regarded as the ‘mother of alllanguages’ because it is ‘in accord with nature’. God chose Hebrew to bethe language for the creation of the universe because of the unique perfectproperties of Hebrew.

To know how Hebrew serves as the medium of creation, the practi-tioner of kabbalah had to break down the sacred language into its atomic



components – the Hebrew letters – and recombine their numerical valueaccording to a particular code, a code that Abulafia derived from theprinciples of Maimonides’s philosophy. This contemplative human activity,one can surmise, was one reason why the kabbalah of Abulafia wasrejected by the leader of Castilian Jewry, Solomon ibn Adret (d. 1310), akabbalist committed to Nahmanides’s conservative posture that kabbalahmerely transmits a specific body of received esoteric teachings. For Abulafia,by contrast, there was no contradiction between reception of traditionand the creative, intellectual activity. In fact, the contemplative activityof letter combination (harkavah) was the deepest meaning of ma’asehmerkavah,48 as far as Abulafia was concerned. His techniques of letter com-bination and visualization of letters were intended to break down thelimits of human embodiment and bring about the liberation of therational soul from the shackles of the body. Abulafia defined this cognitivestate as prophecy.

Abulafia’s kabbalah was not merely a theoretical endeavor but a full-fledged, experiential program to achieve paranormal psychic states thatculminate in a mystical union with the Active Intellect. As a result, thehuman intellect attains immortality, precisely as Maimonides taught. Inaddition to the performance of the commandments and rigorous learningof philosophy and its sciences, Abulafia’s program included seclusion,breathing, physical postures, recitation of divine names, visualization ofletters, and letter combination. Most of these techniques were developedon the basis of existing Jewish practices, but some have analogues inother mystical systems, mainly Sufism and were influenced by thecontact Abulafia had with Sufis during his travels in Palestine and theBalkans and through the writings of ibn Arabi he encountered inSpain.49

Since Abulafia believed that he actually attained ultimate cognitiveperfection and possessed the inner meaning of the Torah, it is no surprisethat he viewed himself both as a prophet and as a messiah. In Sicily duringthe early 1290s he was actively engaged in messianic propaganda, althoughhe interpreted redemption in radical spiritual terms.50 Abulafia shiftedredemption from the historical to the psychological realm, minimized thecatastrophic elements of popular Jewish eschatology, and did not advocatethe departure of the Jews from the diaspora. Despite his highly individualisticmessianism, his prophetic activity was rebuffed by papal authorities, whoin the thirteenth century were most concerned with heretical implicationsof mystical prophecies. While ibn Adret’s opposition to Abulafia limitedthe dissemination of his works in Spain, Abulafia’s work were preservedin Sicily and southern Italy and would be the main source for knowledgeof kabbalah during the fifteenth century. Moreover, Abulafia’s notion thatthe Sefirot are identical with the separate Intellects became the basis ofattempts to coordinate philosophy and kabbalah in Spain and Provenceduring the fourteenth century.



Kabbalah as a Cultural Force

The theosophic-theurgic kabbalah of the Zohar and the ecstatic-prophetickabbalah of Abulafia would continue to evolve in the early modern periodand shape the history of Jews and the relations between Jews and non-Jews.From Iberia, kabbalah spread to Italy, North Africa, and the OttomanEmpire when the Jews were expelled in 1492 and 1497. Prior to 1492 inItaly, the Zohar was barely known.51 Instead, the writings of Abulafia andanother philosophically oriented kabbalist, Menachem Recanati (fl.1300),52 provided major sources of knowledge about kabbalah. As a result,kabbalah was perceived as an ancient theoretical science with a universalappeal, rather than as a set of practices for the proper observance of Jewishlaw. Aristotelian philosophy remained the dominant interpretation ofJudaism but by the end of the fifteenth century there was a decided interestin kabbalah among philosophically trained Jewish scholars.

In the end of the fifteenth century in Italy, Christian humanists such asPico della Miarndola (d. 1494), Yohannes Reuchlin (d. 1522), GuillaumePostel (d. 1588), and Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo (d. 1532) expressed greatinterest in kabbalah. They regarded kabbalah as part of prisca theologica,which they believed culminated in the truths of Christianity,53 and believedthat Jews who know kabbalah would convert to Christianity. This was notthe first time that kabbalah was seen as the basis for conversion to Chris-tianity; the idea had been asserted by Raymond Lull (d. 1316) who wasfamiliar with contemporary kabbalah in Spain and believed it could serveas the foundation for the conversion of Jews and Muslims to Christianity.54

In the fifteenth century, Christian humanists gained access to kabbalistictexts first through the translations of kabbalistic texts into Latin by Jewishapostates and later through their own mastery of Hebrew. As a distinctiveinterpretation of Christianity, Christian kabbalah was inseparable from theRenaissance fascination with the occult (i.e., hidden) properties and spec-ulations about the creative powers of language. For example Reuchlinconsidered Hebrew to be a pure, natural language, the foundational structureof the created universe. The knowledge of Hebrew (as Sefer Yetzirahalready argued) along with unique vocalization, punctuation and accentswas, therefore, conducive to knowledge of the nature as much as it wasconducive to the salvation of the individual soul.

Christian humanists initiated the publication of the Zohar in 1558–59in Christian printing presses of Cremona and Mantua. If the Zohar indeedcontained spiritual truths whose revelation could bring about the redemptionof the Jewish people, publishing the Zohar was a religious obligation ofthe highest order. Jews who supported the printing of the Zohar collab-orated with the Christian publishers and helped in the translations of theZohar into Latin. The printing of the Zohar was significant in Jewish-Christian relations, especially because five years earlier the Talmud wasconsigned to the flames accused of blasphemy against Christianity, and



three years prior Jews in the Papal States were confined to ghettos. In theItalian ghettos, kabbalah would be studied by voluntary associations, orconfraternities, who found solace in the spiritual message of the Zohar andits symbolic understanding of reality.55 However, whereas in sixteenth-centuryItaly the Zohar was perceived as part of ancient philosophic lore, in NorthAfrica the Zohar was regarded as a holy book that had to be treated as asacred object because it contains occult powers that bring concrete benefitsto those who study it.56 In the Draa Valley of Southern Morocco, kabbalahwas cultivated under the influence of local Sufi practices, such as ritualizedrecitation of divine names and communication with the souls of deceasedsaints.

The various strands of kabbalah, German Pietism, and Sufi-inspiredJewish mysticism converged in Safed, as small town of in the UpperGalilee, where kabbalah flourished in the community of Jewish refugeesfrom Iberia. Although several outstanding kabbalists such as Moses Cordovero(d. 1570) made this kabbalistic fraternity exceedingly creative, it was theleadership of Rabbi Isaac Luria (d. 1572) that would shape the history ofkabbalah for generations to come. Imbued with a strong sense of guilt andobsessed with the reality of exile, the Iberian exiles led a very intensereligious life in expectation of the imminent coming of the messiah.57 Thekabbalists of Safed devised an elaborate spiritual program that includedascetic practices and penances for sins in order to cultivate spiritual virtuessuch as modesty and humility. The intense introspection and self-examinationwas designed to purify the soul and facilitate communion with God, butthe goal was attained only if one practice specific mystical techniques suchas social isolation and seclusion, reduction of verbal communication to theminimum, meditation and recitation of divine names, withdrawal fromcontact with material objects so as to minimize bodily sensations.58 Otherpractices included prostration on the grave sites of ancient rabbis to communewith their departed saintly souls (yihudim) and outdoor peregrinations toencounter the Shekhinah (gerushim). The kabbalists of Safed, like theliterary figures of the Zohar, identified themselves with the suffering ofthe Shekhina and acted to rescue the feminine aspect of God from itssuffering. All of these mystical techniques and practices yielded visual andauditory revelatory experiences which were given normative power notonly because they were associated with the figure of Elijah, but becausesome of the mystics, especially Joseph Karo, whose code of Jewish Lawwould become normative.

Underlying the mystical practices of the Safed community was anelaborate myth about events that took place within the Deity whichaccount for the disharmonious condition of universe, the human, and thePeople of Israel.59 According to the Lurianic myth, the self-manifestationof God and the self-manifestation of the cosmos are two sides of the samecoin. In the primordial condition, only the presence of God, the Ein Sof,imaged as limitless divine light, existed. The divine reality, however, was



not utter simplicity, because it already consisted of mixture of good andevil, or powers of Judgment and powers of Mercy, which are associatedwith feminine and masculine forces respectively. Whether to catharticallycleanse the divinity from forces of evil, or simply to make room for non-divine reality, the first event in the creative process was the withdrawal(tzimtzum) of the divine light and the emergence of primeval space (tehiru)within which the next phase of the process will take a shape. A ray oflight entered into the vacated space and formed the shapeless matter intoten Sefirot constellated in the form of a human, the macro-anthropos(Adam Qadmon). The details of the process vary but all interpreters agreethat the constellated divine structure was unable to sustain the divine light,either because there was a ‘mechanical’ flaw in the ‘vessels’ that were tocontain the light or because of the need to refine the structure in orderto further remove any form of impurity. The result was the same: thedivine ‘vessels’ were shattered and became ‘shards’ or ‘shells’ (kelippot)which are the basis of corporeal world which we experience through thesenses. The Breaking of the Vessels (Shevirat ha-kelim) separated most ofthe lights of the divine Compassion from the lights of divine Judgment,but now shattered and fully materialized forces of Judgment were animatedwith the strength of holy sparks that were trapped in the qellipot. In corporealreality, the particles of divine light, the holy sparks, which were estrangedfrom their sublime and transcendent origins, vitalize the world and compelthe human rescue them or release them from their entrapment.

The ‘Breaking of the Vessels’ is a cosmic event that affects all level ofreality. After the initial event, the Deity entered a process of reconfigurationin which the ten Sefirot that constitute the primordial human, the divinemacro-anthropos, known as Adam Qadmon, have been rearranged in fivepartzufim (literally, ‘faces’ or ‘countenances’). Each of the five ‘Faces’ containsthe full structure of ten Sefirot and the entire structure is repeated throughoutthe four levels of reality: ‘Emanation’, (Atzilut), ‘Creation’ (Beriah), ‘For-mation’ (Yetzirah), and ‘Actualization’ (Asiya). Since the Deity is androgynous,it is not surprising that the rearrangement of the broken Deity is conveyedin biological categories of ‘conception’, ‘pregnancy’, ‘suckling’, and‘maturation’ through which the Deity gives birth to itself. Presumably,these reorganized ‘Faces’ possessed stability and strength that the earliermanifestations of light lacked. However, the attempt of the Deity torehabilitate itself failed once again with the sin of disobedience in theGarden of Eden, a sinfulness that is perpetually repeated through humansinful activities that empower the realm of Evil. The task of humans, ormore accurately of Jews, is to complete the ‘mending’, ‘healing’, or‘restoration’ of God (i.e., Tiqqun) through the performance of divinecommands with the appropriate intentions (kavanot).

The elaborate theogonic and cosmogonic myth served as the theoreticalrationale for the mystical life of the kabbalistic fraternity in Safed. Thetask of the kabbalistic virtuoso, whose own soul has been healed by living



the mystical way, is to repair the broken universe and the broken deity. Inthe mending or healing of the world and of God lies the messianic importof Lurianic kabbalah. Luria understood himself in messianic terms but didnot declare himself publicly as a messiah. In the seventeenth century Lurianickabbalah would inspire a messianic movement, although the messianicclaimant himself, Sabbatai Zevi (d. 1676) was inspired not by Lurianickabbalah but by the Zohar and other kabbalistic texts.

During the seventeenth century Lurianic kabbalah shaped Jewish culturein Italy, Central Europe and Amsterdam, and was especially appealing toformer conversos. For example, Abraham Cohen Herrera (d. 1635) regardedthe elaborate myths of Lurianic kabbalah to be totally compatible withrenaissance Platonism, even though kabbalah was not reducible to Platon-ism.60 Menasseh ben Israel (d. 1657) was another ex-converso scholar inAmsterdam who promoted kabbalah in his contacts with leading Christianscholars such as Petrus Serrarius (d. 1669), Franciscus Mercury van Helmont(d. 1698), and Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (d. 1687). Like Jewishthinkers in fifteenth-century Italy,61 Ben Israel showed the affinity of kabbalahwith Platonism. Functioning like the Platonic Ideas, the letters of theHebrew alphabet were the ‘lights of the Sefirot’.62

The fusion of Christianity and kabbalah reached its zenith in thecourt of Christian August of Sulzbach (1622–1708) giving rise to a mixtureof ‘tolerant ecumenism, faith in science, and belief in progress that aregenerally associated with the Enlightenment’.63 As Allison Coudert hasshown, the thinkers of the Sulzbach court were familiar with the doctrinesof Lurianic kabbalah and even identified Christ with technical termi-nology of the Lurianic process.64 The Christian kabbalists did not simplycoordinate Christian beliefs with Lurianic terminology; they also adoptedJewish views to argue against conventional Christian beliefs. The mostimportant legacy of this activity was Knor von Rosenroth’s KabbalahDenudata (1677–84), an anthology of kabbalistic texts translated intoLatin that served generations of Christian kabbalists in the followingcenturies.

During the seventeenth century the Christian interest in kabbalah wassuffused with millennial expectations (including the final conversion ofthe Jews) as well as a keen desire to unlock the occult secrets of theuniverse, characteristic of the so-called ‘radical Enlightenment’. Animportant contributor to this trend was the Swedish mystic and scientist,Emanuel Swedenborg (d. 1772), who was active in England since 1710and whose thought had a decisive influence on later millenarians andmystics in the nineteenth century. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, interest in the Zohar generated translations into various vernacularlanguages, endeavors undertaken by apostate Jews or by Christians forexpressed missionizing purposes.65 Philosophically, kabbalah exerted someinfluence on Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (d. 1854), whoseknowledge of kabbalah was derived from Latin translations such as the



Kabbalah Denudata and whose interpretation of kabbalah was mediatedthrough the mystical theosophy of Jacob Böhme (d. 1624).66

The seventeenth century was characterized by acute messianism amongJews and non-Jews. For Jews, the messianic convulsion was associatedwith Sabbatai Zevi (d. 1675) a messianic contender whose messianic self-understanding was linked to antinomian acts.67 Zevi’s idiosyncratic behaviorand his later conversion to Islam were interpreted by Nathan of Gaza(d. 1684) within the framework of Lurianic kabbalah, even though Zevi’spersonal faith was shaped more by the Zohar than by Lurianic doctrines.68

Zevi’s conversion to Islam did not end the movement and in fact stimulatedthe systematization of Sabbatean ideology by Nathan of Gaza and othertheologians, such as Abraham Miguel Cardozo (d. 1706). The conversionalso inspired other Jews in Turkey to follow suit and formally convert toIslam while living privately as Jews. Known as ‘Doenmeh’ (literally,‘reversed’ in Turkish) this sect was led by Baruchia Russo, who consideredhimself an incarnation of Zevi’s soul.69 On the basis of Sabbatean ideologyhe devised a full-fledged sectarian life that was rife with sexual deviantpractices as much as with acute messianism. In Padua and Hamburg therewere active Sabbatean groups, clustered in fact around well-known rabbinicauthorities: Rabbi Moses Hayyim Luzzatto (d. 1746) and Jonathan Eibe-schutz (d. 1764), respectively, who incurred the wrath of established rabbinicauthorities.70 The opposition did not succeed in totally eradicatingSabbateanism. In fact, the most radical off-shoot which caused great troubleto Jewish communities was the sect of Jacob Frank (d. 1791) in Polandthat eventually converted to Catholicism. They instigated a blood libelagainst the Jewish community in Brody (1759) and challenged the rabbinicleadership to a formal debate about the Talmud. The Frankist heresyexacerbated the decline of rabbinic leadership in the late eighteenth century,but did not cause it, and followers of Frankism would find their way tosecular revolutionary movements.

As much as kabbalistic ideas gave rise to heretical movements such asSabbateanism and Frankism, they also stimulated a Jewish spiritual revivalthat would reshape the life of Eastern European Jews in the second halfof the eighteenth century – Hasidism.71 The movement is associated withIsrael Baal Shem Tov (d. 1760), known as the Besht, a folk healer, magician,and exorcist, regarded as the founder of Hasidism.72 He had only a limitedformal knowledge of kabbalistic doctrines, but what he lacked in formallearning he surely compensated by personal charisma, organizationalpower, piety, and ecstatic prayer. According to the Besht, communion withGod (devequt) is the goal of Jewish religious life for all Jews and not justfor the religious elite, and prayer is an exuberant experience filled withjoy in which negative thought are transformed into positive awareness of God.

The Hasidic master functioned as the spiritual and organizational centerof a given Hasidic community and was revered for his unique spiritualpowers which enabled him to function as an intercessor between the



supernal and corporeal worlds. The ideology that justified this social insti-tution highlighted the metaphysical interdependence between the ‘righteousman’ (tzaddiq) and his followers: the leader related to his followers as formrelates to matter. Practically it meant that the followers were responsiblefor the physical sustenance of the leader and he in turn provided for theirspiritual needs. Believed to be a conduit of spiritual energy, the Hasidicmaster acted as a healer, prognosticator of future events, confessor, andmiracle worker. The Hasidic master, as Idel persuasively argued, combinedecstasy and magic: the mystical experience of the master was translatedinto concrete results in the corporeal world.73

The mass appeal of Hasidism was to be found in part in its psychologicalinterpretation of kabbalah. Minimizing the mechanistic and catastrophicaspects of Lurianic theology, Hasidism interpreted the major events ofGod’s evolution as state of consciousness. Thus the ‘Contraction’ of God(tzimtzum) was understood to mean that God is everywhere but is con-cealed through various veils of ordinary human consciousness. Likewise,the ‘Breaking of the Vessels’ (shevirah) was not a catastrophic act of thedivine machinery, but as an internal conflict within one’s soul, and act of‘Repair’ (tiqqun) meant personal transformation of the individual whomeets God through the descent into one’s own Self. The psychologicalemphasis shifts the messianic drama from the public arena to the privatesphere, to the redemption of the individual Self. The major obstacle topersonal redemption and communion with God is the ego (the ‘I’), whichseparates between God and the human. The Hasidic ideal is to minimizethe ego so that the individual is taken over by God, or by the divine light,becoming like a vessel through which God is manifested. Because of itsmass appeal, Hasidism generated fierce opposition. The traditional opponents(mitnagedim) of Hasidism, who regarded themselves as the protectors of thenormative tradition, considered Hasidism an affront to traditional Jewishlearning and leadership,74 whereas the proponents of the Jewish Enlight-enment (the maskilim), some of whom were willing to entertain changesin Jewish religious practices, scorned the Hasidism for its backwardness,superstitious, and unenlightened views.75 In retrospect, notwithstandingthe critics, Hasidism actually enhanced the traditionalist camp, even thoughsome of the later thinkers of Hasidism were daring theologians whoskirted the boundary between nomian and anti-nomian interpretations ofJudaism.76

Kabbalah and the Search for Jewish Identity

While the proponents of Hasidism and their opponents in Eastern Europebattled the correct interpretation of Judaism, Jews in Central and WesternEurope struggled to be granted civil rights as citizens of a modern state.The Jewish demand for emancipation was rooted in the awareness thatJudaism is culturally backward and that if Jews are to be integrated into



European society, Jewish religious practices must be thoroughly trans-formed. Those who agitated for the reform and modernization of Judaismadopted the logic of historical inquiry about the Jewish past and promotedthe Science of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums). Looking at Judaism ina disinterested fashion, the scientific study of Judaism was to discover thetruths about the Jewish past and separate that which is essential to Judaism(e.g., ethical monotheism) from that which is a product of historicalcircumstances (i.e., the rituals of Judaism). Given the pursuit of objectivetruth about the past, all claims were to be examined critically with the helpof philology and the commitment to the recovery of the past as it trulywas. The historical analysis of the past was to be applied to first and foremostto the immediate medieval past, including the philosophical and kabbalisticstrains of medieval Judaism.

The Jewish historians of the nineteenth century were largely unsympa-thetic to kabbalah. The symbolic worldview of kabbalah, the valorizationof the imagination, the association with magic and astrology were all takento be manifestations of a superstitious worldview that was not only anti-thetical to modern rationalism, but also the cause for the continued back-wardness of the Jews. If Jews are to be integrated into Western society andculture, they must relinquish the commitment to kabbalah, speculative orpractical. The historical retelling of the Jewish past by Heinrich Graetz,for example, was overtly critical of kabbalah and especially of Sefer ha-Zohar,which for him was no more than a harmful forgery by a charlatan.77

Historical research proved that the Zohar was not was a second-centuryrabbinic text, as it claimed to be, but a late thirteenth-century text.78 Thehistorical study of the Jewish mystical past, paradoxically enough, alsogenerated the publication of books previously extant in manuscripts, criticaleditions of seminal texts, monographs on outstanding authors, and initialinterpretation of the historical development of the Jewish mystical tradition.

By the 1870s Jews in Western and central Europe were formally eman-cipated and entered all aspects of modern society, but they were by nomeans socially accepted. The rise of modern, racial anti-Semitism was abacklash to the emancipation, accentuated Jewish Otherness on the basisof biological difference. Zionists took modern anti-Semitism as evidencethat Jews could never be fully integrated into Europe and thereforepreached departure from Europe and settlement in the Land of Israel. TwoGerman Zionists, Martin Buber (d. 1965) and Greshom Scholem (d.1982), would shape the study of kabbalah in the twentieth century. Buber,who was deeply interested in mysticism, would find in Hasidism theanswer to his own spiritual quest but it would lead him to move frommysticism to dialogical philosophy.79 His translation of Hasidic stories intoGerman made Hasidism accessible to readers in the West and his inter-pretation of Hasidism would impact the practice of psychology because ofits emphasis on dialogue. By contrast, Scholem was committed to historicismas practiced in German universities and used the recovery of the kabbalistic



past to serve as the lever for the Zionist program of Jewish nationalrenewal.80 Soon after he migrated to Palestine in 1923, Scholem wasamong the founders of the Hebrew University in 1925 where the studyof Jewish mysticism was to be conducted with utmost rigor of empiricalscientific method.81

Scholem professionalized the study of kabbalah, making it accessible toscholars all over the world, Jews or non-Jews, believers on non-believers,and Scholem designated this tradition as ‘Jewish mysticism’.82 As a Zionist,Scholem highlighted the uniqueness of Jewish mysticism, arguing thatJewish mystics never obliterated the boundary between the human andGod, and that Jewish mysticism remained particularistic because of itsinherent link to the Hebrew language. Scholem’s historicist empiricismled him to ignore contemporary practitioners of kabbalah in Palestine,North America, or Europe, most of whom came from Hasidic families,struggled with modernity, and sought some reconciliation between kabbalahand modernism. Boaz Huss, therefore, rightly labeled these attempts‘modernist kabbalah’.83

Scholem’s empiricist approach to kabbalah was perpetuated by his studentswho continued to systematize the vast field of kabbalah, Sabbateanism,and Hasidism but none of them offered an alternative to Scholem’s inter-pretation of the tradition. This state of affairs was changed when MosheIdel, who was not a direct student of Scholem, subjected Scholem’s legacyto a comprehensive revision.84 Idel challenged Scholem’s claim that unio-mystica is missing in Judaism and cast serious doubts about the history ofkabbalah that Scholem had outlined. Under the impact of Idel’s extensivescholarship, the academic study of kabbalah has been thoroughly trans-formed. Current scholarship pays close attention to the phenomenologyof diverse religious experiences; highlights the interplay between kabbalahand non-Jewish mystical traditions (e.g., Sufism, Christian mysticism, andHinduism); investigates the role of kabbalah in the culture of Jewishsocieties in the early modern period, explores the connection betweenkabbalah, magic, and shamanism; analyzes literary strategies of kabbalistichermeneutics and explores the aesthetic dimensions of kabbalah, and lastbut not least, the scholarship reflects on the gendered aspects of kabbalah.85

As a result, kabbalah is now seen less as speculative theology and more asa lived experienced that shapes the social world of its practitioners andvice versa. Instead of continuity and coherence, scholars of kabbalah todayemphasize internal diversity and discontinuity and much more attentionis paid to the kabbalah as a cultural phenomenon in the present.86

In North America too the academic study of kabbalah was intertwinedwith the search for Jewish identity, but the circumstances vary greatly,because Jews are a tiny minority and because identity issues are framedindividually rather than collectively. In the counter-cultural revolution ofthe late 1960s, young American Jews found the style of American suburbansynagogue unappealing and the exclusive focus on Zionist support for the



nascent State of Israel spiritually unsatisfying. Some spiritual seekers (themost famous of whom are Richard Alpert, otherwise known as RamDass, Allen Ginzburg, Joseph Goldstein, and Jack Kornbluth), found theirway to Buddhism, while others went ‘back to the sources’ and reconnectedwith traditional Judaism. An important catalyst for this development wasAbraham Joshua Heschel (d. 1972), a scion of a famous Hasidic family,who worked closely with Buber in Germany before fleeing Europe andsettling in the U.S. Translating Hasidic teachings into a poetic critique ofmodernity, Heschel offered Jewish spiritual seekers a way to be passionateabout Judaism without being culturally regressive or intellectually naïve.87

Heschel’s legacy inspired many disaffected and assimilated Jews to returnto the literary sources of Judaism, a move that facilitated the flourishingof Jewish Studies in universities throughout North America during the1970s.88

The interest in traditional Judaism, especially Hasidism on Americancampuses was no less indebted to the inspiring work of two adherents ofHabad branch of Hasidism, Rabbi Zalman Shachter-Shalomi (b. 1924)and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (d. 1994). The former is an original, andcreative mystic who founded the Jewish Renewal Movement in the 1980s;and the latter is a musician who help inspire the revival of East-EuropeanJewish folk music (known as Kleizmer), which encompassed many Hasidicmelodies and captured the deep yearning of Hasidic spirituality. ThisNeo-Hasidic Renewal Movement encouraged the incorporation ofkabbalistic symbolic terminology and the psychological interpretation ofkabbalah, although most members of the movement neither masteredHebrew nor became proficient in kabbalistic texts.

Some of the activists of the Jewish Renewal Movement receivedacademic training at Brandeis University, the main academic institution(in contradistinction to a religious seminary) where Jews could be trainedin the study of kabbalah in the second half of the twentieth century.Under the tutelage of Alexander Altmann, a German-Jewish émigré wholacked Scholem’s Zionist convictions, a generation of American Jewslaunched the academic study of kabbalah in the U.S. in the late 1960s and1970s.89 The work of Altmann’s students facilitated the study of kabbalahand Hasidism in English and the incorporation of kabbalah into thecurriculum of Religious Studies departments in American secular universities.The most original interpretation of kabbalah in North America is offeredby Elliot R. Wolfson, another graduate of the Brandeis program, whosenumerous studies present a phenomenological reading of kabbalah indebtedto Heidegger’s philosophy. Wolfson is also inspired by feminist theory andpsychoanalytic analysis of gendered language, but his conclusions aboutgender in kabbalah undermine any attempt to appropriate kabbalah inorder to buttress contemporary feminist sensibilities. For the kabbalistsGod is a masculine androgyne: the female is an extension of the male andin the ideal future the female will be contained within the male.90



In both Israel and the U.S., kabbalah has become a staple of contem-porary popular culture, albeit for different reasons. Paradoxically, in Israelthe popular interest in kabbalah goes hand in hand with the decline ofpopularity of Jewish Studies among secularist Israelis. The most importantcause of this development is the rise of post-Zionism and with it theskeptical stance toward the national narrative and the previous commitmentto a state-sponsored ideology. Whereas in the pre-State years, the scientificstudy of the past (including kabbalah) was meant to forge collective Zionistidentity, today the academic study of Judaism no longer serves a nationalfunction.91 Israeli scholars of kabbalah continue to generate important andcreative studies, but the primary study of kabbalah takes place outside theacademy in myriad religious institutions and popular venues, all of whichuse electronic media and direct marketing to attract those who seek spiritualtransformation and growth which the secular academy does not and cannotprovide.

In Israel the debate about the meaning of the Jewish State becameexceedingly painful after Israel’s victory in 1967. Those who interpret 1967in messianic terms draw their inspiration from the teachings of RabbiAbraham Isaac Kook (d. 1935), the first Chief Ashkenazi rabbi in pre-StateIsrael, who was a mystical poet with strong messianic self-perception.92 Hesupported the Zionist pioneers who were committed to secularist ideologies,especially Socialism, but he invested their activities with a messianicmeaning expressed in kabbalistic terminology. This blend of kabbalah,messianism, and nationalism was elaborated by the son, Rabbi Zevi YehudahKook (d. 1982) whose writings provided the ideological basis for thesettlements in the occupied territories. Whether religious Zionists areinspired by Kook or by the messianic teachings of the Hasidic master,Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav,93 the interest in kabbalah featured as part of apolitical agenda to bring about the messiah through human action.

Even more important for the popularization of kabbalah is the legacyof Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag (d. 1954) who was born into Hasidicfamily in Poland where he was also attuned to Communism. Settled inPalestine in 1921, Ashlag devoted his life to the dissemination of egalitarianand highly psychological interpretation of Lurianic kabbalah in order tobuild a utopian Communist society in which one works according toone’s ability but received according to one’s needs. Ashlag’s disciples (e.g.,Yehuda Brandwein, Rabbi Philip Berg, and his sons, Rabbi Michael Bergand Rabbi Judah Berg, as well as Rabbi Michael Laitman) have disseminatedtheir master’s teaching all over the world. Under their interpretation, themedieval tradition reserved for the few has become New-Age religion forthe many.94 Ashlag’s interpretation of kabbalah is promoted most successfullyby the Kabbalah Centre led by the Berg family. Directed at a mass marketof baby boomers who are obsessed with self-discovery and personalhappiness, the books of the Kabbalah Centre present kabbalah as a self-standing, perennial wisdom that ‘teaches us to bring prosperity into our



lives in every sense of the word, including the material sense’.95 Insteadof esoteric interpretation of Jewish scriptures, kabbalah is presented as ‘atechnology of self-transformation’, a neutral label that is geared to appealto those who have experimented with practically everything and stillexperience emptiness and helplessness. The marketing techniques of theKabbalah Centre are apparently effective, since its branches are now presentin twenty-two countries and a very rigorous study program, especially ofthe Zohar, is available through Internet.96

Today kabbalah proliferates through print culture, public happenings,performances of spiritual poetry and music, adult education courses, radiobroadcasts, columns in daily newspapers and Internet blogs. Kabbalisticlanguage, symbolism, and outlook are ubiquitous, helped in large part byhigh-tech industry no less than the diffusion of ‘practical kabbalah’, whichincludes pilgrimages to the graves of kabbalistic saints and Hasidic masters,use of amulets and blessings to affect desired results, and marketing ofproducts with presumed occult powers. Since many popularizers of kabbalahgive it a highly psychological interpretation, many are attracted to kabbalahin the belief that it can unlock the mysteries of human existence and offerthem happiness and fulfillment.97

By the turn of the twenty-first century, the utopian spirit of kabbalahand its message of human transformation receive additional boost from thetechnological developments in genetics, robotics, informatics, and nanote-chnology that promise to transform humanity into a new, ‘posthuman’ age.98

Those who welcome the new phase of human evolution are known astranshumanists,99 and they hold that the convergence of new technologieswill make it possible for humans to ‘play God’ by interfering in humanreproduction through genetic engineering, including human cloning. Thenotion that humans who possess the mysteries of creation can create anartificial humanoid (Golem) has a long history in kabbalistic tradition, aswe have noted above.100 Currently the legend of the Golem has come tosymbolize both human creative powers and their destructive potential,both of which are now actualized by contemporary science. Cognitivescientists who work on artificial intelligence are inspired by the Golemlegend,101 and Jewish bioethicists discuss the moral status of human clonesby reference to it.102 In contemporary conversations, the kabbalistic yearningto fathom the mystery of creation seems to be in accord with the spiritof contemporary science, and the kabbalistic view of the world as alinguistic construct seems to cohere with the science of informatics.

Conclusion

Kabbalah is an important and creative strand within rabbinic Judaism thatdesires to fathom the mysteries of God, the universe, and the Torah.Viewing God as a dynamic reality that interacts with the human, kabbalistsbelieved that the revealed Torah provides the path for unlocking the



mysteries of God’s inner life. The correct interpretation of the Torah andthe proper practice of the Torah’s commandments presumably enable thekabbalists to participate in the inner life of God and even empower God.Although the roots of kabbalistic ideas could be traced to rabbinic period,kabbalah functioned as a self-conscious program for the interpretation ofrabbinic Judaism in the middle ages, primarily in response to the rationalistinterpretation of Judaism articulated by Maimonides and his followers.Kabbalah continued to evolve in the early modern period and functionedas a major cultural force that shaped Jewish-Christian relations, preciselybecause of the messianic import of kabbalah. Originally intended for theintellectual elite among Jews, kabbalah became a mass phenomenon in theseventeenth century during the messianic outburst of the Sabbatian move-ment and would be further popularized through its transformation inHasidism. Technological innovations, such as printing in the fifteenthcentury and the electronic media in the twentieth century, have facilitatedthe dissemination and popularization of kabbalah, and conversely, kabbalisticideas inspire contemporary technology.

The study of kabbalah as an academic discipline emerged in the nineteenthcentury but continued to evolve in very circuitous ways in the twentiethcentury, when the academic study of kabbalah was used as means to forgecollective Zionist identity and culture. At the dawn of the twenty-firstcentury, however, the interest in kabbalah has spilled outside the walls ofthe academy as kabbalah became one of the variants of New-Age religions.Scholars of kabbalah are generally quite weary of the celebrity statusaccorded to kabbalah today and are concerned about the misuse of thetradition, but there are also a few who examine the current popularityof kabbalah with sociologically or anthropologically without judging,endorsing, or condemning it. It is reasonable to believe that interest inkabbalah will increase in the following decades but whether the resultswill be positive or negative depends entirely on one’s point of view.

Short Biography

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson writes on Jewish intellectual history with a focuson the interplay of philosophy and kabbalah in pre-modern Judaism,Jewish philosophy and feminism, Judaism and ecology, and Judaism andscience. Her articles appeared in Cambridge History of Medieval Jewish Phi-losophy, AJS Review, Science in Context, Feminist Theology, Oxford Handbookof Religion and Ecology, and Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion. She is theauthor of Between Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben JudahMesser Leon (SUNY Press, 1991), awarded the Vizhnitzer Prize for thebest work in Jewish history in 1991 by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.She is also the author of Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledgeand Well Being (Hebrew Union College Press, 2003) that documents thereception of Aristotelian virtue ethics in premodern Judaism. She has



edited Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word (HarvardUniversity Press, 2002), and Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy (IndianaUniversity Press, 2004). Her current research is about conceptions ofnature in Judaism and she has another edited volume in press, Judaism andthe Phenomenon of Life: The Legacy of Hans Jonas (Brill Academic Publishers).Tirosh-Samuelson is a Professor and Associate Chair of the Departmentof History at Arizona State University. She is the recipient of the TempletonResearch Lectures on Constructive Engagement of Science and Religion(2006–09) for a project entitled: ‘Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism:Religion, Science, and Technology’. Prior to joining the faculty of ASUshe taught at Indiana University, Emory University, and Columbia University.She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Kabbalah from the Hebrew Universityof Jerusalem.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Department of History, P.O. Box 85287-4302, Arizona State Uni-versity, Tempe, AZ 85287-4302, USA. E-mail: [email protected].

1 Esotericism is one of the characteristic features of the Jewish mystical tradition, rooted in thevery ideology of dual Torah, since the Oral Torah is believed to be the hidden aspect of theWritten Torah. On the logic of esotericism in the Jewish mystical tradition consult M. Idel,‘Secrecy, Binah and Derisha’, in H. Kippenberg and G. Stroumsa (eds.), Secrecy and Concealment(Leiden: Brill, 1995), 313–44; E. R. Wolfson, ‘Beyond the Spoken Word: Oral Tradition andWritten Transmission in Medieval Jewish Mysticism’, in Y. Elman and I. Gershoni (eds.),Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality and Cultural Diffusion (New Haven, CT/London:Yale University Press, 2000), 193–206.2 On the content of Hekhalot and Merkabah tradition and its relationship to Jewish apocalyp-ticism, on the one hand, and to rabbinic Judaism, on the other hand see I. Grunwald, Apocalpyticand Merkabah Mysticism (Leiden/Köln: E. J. Brill, 1980); I. Chernus, Mysticism in Rabbinic Judaism(Berlin/New York, NY: Walter de Gruyter, 1982); J. Dan, ‘The Religious Experience of theMerkava’, in Arthur Green (ed.), Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible through the Middle Ages, Vol. 1(New York, NY: Crossroad, 1986), 289–312; D. J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot (Tübingen:J. C. B. Mohr, 1988); P. Schäfer, The Hidden and the Manifest God: Some Major Themes in EarlyJewish Mysticism, trans. A. Pomerance (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992);R. Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism, trans. D. Louvish (Oxford/Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004).3 For a critical edition of the text and the transmission of the tradition consult M. S. Cohen,Shiur Qomah: Texts and Recensions (Tübingen: Mohr, 1985). On the conception of God’sluminous body see A. Goshen-Gottstein, ‘The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literautre’,Harvard Theological Review, 87/2 (1994): 171–95.4 On the interplay between philosophy and kabbalah see E. R. Wolfson, ‘Jewish Mysticism’, inD. H. Frank and O. Leaman (eds.), The History of Jewish Philosophy (New York, NY: Routledge,1997), 450–98; H. Tirosh-Samuelson, ‘Philosophy and Kabbalah: 1200–1600’, in D. H. Frankand O. Leaman (eds.), The Cambridge Companion of Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2003), 218–57.5 The dominant view sees the text as a product of Hellenistic environment (Palestine, Egypt,or Transjordan) sometimes between the second and fourth centuries. See G. Scholem, Kabbalah(New York, NY: Schocken, 1974), 21–30. Yehudah Liebes argued that the book could havewritten prior to 70 CE in Northern Mesopotamia, see Y. Liebes, Ars Poetica in Sepher Yetsira(in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 2000), 229–37. By contrast, Steven Wasserstrom has arguedthat the text was composed in the ninth century in the Islamic East as part of the Hellenisticrevival among Shiite-Gnostic groups, see S. Wasserstrom, ‘Sefer Yesira and Early Islam: A



Reappraisal’, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 3 (1993): 201–21; Wasserstrom, ‘FurtherThoughts on the Origins of Sefer Yesirah’, Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism, 2(2002): 201–21.6 For a critical edition of the text and an English translation see P. A. Hayman, Sefer Yesirah:Edition, Translation and Text-Critical Commentary (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). For overviewof the evolution of the variants of the text see J. Dan, ‘Three Phases of the History of SeferYezirah’, Frankfurter Judaistische Beitrage, 21 (1994): 7–29.7 Liebes, Ars Poetica, 23–59.8 There are obvious similarities between the views of Sefer Yetzirah and the Neo-Pythagoreanspeculations of the mathematician Nicomachus of Gerasa in the first century CE.9 See R. Jospe, ‘Early Philosophical Commentaries on the Sefer Yezirah: Some Comments’,Revue des études juifs, 146 (1990): 369–415.10 For analysis of Saadia’s philosophical proofs of creation see H. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity,Creation, and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (New York, NY:Oxford University Press, 1987).11 On Saadia Gaon’s commentary on Sefer Yetzirah see H. Ben Shamai, ‘Saadia’s Goal in hisCommentary on Sefer Yezirah’, in R. Link-Salinger (ed.), A Straight Path: Studies in MedievalPhilosophy an Culture (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1988), 1–9.12 A major contributor to the rise of kabbalistic theosophy was the R. Shabbetai ben AbrahamDonnolo (d. 982), the Italian physician, philosopher and theologian. See E. R. Wolfson, ‘TheTheosophy of Shabbetai Donnolo, with Special Emphasis on the Doctrine of Sefirot in SeferHakhmoni’, Jewish History, 6 (1992): 281–316.13 On the Golem in the Jewish tradition consult M. Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and MysticalTraditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990).For the continuity between German pietism and ancient rabbinic magical traditions see E.Kanarfogel, ‘Peering through the Lattices’: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the TosafistPeriod (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000).14 For discussion of the esoteric theosophy of the German Pietists and its relations to earlierrabbinic and philosophic traditions see E. R. Wolfson, Through the Speculum that Shines: Visionand Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994),188–269.15 The spiritual program of German Hasidism and the politics of pietism is analyzed in I.Marcus, Piety and Society: The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981).16 For an overview of the complex relations between kabbalah and the philosophy of Maimonidessee M. Idel, ‘Maimonides and Kabbalah’, in Isadore Twersky (ed.), Studies in Maimonides(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uniersity Press, 1991), 31–79.17 On the kabbalah in Provence see G. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, ed. R. J. Z. Werblosky,trans. A. Arkush (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; Philadelphia, PA: Jewish PublicationSociety, 1987), 199–364.18 For a systematic analysis of Isaac Sagi Nahor’s kabbalah see B. M. Sendor, ‘The Emergenceof Provençal Kabbalah: Rabbi Isaac the Blind’s “Commentary on Sefer Yezirah” ’, Ph.D. diss.(Harvard University, 1994); H. Pedaya, Name and Sanctuary in the Teaching of R. Isaac the Blind:A Comparative Study in the Writings of the Earliest Kabbalists (in Hebrew) ( Jerusalem: The HebrewUniversity Magnes Press, 2001).19 On Sefer ha-Bahir see Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 49–198. For a new critical editionconsult D. Abrams (ed.), Sefer ha-Bahir: An Edition Based on Early Manuscripts (Los Angeles, CA:Cherub Press, 1994); for a non-academic English translation consult A. Kaplan (ed. and trans.),The Bahir (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1995).20 For an introduction to the doctrine of Sefirot see M. Hallamish, An Introduction to the Kabbalah,trans. R. Bar-Ilan and O. Wiskind-Elper (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,1999), 121–66. The discussion is not limited to the Bahir but encompasses kabbalistic theosophyin its entirety as articulated mostly but not exclusively in the Zohar.21 On the difference between these two interpretations of the Sefirot see M. Idel, ‘Between theConception of Essence and Instruments of God during the Renaissance’ (in Hebrew), Italia,3 (1982): 89–111; for a less technical exposition of this issue consult D. S. Ariel, The MysticQuest: An Introduction (Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1988), 65–88.



22 The meaning of gendered symbolism in the Bahir and in theosophic kabbalah in general hasbeen subject of intense scholarly debate. See below note 82.23 See G. Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, trans.J. Neugroschel (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1991), 161.24 See A. Green, ‘Shekhinah: The Virgin Mary and the Song of Songs: Reflection on aKabbalistic Symbol in its Historical Context’, AJS Review, 26 (2002): 1–52; P. Schäfer, Mirrorof His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton, NJ/Oxford:Princeton University Press, 2002), 118–34.25 M. Idel, Kabbalah and Eros (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 45–9.26 E. R. Wolfson, ‘The Tree That Is All: Jewish Christian Roots of a Kabbalistic Symbol inSefer Ha-Bahir’, Jewish Thought and Philosophy 3 (1993): 31–76.27 A good summary of kabbalah in Girona is available in H. J. Hames, The Art of Conversion:Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden/Boston, MA: Köln, 2002), 31–82.28 For a comprehensive presentation of Nahmanides’s worldview see H. Pedaya, Nahmanides:Cyclical Time and Holy Texts (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2003). On Nahmanides’skabbalistic approach to the biblical text see E. R. Wolfson, ‘By the Way of Truth – Aspects ofNahmanides: Some Kabbalistic Hermeneutic’, AJS Review, 14 (1989): 103–78.29 The conservative posture of Nahmanides is spelled out in M. Idel, ‘We Have No KabbalisticTradition on This’, in I. Twersky (ed.), Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in HisReligions and Literary Virtuosity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 51–73. Foran attempt to situate Nahmandies’s posture in its socio-cultural, contemporary context see Idel,‘Kabbalah and Elites in Thirteenth-Century Spain’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 9 (1994): 5–19.30 Some of these commentaries on the Guide were written by Kabbalists (e.g., Moses de Leon,Abraham Abulafia, Joseph Gikatila). See M. Idel, ‘Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed andKabbalah’, Jewish History, 18 (2004): 197–226.31 The dissemination of philosophy in thirteenth-century Spain is discussed in H. Tirosh-Samuelson, Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge and Well-Being (Cincinnati, OH:Hebrew Union College, 2003), 251–6.32 See M. Idel, ‘The Kabbalah’s “Window of Opportunities” 1270–1290’, in E. Fleischer, G.Blidstein, C. Horowitz and B. Septimus (eds.), Me’ah Shearim: Studies in Medieval Jewish SpiritualLife in Memory of Isadore Twersky (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2001), 171–208.33 For excellent introduction to the Zohar consult A. Green, A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). This volume was written as an introduction to the newEnglish translation of the Zohar by D. Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 2004–2007). Very useful in unpacking the Zoharic text is P. Giller, Readingthe Zohar: The Sacred Text of the Kabbalah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). On thefunction of the imagination in Zoharic hermeneuitics see Wolfson, Through the Speculum thatShines, 326–92.34 The idea that the Zohar is a product of a mystical fellowship was first proposed by Y. Liebes,Studies in the Zohar, trans. A. Schwartz, S. Nakache, and P. Peli (Albany, NY: State Universityof New York press, 1993), 85–138. It is largely accepted by scholars of kabbalah today, eventhough there are no references for the existence of such group in other historical documentsof the period. Liebes has recently moved further to claim that the Zoharic group reflected a‘spiritual movement’ that exercised ‘decisive influence on later Judaism’. See Y. Liebes, ‘Zoharand Tiqquney Zohar: From Renaissance to Revolution’ (in Hebrew), in Ronit Meroz (ed.),New Developments in Zohar Studies (Ramat Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2007), 252. Cf. Liebes,‘Zohar as Renaissance’, Da’at: Journal of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah, 46 (2001): 5–11.35 See E. R. Wolfson, The Book of the Pomegranate: Moses de Leon’s Sefer ha-Rimon (Atlanta, GA:Scholars Press, 1988).36 For a rich and nuanced discussion of the Zoharic portrayal of R. Shimon bar Yohai and hismystical fraternity see M. Hellner-Eshed, A River Issues Forth from Eden: On the Language ofMystical Experience in the Zohar (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2005).37 See Robert Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath (Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA/Oxford: University of California Press, 1992).38 See Tirosh-Samuelson, Happiness in Premodern Judaism, 300–9.



39 Zohar 156a. It is intriguing to note that ‘Light of the World’ is a phrase that refers to Jesusin Christian liturgy. Indeed, in the Easter Vigil a single great candle, the Paschal Candle, wasthe only illumination. It was placed on the ground in front of the altar ‘to represent the factthat hope was at its lowest point, that the Light of the World was brought low, and that Christhad assumed perishable flesh in order to save man’. J. W. Harris, Medieval Theater in Context:An Introduction (New York, NY/London: Routledge, 1992), 29. It is not too far fetched toconjecture that the Zohar’s depiction of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai as the ‘Light of the World’could have been intended as a Jewish rebuttal of Christian doctrine especially as they dramatizedon stage and in the liturgy during the thirteenth century.40 The importance of Christian context was recognized by Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 139–62.On Christian interest in kabbalah during the thirteenth century, especially as exhibited byRaymon Llull see Hames, Art of Conversion, 118–89. The integration of Llull’s idiosyncraticsystem and kabbalah was made during the Renaissance and both Llull and Christian Kabbalistswere motivated by the desire to bring about the collective conversion of the Jews.41 See I. Tishby and F. Lachower (eds. and trans.), The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology ofTexts, trans. D. Goldstein (London/Washington, DC: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization1989), 1:30–55.42 On the reception of the Zohar see B. Huss, ‘Sefer ha-Zohar as a Canonical, Sacred, and HolyText: Changing Perceptions of the Book of Splendor between the Thirteenth and EighteenthCenturies’, The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 7 (1997): 257–307; Huss, ‘ZoharTranslations’ (in Hebrew), in Meroz (ed.), New Developments in Zohar Studies, 33–107.43 For overviews of Abulafia’s kabbalah see G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (NewYork, NY: Schocken, 1941), 119–55; M. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1988, 59–73); E. R. Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia – Kabbalist and Prophet:Hermeneutics, Theosophy and Theurgy (Los Angeles, CA: Cherub Press, 2000).44 For analysis of the mystical aspects in Abulafia see M. Idel, The Mystical Experience in AbrahamAbulafia (in Hebrew) ( Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1988); Idel, Studies inEcstatic Kabbalah (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988), 1–31; Idel, ‘MysticialTechniques’, in Lawrence Fine (ed.), Essential Papers on Kabblaah (New York, NY: New YorkUniversity Press, 1995), 438–94.45 On the kabbalah of divine names see M. Idel, ‘Defining Kabbalah: The Kabbalah of theDivine Names’, in R. A. Herrera (ed.), Mystics of the Book, Themes, Topics and Typologies (NewYork, NY: Peter Lang), 97–122.46 For Abulafia’s understanding of the Sefirot see Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, 94–177.47 It is important to note that while Abulafia developed his views on the basis of Maimonides,he deviated from the master in regard to the Divine Names.48 In Jewish mysticism of antiquity, ma’aseh merkabah (The Account of the Chariot) was thetechnical term to denote the privileged information gained in experiences of ascent to heaven.In the Guide of the Perplexed Maimonides identified this technical term with Aristotelian metaphysics.49 On the influence of this Muslim mystic-philosopher on kabbalah see R. Keiner, ‘Ibn al-‘Arabiand the Qabbalah: A Study of Thirteenth Century Iberian Mysticism’, Studies in Mystical Literature,2/2 (1982): 26–52.50 On Abulafia’s messianic activity in Sicily see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 45–61; Idel,Messianic Mystics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 58–100.51 On the lack of access to the Zohar in Italy prior to 1492 see M. Idel, ‘Major Currents inItalian Kabbalah between 1560 and 1660’, in D. B. Ruderman (ed.), Essential Papers in JewishCulture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1992),107–169; Idel, ‘Particularism and Universalism in Kabbalah, 1480–1650’, op. cit., 324–44.52 On this kabbalist see M. Idel, R. Menachem Renacanti the Kabbalist (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1998).53 For overview of Christian kabbalah in the Renaissance consult J. L. Blau, The ChristianInterpretation of the Cabbalah in the Renaissance (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1965[1944]); K. S. de León-Jones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah: Prophets, Magicians, and Rabbis(New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press, 1997).54 The conversionary intent of Llul’s program and its interpretation in the Renaissance isexplored by H. J. Hames’s work cited in note 27 above.



55 On Kabbalah in Italian Jewish culture see R. Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, trans. A.Oldcorn (Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA/London: University of California Press, 1994), 145–67;David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth CenturyJewish Physician (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).56 See note 42 above.57 For a detailed of the Safed community see L. Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos:Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 41–77.58 The various mystical techniques used by Lurianic kabbalists are described in ibid., 259–99.59 The Lurianic myth is summarized in ibid., 124–49. For analysis of the differences betweenthe Zoharic and Lurianic symbolism consult, Y. Liebes, ‘Myth vs. Symbol in the Zohar and inLurianic Kabbalah’, in Fine (ed.), Essential Papers on Kabbalah, 212–42.60 On this important interpreter of Lurianic kabbalah and an English translation of his majorwork, Puerta del Cielo, see K. Krabbenhoft, Abraham Cohen de Herrera: Gate of Heaven (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002). For exposition of Herrera’s thought see Krabenhoft,‘Syncretism and Millennium in Herrera’s Kabbalah’, in M. Goldish and R. H. Popkin (ed.),Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World (Dordrecht/Boston, MA/London: Kluwer AcademicPublishers, 2001), 65–76; N. Yosha, Myth and Metaphor: Abraham Cohen Herrera’s Philosophic Inter-pretation of Lurianic Kabbalah (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1994).61 The association of the Sefirot with Platonic Ideas was suggested in the late fifteenth centuryin the writings of David Messer Leon, Isaac Abravanel, and his son, Judah Abrabanel. See M.Idel, ‘The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretation of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance’, in B.D. Cooperman (ed.), Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 1983), 186–242.62 On Menasseh ben Israel’s integration of kabbalah and Platonism see M. Idel, ‘Kabbalah,Platonism, and “Prisca Theologia”: The Case of R. Menasseh ben Israel’, in Y. Kaplan, H.Méchoulan, and R. H. Popkin (eds.), Menasseh ben Israel and His World (Leiden/New York,NY/Kbenhaven/Köln: E. J. Brill, 1989), 199–219.63 A. P. Coudert, ‘The Kabbalah Denudata: Converting Jews or Seducing Christians’, in R.Poplin and G. M. Weiner (eds.), Jewish-Christians and Christians Jews: From the Renaissance to theEnlightenment (Dordrecht/Boston, MA/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 75.64 Ibid., 80.65 See Huss, ‘Zohar Translations’, 48–77. The Zohar was first translated into Yiddish andLadino, the languages spoken by Jews, and was into the European vernaculars of German,English, and French. The translations into Hebrew during the twentieth century reflected therevival of Hebrew as a spoken language of the Jews.66 On Kabbalah in Schelling’s philosophy see E. R. Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musingson Time, Truth, and Death (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006), 34– 42.67 The standard study of Sabbatai Zevi’s biography and the history of the Sabbatian movementconsult G. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1973). For a very different interpretation consult Idel, Messianic Mystics, 183–211. Forperceptions of Zevi among his Jewish contemporaries see D. J. Halperin, Sabbatai Zevi: Testimoniesto a Fallen Messiah (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007); for perceptionof Zevi in the Christian community see R. H. Popkin, ‘Christian Interest and Concerns aboutSabbati Zevi’, in M. D. Goldish and R. H. Popkin (ed.), Jewish Messianism in the Early ModernWorld (Dordrecht/Boston, MA/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 91–106.68 Y. Liebes highlighted the difference between messianic self-understanding of Zevi and Nathanof Gaza’s interpretation of Zevi. Y. Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism, trans.B. Stein (Albany, NY: State University Press of New York, 1993), 93–106. Moshe Idel, bycontrast, argued that Zevi’s messianism reflected a ‘certain type of symbolism in classical kabbbalisticbooks’, which ‘could be reflected in the inner life of a mystic who became a messiah’. See Idel,Messianic Mystics, 188.69 On the Doenmeh consult Scholem, Kabbalah, 327–32. The sect survived into the twentiethcentury and some of its members supported the modernizing revolution of the early twentiethcentury.70 On the rabbinic campaign to eradicate Sabbatean heresies see E. Carlebach, The Pursuit ofHeresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies (New York, NY: Columbia UniversityPress, 1990).



71 Excellent papers on Hasidism are available in G. D. Hundert (ed.), Essential Papers on Hasidism:Origins to the Present (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1991).72 For new biographies of Israel Baal Shem Tov see M. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Questfor the Historical Baal Shem (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996); E. Etkes, TheBesht: Magician, Mystic, and Leader (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press; Hanover, NH/London: University Press of New England, 2005).73 See M. Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany, NY: State University of New YorkPress, 1995); Idel, Messianic Mystics, 212–47.74 See A. Nadler, The Faith of the Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rupture (Baltimore,MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).75 See R. Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment: Their Confrontation in Galicia and Polandin the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, PA: the Jewish Publication Society ofAmerica, 1985).76 Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Lainer of Izbica (d. 1854) and his grandson, Gershom Henokh Lainerof Radzin (d. 1891) illustrate this trend. See S. Magid, Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation,Antinomianism, and Messianism in Izbica/Radzin Hasidism (Madison, WI: The University ofWisconsin Press, 2003).77 See Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, 1:44.78 See ibid., 58–96. Those who believe in the sanctity of kabbalah do not accept the findingsof modern scholarship about kabbalah. The issue is ultimately a matter of faith and cannot beresolved a-priori.79 On Buber’s intellectual development see P. Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue: martinBuber’s Transformation for German Social Thought (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1989).80 Scholem reflected at extensively on the fusion of Zionism and scholarship of kabbalah in theinterview with Muki Tzur, see G. Scholem, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, ed. W. J. Danhauser(New York, NY: Schocken, 1976), 1–48. For overviews of Scholem’s life and contribution tothe modern study of kabbalah see P. Mendes-Flohr (ed.), Gershom Scholem: The Man and HisWork (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994); D. Biale, Gershom Scholem,Kabbalah and Counter History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979).81 On the role of the study of kabbalah in the formation of Zionist identity and the curriculumof the Hebrew University see D. N. Myers, Reinventing the Jewish Past (New York, NY: OxfordUniversity Press, 1995).82 The designation of kabbalah as ‘Jewish mysticism’ has been subject to subject to recentreappraisals. See J. Dan, On Sanctity (in Hebrew) ( Jerusalem: The Hebrew University MagnesPress, 1998), 131–54; S. Waserstrom, Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, andHenri Corbin at Eranos (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); B. Huss, ‘TheMystification of Kabbalah and the Myth of Jewish Mysticism’ (in Hebrew), Pe’amim, 110(2007): 9–30.83 On Rabbi Ashlag and his idiosyncratic fusion of Communism and kabbalah see B. Huss,‘ “Altruist Communism”: The Modernist Kabbalah of Rav Ashlag’ (in Hebrew), Iyyunimbe-Tequmat Yisrael, 16 (2006): 109–30.84 M. Idel’s Kabbalah: New Perspectives caused a major uproar in Israel because it challengedScholem’s prominence as a scholar and an interpreter of Zionism. For analysis of the publicdebate and framing of Idel’s critique of Scholem see H. Tirosh-Rothschild, ‘Continuity andRevision in the Study of Kabbalah’, AJS Review, 18 (1991): 161–91.85 For Idel’s overview of the field of kabbalah studies see M. Idel, ‘Academic Studies of kabbalahin Israel, 1923–1998: A Short Survey’, Studia Judaica, 8 (1998): 91–114.86 See J. Garb, ‘The Chosen Will Become Herds’: Studies in 20th Century Kabbalah (in Hebrew)(Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2005).87 For a biography of Heschel and overview of his spiritual legacy see E. K. Kaplan and S. H.Dresner, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness (New Haven, CT/London: Yale UniversityPress, 1998); E. K. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).88 For an overview of the role the academic study of Judaism has played in the formation ofJewish collective identity in America consult S. J. D. Cohen and L. Greenstein, The State ofJewish Studies (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1990); P. Ritterband and H. S.



Wechsler, Jewish Learning in American Universities: The First Century (Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity, 1994).89 Scholars of kabbalah trained by Altmann include Bracha Sack, Arthur Green, Kalman Bland,Daniel Matt, and Lawrence Fine among others. The most lasting legacy will be the translationof the Zohar into English with commentary by Daniel C. Matt cited above.90 For an example of Wolfson’s numerous studies on gender see E. R. Wolfson, Circle in theSquare Studies in the Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany, NY: State University of New YorkPress, 1995). Wolfson’s approach has been criticized by Idel, Kabbalah and Eros, 97–103, 128–34,but largely endorsed by D. Abrams, The Female Body of God in Kabbalistic Literature: EmbodiedForms of Love and Sexuality in the Divine Feminine ( Jerusalem: The Hebrew University MagnesPress, 2005) as far as reliance on contemporary feminist and psychoanalytic categories.91 A very thoughtful reflection about the state of Jewish Studies in Israeli culture today is offeredby S. Peled, Shredded Identities (in Hebrew) ( Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press,2007).92 For analysis of Rav Kook’s thought see L. Kaplan and D. Shatz (eds.), Rabbi Abraham IsaacKook and Jewish Spirituality (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1995).93 For a biography of R. Nahman of Bartslav see A. Green, Tormented Master: A Life of RabbiNahman of Bratslav (Birmingham, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1979).94 For an assessment of this phenomenon see B. Huss, ‘The New Age of Kabbalah: The NewAge and Postmodern Spirituality’, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 6/2 (2007): 107–25.95 M. Berg, The Way: Using the Wisdom of Kabbalah for Spiritual Transformation and Fulfillment(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Son, 2001), 126.96 For analysis of the Kabbalah Centre consult J. Myers, Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest: TheKabbalah Centre in America (Westport, CT/London: Praeger, 2007).97 A typical example of this genre is I. Aricha, Kabbalah and Secret of Happiness: A Guide to Self-Fulfillment (in Hebrew) ( Jerusalem: Keter, 2005).98 For a positive overview of these trends see R. Bailey, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and MoralCase for the Biotech Revolution (New York, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005). For a critical over-view of these developments see F. Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotech-nological Revolution (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002).99 Extensive information about transhumanism is available on http://www.asu.edu/transhumanism.100 On the legend of the Golem in Jewish culture see B. Sherwin, The Golem Legend: Origins andImplications (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984) and the work by Idel cited above.101 See Norbert Wiener, God and Golem, Inc. A Comment on Certain Points Where CyberneticsImpinges on Religion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964).102 For Jewish halakhic arguments in favor of cloning that make use of the Golem tradition seeB. Sherwin, Golems among Us: How Jewish Legend Can Help Us Navigate the Bioethic Century(Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2004).

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kabbalah, a medieval tradition and its contemporary appeal

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