The commonly used term for the mystical, magical, and theosophic
teachings of Judaism from the twelfth century onward, the cabala (also
cabbala, kabbala, or kabbalah) was considered the esoteric and unwritten portion of the revelation granted to Adam and again to Moses, while the Bible represented the exoteric
revelation. (Although the term is often spelled with a 'k' when
referring to the Jewish tradition and with a 'c' in the Christian
version, it is spelled here with a 'c' for simplicity's sake.) The word
means "that which is received" or "tradition," implying that the cabala
was a body of knowledge that passed orally from generation to
generation. A distinction is generally made between theoretical and
practical cabala, the first dealing with theosophical issues, and the
second with producing specific practical and eschatological effects
(healing the sick, hastening the advent of the Messiah, attaining an ecstatic state) through the use of divine names and Hebrew letters.
The
cabala proper developed from diverse esoteric and theosophical currents
among Jews in Palestine and Egypt during the first Christian centuries.
Early strands of Jewish apocalypticism and Merkabah (throne) and Hekhalot (palaces) mysticism were influenced by Hellenistic, Iranian, and gnostic
thought, although scholars disagree about the extent and importance of
these external influences. Merkabah and Hekhalot mysticism was devoted
to descriptions of the dangerous ascent through various worlds and
palaces that culminated in the vision of the divine throne described in
Ezekiel. The Sefer Yezirah
(Book of formation), a major source of later cabalistic speculation,
belongs to the same period (second to sixth century). It describes the
creative power of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the
ten sefirot (numbers or manifestations of God) through whom the world came into being.
During
the Middle Ages these traditions of early Jewish mysticism were fused
with Christian and Islamic (Sufism) mysticism and Islamic and Christian
Neoplatonism to produce the German Hasidic movement (Ashkenazi
Hasidism), which peaked between the eleventh and the thirteenth
centuries. Its leading figures were Judah he-Hasid (d. 1217) and his
pupil Eleazar of Worms (d. 1238), who produced popular works combining elements of Merkabah mysticism and theurgy with mystical speculations about letters and numbers.
The
cabala originated simultaneously from these same sources in southern
France in the twelfth century. Among its most important proponents were
Rabbi Abraham ben David and his son Rabbi Isaac the Blind (d. c. 1235).
The Sefer ha-Bahir, composed in the late twelfth century, circulated among these cabalists. It elaborated on the idea of the ten sefirot, describing them as divine powers emanating from the hidden God (En Soph). This became a dominant motif in later cabala. Cabalist centers developed in Burgos,
Toledo, and Gerona. Azriel of Gerona applied Neoplatonic philosophy to
cabalist concepts. For Gerona cabalists the highest human goal was to
attain Devekut (communion with God) through prayer and meditation on the sefirot.
Nachmanides (c. 1194–1270) was the most famous member of this group.
Many of the ideas of Ashkenazi Hasidism were absorbed by cabalists in
Spain and southern France, who established new schools of cabala in
Europe, Italy, and the East. Although there were considerable
differences between the teachings of the various mystical and
cabalistic groups in the medieval period, a common theme was the idea
of the Godhead as a unity of dynamic forces.
A school of
prophetic Cabala arose in connection with the teachings of Abraham
Abulafia (c. 1240–1292), who devised "the science of combination," a
mystical technique of meditating on the divine names and the Hebrew
letters in order to draw down the divine spirit and attain ecstatic
experiences. The main product of Spanish Cabala, however, was the Sefer ha-Zohar (The book of splendor), written largely between 1280 and 1286. More of a library than a book, the Zohar
consists of some twenty independent works. While it was attributed to
the second-century Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, a renowned sage of the
school of Rabbi Akiva, the actual author was the contemporary Spanish cabalist Moses de Leon. The whole thrust of the Zohar,
and the Cabala in general, is to understand the nature of God and man's
relation to him, but the picture that emerges is different from that
found elsewhere in Judaism. Instead of the lawgiver and ruler of halakhah (Jewish law), the merciful father of aggadah (allegorical rabbinic literature), the awesome king of Merkabah and Hekhalot mysticism, or the necessary being of the philosophers, the Zohar envisions God as ten sefirot
joined in a dynamic, organic unity. Each represents a distinct
attribute of God, such as "wisdom," "understanding," "power," "beauty,"
"endurance," and "majesty."
Humanity is accorded tremendous power in the Zohar.
Because people are made in the image of God and originate from the
Godhead, they have the power to influence and act in the divine realm
for good and ill. Through devotion in prayer and by fulfilling the
commandments, people become active participants in the "mystery of
unification" (sod hayihud), the process through which the divine
forces are united, perfected, and return to their source. The notion
that man can participate in the restoration, repair, and amendment of
this world is stressed throughout the Zohar in the notion of Tikkun, which literally means 'restoration'.
In the sixteenth century a new form of Cabala appeared, derived from the teachings of Isaac Luria (1534–1572). Where the Zohar and earlier cabalistic works concentrated on cosmology, the Lurianic Cabala focused on exile, redemption,
and the millennium. Luria reasoned that in order for there to be a
place for the world, God had to withdraw from a part of himself. This
doctrine of Tsimsum (withdrawal) was both profound and
ambiguous. It provided a symbol of exile in the deepest sense, within
the divinity itself, but it also implied that evil was intrinsic to the creation process and not attributable to man alone. Two other doctrines are crucial to Luria's radical theology, the Shevirat-ha-Kelim (breaking of the vessels) and Tikkun
(restoration). Both explain how the evil that emerged with creation
represented a temporary state that would eventually end with the
perfection of all things.
According to the complex mythology of
the Lurianic cabala, after God withdrew from himself, traces of light
were left in the void. These were formed into the image of the primordial man, Adam Kadmon, who was the first manifested configuration of the divine. However, at this point a catastrophe
occurred. Further divine lights burst forth from Adam Kadmon, but the
"vessels" meant to contain them shattered. With "the breaking of the
vessels" evil came into the world as sparks of light (souls) became
sunk in matter.
In the Lurianic cabala man is given an even more central role than in the Zohar,
for it is only through human actions (observing the commandments,
studying the Torah, and mystical meditation) that the souls, trapped
among the shards of the broken vessels, can be reunited with the divine
light. Luria viewed history as an ongoing struggle between the forces
of good and evil played out by the same cast of characters, who
experience repeated reincarnations (Gilgul ) until they become perfect. Although the process of Tikkun will be long and arduous,
restoration will eventually occur as each exiled being moves up the
ladder of creation, becoming better and increasingly spiritual until
finally freed from the cycle of rebirth. The Lurianic cabala
transformed mysticism into an activist historical force, involving
individuals in a cosmic millennial drama in which their every action
counted. The Lurianic cabala was the first Jewish theology to envision perfection in terms of a future state, not in terms of some forfeited ideal past.
Gershom
Scholem believed that the Lurianic cabala became "something like the
true theologia mystica of Judaism" from 1630 onward (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 284). He attributed the emergence of the heretical movement connected with Shabbetai Tzevi (also Sabbatai Sevi; 1626–1676) to the messianic ideas inherent in Lurianic cabala. In Scholem's view, Shabbetai Tzevi's eventual apostasy and conversion to Islam led to a crisis in Judaism that precipitated the Haskalah,
or secular Enlightenment. The cabala thus played a key role in
transforming Jewish history and culture. Not all scholars agree. Idel
and others deny that Messianism was a significant element of Lurianic
cabala. In their view the Sabbatean movement was an outgrowth
of popular apocalyptic Messianism and secularization that was largely
the result of increased social and intellectual contact with Christians.
The
last stage in the development of Jewish cabala occurred with the
emergence of the modern Hasidic movement, founded by Rabbi Israel Baal
Shem Tov, in the mid-eighteenth century. This movement created a
serious rift within Judaism between Hasids and their rationalist
opponents (the Mitnagedim), who claimed that Hasidism ignored
important aspects of the Jewish law, especially Torah study and prayer,
and placed too much emphasis on the redeeming role of the Hasidic
rabbi, or Tsaddik (holy one).
Christian Cabala
Christian interest in the cabala emerged at the end of the fifteenth century in the Platonic Academy at the Medici court in Florence. The cabala was seen as a source for retrieving the prisca theologia, or ancient wisdom, but being Jewish and not pagan in origin, cabalistic writings were regarded as the purest source of this divine knowledge. This was the view of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
(1463–1494), who studied the cabala with the assistance of several
Jewish teachers, Samuel ben Nissim Abulfaraj, Yoseph Alemano
(1435–1504) and the converted Jew Raymond Moncada, also known as
Flavius Mithradites (fl. 1470–1483). Pico's cabalistic studies were
aimed at converting the Jews by showing them that their own ancient
wisdom supported the truth of Christianity. Forty-seven of his famous
nine hundred theses were taken directly from the cabala, while another
seventy-two were based on his speculations about the cabala. As a
result of his study, he concluded that "no science can better convince
us of the divinity of Jesus Christ than magic and the cabala," an
opinion the Catholic Church condemned. Pico's work influenced the
German Christian Hebraist Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), who wrote De Verbo Mirifico (1494; On the miracle-working name) and De Arte Cabalistica
(1517; On the science of the cabala). Reuchlin claimed that God
revealed himself in three stages: first, to the Patriarchs through the
three-letter name Shaddai (shin, dalet, yod); then in the Torah as the four-letter Tetragrammaton (yod, he, vav, he); and finally as the five-letter name Yehoshua (yod,
he, shin, vav, he) or Jesus. Pico's and Reuchlin's work encouraged
other Christians to explore the cabala. Cornelius Agrippa included
discussions of the practical cabala in De Occulta Philosophia (1531), which led to the association of the cabala with magic and witchcraft. Cardinal Egidio
da Viterbo (1465–1532) wrote a treatise on the Hebrew letters. The
Franciscan Francesco di Giorgio (1460/66–1540) incorporated material
from the Zohar in his De Harmonia Mundi (1525) and Problemata (1536). Guillaume Postel (1570–1581) translated the Sefer Yetzirah and parts of the Zohar into Latin with annotations. A fusion between the cabala and alchemy emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, appearing in Heinrich Khunrath's Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (1609) and the writings of Robert Fludd (1574–1637) and Thomas Vaughan (1622–1666).
During the seventeenth century Jakob Boehme's (1575–1624) work was noted for its affinity
to the cabala, and the German Jesuit Athansius Kircher drew a parallel
between Adam Kadmon and Jesus. The most influential Christian cabalist,
however, was Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636–1689), whose Kabbala Deundata
(1677, 1684) offered the Latin-reading public the largest collection of
cabalistic texts available before the nineteenth century. This
collection was especially important because it included selections from
the Zohar (with annotations and commentaries) and translations
and synopses of treatises written by Luria's disciples Hayyim Vital and
Israel Sarug. Scholars have recently begun to investigate the way in
which this work and the cabala in general influenced such thinkers as
Henry More, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Locke, and Isaac Newton,
contributing to the modern idea of scientific progress and the concept
of toleration. The German Pietists led by Friedrich Christoph Oetinger
(1702–1782) were also influenced by von Rosenroth's translations, and
he in turn influenced Franz von Baader,
Martines de Pasqually, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich von Schelling. Georg von Welling
published his popular Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum et Theosophicum in 1735. The last great work of Christian cabala was Franz Josef Molitor's (1779–1861) Philosophie der Geschichte oder Ueber die Tradition,
which in spite of its Christological approach received high praise from
Scholem, influencing his own view of the cabala. The theosophical
systems of eighteenth-century Freemasons, Illuminati, and Rosicrucians
also reflect cabalistic concepts and symbolism. This connection
unfortunately played into the hands of anti-Semites, who claimed that a
Jewish "cabale" of revolutionary Freemasons and cabalists were
infiltrating European institutions and destroying them from within. The
legacy of the cabala in Europe is thus Janus-faced: on the one hand it
contributed to ideas at the heart of the Enlightenment: scientific
progress, the ability of man to shape his own destiny, and religious
toleration; on the other hand, it fed into the anti-Semitic rhetoric
that laid the foundation for genocide.
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—ALLISON P. COUDERT
Topic: My daughter’s home.
