Kabbalah

 ( Esotericism ) 

A version of the above-mentioned diagram for the attainment of authority within the tradition appears in a more open and less precise form in the first lecture of Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, and an account in yet another work explains that the Kabbalists themselves expressively describe the nomination of authority as proceeding from conversations with the Elijah.

Scholem writes: “Since the beginnings of Rabbinical Judaism the Prophet Elijah has been a figure profoundly identified with the central preoccupations of Jewry: it is he who carries the divine message from generation to generation, he who at the end of time will reconcile all the conflicting opinions, traditions, and doctrines manifested in Judaism. Men of true piety meet him in the market place no less than in visions. Since he was conceived as the vigilant custodian of the Jewish religious ideal, the Messianic guardian and guarantor of the tradition, it was impossible to suppose that he would ever reveal or communicate anything that was in fundamental contradiction with the tradition. Thus by its very nature the interpretation of mystical experience as a revelation of the Prophet Elijah tended far more to confirm than to question the traditional authority of.”

Methods of Calling Upon Authority

The entire frame and character of composition in early Kabbalah, prior to the late-phase in Safed, appeals to an argument of authority grounded in the antiquity of authority, by speaking in ancient voices and mimicking ancient texts from a contemporary present in the high and late Middle Ages.See, e.g., Joseph Dan's discussion in .As a result the foundational works in the main phase of Kabbalah as a literature, from Bahir to the Zohar, claim, or are ascribed, ancient authorship. For example, Sefer Raziel HaMalach, an astro-magical text partly based on a magical manual of late antiquity, Sefer ha-Razim, was, according to the Kabbalists, transmitted by the angel Raziel to Adam after he was evicted from Eden. Another famous work, the early Sefer Yetzirah, is dated back to the patriarch Abraham. Most (in fact, to our knowledge, all) of the earliest extant versions of the Sefer Yetzirah do not internally claim authorship by Abraham, but this attribution grows up as a tradition or rumor following the text. This tendency toward pseudepigraphy has its roots in apocalyptic literature, which claims that esoteric knowledge such as magic, divination and astrology was transmitted to humans in the mythic past by the two angels, Aza and Azazel (in other places, Azaz'el and Uzaz'el) who fell from heaven (see Genesis 6:4). This tendency relates to a phase so early that it can scarcely be called Kabbalah, according to the trend in historiography, but relates to the twin traditions referred to as the way of the chariot and the account of creation.Te: Tractate Chagigah, 11-15; mentioned also by Jerome and Origen. The book of Enoch (in which conversations between angels and sn antediluvian patriarch are recorded), for example, may be almost as old as our extant version of the Book of Daniel if ascriptions of the Aramaic Fragment of Enoch are found to be reliable.“ An Interview with John Strugnell". The BAS Library.

As well as ascribing ancient origins to texts, and reception of Oral Torah transmission, the greatest and most innovative Kabbalists claimed mystical reception of direct personal divine revelations, by heavenly mentors such as Elijah the Prophet, the souls of Tannaim, prophetic revelation, soul ascents on high, etc. On this basis Arthur Green speculates, that while the Zohar was written by a circle of Kabbalists in medieval Spain, they may have believed they were channeling the souls and direct revelations from the earlier mystic circle of Shimon bar Yochai in 2nd century Galilee depicted in the Zohar's narrative. Academics have compared the Zohar mystic circle of Spain with the romanticised wandering mystic circle of Galilee described in the text. Similarly, Isaac Luria gathered his disciples at the traditional Idra assembly location, placing each in the seat of their former reincarnations as students of Shimon bar Yochai.

David Halperin argues that the collapse of Kabbalah's influence among Western European Jews over the course of the 17th and 18th century was a result of the cognitive dissonance they experienced between the negative perception of Gentiles found in some exponents of Kabbalah, and their own positive dealings with non-Jews, which were rapidly expanding and improving during this period due to the influence of the Enlightenment. Pinchas Elijah Hurwitz, a Lithuanian-Galician Kabbalist of the 18th century and a moderate proponent of the Haskalah, called for brotherly love and solidarity between all nations, and believed that Kabbalah can empower everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, with prophetic abilities.Love of one's Neighbour in Pinhas Hurwitz's Sefer ha-Berit, Resianne Fontaine, Studies in Hebrew Language and Jewish Culture, Presented to Albert van der Heide on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, p.244-268.

The works of Abraham Cohen de Herrera (1570–1635) are full of references to Gentile mystical philosophers. Such approach was particularly common among the Renaissance and post-Renaissance Italian Jews. Late medieval and Renaissance Italian Kabbalists, such as Yohanan Alemanno, David Messer Leon and Abraham Yagel, adhered to humanistic ideals and incorporated teachings of various Christian and Paganism mystics.

A prime representative of this humanist stream in Kabbalah was Elijah Benamozegh, who explicitly praised Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, as well as a whole range of ancient pagan mystical systems. He believed that Kabbalah can reconcile the differences between the world's religions, which represent different facets and stages of the universal human spirituality. In his writings, Benamozegh interprets the New Testament, Hadith, Vedas, Avesta and pagan mysteries according to the Kabbalistic theosophy.Israel and Humanity, Elijah Benamozegh, Paulist Press, 1995

E. R. Wolfson provides numerous examples from the 17th to the 20th centuries, which would challenge the view of Halperin as well as the notion that "modern Judaism" has rejected or dismissed this "outdated aspect" of the religion and, he argues, there are still Kabbalists today who harbor this view. He argues that, while it is accurate to say that many Jews do and would find this distinction offensive, it is inaccurate to say that the idea has been totally rejected in all circles. As Wolfson has argued, it is an ethical demand on the part of scholars to continue to be vigilant with regard to this matter and in this way the tradition can be refined from within.

Maimonides (12th century), celebrated by followers for his Jewish rationalism, rejected many of the pre-Kabbalistic Hekalot texts, particularly Shi'ur Qomah whose starkly anthropomorphic vision of God he considered heretical.Maimonides' responsa siman ( 117 (Blau) / 373 (Freimann) ), translated by Yosef Qafih and reprinted in his Collected Papers, Volume 1, footnote 1 on pages 475–476; see also pages 477–478 where a booklet found in Maimonides' Genizah with the text of Shi'ur Qomah appears with an annotation, possibly by Maimonides, cursing believers of Shi'ur Qomah (Hebrew: ארור המאמינו) and praying that God be elevated exceedingly beyond that which the heretics say (Judeo-Arabic: תע' ת'ם תע' עמא יקולון אלכאפרון; Hebrew: יתעלה לעילא לעילא ממה שאומרים הכופרים). Maimonides, a centrally important medieval sage of Judaism, lived at the time of the first emergence of Kabbalah. Modern scholarship views the systemisation and publication of their historic oral doctrine by Kabbalists, as a move to rebut the threat on Halakha by the populance misreading Maimonides' ideal of philosophical contemplation over ritual performance in his philosophical Guide for the Perplexed. They objected to Maimonides equating the Talmudic Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah secrets of the Torah with Aristotelean physics and metaphysics in that work and in his legal Mishneh Torah, teaching that their own Theosophy, centred on an esoteric metaphysics of traditional Jewish practice, is the Torah's true inner meaning.

The Kabbalist Rishonim Nachmanides (13th century), classic debater against Maimonidean rationalism, provides background to many kabbalistic ideas. An entire book entitled Gevuras Aryeh was authored by Yaakov Yehuda Aryeh Leib Frenkel and originally published in 1915, specifically to explain and elaborate on the kabbalistic concepts addressed by Nachmanides in his classic commentary to the Five books of Moses.

Abraham Maimonides (in the spirit of his father Maimonides, Saadiah Gaon, and other predecessors) explains at length in his Milḥamot HaShem that God is in no way literally within time or space nor physically outside time or space, since time and space simply do not apply to his being whatsoever, emphasizing the Monotheism Oneness of Divine transcendence unlike any worldly conception. Kabbalah's Panentheism expressed by Moses Cordovero and Hasidic thought, agrees that God's essence transcends all expression, but holds in contrast that existence is a manifestation of God's Being, descending Divine immanence through spiritual and physical condensations of the divine light. By incorporating the pluralist many within God, God's Oneness is deepened to exclude the true existence of anything but God. In Atzmus, the world is Acosmism from the Divine view, yet real from its own perspective.

Around the 1230s, Rabbi Meir ben Simon of Narbonne wrote an epistle (included in his Milḥemet Mitzvah) against his contemporaries, the early Kabbalists, characterizing them as blasphemers who even approach heresy. He particularly singled out the Sefer Bahir, rejecting the attribution of its authorship to the tanna R. Neḥunya ben ha-Kanah and describing some of its content as truly heretical.

Leon of Modena, a 17th-century Venice critic of Kabbalah, wrote that if we were to accept the Kabbalah, then the Christian trinity would be compatible with Judaism, as the Trinity seems to resemble the kabbalistic doctrine of the sephirot. This was in response to the belief that some European Jews of the period addressed individual sephirot in their prayers, although the practice was apparently uncommon. Apologists explained that Jews may have been praying for and not necessarily to the aspects of Godliness represented by the sephirot. In contrast to Christianity, Kabbalists declare that one prays only "to Him (Atzmus, male solely by metaphor in Hebrew's gendered grammar), not to his attributes (sephirot or any other Divine manifestations or forms of incarnation)". Kabbalists directed their prayers to God's essence through the channels of particular sephirot using kavanot Divine names intentions. To pray to a manifestation of God introduces false division among the sephirot, disrupting their absolute unity, dependence and dissolving into the transcendent Ein Sof; the sephirot descend throughout Creation, only appearing from man's perception of God, where God manifests by any variety of numbers.

Yaakov Emden (1697–1776), himself an Orthodox Kabbalist who venerated the Zohar,. concerned to battle Sabbatean misuse of Kabbalah, wrote the Mitpaḥath Sfarim ( Veil of the Books), an astute critique of the Zohar in which he concludes that certain parts of the Zohar contain heretical teaching and therefore could not have been written by Shimon bar Yochai.

Vilna Gaon (1720–1797) held the Zohar and Luria in deep reverence, critically emending classic Judaic texts from historically accumulated errors by his acute acumen and scholarly belief in the perfect unity of Kabbalah revelation and Rabbinic Judaism. Though a Lurianic Kabbalist, his commentaries sometimes chose Zoharic interpretation over Luria when he felt the matter lent itself to a more exoteric view. Although proficient in mathematics and sciences and recommending their necessity for understanding Talmud, he had no use for canonical medieval Jewish philosophy, declaring that Maimonides had been "misled by the accursed philosophy" in denying belief in the external occult matters of demons, incantations and amulets.

Views of Kabbalists regarding Jewish philosophy varied from those who appreciated Maimonidean and other classic medieval philosophical works, integrating them with Kabbalah and seeing profound human philosophical and Divine kabbalistic wisdoms as compatible, to those who polemicised against religious philosophy during times when it became overly rationalist and dogmatic. A dictum commonly cited by Kabbalists, "Kabbalah begins where Philosophy ends", can be read as either appreciation or polemic. Moses of Burgos (late 13th century) declared, "these philosophers whose wisdom you are praising end where we begin". Moses Cordovero appreciated the influence of Maimonides in his quasi-rational systemisation. From its inception, the Theosophical Kabbalah became permeated by terminology adapted from philosophy and given new mystical meanings, such as its early integration with the Neoplatonism of Ibn Gabirol and use of Aristotelian terms of Form over Matter.

In contemporary Orthodox Judaism there is dispute as to the status of the Zohar's and Isaac Luria's (the Isaac Luria) Kabbalistic teachings. While a portion of Modern Orthodox, followers of the Dor De'ah movement, and many students of the Rambam reject Arizal's Kabbalistic teachings, as well as deny that the Zohar is authoritative or from Shimon bar Yohai, all three of these groups accept the existence and validity of the Talmudic Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah mysticism. Their disagreement concerns whether the Kabbalistic teachings promulgated today are accurate representations of those esoteric teachings to which the Talmud refers. The mainstream Haredi Judaism (Hasidic, Lithuanian Jews, Oriental) and Religious Zionist Jewish movements revere Luria and the Kabbalah, but one can find both rabbis who sympathize with such a view, while disagreeing with it,e.g., Ovadia Yosef, who ruled that it is "impossible" to consider followers of the Dor De'ah movement as heretics: לגבי הדרדעים "אי אפשר לדונם ככופרים"
(מעין אומר סימן צג עמ' עדר) available at hydepark.hevre.co.il as well as rabbis who consider such a view heresy. The Haredi Eliyahu Dessler and Gedaliah Nadel maintained that it is acceptable to believe that the Zohar was not written by Shimon bar Yochai and that it had a late authorship. An Analysis of the Authenticity of the Zohar (2005), p. 39, with "Rav E" and "Rav G" later identified by the author as Eliyahu Dessler and Gedaliah Nadel, respectively (Marc Shapiro in Milin Havivin Volume 5 2011, Is there an obligation to believe that Rebbe Shimon bar Yochai wrote the Zohar?, p. יב PDF):
"I approached Rav A Aryeh with some of the questions on the Zohar, and he responded to me—'and what about nikud? Nikud is also mentioned in the Zohar despite the fact that it is from Geonic times!' he said. I later found this comment in the Mitpachas Seforim. I would just add that not only is nikud mentioned, but only the Tiberian Nikkud—the norm in Europe of the middle ages—is mentioned and not the Yerushalmi nikud or the Babylonian one — which was used then in the Middle East, and is still used by Yemenites today. Also the Taamay Hamikrah – the trop – are referred to in the Zohar—only by their Sefardi Names. Rav A told me a remarkable piece of testimony: 'My rebbe (this is how he generally refers to Rav E Elijah) accepted the possibility that the Zohar was written sometime in the 13th century.
"Rav G Gedaliah told me that he was still unsure as to the origin and status of the Zohar, but told me it was my absolute right to draw any conclusions I saw fit regarding both the Zohar and the Ari." Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg mentioned the possibility of Christian influence in the Kabbalah with the "Kabbalistic vision of the Messiah as the redeemer of all mankind" being "the Jewish counterpart to Christ." "Scholars and Friends: Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg and Professor Samuel Atlas" in The Torah U-Madda Journal, Volume 7 (1997), p. 120 n. 5. Hebrew original quoted in Milin Havivin Volume 5 2011, Is there an obligation to believe that Rebbe Shimon bar Yochai wrote the Zohar?, p. י

Modern Orthodox Judaism, representing an inclination to rationalism, embrace of academic scholarship, and the individual's autonomy to define Judaism, embodies a diversity of views regarding Kabbalah from a Neo-Hasidic spirituality to Maimonist anti-Kabbalism. In a book to help define central theological issues in Modern Orthodoxy, Michael J. Harris writes that the relationship between Modern Orthodoxy and mysticism has been under-discussed. He sees a deficiency of spirituality in Modern Orthodoxy, as well as the dangers in a fundamentalist adoption of Kabbalah. He suggests the development of neo-Kabbalistic adaptions of Jewish mysticism compatible with rationalism, offering a variety of precedent models from past thinkers ranging from the mystical inclusivism of Abraham Isaac Kook to a compartmentalisation between Halakha and mysticism. Faith Without Fear: Unresolved Issues in Modern Orthodoxy, Michael J. Harris, Vallentine Mitchell 2015, Chapter 3 Modern Orthodoxy and Jewish Mysticism

Yiḥyeh Qafeḥ, a 20th-century Yemenite Jewish leader and Chief Rabbi of Yemen, spearheaded the Dor Daim ("generation of knowledge") movement Encyclopedia of Yemenite Sages (Heb. אנציקלופדיה לחכמי תימן), ed. Moshe Gavra, vol. 1, Benei Barak 2001, p. 545, s.v. קאפח, יחיא בן שלמה (Hebrew) שהקים את תנועת... דור דעה (he established the Dor Deah movement). to counteract the influence of the Zohar and modern Kabbalah. He authored critiques of mysticism in general and Lurianic Kabbalah in particular; his magnum opus was Milḥamoth ha-Shem ( Wars of Hashem) against what he perceived as Neoplatonism and gnostic influences on Judaism with the publication and distribution of the Zohar since the 13th Century. Rabbi Yiḥyah founded yeshivot, rabbinical schools, and synagogues that featured a rationalist approach to Judaism based on the Talmud and works of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides (Rambam). In recent years, rationalists holding similar views as those of the Dor De'ah movement have described themselves as "talmide ha-Rambam" (disciples of Maimonides) rather than as being aligned with Dor De'ah, and are more theologically aligned with the rationalism of Modern Orthodox Judaism than with Orthodox Hasidic Judaism or Haredi Judaism communities.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994), an ultra-rationalist Modern Orthodox philosopher, referred to Kabbalah "a collection of "pagan superstitions" and "idol worship" in remarks given in 1990.

According to Bradley Shavit Artson (Dean of the Conservative Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies):

However, in the late 20th century and early 21st century there has been a revival in interest in Kabbalah in all branches of liberal Judaism. The Kabbalistic 12th-century prayer Anim Zemirot was restored to the new Conservative Sim Shalom siddur, as was the B'rikh Shmeh passage from the Zohar, and the mystical Ushpizin service welcoming to the Sukkah the spirits of Jewish forebears. Anim Zemirot and the 16th-century mystical poem Lekhah Dodi reappeared in the Reform Siddur Gates of Prayer in 1975. All rabbinical seminaries now teach several courses in Kabbalah—in Conservative Judaism, both the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles have full-time instructors in Kabbalah and Hasidut, Eitan Fishbane and Pinchas Giller, respectively. In Reform Judaism, Sharon Koren teaches at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Reform rabbis like Herbert Weiner and Lawrence Kushner have renewed interest in Kabbalah among Reform Jews. At the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Joel Hecker is the full-time instructor teaching courses in Kabbalah and Hasidut.

According to Artson:

The Reconstructionist movement, under the leadership of Arthur Green in the 1980s and 1990s, and with the influence of Zalman Schachter Shalomi, brought a strong openness to Kabbalah and hasidic elements that then came to play prominent roles in the Kol ha-Neshamah siddur series.

The Kabbalah Society, run by Warren Kenton, an organisation based instead on pre-Lurianic Medieval Kabbalah presented in universalist style. In contrast, traditional kabbalists read earlier kabbalah through later Lurianism and the systemisations of 16th-century Safed.

The New Kabbalah, website and books by Sanford L. Drob, is a scholarly intellectual investigation of the Lurianic symbolism in the perspective of modern and postmodern intellectual thought. It seeks a "new kabbalah" rooted in the historical tradition through its academic study, but universalised through dialogue with modern philosophy and psychology. This approach seeks to enrich the secular disciplines, while uncovering intellectual insights formerly implicit in kabbalah's essential myth:

The Kabbalah of Information is described in the 2018 book From Infinity to Man: The Fundamental Ideas of Kabbalah Within the Framework of Information Theory and Quantum Physics written by Ukrainian-born professor and businessman Eduard Shifrin. The main tenet of the teaching is "In the beginning He created information", rephrasing the famous saying of Nahmanides, "In the beginning He created primordial matter and He didn't create anything else, just shaped it and formed it."

…that the powerful Jewish culture in Languedoc, which had acquired sufficient strength to assume an aggressive, propagandist policy, created a milieu wherefrom movements of religious independence arose readily and spontaneously. Contact and association between Christian princes and their Jewish officials and friends stimulated the state of mind which facilitated the banishment of orthodoxy, the clearing away of the debris of Catholic theology. Unwilling to receive Jewish thought, the princes and laity turned towards Catharism, then being preached in their domains.

Nathaniel Deutsch writes:

R.J. Zwi Werblowsky suggests Mandaeism has more commonality with Kabbalah than with Merkabah mysticism such as cosmogony and sexual imagery. The Thousand and Twelve Questions, Scroll of Exalted Kingship, and Alma Rišaia Rba link the alphabet with the creation of the world, a concept found in Sefer Yetzirah and the Bahir. Mandaean names for (angels or guardians) have been found in Jewish magical texts. Abatur appears to be inscribed inside a Jewish magic bowl in a corrupted form as "Abiṭur". Ptahil is found in Sefer HaRazim listed among other angels who stand on the ninth step of the second firmament.

• List of Jewish Kabbalists

• Joseph Dan (1999). 9783161467981, Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 9783161467981
• Joseph Dan (2025). 9780195300345, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195300345
• Sanford Drob (1999). 9781461734154, Jason Aronson. ISBN 9781461734154
• Sanford Drob (2025). 9780765761255, J. Aronson. ISBN 9780765761255
• Sanford L. Drob (2025). 9781433103049, Peter Lang. ISBN 9781433103049
• (2025). 9789657146118, Gal Einai. ISBN 9789657146118
• Arthur Green (2025). 9780804749084, Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804749084
• David J. Halperin (2025). 9780791497449, State University of New York Press. ISBN 9780791497449
• Moshe Idel (1988). 9780300046991, Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300046991
• Aryeh Kaplan (1995). 9781568213811, Jason Aronson. ISBN 9781568213811
• Aryeh Kaplan (2025). 9780307761118, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 9780307761118
• J. H. Laenen (2025). 9780664224578, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. ISBN 9780664224578
• Gershom Scholem (1995). 9780805210422, Schocken Books. ISBN 9780805210422
• Gershom Scholem (1962). 9780691020471, Schocken. ISBN 9780691020471
• Gershom Scholem (1974). 9780812903522, Quadrangle/New York Times Book Company. ISBN 9780812903522
• Gershom Scholem (1977). 9780805202359, Schocken Books. ISBN 9780805202359
• 5 volume set.

• Aryeh Kaplan (1988). 9780877286172, S. Weiser. ISBN 9780877286172
• Gabriella Samuel (2025). 9781101218464, Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 9781101218464

• Jewish Encyclopedia: Cabala
• Judaism 101: Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism
• King David Kabbalah on Mount Zion, Jerusalem
• Learn Kabbalah: Lurianic Kabbalah
• Chabad.org's "What is Kabbalah?"