Kabbalah

Kabbalah

A Very Short Introduction
JOSEPH DAN

2006

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dan, Joseph, 1935– Kabbalah : a very short introduction / Joseph Dan.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-19-530034-5

ISBN-10: 0-19-530034-3

1. Cabala I. Title.

BM525.D355 2005

296.1'6—dc22 2005017169

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Contents

Illustrations
VII
Preface
IX

1 Kabbalah: The Term and Its Meanings 1

2 Ancient Jewish Mysticism and the Emergence of the Kabbalah 11

3 The Kabbalah in the Middle Ages 25

4 Main Ideas of the Medieval Kabbalah 37

5 Modern Times I: The Christian Kabbalah 61

6 Modern Times II: Safed and the Lurianic Kabbalah 71

7 Modern Times III: The Sabbatian Messianic Movement 85

8 Modern and Contemporary Hasidism 93

9 Some Aspects of Contemporary Kabbalah 103

Further Reading
113

Index
119

V

Illustrations
1 A Latin translation of

Library of the Jewish
Shaaey Ora
(“The Gates
Theological Seminary of
of Light”).
Courtesy of
America

28

The Library of the Jewish
5 A Latin schematic

Theological Seminary of
drawing of the ten divine

America

xiv

emanations, the
sefirot.

2 The ancient
Sefer Yezira
Courtesy of the Library of
(The Book of Creation,

the Jewish Theological
Latin translation,

Seminary of America
36

Amsterdam, 1642).

6 An amulet designed to

Courtesy of the Library of
repel the power of Lilith.

the Jewish Theological
Courtesy of the Library of
Seminary of America
12

the Jewish Theological
3 The book Zohar, the

Seminary of America
51

Book of Splendor.

7 The
Kabbalah Denudata
.

Courtesy of the Library of
Courtesy of the Library of
the Jewish Theological
the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America
26

Seminary of America
60

4 Permutations of divine

8 Henry More’s
Vision of
names and names of

Ezekiel
.
By permission of
angels in a protective

Houghton Library,
amulet.
Courtesy of the
Harvard University
65

VII

I L L U S T R A T I O N S

9 The structure of the ten

11 The holy name of God.

sef irot
.
Courtesy of the
Courtesy of the Library of
Library of the Jewish
the Jewish Theological
Theological Seminary of
Seminary of America
94

America

70

12 Esther represents the

10 Portrait of Shabbatai

Jewish feminine divine

Zevi.
Courtesy of the
power, the
shekhinah
.

Library of the Jewish
Courtesy of the Library of
Theological Seminary of
the Jewish Theological
America

84

Seminary of America
104

VIII

Every author of a “very short introduction” is faced with the difficult task of finding a way to present his subject in a brief and coherent manner, addressing readers who seek only the basic, yet most important, aspects of the discipline to which the book is dedicated. In the case of the kabbalah, however, there is an added difficulty: many readers will seek in the few pages of this book not only new information, but also a confirmation of their own impression of what the kabbalah is. Some will even, knowingly or unknowingly, seek here a description of what the kabbalah should be. For fifty years I have been trying to respond to the question “what is the kabbalah?” And, in many cases my answer was accepted with disappointment or even resentment: this is not what I believe that the kabbalah is, and certainly it is not what I feel that the kabbalah should be.

The term “kabbalah” has never been used as often and in so many contexts as it is today, yet now, as in the past, it does not have a “real,” definite one meaning. From its early beginnings, it has been used in a wide variety of ways. Every medieval kabbalist gave the term his own meaning, which differed slightly or meaningfully from the others. In modern times numerous Jewish and Christian theologians, philosophers, and even scientists have used it in various, sometimes contradic-tory, ways. It has been an expression of strict Jewish orthodoxy IX

P R E F A C E

as well as a vehicle for radical, innovative worldviews. The explanation of the meaning of the term must, therefore, be defined within a clear, historical context, stating the time, place, and culture that used it in the past or is using it today. From the point of view of the historian of religious ideas there is no “true” meaning that is above all others. This short introduction is intended, therefore, to present some of the most prominent characteristics of the different phenomena that were described as “kabbalistic” in various periods, countries, and cultural contexts.

Our libraries contain many hundreds of works of kabbalah, printed or still in manuscript form. And, beside these, there are thousands of works—collections of sermons, ethical treatises, and commentaries on the scriptures and the Talmud—that use a little or more kabbalistic terminologies and ideas. As a result, there is hardly a Jewish idea that cannot be described as “kabbalistic” with some justification, as most of these ideas are found in works that use kabbalistic terminology. How can one distinguish between a traditional Jewish ethical norm and a kabbalistic one? Today, it often seems that designating an idea as “kabbalistic” makes it more welcome to outsiders than if it were described as “Jewish.” The main work of the medieval kabbalah, the book Zohar, contains 1,400 pages that deal with every conceivable subject. There is nothing that cannot be confirmed by a quotation from the Zohar. A friend of mine who was teaching kabbalah at a university in California in the 1960s produced a beautiful quote from the Zohar to confirm that it is forbidden to study the kabbalah without, at the same time, smoking pot, and he demanded that his students do so in class.

I failed in my attempt to persuade him to change his attitude; my authority could not compete with that of the Zohar as he understood it at that time. This small book should therefore be regarded as a subjective selection, augmented by my experience as a historian of religious ideas, of the most prominent meanings attached to the term kabbalah through the ages, without designating any of them as more truthful than the others.

X

P R E F A C E

As for the deluge of meanings given to the term in contemporary culture, only a future historian will be able to distinguish between the ephemeral and the enduring ones.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 2005

XI

1 A Latin translation of
Shaaey Ora
(“The Gates of Light”), one of the most influential presentations of the kabbalistic worldview, written by Joseph Gikatilla in the thirteenth century.

K A B B A L A H : T H E T E R M A N D I T S M E A N I N G S

1

Kabbalah:

The Term and Its Meanings

A visitor to the State of Israel is confronted by kabbalah several times every day. When he enters a hotel, he is obligated to face a desk, behind which a large sign reads “Kabbalah”; in English, the same sign reads “Reception.” When he purchases anything or pays for a service he receives a piece of paper on which the word “Kabbalah” is written in large Hebrew letters. If there is an English translation on that piece of paper, it reads “Receipt.”

The term will pop up in scores of contexts. If he is invited to a reception, the Hebrew term for the event is “
kabbalat panim”

(literally, “receiving the face”). If he wishes to visit a bank or a government office he must first check the
kabalat kahal
—the hours in which clerks receive the public, the equivalent of the English “open.” Every professor, of any discipline, is engaged every week in a kabbalistic hour,
sheat kabbalah
, that is, office hour, in which his door is open to students. The verb “kbl” is present in every other sentence in Hebrew, meaning simply “to receive.” Judging by their behavior, the Hebrew-speaking Israelis seem to be oblivious to the depth of their immersion in mysticism, and treat kabbalah as a simple, mundane word in their language. In a religious context, the key sentence in which this word is used is found in the opening phrase of the talmudic tractate
avot,
one of the most popular rabbinic Hebrew texts, which was probably formulated in the second century CE. The 1

K A B B A L A H

first section of this tractate describes the traditional chain of Jewish law and religious instruction, which was transmitted from generation to generation. The first stage of this transmission, as described in this tractate, is: “Moses received
[kibel
] the Torah on [Mount] Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, who [transmitted it] to the Elders [of Israel] . . . ”; the text goes on to describe the oral transmission of this tradition to the judges, the prophets, and the early sages of the Talmud. This paragraph was used for nearly two thousand years to validate Jewish tradition as a whole, fixing the Mount Sinai revelation as the point of origin, deriving legitimacy from the sanctity of that event. The term “torah” in this sentence was understood to mean everything—scriptures, the law (halakhah), the rules of ethics, the expounding of scriptural verses (midrash)—everything related to truth of divine origin. Some even said that everything that a scholar might innovate was given by God to Moses: what may seem to be an innovative, brilliant religious observation was already known to Moses, informed by God in that all-en-compassing revelation. What Moses “received” on that occa-sion is kabbalah—tradition, which in this context acquired the particular meaning of sacred tradition of divine origin, part of which is found in writing (scriptures), and part transmitted orally from generation to generation by the religious leaders of the Jewish people.