The Birth of Kabbalah
Below is a script I wrote for BimBam, a Jewish Educational Media Company.
At the center of Kabbalah (and by that I mean an ancient mystic stream of Judaism, not this place in LA) at the center of Kabbalah is a book called the Zohar, which is a book that collects knowledge from even older Jewish mystical works. It looks at verses in the bible and ideas in Judaism through the lens of the ten sephirot. Put simply, each of these sephirot is a way to interact with an aspect of God. Through these sephirot, the Zohar created new ways to think about lots of the bible and Judaism in general. Mystical ways.
Now, the Zohar was written in the 13th Century in a culture where there was both intellectual curiosity and deep religious fervor. In this culture in northern Spain, on one hand they were influenced by the teachings of Maimonides, a Jewish thinker that tried to approach thought from a Greek philosophical perspective. So he said, “You can’t ever know what God does, just what he doesn’t do.” In other words, you shouldn’t ever assume God’s actions have a direct effect on you. It’s an intellectual way to approach God.
And then they were influenced by Christian Europe’s religious fervor. “God has a direct effect on me.”
So, how can God simultaneously have an effect and not have an effect? For this, mysticism’s answer is there are multiple aspects to God. We can’t interact with God, who is unknowable - the Ein Sof, but we can interact with ten constricted aspects of God - the Sephirot. A small group of people wrote about this in 13th Century Northern Spain. One was Nachmonide’s in his interpretations of the Torah. And the other was Moshe de Leon who collected older texts that formed into the Zohar. These older texts focused on trying to understand some difficult sections in the Bible like the logic behind creation, the chariot vision of Ezekiel, and the Apocalyptic visions of Daniel.
Notably, only a small group of scholars read any of these Kabbalistic texts, including the Zohar, as it was generally accepted that studying them would drive you mad.
That is, until 250 years later. So, 60 years after the Spanish inquisition, Isaac Luria entered the picture. At this time, Jews were in a down place. The whole focus of the religion was on living in the past, and being sad about where we are now - not having fun in Spain. Luria had this revelatory idea to take the principles of Kabbalism found in the Zohar and evolve them. Instead of it mostly being about understanding the Sephirot, Kabbalism was now about collecting sparks. Luria said the world was originally a perfect vessel, but it was destroyed and it’s up to us to collect all of the pieces. Each time we do a good deed, we’re collecting these sparks and taking another step towards the Messiah. For instance, the way a person held a kiddish cup could create a spark - as holding it in a certain way showed off God’s name. Lots of traditions Jews do to this day were created by Luria and people that followed him. Kabbalat Shabbat, for instance.
So, with Luria, instead of being sad about the past, suddenly Judaism was about looking towards the future and the hope of salvation by the Messiah. And these thoughts were wildly popular. It got people to follow many more traditions and it significantly spread Kabbalah.
It continued to grow until it brought about the Messiah. Well, it brought about someone who claimed to be the Messiah, and this threw a major wrench in people’s faith in the movement.
To learn about Sabtai Tzvi, someone who claimed to be the Messaiah and who almost brought down Judaism, click here for the next video.