Kabbalah [addendum]
Medieval Jewish philosophy contributed considerably to the mystical branch of Judaism known as Kabbalah. This movement is generally regarded as having its origins in twelfth and thirteenth-century Provence in the midrashically styled Bahir (Book of Enlightenment). Some, however, consider the much earlier Sefer Yetsirah (Book of Formation)—from the third through the seventh centuries—to be the earliest work of Kabbalah.
Chief among the philosophers who influenced concepts within Kabbalah were those who thrived in the Muslim cultures of Babylon (Iraq) and Spain. An example is Saadya Gaon (882—942), head of the Babylonian Yeshivah (religious academy) of Pumbedita. Although Saadya was a rationalist philosopher, he nevertheless published a detailed commentary on Sefer Yetsirah. In addition, he posited an intermediary between God and creation, known as the kavod or "glory." It is possible that this concept was influenced by the Karaite thinker, Benjamin al-Nahawandi (830–860), and that both were influenced by the Muslim kalamic (theological) view of the "creative word" of God. Contextually, the idea of the kavod is less likely to have been influenced by Christian ideas of the logos. The concept of an intermediary between God and creation influenced the seminal idea of the sefirot (emanations from the Divine), as developed in all major kabbalistic works.
Abraham ibn Ezra (1089–1164) was born in Muslim Tudela, northern Spain, but lived to see both his own birthplace and other major Spanish cities taken by Christian forces before he was thirty. At fifty he left Spain and traveled through northern Christian Europe, dying in a pogrom in London in 1164. Through his travels, he influenced kabbalistic thought in Ashkenazi and Christian domiciles at both a theoretical and practical level. For example, Ibn Ezra's complex attitude to the preexistence of "matter" impacted on circles in Provence, out of which the foundations for the Bahir emerged. The problem of "matter," which had not been widely discussed in works of popular Jewish biblical exegesis before Ibn Ezra, played a seminal part in kabbalistic thinking, both in relation to the sefirot and also in discussions about the origins and role of evil in the universe. This is particularly true of the sixteenth-century Lurianic Kabbalah of Sfat, northern Israel.
In some ways an even bolder innovation on Ibn Ezra's part was his emphasis on the importance of the mitzvot (religious commandments) that, when practiced correctly, could affect the deity. This theory influenced theurgical Kabbalah. It was instrumental in lending a psychological dimension to the practice of Kabbalah, in which human beings could be regarded as influencing the deity by means of the sefirot.
It is therefore not completely accurate to view Kabbalah solely as a movement (or series of movements) that emerges during certain tragic times of Jewish history. It is more accurate to see it as being embedded at the heart of the Jewish religion, with biblical and rabbinic antecedents. Kabbalah has also been compared to mystical traditions in other religions, notably Sufism, in which emphasis is placed on experience of the Divine. This approach has paralleled neuroscientific interest in the field of consciousness studies. Lastly, developments in the study of language and linguistics have led to emphasis on the importance of the "text" and letter mysticism in Kabbalah. Interest in Kabbalah may thus be summarized as historical, philosophical, psychological, linguistic, and experiential, but as being grounded in the same intellectual milieu as more conventional Jewish genres.
Chinese Philosophy: Buddhism; Consciousness; Experimentation and Instrumentation; Islamic Philosophy; Jewish Philosophy; Mysticism, History Of; Philosophy of Language; Postmodernism; Sufism.
Bibliography
Translations Into English of Major Kabbalistic Works
Kaplan, Aryeh. The Bahir. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1979.
Kaplan, Aryeh. Sefer Yetzirah. Rev. ed. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1997.
Matt, Daniel. The Zohar. Vols. 1–2. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.
Tishby, Isaiah. The Wisdom of the Zohar. 3 vols. Translated by David Goldstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 (1949).
Secondary Sources
Idel, Moshe. Absorbing Perfections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
Idel, Moshe. Kabbalah: New Perspectives. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.
Lancaster, Brian, L. Approaches to Consciousness: The Marriage of Science and Mysticism. Houndsmill, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Lancaster, Brian, L. The Essence of Kabbalah. London: Arcturus, 2005.
Lancaster, Irene. Deconstructing the Bible. London: Routledge Curzon, 2003.
Scholem, Gershom. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken, 1961.
Scholem, Gershom. On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. New York: Schocken, 1965.
Wolfson, Elliot R. Through a Speculum That Shines. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
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