Since the second century CE, there has been a trend in Jewish culture not content with the traditional ways of approaching God through Jewish religious practice and thought, but seeking closer, more intimate, and more meaningful contact between the worshiper and his Creator. The search for such an approach to or union with God was expressed in many ways and those who were convinced that it could not be brought about by intellectual or rational means gave rise to the various circles, groups, and sects of Jewish mysticism. The best-known and most important Jewish mystical movement is known as the Kabbalah, which flourished from the end of the 12th century; however, it was preceded in ancient times by Hékhalot and Merkavah mysticism and in the Middle Ages by the Ashkenazi Ḥasidic mysteries (ḥasidé Ashkenaz).
Jewish mysticism, like Judaism as a whole, believes that the Bible is the source of all truth. Ancient Divine revelations to the patriarchs, to the Jewish people as a whole, and to the prophets, embody eternal truth. Mystical truth, therefore, need not be revealed in an individual, visionary manner; it can be gleaned from a mystical interpretation of the ancient texts. Throughout its history, Jewish mysticism has reflected the tension between the tendency, on the one hand, to arrive at the mystical truth by an esoteric system of hermeneutical interpretation of biblical verses and talmudic sayings, viewing them as mystic symbols, and the impulse, on the other, to arrive at original mystical discoveries through visions, dreams, revelations of celestial powers, and intuitive reflection. Ancient Jewish mysticism, as reflected in the Hékhalot mystical texts, tended to take the latter road, so that most of the works of these mystics are vivid and colorful descriptions of their visions in the Divine world. The Kabbalah, on the other hand, usually tended towards the hermeneutical alternative: its very name means "tradition," and the kabbalists saw themselves as transmitters of ancient secrets given to them by previous generations or gleaned by them from ancient texts. Nonetheless, even within the homiletical and exegetical works of the kabbalists it is possible to trace the elements of an original revelation, an individual mystical experience.
The core of Jewish mysticism is a set of symbols which can be found in its most developed form in the Kabbalah. Mystics, almost by definition, claim that truth cannot be expressed by words, because words denote only what the human senses or intellect experience. If truth is beyond human sensory or logical perception, then it cannot be expressed by language. Yet the Bible is written in words and, being Divinely inspired, these words must contain Divine truth. According to the kabbalists, these words do not denote sensual reality, but symbolize, in a complex way, a mystical truth which is essentially beyond words. God gave the mystics the Scriptures as a kind of dictionary of symbols which only the mystic can understand and in this way obtain a glimpse of the truth beyond these words. The mystics thus read the Scriptures in a different, unique way and they can use the symbols---the biblical terms---to express the truth as glimpsed by them. The symbols used by the earliest kabbalistic sources---the Sefer ha-Bahir and the works of R. Isaac the Blind in the late 12th century---became the standard language of the kabbalists, to which each school and each individual mystic added their own terms and their own specific meanings. The ancient Jewish mystics and the Ashkenazi Ḥasidim did not form such detailed systems of symbols as did the Kabbalah, but the basic trend of giving biblical terms symbolical meaning is also present in their writings.
During most of its history, Jewish mysticism developed in the form of small esoteric circles of mystics who lived with their secrets far from the center of the contemporary culture, even though they themselves were part of that center. The texts of Hékhalot and Merkavah mysticism are attributed, pseudepigraphically, to R. Akiva, R. Ishmael, and other tannaitic sages, and it seems that these mystics were not culturally remote from the centers of talmudic and midrashic culture. Ashkenazi Ḥasidim developed mainly in the school of the medieval German Kalonymus family, which was the most prestigious of the time. The first schools of the Kabbalah, those of R. Abraham Ben David of Posquières in Provence and the Spanish school in Gerona headed by Naḥmanides, were at that time the leading academies of Halakhah and their heads were the religious leaders of their generation. The Kabbalah of Isaac Luria developed in the great cultural center of 16th-century Safed and there are several similar examples. Jewish mysticism was not marginal, but it tried to keep its secrets from the general public and therefore did not dominate Jewish culture. This changed dramatically in early modern times, when Lurianic Kabbalah spread widely in the 17th century, and the movements of Shabbetai Tsevi and ḥasidism became popular, shaping Jewish culture and religious history.
From the late 12th century, Jewish mystics wrote ethical treatises which did not reveal their mystical views but whose content itself reflected the message that they thought the general public could and should receive. Both Ashkenazi Ḥasidim and the Gerona kabbalists wrote some of the most influential ethical works, contributing significantly to Jewish medieval culture---works such as R. Judah He-ḥasid's Sefer Ḥasidim and R. Jonah Gerondi's Sha'aré Teshuvah ("The Gates of Repentance"). In the 16th century, kabbalists began to publish kabbalistic ethical works which used openly kabbalistic symbolism and terminology; in the 17th century such symbolism became dominant in Hebrew homiletical literature. In this way, the Kabbalah gradually became interwoven into everyday Jewish religious and ethical practice, especially by giving mystical meaning to the commandments and ethical norms. Modern Ḥasidism continued this trend and brought it to a peak, popularizing mystical symbols and making them central in Jewish life and worship. Hebrew mystical ethical literature was the vehicle by which Jewish mysticism became a dominant force in Jewish culture in the 17th to 19th centuries.
History
In the first three periods, until the late 15th century, Jewish mysticism was not a central element in Jewish religious culture. Mystical literature developed mainly in closed esoteric circles whose works remained unknown to the general public, with interest limited to very small groups. Thus, for instance, among the vast collection of writings in the Cairo Genizah only 23 fragments of ancient Jewish mystical works (Hékhalot and Merkavah mysticism) were found, an insignificant number compared to the tens of thousands of fragments in the collection. On the other hand, the prevalence of references to mystical lore in talmudic and midrashic literature proves that among at least a part of the Jewish intellectual leadership in late antiquity there was an interest in esoteric and mystical speculation. Ancient Jewish mysticism developed on the basis of midrashic interpretations of biblical texts, especially of the first chapters of Ezekiel and Genesis (Creation) and the Song of Songs, to which it added ideas and influences from other sources, most notably the Enoch literature of the second century BCE and other apocryphal and apocalyptical sources (see APOCALYPSE; APOCRYPHA).
The ancient Jewish mystics were an integral part of the cultural world of the ancient sages, but they developed a specific mystical practice, as well as a literary genre (Hékhalot and Merkavah literature), and even differed in some linguistic aspects from the general talmudic-midrashic literary and linguistic forms.
The early stages of development of this school of mystics can be found in the second century CE, probably among scholars who developed ideas originating in the school of R. Akiva. Their main aim as mystics was the practice of ascension, which was paradoxically called "descent to the chariot" (yeridah la-merkavah). Several pseudepigraphical works attribute this practice to R. Akiva and R. Ishmael, sometimes describing the tanna Neḥuniah ben ha-Kanah as the leader of the group. Their main contribution to Jewish mystical thought is to be found in the treatise Shi'ur Komah ("The Measurement of the Height"), in which God, the Creator, is described as an enormous anthropomorphic figure, each of His limbs having several esoteric names, whose measurement is given as billions of times the size of the cosmos. The mystic attempts to ascend through the seven heavens and the seven celestial palaces in order to reach the throne of glory on which this figure "sits" and participate in the prayers of the ministering angels around this throne.
Hékhalot and Merkavah literature is intensely visionary in character, describing in great detail the celestial realm and God's surroundings. It is expressed in poetical language and includes many hymns, some of which were later included in the Jewish prayer book. It does not convey any general religious or ethical message to the people as a whole and, in form and content, remains the concern of the closed circle of mystics.
It seems that this mysticism reached its peak in the fourth century and continued to develop in the fifth and sixth, first mainly in Erets Israel and later in Babylonia. Some anthologies of the works of these mystics were compiled later in the geonic period, but there do not seem to have been new and original trends and ideas in the later geonic period. The edited texts of ancient Jewish mysticism served as a starting point for the next stage, the appearance of mystical schools in medieval Christian Europe in the 12th century.
In the second half of the 12th century, two new mystical schools emerged, one in southern Europe, mainly in northern Spain and southern France, and the other in the Rhineland. These two, commonly known as the Kabbalah and Ashkenazi Ḥasidism, were not, at that time, unified schools, but rather several independent groups or even solitary writers, each unaware of the existence of the others. The early Kabbalah includes three different, and probably independent, traditions---the Sefer ha-Bahir, composed in the late 12th century and including the symbolism of the ten Divine Emanations, the Sefirot; the tradition of R. Abraham ben David of Posquières and his son R. Isaac the Blind; and the third, the Iyyun ("contemplation") circle, a group which produced several brief mystical treatises, intensely Neoplatonic in character, which did not know of the symbolism characterizing the other two traditions.
Ashkenazi Ḥasidism flourished mainly in the Kalonymus family, in Speyer and Worms, the three main figures in its tradition being R. Samuel ben Kalonymus he-Ḥasid (the Pious), his son R. Judah He-ḥasid, and the latter's disciple, R. Eleazar Ben Judah of Worms. Besides this central school, there were several other groups and independent writers, such as the school which based its pseudepigraphical traditions on a "Baraita of Joseph ben Uzziel" and the anonymous authors of the Sefer ha-Ḥayyim, a theological and ethical work, and Sefer ha-Navon, a commentary on the Shema. The three "kabbalistic" schools have common elements which differentiate them from the different "Ashkenazi Ḥasidic" groups; however, the differences between the several groups in each of them are considerable.
The common element in all these groups is a new concept of the Godhead as representing a unity of several different forces. The simple biblical and rabbinic conception of the unity of God had been broken by all these circles of mystics and in its place a complex system, describing Divine unity as a result of the harmony among several Divine powers, numbering between three and 13, was instituted. From this period on, until the present day, the main concern of Jewish mystics has been the description of the inner relationship between the various Divine powers within the Godhead, their division into "masculine" and "feminine" elements, their position in relation to evil, and their role in the Creation, in the Divine guidance of world affairs, in the fate of the Jewish people, and in the future messianic redemption.
After the initial phase, in the last quarter of the 12th century and the first quarter of the 13th, these various groups began to develop into two distinct schools: the Ashkenazi Ḥasidic school, headed by R. Eleazar of Worms, and the kabbalistic one centered in Gerona in Catalonia and headed by Naḥmanides. In these two schools, European Jewish mysticism received its basic symbols and ideas, which shaped Jewish mysticism for centuries to come. Ashkenazi Ḥasidism declined after the middle of the 13th century and many of its ideas were absorbed by the Kabbalah, which spread widely in the second half of the 13th century and established new schools in Central Europe, in Italy, and in the East.
The third stage was the development of the Kabbalah in Spain from the late 13th century to the expulsion of the Jews from the country in 1492. The most important event in this period was the appearance of the Zohar, the main text of the Kabbalah, in the last years of the 13th century. The author of the main part of the Zohar, R. Moses de Leon, utilized in the composition of his mystical masterpiece the teachings of the various kabbalistic circles that flourished in Spain in the 13th century, especially those of Gerona and the radical teachings of the Cohen brothers, the "gnostic" kabbalistic group of Castile in the second half of the 13th century. In this group the kabbalistic concept of dualism, of a constant struggle between the "left side" and the "right side" in the cosmos, was powerfully expressed, and influenced the Zohar's teachings concerning the sitra aḥra, the satanic left side in the Divine and created worlds.
The Zohar emerged at a time when a large group of kabbalists were active in northern Spain, some of them having direct contact with R. Moses de Leon; some of them may have had some impact on the Zohar itself. Most notable among them were R. Joseph Gikatilla (who was a disciple of R. Abraham Abulafia, one of the most original kabbalistic thinkers in Spain); R. David ben Judah the Pious; R. Joseph "of Shushan the Capital," the anonymous author of Tikkuné ha-Zohar, whose work was included in the Zohar collection; and, possibly, the anonymous author of the Sefer ha-Temunah ("The Book of the Picture"). These and other kabbalists developed the symbolism of the Kabbalah and helped gain a central place for the Zohar in Jewish mysticism; their work had a great impact on subsequent generations of kabbalists in Spain and elsewhere. During the 14th and the early 15th centuries the Kabbalah in general and the Zohar in particular had increasing influence on Jewish intellectuals in Germany, Erets Israel, Italy, and Byzantium. From Byzantine kabbalistic circles came, probably in the 15th century, the books Kanah and Peliah, two of the masterpieces of medieval Kabbalah.
The fourth period in the history of Jewish mysticism is directly connected to the crisis in Spain that culminated in the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492) and Portugal (1497) and the establishment of new intellectual centers in Italy, Turkey, and Safed. By the 16th century, the teachings of the Zohar had become an integral part of Jewish general culture, used by homilists and writers without any distinct mystical intention. At the same time, an upsurge in the messianic element in the Kabbalah, which had not been central in its previous development, changed its character dramatically (see Messiah). Even before the expulsion, a new school of kabbalists in Spain began to write intensely messianic kabbalistic works and this tendency increased in the works written by the kabbalists who lived through the expulsion. R. Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi, who went to Jerusalem, wrote several mythological-apocalyptical kabbalistic works expressing the new attitude.
The center in 16th-century Safed included kabbalists of different schools. Some of the most prominent among them, like R. Moses Cordovero, wished to continue the old Spanish Kabbalah. Cordovero's main purpose was the systemization of Zoharic Kabbalah and the writing of a detailed commentary on the Zohar. However, the new trends were becoming stronger and they found their clearest expression ithe revolutionary Kabbalah developed in Safed by R. Isaac Luria (the Ari) and his disciples, especially R. Ḥayyim Vital, in the last third of the century. While using elements found in the Zohar, Lurianic Kabbalah developed a new myth according to which the earthly exile is but a reflection of a flaw in the Divine world which allows evil to flourish. Jewish religious life is intended to correct this flaw and bring salvation first and foremost to the Divine world, but also pave the way for the Redemption of the Jewish people. Lurianic Kabbalah transformed Jewish mysticism into an ideology directly relevant to Jewish contemporary problems, thus for the first time enabling Jewish mystics to be historically active in shaping the future of the people as a whole.
This reversal in the attitude of the Kabbalah towards messianism and historical action served as a spiritual basis for the emergence of the Shabbatean movement in 1665-1666. The messianic theology of Nathan of Gaza, the prophet of Shabbetai Tsevi, developed Lurianic Kabbalah while putting in its center the role of the messiah in the process of the redemption. Shabbetai Tsevi and Nathan of Gaza gave their believers a new mystical faith, faith in the redemptive role of the personal messiah who, as one of the sefirot, is an incarnation of a Divine power whose role it is to correct everything that is flawed in the Divine and earthly worlds. When Shabbetai Tsevi converted to Islam these ideas were developed further to explain and justify the conversion, creating a paradoxical mysticism of faith in a converted messiah. Various Shabbatean sects in the 17th and 18th centuries developed different versions of this messianic theology, but all of them put in their center the idea of the mystical leader, the Divine power whose responsibility it is to bring salvation to all existence. Shabbateanism turned Lurianic Kabbalah into a theology centered around a mystical leader.
The fifth and last stage in the development of Jewish mysticism, which began in the middle of the 18th century and continues to develop today, is connected with the emergence of the modern Ḥasidic movement, founded by R. Israel Baal Shem Tov. Ḥasidism brought about a schism in East European Jewry between the adherents of the many Ḥasidic sects, led by the Tsaddikim, and their opponents, the Mitnaggedim.
Both sides in this schism were kabbalists, accepting, in various ways, the basic ideas of the Kabbalah, though many Ḥasidic leaders tended to reinterpret some Lurianic symbols in a new way. The Mitnaggedim were very often devoted to Lurianic concepts in different forms. The main difference between Ḥasidism and its opponents is to be found in the Ḥasidic theory of the Tsaddik, the belief in the redemptive role of the Ḥasidic rabbi as a mystical leader. Some Shabbatean elements undoubtedly had an impact on the development of the theology that gives the Tsaddik a superhuman role in redeeming the souls of his adherents and responsibility over their fate both in this world and the next. The Mitnaggedim fiercely oppose attributing such a role to a human being and uphold the symbols of pre-Shabbatean Kabbalah. This conflict continues into present-day Judaism.
