Ask about Kabbalah

[agricola]

Actually, the impetus to start this thread was precisely because 'kabbalah' is one of those things floating around in Hollywood circles that purports to be something mysterious and important - it isn't a 'religion' however (and doesn't pretend to be, even at the Kabbalah Center in Beverly Hills). But it is a religion TOPIC, at least.

So this thread is 'authentic kabbalah' as opposed to 'popularly advertised' kabbalah - and I don't charge money and I won't sell you a red thread bracelet and tell you it will protect you against the evil eye.

So -
assuming more than one person has heard 'something' about kabbalah (or the Kabbalah Center and Madonna) prior to this, and if a question about kabbalah arises out of that, especially in reference to something I've posted from Frankiel's books, bring it up by all means. That - in my opinion - is totally valid (along the lines of that 'educational' aspect I mentioned earlier).

Ideally, after I get done with this book (and we are actually forging along and getting closer to the end already) then the reader will be more able to evaluate the claims of places like the Kabbalah Center. And I'm not saying the Center is completely off base - but any teacher who is in the business of charging money routinely for this sort of information is possibly someone you might want to hesitate before taking that teacher on as your own. Maybe.

[teresa]

agricola

I am way behind, and will have more questions when I catch up.

When you speak of mysticism, are you talking about an individual experiencing oneness with God in a way that is hard (or impossible) to put into everyday language? It seems to me that the ancient Hebrew prophets experienced God in this way. And that is what Jeremiah meant when he said that those in new covenant with God would "know God". So in a sense, Kabbalah is a return to these earlier roots -- would you agree?

I attended the Wednesday night services at a community church for a few years, where the service was designed to encourage a non-verbal, intuitive experience of oneness with God. I can now enter into that state without any external props. I often hold back, because I wonder how real this experience is. At the same time, I don't know of any other way to experience oneness with God. It's quite different from an intellectual knowledge of God, as the traditional CoC seemed to promote.

All of which is to say, I am confused as to whether Kabbalah is about experiencing oneness with God in a similar intuitive, non-verbal way, or about something else? What confuses me is the emphasis on the diagram and Sephirot. And the way the Sephirot are spoken of as almost separate from God. Are the diagram and Sephirot intended to be a kind of "crib notes", a way to organize and convey information that only becomes real to us through the actual experience of God?

[agricola]

agricola

I am way behind, and will have more questions when I catch up.

When you speak of mysticism, are you talking about an individual experiencing oneness with God in a way that is hard (or impossible) to put into everyday language? It seems to me that the ancient Hebrew prophets experienced God in this way. And that is what Jeremiah meant when he said that those in new covenant with God would "know God".

Yes

So in a sense, Kabbalah is a return to these earlier roots -- would you agree?

No, because this implies that kabbalistic ideas and thought 'started' in modern times as an attempt to 'return'. That would be no, because this TYPE of interpretation of scriptural material and this TYPE of practice (individual experiencing of oneness with God, traditions teaching methods of reaching that experience, ideas and teachings about what these visions of the prophets meant/stood for) has really NEVER gone missing, or died out, and therefore is in no need of 'returning to'. All that has happened in the past 500 years (and increasingly, in the last 50) is the relative advertising or popularization of these existing traditions.
In the first century, for instance, the mystical traditions ALREADY existed - the Book of Yetzirah (which you can now buy at Amazon) dates to this period. The brand of mystical thought was what we call: Merkavah mysticism, and it involved a lot of practices and symbology based on the 'wheels within wheels' and the 'fiery chariot' visions of Ezekiel. What is called 'Lurianic kabbalah' (still the major body of today's kabbalistic teachings) dates to the 1500's - but it is built upon the earlier 'schools'. It is not a new invention, and it is also not a 'return' to the earlier versions.

I attended the Wednesday night services at a community church for a few years, where the service was designed to encourage a non-verbal, intuitive experience of oneness with God. I can now enter into that state without any external props. I often hold back, because I wonder how real this experience is. At the same time, I don't know of any other way to experience oneness with God. It's quite different from an intellectual knowledge of God, as the traditional CoC seemed to promote.

Yes that's 'mysticism' par excellence. And it is absolutely different from the way the CoC 'thinks' about religion - which is essentially suspicious of, and dismissive toward, 'spirituality' or the emotional, intuitive experience of the divine.

All of which is to say, I am confused as to whether Kabbalah is about experiencing oneness with God in a similar intuitive, non-verbal way, or about something else? What confuses me is the emphasis on the diagram and Sephirot. And the way the Sephirot are spoken of as almost separate from God. Are the diagram and Sephirot intended to be a kind of "crib notes", a way to organize and convey information that only becomes real to us through the actual experience of God?

The sefirot are NOT separate from God. It is perhaps more useful to say that kabbalistic thinking is more like panentheism: God is not separate and apart from anything, but is present (immanent) in all of creation. The sefirot are more like ways to think about how this immanent presence appears to humans, while recognizing that 'all is One' and 'One is all'.
But yes, I think (though I could be wrong) that the diagrams and sefirot teachings are ways to organize and convey information to us, about ourselves, the universe and God - which become 'real' when we internalize and practice this (here is why I say I study ABOUT kabbalah but do not study 'kabbalah'). That is a very good way to look at all this, I think.

Remember, humans 'experience' God FIRST, and THEN we try to 'understand' our experience. And our understanding of the experience comes out in stories and metaphors, because that is the only way we can process this extreme experience and put it in understandable terms.

I think Christians can see this in the NT and early Christian writings as well, especially perhaps in Paul's 'High Christology'. The apostles and early Christians 'experienced' God in the person of Jesus, and then spent lifetimes producing a narrative or narratives that 'explained' to themselves and others, how they understood that experience. Maybe ESPECIALLY in the Trinity (which, really, logically, hardly makes actual sense - but to many people, 'speaks' a reality which is vitally important if not quite explainable).

[agricola]

Rabbi Heschel is one of my 'teachers', and what most Jews would consider a 'tzaddik' (a righteous man). He wrote several important works (even more impressive when you realize that English was not his first language). Here is an academic paper (which apparently means 'the footnotes are much longer than the text of this article') about the mystical elements in Heschel's related to his activity with the American Civil Rights movement (Rabbi Heschel is the guy with the beard marching next to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in the march on Selma).

h**ps://www.academia.edu/27603324/Ecstatic_Prot ... al_Thought

If anyone has read Heschel, you might be interested in his influences from Hasidism and kabbalah.

The question, “was Heschel a mystic?” arises due to his anti-mystical and anti-ecstatic attitude found primarily in The Prophets juxtaposed with his biographical background. The answer generally revolves around the tautological argument, “if we define mysticism as x, then Heschel is a mystic, and if as
y then he is not.” I find this type of answer unhelpful and instead I propose that in order to understand Heschel’s connection to Jewish mysticism his thought must be phenomenologically contrasted with kabbalistic and hasidic sources, as elucidated by Elliot R. Wolfson and that his holistic view of Judaism must be emphasized.

Heschel was born and raised in a thoroughly Hasidic environment (lots of mysticism) but moved away from that approach as a young adult in Berlin, and after coming to the US, he became one of the leading lights of the Conservative Movement.

Heschel’s description of the prophet is almost identical to his depiction of the kabbalist. This should not be seen as a “prophetization” of the Jewish mystic, rather as an example of Heschel’s unitive view of Judaism, in which the ṣaddiq is seen as the heir of the prophets, who are configured through the prism of the ṣaddiq. Although The Prophets is a study of the biblical prophets and offers a phenomenological understanding of prophecy, it also carries references to Heschel’s hasidic conception of God and man. This is most strongly pronounced in Heschel’s explanation of what God being a personal being means, as he writes,

“Is it proper to apply the term "personal" to God? We have suggested that the outstanding feature of a person is his ability to transcend himself, his attentiveness to the nonself. To be a person is to have a concern for the nonself. It is in this limited sense that we speak of God as a personal Being: He has concern for nondivine beings"

I haven't gone through the entire paper, but I think it is interesting. (By the way, 'saddiq' is the same as 'tzaddik')

[KLP]

...No, because this implies that kabbalistic ideas and thought 'started' in modern times as an attempt to 'return'. That would be no, because this TYPE of interpretation of scriptural material and this TYPE of practice (individual experiencing of oneness with God, traditions teaching methods of reaching that experience, ideas and teachings about what these visions of the prophets meant/stood for) has really NEVER gone missing, or died out, and therefore is in no need of 'returning to'. All that has happened in the past 500 years (and increasingly, in the last 50) is the relative advertising or popularization of these existing traditions.
In the first century, for instance, the mystical traditions ALREADY existed - the Book of Yetzirah (which you can now buy at Amazon) dates to this period. The brand of mystical thought was what we call: Merkavah mysticism, and it involved a lot of practices and symbology based on the 'wheels within wheels' and the 'fiery chariot' visions of Ezekiel. What is called 'Lurianic kabbalah' (still the major body of today's kabbalistic teachings) dates to the 1500's - but it is built upon the earlier 'schools'. It is not a new invention, and it is also not a 'return' to the earlier versions.

...

OK, that is an interesting IMO, the origin of the text. So you think the Book of Yetzirah text originated in the 1st century A.D.? I am looking for external references or corroborating evidence for that date but have not found it yet. Is there a copy of the text that includes or in included in something else that can verify a date back to the 1st century? A reference some place that gives the earliest confirmed date? I know they had various mystic books since Acts 19 mentions the people deciding to burn them. It is just human nature it seems to want to know or connect to some special knowledge or source, so no doubt the Jewish mystic stuff would have been extant but I was just looking for a specific early reference to the Book of Yetzirah.

[agricola]

AFAIK, the EARLIEST mention of the 'Sefer Yetzirah' dates to the Talmud, so at least as early as third century CE, that book (or a book of that name, also considered a source of esoteric ideas) was in circulation. I have no special problem with the idea that it dates to at least late Second Temple times (400 BCE to 100 CE, basically).

It is ATTRIBUTED to Abraham, which I think is probably not the case. Some others say it was authored by Rabbi Akiva, who was second century CE. That's more possible, but it could be earlier. At least one scholar dates it to 2nd century BCE (200 to 100 BCE), which I think would be a fair enough estimate. There are similar kinds of ideas in Greek writings from about the same period.

We have a commentary on it written in the 10th century by Sa'adia Gaon (who authored the first known Jewish prayer book). So it is certainly older than that.

Here is how the book starts, though:

By thirty-two mysterious paths of wisdom Jah has engraved [all things], [who is] the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, the living God, the Almighty God, He that is uplifted and exalted, He that Dwells forever, and whose Name is holy; having created His world by three [derivatives] of [the Hebrew root-word] sefar : namely, sefer (a book), sefor (a count) and sippur (a story), along with ten calibrations of empty space, twenty-two letters [of the Hebrew alphabet], [of which] three are principal [letters] (i.e. א מ ש), seven are double-sounding [consonants] (i.e. בג"ד כפר"ת) and twelve are ordinary [letters] (i.e. ה ו ז ח ט י ל נ ס ע צ ק).

The book is about (about?) letters and numerical calculations - of a sort.

So it is definitely very OLD, even if we don't know exactly how old.

h**ps://smile.amazon.com/Sefer-Yetzirah-Creation-Aryeh-Kaplan/dp/0877288550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1470676806&sr=8-1&keywords=sefer+yetzirah

[agricola]

Then you have the Bahir, also supposed to be from the first century CE, but the first real mention of THAT comes in the 12th century, so I don't think it is as early as it is claimed to be.

h**ps://smile.amazon.com/Bahir-Aryeh-Kaplan/dp/0877286183/ref=wl_mb_wl_huc_mrai_1_dp

Note the 'attributed to' information - that would be a first century figure, but it isn't attested (that is, the Talmud does mention the Sefer Yetzirah, but it doesn't mention the Bahir - that's negative information and not positive, but still - if it were that important, we might hope or expect that it would be mentioned - if it existed at the time).

wiki says -

modern scholars of Kabbalah now hold that at least part of the Bahir was an adaptation of an older work, the Sefer Raza Rabba. This older book is mentioned in some of the works of the Geonim; however no complete copies of Sefer Raza Rabba are still in existence. However, quotes from this book can still be found in some older works. Scholar Ronit Meroz argues that elements in the Bahir date back to 10th century Babylonia, as witnessed by the acceptance of the Babylonian system of vowel points, which later fell into disuse, while other elements were written in 12th century Provence.[2]

Many scholars of Kabbalah hold that the Bahir adds gnostic elements to the older work. The question of how much gnosticism has influenced Kabbalah is one of the major themes of modern-day research on Kabbalah, see the works of Gershom Scholem and Moshe Idel for more information.

[agricola]

Referring to the sefirot as we have been consistently doing - it is interesting to see that the Sefer Yetzirah uses that word, but doesn't use it in the modern sense (so to speak). But in the Bahir, we definitely have the same meaning as in today's kabbalah:

The Hebrew word "sefirot" was first described in Sefer Yezirah as corresponding to the ten basic numbers, and did not possess the meaning that later Kabbalists gave to it. It is in the Bahir that we find the first discussion of the Kabbalistic concept of Sefirot as divine attributes and powers emanating from God.

“Why are they called סְפִירוֹת (sefirot)? Because it is written, The heavens מְסַפְּרִים (mesaprim), tell, God’s glory (Psalms 19:2)” (Bahir §125 [Margaliot]).

[KLP]

I wonder if there are books/movies based on this numerology/symbol stuff sort of like De Vinci Code or Indiana Jones? So it seems it is maybe 100AD or maybe a century or so afterward that actual extant references are made? And it is maybe copying other traditions and ideas from the Greeks...I am guessing maybe this type story is something common in a lot of cultures.

I am guessing from the point of Kabballah, that it deems itself as having value and having some sort of truth to itself, or else what is the point. Is there any sense that the Kabballah version is original revelation from God? Or is it just considered received wisdom and the source is left vague? Does it ascribe words or wisdom as being sourced from God himself directly as in a quote? I am just wondering since this document is sourced about the same time as Jesus if there was some sort of popularity or fashion at the time of claiming that people had revelations or secret knowledge from God?

[agricola]

Basically, just as the Torah came 'directly from God', the kabbalah (the 'received tradition') is ALSO seen as coming 'directly from God'. But some knowledge was basically for everybody, while other knowledge was only for the select few. I think there is DEFINITELY a whiff of gnostic thought in this - and yet it is also clearly true in any case, that the whole 'mystical path' (of ANY religion) is not for everybody, because not everybody is actually INTERESTED (or equipped to handle the extremes of metaphor which all mystical traditions use).

So 'gnostics' might have deliberately hidden information, while kabbalah practicioners might simply have not advertised widely - the end result is about the same. It is believed though (and I believe it) that almost all WRITTEN sources of kabbalistic thought certainly used hidden ideas, deliberately misleading language and even codes, to avoid revealing everything plainly to every leader- mostly because it is SO easy to misunderstand this stuff without an actual live teacher standing next to you, explaining what this MEANS (which is kind of what I'm trying to do, however imperfectly).

Kabbalists believe only a live teacher can 'really' convey this information properly, so books are actually rather few and far between, and the older texts are purposely obscure.