Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 114 views

    Kabbalah and Mysticism

    Uploaded by

    Anonymous cvec0a
    This document provides an overview of Jewish mysticism. It discusses two types of mysticism - moderate mysticism which is intellectual in nature and aims to understand God through study, and intensive mysticism which is experiential using meditation and chanting. It outlines some early forms like Merkavah mysticism and creation mysticism, and later traditions like Kabbalah originating from the Zohar and Hasidism which spread mysticism among European Jews. Jewish mysticism continues to influence thought today and has seen renewed popular interest.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Kabbalah and Mysticism

    Uploaded by

    Anonymous cvec0a
    114 views2 pages
    This document provides an overview of Jewish mysticism. It discusses two types of mysticism - moderate mysticism which is intellectual in nature and aims to understand God through study, and intensive mysticism which is experiential using meditation and chanting. It outlines some early forms like Merkavah mysticism and creation mysticism, and later traditions like Kabbalah originating from the Zohar and Hasidism which spread mysticism among European Jews. Jewish mysticism continues to influence thought today and has seen renewed popular interest.

    Original Description:

    Kabbalah and Mysticism

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    This document provides an overview of Jewish mysticism. It discusses two types of mysticism - moderate mysticism which is intellectual in nature and aims to understand God through study, and intensive mysticism which is experiential using meditation and chanting. It outlines some early forms like Merkavah mysticism and creation mysticism, and later traditions like Kabbalah originating from the Zohar and Hasidism which spread mysticism among European Jews. Jewish mysticism continues to influence thought today and has seen renewed popular interest.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    114 views2 pages

    Kabbalah and Mysticism

    Uploaded by

    Anonymous cvec0a
    This document provides an overview of Jewish mysticism. It discusses two types of mysticism - moderate mysticism which is intellectual in nature and aims to understand God through study, and intensive mysticism which is experiential using meditation and chanting. It outlines some early forms like Merkavah mysticism and creation mysticism, and later traditions like Kabbalah originating from the Zohar and Hasidism which spread mysticism among European Jews. Jewish mysticism continues to influence thought today and has seen renewed popular interest.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Kabbalah and Mysticism 101

    Jewish mysticism has taken many forms.

    By MJL

    You might also like

    The Zohar

    Mysticism

    What Is Gematria?

    Mysticism

    My Jewish Learning is a not-for-profit and relies on your help

    Donate

    The Jewish mystical tradition is rich and diverse, and Jewish mysticism has taken many forms. Scholar
    Moshe Idel groups the different expressions of Jewish mysticism into two fundamental types: moderate
    and intensive. Moderate mysticism is intellectual in nature. It is an attempt to understand God and
    God’s world, and ultimately affect and change the divine realm. This type of mysticism incorporates
    many aspects of traditional Judaism, including

    study and the performance of the commandments, infusing these activities with mystical significance.
    Intensive mysticism, on the other hand, is experiential in nature. Intensive mystics use nontraditional
    religious activities, including chanting and meditation, in an attempt to commune with God.

    Origins
    The first forms of Jewish mysticism emerged in the early centuries of the first millennium. Merkavah
    mysticism was the most common early form. Merkavah mystics aimed at understanding and
    experiencing the vision of the divine throne discussed in the first chapter of the biblical book of Ezekiel.
    Another form of early mysticism focused on exploring the mysterious methods that God used to create
    the world. Sefer Yetzirah, the most important work of creation mysticism, describes the creation of the
    world through the arrangements of letters and numbers.

    Kabbalah and Hasidism

    Kabbalah is the most famous form of Jewish mysticism. It flowered in 13th century Spain with the
    writing of the Zohar, which was originally attributed to the 2nd century sage Shimon bar Yohai. The
    Zohar is a commentary on the Torah, concerned primarily with understanding the divine world and its
    relation to our world. According to

    , God as God–also known as Ein Sof or “the Infinite”–cannot be comprehended by humans. However,
    God can be understood and described as revealed in ten mystical attributes, or sefirot.

    Much of all future Kabbalah, including the important 16th-century Kabbalah of Isaac Luria–whose
    intricate theology of creation describes how God contracted to make room for the world–concerns itself
    with the sefirot. Abraham Abulafia was the most important of the medieval intensive mystics. He tried
    to achieve a state of prophecy through methods of experiential Kabbalah. Hasidism, a religious
    movement that emerged in the 18th century, spread mystical thinking and living to the masses of
    European Jewry by teaching that all people could have an experiential connection with God.

    The New Age

    Traditional mystical concepts permeate mainstream Jewish thought to this day (for example, the notions
    of tikkun ha-olam, or repair of the world, and of tzimtzum, God’s self-limiting), and texts of mystical
    origin have penetrated Jewish liturgy (including Lecha Dodi, the Friday night hymn welcoming the
    Sabbath, and other liturgical poetry). In addition, the academic study of Jewish mysticism has flourished
    in recent decades, due primarily to the work of a single scholar, Gershom Scholem. Scholem discovered
    and interpreted a wide range of mystical manuscripts and shed light on the origins and development of
    Jewish mysticism. With the emergence of New Age spirituality, Jewish mysticism has also experienced a
    popular renaissance. Jewish groups like the Renewal movement teach mysticism to spiritually inclined,
    nontraditional Jews, while controversial institutions such as the Kabbalah Centre offer a more universal
    and magical mysticism to Jews and non-Jews alike.

    You might also like