Kabbalah or Qabalah is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal.
Isaac ben Solomon Luria Ashkenazi, commonly known in Jewish religious circles as Ha'ari, Ha'ari Hakadosh or Arizal, was a leading rabbi and Jewish mystic in the community of Safed in the Galilee region of Ottoman Syria, now Israel. He is considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah, his teachings being referred to as Lurianic Kabbalah.
The Dardaim or Dor Daim, are adherents of the Dor Deah movement in Orthodox Judaism. That movement took its name in 1912 in Yemen under Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ, and had its own network of synagogues and schools, although, in actuality, the movement existed long before that name had been coined for it. According to ethnographer and historian, Shelomo Dov Goitein, author and historiographer, Hayyim Habshush had been a member of this movement before it had been given the name Dor Deah, writing, “...He and his friends, partly under European influence, but driven mainly by developments among the Yemenite Jews themselves, formed a group who ardently opposed all those forces of mysticism, superstition and fatalism which were then so prevalent in the country and strove for exact knowledge and independent thought, and the application of both to life.” It was only some years later, when Rabbi Yihya Qafih became the headmaster of the new Jewish school in Sana'a built by the Ottoman Turks and where he wanted to introduce a new curriculum in the school whereby boys would also learn arithmetic and the rudiments of the Arabic and Turkish languages that Rabbi Yihya Yitzhak Halevi gave to Rabbi Qafih's movement the name Daradʻah, a word which is an Arabic broken plural made-up of the Hebrew words Dör Deʻoh, and which means "Generation of Knowledge."
Academic study of Jewish mysticism, especially since Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941), draws distinctions between different forms of mysticism which were practiced in different eras of Jewish history. Of these, Kabbalah, which emerged in 12th-century southwestern Europe, is the most well known, but it is not the only typological form, nor was it the first form which emerged. Among the previous forms were Merkabah mysticism, and Ashkenazi Hasidim around the time of the emergence of Kabbalah.
Sha'ar ha Gilgulim is a kabbalistic work on Gilgul, the concept of reincarnation put together by Rabbi Hayyim Vital who recorded the teachings of his master Itzhak Luria in the 16th century CE.
Sefirot, meaning emanations, are the 10 attributes/emanations in Kabbalah, through which Ein Sof reveals itself and continuously creates both the physical realm and the seder hishtalshelut. The term is alternatively transliterated into English as sephirot/sephiroth, singular sefira/sephirah.
In the branch of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah, Daʻat or Da'ath is the location where all ten sefirot in the Tree of Life are united as one.
Hayyim ben Joseph Vital Calabrese/Calabris was a rabbi in Safed and the foremost disciple of Isaac Luria. He recorded much of his master's teachings. After Vital's death, his writings began to spread and led to a "powerful impact on various circles throughout the Jewish world."
Jewish meditation includes practices of settling the mind, introspection, visualization, emotional insight, contemplation of divine names, or concentration on philosophical, ethical or mystical ideas. Meditation may accompany unstructured, personal Jewish prayer, may be part of structured Jewish services, or may be separate from prayer practices. Jewish mystics have viewed meditation as leading to devekut. Hebrew terms for meditation include hitbodedut or hitbonenut/hisbonenus ("contemplation").
Pardes is a Kabbalistic theory of Biblical exegesis first advanced by Moses de León, adapting the popular "fourfold" method of medieval Christianity. The term, sometimes also rendered PaRDeS, means "orchard" when taken literally, but is used in this context as a Hebrew acronym formed from the initials of the following four approaches:
Lurianic Kabbalah is a school of Kabbalah named after Isaac Luria (1534–1572), the Jewish rabbi who developed it. Lurianic Kabbalah gave a seminal new account of Kabbalistic thought that its followers synthesised with, and read into, the earlier Kabbalah of the Zohar that had disseminated in Medieval circles.
Yeridat ha-dorot, meaning literally "the decline of the generations", or nitkatnu ha-dorot, meaning "the diminution of the generations", is a concept in classical Rabbinic Judaism and contemporary Orthodox Judaism expressing a belief in the intellectual inferiority of subsequent, and contemporary Torah scholarship and spirituality in comparison to that of the past. It is held to apply to the transmission of the "Revealed" aspects of Torah study, embodied in the legal and homiletic Talmud, and other mainstream rabbinic literature scholarship. Its reasoning derives from the weaker claim to authoritative traditional interpretation of scripture, in later stages of a lengthening historical chain of transmission from the original revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai, and the codification of the Oral Torah in the Talmud. This idea provides the basis to the designated Rabbinic Eras from the Tannaim and Amoraim of the Talmud, to the subsequent Gaonim, Rishonim and Acharonim. Additionally, it has an extra metaphysical explanation in Kabbalah, regarding lower levels of souls in succeeding generations.
The primary texts of Kabbalah were allegedly once part of an ongoing oral tradition. The written texts are obscure and difficult for readers who are unfamiliar with Jewish spirituality which assumes extensive knowledge of the Tanakh, Midrash and halakha.
Christian Kabbalah arose during the Renaissance due to Christian scholars' interest in the mysticism of Jewish Kabbalah, which they interpreted according to Christian theology. It is often transliterated as Cabala to distinguish it from the Jewish form and from Hermetic Qabalah.
Practical Kabbalah in historical Judaism, is a branch of the Jewish mystical tradition that concerns the use of magic. It was considered permitted white magic by its practitioners, reserved for the elite, who could separate its spiritual source from qlippoth realms of evil if performed under circumstances that were holy (Q-D-Š) and pure, tumah and taharah. The concern of overstepping Judaism's strong prohibitions of impure magic ensured it remained a minor tradition in Jewish history. Its teachings include the use of Divine and angelic names for amulets and incantations.
The World of Chaos and The World of Rectification are two general stages in Jewish Kabbalah in the order of descending spiritual worlds known as "the Four Worlds". In subsequent creations, they also represent two archetypal spiritual states of being and consciousness. Their concepts derive from the new scheme of Lurianic Kabbalah by Isaac Luria (1534–1572), the father of modern Kabbalah, based on his interpretation of classic references in the Zohar.
Yichudim is a specific form of Jewish meditation in Kabbalistic Jewish mysticism, especially denoting the complete meditative method developed by Isaac Luria (1534–1572). The term Yichud is found in Halakha, denoting male-female "seclusion". In the esoteric anthropomorphism in Kabbalah, Yichudim denote unifications between male and female Divine aspects in the supernal sephirot.
Kabbalists have included contemporary traditionalist Orthodox teachers of Kabbalah, as well as Neo-Kabbalistic and Academic scholars who read Kabbalah in a critical, universalist way.
The history of Jewish mysticism encompasses various forms of esoteric and spiritual practices aimed at understanding the divine and the hidden aspects of existence. This mystical tradition has evolved significantly over millennia, influencing and being influenced by different historical, cultural, and religious contexts. Among the most prominent forms of Jewish mysticism is Kabbalah, which emerged in the 12th century and has since become a central component of Jewish mystical thought. Other notable early forms include prophetic and apocalyptic mysticism, which are evident in biblical and post-biblical texts.
