Context
Myths and misconceptions about Kabbalah have
persisted for over two thousand years. Most describe Kabbalah as
a religion rooted in magic, or as an upstart offshoot of Judaism—in
truth, Kabbalah is neither. In The Essential Zohar, a
book about Kabbalah’s main text, the leader of the modern Kabbalah
movement, Rav Philip Berg, describes Kabbalah as “the spiritual
heritage of all humankind.” He dismisses the notion that Kabbalah
derives from Judaism, or any other specific religion, ethnicity,
or nation. Instead, he describes Kabbalah as a set of ideas, a spiritual
path that predates all major religions and belongs to no fixed time,
place, or society. Kabbalists prefer to refer to Kabbalah as a way, a
mystical approach to understanding the world and finding purpose
in life. Kabbalah provides its followers with what Berg describes
as “tools” to help them find their way. These tools include the
Torah, the Talmud, the Zohar, and the Hebrew language.
Although Kabbalah’s leaders tend to distance their beliefs
from Judaism, some strong similarities link Kabbalah to Judaism.
Kabbalists read the same two main texts as Jews—the Torah and the
Talmud—and most kabbalistic literature comments on the contents
of those two holy books. Kabbalists honor the Sabbath, a day of
the week that they and Jews both consider holy, and like Judaism,
Kabbalah teaches that one God created the universe.
Yet Kabbalah has its own core texts as well, the most
important of which is the Zohar, which means “radiance” in Hebrew.
Spanning over twenty volumes, the Zohar covers all of the fundamental teachings
of Kabbalah. Unlike religions, such as Judaism and Christianity,
which follow rules set down ages ago in static books like the Bible,
Kabbalah, kabbalists believe, cannot be contained in any number
of books or texts. They even view the Zohar as just a tiny fragment
of God’s collective wisdom, a mere first step on the lifelong path
to knowing God. Kabbalists revel in paradoxes like this, and they
tend to depict Kabbalah as a fluid collection of ideas that expands
to help fulfill the changing goals of its followers.
Though it embraces flux and defies boundaries common to
most religions, Kabbalah never deviates from a few core aims and
principles. Kabbalists believe that God’s creation of the universe
was an act of divine self-sacrifice: God gave up its own life to
create enough space for every thing and being that would occupy
the universe. In withdrawing into itself, God (known as “Ein Sof”)
left behind empty vessels to receive its energy in the form of light—Kabbalah comes
from the Hebrew word that means “receiving.” But God’s boundless
energy shattered the vessels, causing God’s light to descend into
the material world of human beings and exist in a fractured and
imperfect state.
Kabbalists believe God’s self-sacrifice created a perfect
universe, but that the shattering of God’s vessels marked the first
plunge from paradise into chaos. Kabbalists believe their main duty
is to repair God’s shattered vessels of light and restore God’s
creation to a state of perfection. Kabbalists believe that once
all the vessels are repaired, God will again be whole and the human
race will enjoy a perfect world. The ultimate aim of Kabbalah and
its followers, therefore, is to aid God and speed up the return
of the human race to paradise. Kabbalists believe they can accomplish
both goals by acting and thinking righteously according to the teachings
of Kabbalah, always with the aim of trying to understand and heal
their shattered God.
Kabbalists believe the Zohar first arose around the second
century C.E. Kabbalah was initially practiced only by scholars in France
and Spain, many of whom kept their controversial views secret to
avoid persecution. In 1492, after Spain expelled its entire Jewish
population, Jews who studied Kabbalah began to spread their views
as they journeyed to North Africa, Italy, and the region east of
the Mediterranean Sea. Kabbalah took hold quickly in all of these
places, especially in the small town of Safed, on the Sea of Galilee
in Palestine. There, men like Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria refined
some of Kabbalah’s most important ideas, and Safed became the center
of Kabbalah for several centuries.
Safed’s rise to prominence almost caused Kabbalah’s downfall. As
Kabbalah’s following in Safed exploded, kabbalists there began to
expect to complete the process of restoring God to wholeness, bringing
back the perfect society that God originally envisioned. Along the
way, Palestine, the homeland of the Jews, would be liberated from
its Turkish occupiers. In the 1660s a kabbalist named Shabbetai
Tzvi took advantage of these widespread expectations and had himself
declared the Messiah by Nathan of Gaza, a visionary who claimed
to have seen Tzvi as the Messiah in a dream. Together Tzvi and Nathan
attracted hundreds of thousands of Jewish followers to Kabbalah,
all convinced that the Messiah had arrived to liberate Palestine
and usher in paradise.
In 1666, Tzvi went to confront the Sultan of Turkey, who
offered him a simple choice: convert to Islam or be killed. Tzvi
chose to convert to Islam, devastating the hopes of his followers
and undermining the integrity of Kabbalah’s leadership. Though some
followers of Shabbetai Tzvi still believed he was the Messiah even
after his death in 1676, most rejected Tzvi and turned away from
Kabbalah. As the Enlightenment arose, placing a heavy emphasis on
rational thought, Kabbalah’s mystical qualities lost appeal and
Kabbalah’s popularity plunged. For centuries Kabbalah languished
and seemed poised to vanish altogether.
Beginning in the late 1990s, a Kabbalah revival took hold
as stars like Madonna and later Britney Spears took up Kabbalah
and began donning its signature red bracelets. A slew of other celebrities
followed and, with their unofficial endorsement, Kabbalah’s popularity
exploded, as did the controversy surrounding it. Rav Berg, the founder
of the movement’s modern headquarters—the Kabbalah Centre—has been
alternately denounced as a fraud and praised as an important spiritual
leader. Among the Centre’s more questionable practices is the sale
of bottled water imbued with mystical properties and the specially
blessed red string bracelets now worn by fashion mavens like Paris
Hilton. Many rabbis and scholars of Kabbalah charge that Berg and
his Kabbalah Centre have reduced a rich mystical tradition to a
fashionable fad for celebrities. Berg supporters might counter that
Berg single-handedly brought Kabbalah from obscurity to widespread
public awareness and established forty Kabbalah Centre locations
around the globe.
