An Incomplete and Infinite God
Kabbalists believe the universe began with a benevolent
sacrifice by God. Unlike Christianity, which says God sacrificed
his only son to save the world, Kabbalah teaches that God sacrificed himself so
that the world and the human race might flourish. Kabbalists describe God’s
sacrifice as tsimtsum, the Hebrew word for “withdrawal.”
Kabbalists believe God existed in the form of pure energy
in the time before creation. The power of God’s energy was so vast
that it prevented anything else from existing in the universe. To
make room for the human race and everything else in the universe,
God first had to recoil into itself. In the process of withdrawal,
God’s identity shattered, dispersing God’s energy throughout the
universe. Aspects of God, in the form of the ten sefirot, then
descended through time and space into the newly created world of
material reality—the world in which humans live. Every kabbalist’s
main duty is tikkun, the process of restoring Kabbalah’s
fractured God to a state of wholeness through righteousness and
good deeds.
In religions like Christianity and Judaism, God creates
and then withdraws, but in Kabbalah God withdraws first in order
to create. God still remains a presence after creation, but in a
divided form, dependent on the help of human beings to restore its
wholeness. Whereas many religions conceive of God as a humanlike
figure to whom they can speak and pray, Kabbalah views God as a
boundless unknowable force. The finite human mind cannot ever truly
comprehend God, but the collective faith and devotion of the followers of
Kabbalah can make God whole and knowable once more. The only way
Kabbalah followers can begin to understand Ein Sof is by becoming
acquainted with the sefirot, the ten aspects of
Ein Sof’s identity that Ein Sof emitted while creating the world.
Understanding and cultivating the sefirot requires
a lifetime of study and devotion, but Kabbalah provides even beginners
with a way of knowing God in everyday life. Shekhinah, the tenth sefirah, represents
God’s presence in the material world and provides the first glimpse
into knowing and understanding God. As kabbalists continue to study
and honor the teachings of Kabbalah, they can ascend sequentially
through each sefirah, in turn gaining a more and more
profound understanding of their divinity.
The Three Types of Fear
In The Essential Zohar, Rav Berg, the
founder of the Kabbalah Centre and the spiritual leader of contemporary
Kabbalah, writes, “No idea in Kabbalah is more important than the
true meaning of fear.” At first glance, Berg’s proclamation might
seem out of place, since Kabbalah tends to encompass such a positive,
hopeful set of ideals. As Berg explains, the true meaning
of fear in Kabbalah differs strongly from what most people expect
it to mean.
We tend to think of fear as a negative emotion, the source
of anxiety and discouragement. Kabbalah instead presents fear as
the primary motivator of every righteous thought and deed in the
universe. To understand this surprising portrayal of fear, we need
to understand the three types of fear described in the Zohar, Kabbalah’s main
text. The first type of fear involves the things we hold dear in our
lives on earth: our home, our health, our friends, and our possessions.
Fearing the loss of any of the above does not qualify as fear in
Kabbalah. Similarly, Kabbalah considers fear of damnation, or any
type of consequence in the afterlife, an unacceptable application of
the concept of fear. Kabbalah refers to fear of loss in the material world
and in the world hereafter as “evil fear.”
The third type of fear is the only fear kabbalists must
honor and cultivate, and that’s the fear of God. In The
Essential Zohar, Berg insists that kabbalists replace the
word “fear” with “awe” in describing the emotion they should feel
when contemplating God. Though “fear of God” appears in the Old
Testament and in the Zohar, Berg believes the phrase was intended
to convey a feeling of respect and admiration, not worry or concern.
Awe in the face of God, the third fear described in the Zohar, is
the most powerful gift God gives us. It is the awareness that God
is the source of all the energy, wisdom, and strength in the universe.
Berg views this awareness as the key to kabbalistic faith,
the beacon that keeps followers loyal to their only goal: bridging
the gap between the perfect world that God initially created and
the broken world that human beings inherited after God withdrew.
By always remaining in awe of God’s power and self-sacrifice, kabbalists should
never indulge in doubt or self-pity. Instead, they should draw inspiration
from God’s power and achievement and strive to honor God by restoring
its wholeness.
Chaos and Forgiveness
Kabbalists believe God created a perfect world that we’ve
never known. Just after the moment of creation, when God’s identity
shattered, the paradise we would have inherited instead descended
into chaos. In place of the Garden of Eden, humans encountered a
world fraught with danger, disease, and countless other perils.
Many religions blame human beings for the problems we encounter
on earth. Rav Berg refers to a famous sermon by puritan minister
Jonathan Edwards, called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,”
to point out how other religions portray God as spiteful and resentful
of human beings for their sinfulness. Edwards notoriously described man
as a piddling insect that God would be delighted to cast into the flames
of hell.
Kabbalah presents God in a very different light. Though
Ein Sof sacrificed its own identity to create the universe for human
beings, kabbalists describe their God as a forgiving, endlessly
loving force. Kabbalists typically portray their relationship with
God as a marriage of sorts, a give and take in which God depends
on people to restore its wholeness, and people depend on God to
inspire them to act righteously in order to heal their fractured
God. Kabbalah does not include a doctrine of irremediable sin, but
instead conceives of everyone, even God, as continually becoming, rather
than being. Kabbalah therefore believes that even
the vilest sinner always has a shot at forgiveness in the eyes of
God: even in the final moments of life, hope remains.
Kabbalah’s strong sense of hope and optimism derives from
its conception of God as an infinite, ever-present force. Since
God created everything and everyone in the universe, everything
and everyone in the universe contains elements of God’s perfection.
The aim of Kabbalah is to provide everyone with a set of tools for
use in discovering their connection to God. These tools typically
include the study of the Zohar, the Torah, the Talmud, and the Hebrew
language. Once enough followers of Kabbalah bridge the gap between the
chaotic human world and the perfect world God first created, paradise
will once again reign on earth.
