What is the Kabbalah? How did the Kabbalah emerge? What does the Kabbalah teach?
What is the Kabbalah? The Kabbalah is the inner wisdom of the Torah. It is an organic part of Judaism. It is an integral part of the Oral Torah handed down to Moses together with the written Torah on Mount Sinai.
How did the Kabbalah emerge? The great twentieth century Sage and Kabbalist, Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlagtaught that all the great Sages of the Mishnah, which expounds the practical aspects of the oral Law, were familiar with the Kabbalah but only one of them, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, had permission from Above to reveal aspects of the Kabbalah because he had the ability of being able to hide the inner wisdom from those who were not yet fit for it. This he did by using a specific code in his writings.Thus the wisdom of the Kabbalah was hidden from the ordinary mass of people throughout the centuries.
The wisdom that Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai taught was written down by one of his disciples in a work that became known as the Zohar . Over the centuries the Zohar emerged as being the central work of the Kabbalah.
The revelation of the Kabbalah took on a further dimension in the holy city of Tsfat with the teaching of Rabbi Isaac Luria,the Ari;, in the sixteenth century. This great soul elucidated the underlying principles found in the Zohar, describing the flow of heavenly light through the spiritual worlds down to this world.
The work of the Ari had enormous impact on all aspects of Judaism and its subsequent development. It is true to say that practically every community of the Jewish world was affected by the work of the Ari, his work eventually giving rise to the Chassidic movement in the Ashkenazi communities of Eastern Europe; in the Sephardi tradtions we see his influence profoundly reflected in the prayerbook and hymns.
Yet, until relatively recently, it would be true to say that this inner wisdom was hidden from the mass of people. Only great Sages who had achieved significant spiritual stature had access to this deep wisdom.
The modern revelation of the Kabbalah really began in the twentieth century with two great Sages, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak haCohen Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of the yet-to-be-born State of Israel, a great mystic and Kabbalist, and Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag, the Baal haSulam, known as the Living Ari. Both these great Sages declared that the time for the Kabbalah to be revealed had come. Humanity had developed sufficiently and the time of the redemption was near. The generations were now ready.
Rav Kookendeared the Kabbalah to people with his song and mystical writing, describing, through the outpourings of his great soul, the longing of the soul to reunite with the Creator.
Rabbi Ashlag, with his great perception of the spiritual worlds, wrote commentaries on the Zohar and on the work of the Ari, unlocking the code in which the Kabbalah had been hidden. For the first time the Kabbalah, the great inner wisdom of the Torah, had now become accessible even to the ordinary person.Both Sages stressed the great role of the Jewish people in bringing this wisdom, the inner wisdom given to Moses on Mount Sinai to the whole of humanity.
What does the Kabbalah teach?
The Kabbalah teaches us that as long as we are locked in our egoistic selfish desires the free flow of the Creator's light into the world is impeded.The Kabbalah teaches that the ego is a unique and precious part of God’s creation. It is the vessel with which, one day, at the redemption, each one of us will be able to receive the light of God, that the Divine wants to give us, according to the purpose of Creation. However, the ego does require tikkun, that is to say rectification, or change of direction, so that instead of using our energies just for our own self-benefit we use our energies in a way that will give benefit to our fellow human beings unconditionally. In this way we become aligned with the the attributes of the Creator and thus the Divine light, the good, can flow freely into the world bringing benefit to all.
As we human beings are complex, so is the study of the Kabbalah—and its implementation is not easy. But its inward message is actually simple. The Kabbalah, as indeed the whole of the Torah, is a commentary on the Biblical sentence," Love your neighbor as yourself “
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