Thank you.
Just regarding the last sentence—why was Ramchal not a kabbalist [according to the Leshem]? Personally, I don’t accept that there are subjects that have no connection to our world, because if they have no connection to our feelings and sensations here in this world, what is the point of dealing with them? What do we have to do with worlds that are not meaningful to us in any way, as though we were donkeys who don’t understand fruit soup, as the cliché goes. So if it interests us and speaks to us, then those are things that belong to this world. I hope I made myself understood—or maybe I’m so far from this that I understand nothing. It’s like a blind person talking about colors, or a deaf person knowing theories in music—there’s no point learning music theory if even in his imagination he can’t describe music to himself. [It’s not exact, because even a deaf person can imagine music and a blind person can imagine colors, but I think the analogy is understood.] Even though we do not understand the Infinite, we can feel it, and therefore there is still reason to deal with it; unlike dealing with worlds to which we have no sensory connection.

I disagree on two counts:

1. There is value in dealing even with things that are not connected to us and our world. Study is attachment to the Holy One, blessed be He, and there is no necessity that it do anything for us ourselves (Nefesh HaChaim, of course). It is somewhat like theoretical science (models of 63 dimensions of space and two dimensions of time, or different universes that existed and no longer do, or that exist parallel to us), which touches nothing practical.

2. Even if one studies higher realms, that can still do something for us. But that does not mean we are studying ourselves. When we study the infinity of the Holy One, blessed be He, or that He created the world, we are not dealing with ourselves in any way. It has one implication or another for us and our world. Ramchal claimed more than that: that Kabbalah is nothing but a language, but in essence we are dealing with ourselves and our world. These are not implications; rather, there are no worlds, and everything is an allegory whose sole purpose is to clarify and illuminate the underlying meaning.

1. Indeed, there is value in knowing and engaging in wisdom even if it is not practical at all and never will be. The very knowledge and involvement enrich the soul. [It does not necessarily improve it, but it is indeed a positive experience.] So there is reason to know it. But when it has no experiential meaning at all, it is superfluous—for example, a person who is completely non-musical, who just doesn’t have it, may learn all the theory and great wisdom of major and minor scales and know how to recite it well, but there is no wisdom in that and nothing there at all. Or to know all the words of a certain language without knowing the meaning of the word and what it expresses. For myself, for example, since I’m not very knowledgeable in mathematics [unfortunately], even if I knew how to recite dozens of formulas without knowing what the formula says, there would be no experience of wisdom. So my question was: if what happens in heaven is formulated in patterns of sefirot and emanation, but I do not experience or understand what the world of Atzilut is and what the sefirah of Keter is, then these are formulas that remain only words—unless you tell me that I do feel and experience them even if they are not practical at all.

2. Is knowledge of how things are conducted in the heavenly world of the Infinite prophecy? divine inspiration? Or can a person whose soul is refined arrive at it through his own reasoning, and the Kabbalah that we possess is wisdom that people reached stage by stage and built into a whole structure?

3. The fact that even secular people find interest in studying Kabbalah and delight in it apparently shows that there is wisdom and logic in it that speaks to the soul.

Again, I disagree.
A person who does not know what music is but studies this field scientifically is a wise and enriched person. His involvement has great value. See “Mary’s room” on Wikipedia.
As for kabbalistic concepts, as I wrote to you, after engaging with them you do acquire a sense of what they mean. But that does not necessarily relate to our world. These are intuitions about what is true in those worlds.
If we take as an example someone who hears Chinese but does not know what the words mean, that has both deficiencies: it says nothing to him about himself, but it also says nothing to him about anything else. So that is not an example of our case. I am talking about involvement that tells me nothing about my world, but I do understand what it says about other worlds.
2. In my opinion, Kabbalah is mainly made up of spiritual intuitions of people with spiritual sensitivity. I don’t really believe it all came down to us from above at Sinai (maybe some core of it did). There is a rather surprising similarity between different mystical traditions, and for me that indicates that they are grasping something real. Apparently we do have some kind of access to the other worlds, and those with especially sensitive spiritual intuition grasp it better. After they tell us what they perceive, we too can understand that there is something substantial there.
I think that is the difference between divine inspiration and prophecy. Prophecy begins with information conveyed to the prophet from above. He is mainly passive. Divine inspiration is your own active perception. You observe the information (with the mind’s eye). It is not conveyed to you, and there is not necessarily any other factor involved. Even brilliant scientific intuition is a kind of divine inspiration (“Torah is like a lost object that comes to a person when his mind is elsewhere”). Kabbalah is also like that. Metaphorically people use descriptions as though there are revelations of Elijah and disclosures from above. In my opinion, what is meant is spiritual perception of ideas and insights. That is divine inspiration, not prophecy. And as is well known, although prophecy ceased, divine inspiration did not cease. It is found among non-Jews as well, and in areas far removed from Torah.
3. Indeed. That is what shows that people really do encounter it in some way. It is not transmitted information and not something uniquely Torah-based. It is part of our world (its spiritual dimensions), and it is open to those with spiritual intuitions. A great author and poet also possess divine inspiration in this sense.

I know this sounds very uncharacteristic of my rationalism. But there is a difference between being rational and being rationalistic. In this context I’ll tell you a story (maybe I’ve told it before). During my time at the yeshiva in Gush Etzion there was a student there (today a well-known person) who got jaundice and did not recover for several months. At some point they brought him a sorcerer who placed pigeons on his navel; they died one after another, and a few days later he recovered and returned to the yeshiva. I heard this from a friend who was there and is trustworthy in my eyes (this was before this sort of thing became common). I went back to my parents and told them the story, and they slapped their hands together and started laughing at me and at the benighted yeshiva that was turning my brain to mush (= Gush, which shows how much they understood about the yeshiva world). I told them that, in my view, a rational approach is not to deny everything you do not understand. If it were, today we would still have Adam’s physics, because we would deny every new finding that did not fit our theory. Rationality means accepting reliable facts, but then thinking about what explains them. The first approach is rationalism—the Greek whose heart is arrogant and who denies anything his eyes do not see, as in Nachmanides’ well-known words in Parashat Acharei Mot. The second approach is rationality—to act with reason and accept reliable facts, and then explain them. As a rational person who is not rationalistic, I tend to think there is something in Kabbalah. Even though, of course, there is also a lot of garbage there, charlatanism, and cynical exploitation of innocence. That is the problem in non-scientific fields that cannot be tested scientifically.
Let me just qualify that by saying that, as someone rational who leans somewhat rationalistic, I treat testimonies about phenomena I do not understand with heavy suspicion. I do not dismiss them out of hand (because I am not a rationalist), but I also demand good evidence before I accept them—and usually such evidence does not exist.

Hello,

Rabbi Michael, if I may try to suggest a different way of looking at it: my impression from studying this wisdom is that all the kabbalists begin from the assumption that there is indeed a great deal of connection, resemblance, emanation, and influence between the upper worlds and our world in general, and our lives in particular. More than that, that is the main point of the book.

Ramchal did something remarkable and argued that Atzilut is not the main thing from which one can learn things relevant to us; rather, we are the main thing (at least the divine governance as it relates to us). And more than that, not only that—Atzilut may not even exist. And that is what caused the uproar.

When the Leshem attacked, he attacked both points: both the presentation of Atzilut as a mere allegory, and the focus primarily on what concerns us, instead of that being only a marginal gain from the study.

I’d be glad to hear what led you to a different impression.

P.S. What you wrote about divine inspiration already appears in the words of the Zohar regarding the revelation of Elijah, brought by Rabbi Chaim Vital in the introduction to Sha’ar HaHakdamot: “And you, Elijah, are destined to be revealed at the end of days, and there is one to whom you will be revealed face to face, and there is one to whom you will be revealed in concealment, in the eye of his intellect.”
And there is no reason to distinguish.

So according to the Rabbi there is no advantage at all in engaging in Kabbalah over engaging in the mysticism of the nations of the world?

Elisha, I didn’t understand your question. It seems you’re saying the same thing I am.

Student, not essentially. As long as we are talking about interesting and useful spiritual intuitions. In Kabbalah they connect them to Torah, and therefore I think it is closer and more intrinsically valuable as an occupation. It is some sort of interpretation of Torah. In other forms of mysticism, you have to make the connections yourself. It is a bit like the difference between studying mathematics and analyzing a Talmudic passage with mathematical tools.

You wrote that the serious kabbalists did not deal with meaning, and I commented that as far as my poor understanding goes, they did deal with meaning too—not that it was secondary to the order of emanation, which for them was the main thing. And that the outrage against Ramchal was because not only did he make meaning primary, but he even turned Atzilut into an allegory.

I understand. As far as I know, many of them really did not deal with meaning or the underlying referent (and even denied that there was any underlying referent). But of course I didn’t conduct a survey.

Sorry for repeating most of what I said,

Since Ramchal proudly carried the banner of the underlying referent, and he in fact claimed that Atzilut is not only an allegory, people wound up with a kind of soup of referent-meaning-governance, as though it were all one thing, and therefore anyone who denied one denied them all.
But that is not the case.
In the end it seems that two main subjects occupy most of Kabbalah’s teaching: the chronology of Atzilut—that is, the order and form in which things happened and unfolded, until they reached the current state—and the governance of Atzilut—that is, how Atzilut acts / governs / conducts itself.
So it is hard to speak of a Kabbalah that does not deal with “meaning.”
When you say “underlying referent,” you turn the discourses on Atzilut into an allegory, and that is what many objected to.
But even among all the great and good ones who saw Atzilut as a reality, they still could not avoid trying to understand its compromise and its meaning.

It is worth mentioning the wonderful book by Rabbi Yosef Avivi, who showed that “meaning” (though according to the definitions I proposed here it would of course not be called “underlying referent,” but rather “meaning”) emerges clearly from the writings of the Ari.

And although I am almost certain the Rabbi agrees with the above, since there is no reason that a talented person who dealt with the field would come to different conclusions, perhaps this will be useful for others.

Elisha, you wrote: “In the end it seems that two main subjects occupy most of Kabbalah’s teaching: the chronology of Atzilut—that is, the order and form in which things happened and unfolded until they reached the current state, and the governance of Atzilut—that is, how Atzilut acts / governs / conducts itself.” That is simply not true. The main point of Kabbalah is engagement in intentions, as explained in Rabbi Chaim Vital’s introduction to Etz Chaim. Another proof of this is the fact that those who dealt in allegorical readings focused mainly on contraction and emanation. They did not at all explain or allegorize the “movement of the mental faculties,” which is the main body and innovation of the Ari’s teaching. None of them (except Rabbi Isaac of Homil) entered into all the details and explained the allegorical referent.

In The Philosopher and the Kabbalist, and this is the wording, sections 63–74 (with omissions):
“Philosopher: …But I still have a great difficulty with the existence of most of the expositions taught in this wisdom, for they render the matter excessively corporeal… And this is impossible, for when speaking of the powers of the supreme will, it is not appropriate to use corporeal language… And if you say that they are allegories, then all these expositions are metaphor and figure of speech, and none of them are things as they truly are—so why waste effort on allegories?
Kabbalist: They are certainly not allegories… I too will tell you that the totality of the vision of the supreme glory according to prophetic imagination is the entire matter of the sefirot and the configurations; and what the prophets abbreviated, the sages explained. And a prophet to whom the Holy One, blessed be He, shows His chariot will see everything mentioned in the words of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, of blessed memory, and his commentators, and everything mentioned in the chapters of the hekhalot literature, and the like. Therefore the expositions of this wisdom are not allegories, for they are true, and they are precisely what the prophets saw when they beheld the supreme glory and His chariots. But this we know: whatever the prophets see is by way of imagination, and they themselves know the truth of this.”

And perhaps what the Leshem did not see is explained by what he wrote in Sefer HaDe’ah:
“And although I did not merit to study his books, and only glanced at them very slightly.”

Rabbi Charlap disagreed with the Leshem in understanding Ramchal, Mei Marom on Maimonides’ Eight Chapters, p. 191:
“Here is the place to note truthfully that there are those who wish to give explanations of the aspects of the emanated beings and remove from them real existence, and they stray from the way of understanding, overturning the words of the living God in order to make Kabbalah into philosophy. And even our master Ramchal, of blessed and saintly memory, who calls all the attributes by the name ‘governances’—Heaven forbid to cast aspersion on a righteous man by saying that he removed reality from the sefirot, far be it. Rather, just as the earlier kabbalists, when they wished to escape corporeal imagery, called them by the name ‘lights,’ Ramchal saw that there were still such fools who imagined that the intention was fire and flame and strayed on a mistaken path; therefore he chose to call them by the name ‘governance,’ which certainly they would not corporealize. But he certainly did not deny their true reality, and Heaven forbid to err in this.”

Elisha, you wrote that two main subjects occupy most of the teaching of Kabbalah: chronology and governance. From that it is easy to understand how much importance they gave to the allegorical referent. But that is not so according to most schools, even before the Rashash, and all the more so after him. The main concern of Kabbalah is study that leads to action, and that is intention.
And note well: not governance from the side of the Creator, but intention from the side of the created being, who is a partner in the Creator’s governance.
This is what Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote long before Ramchal, who only leaned on him—or better, on Rabbi Yekutiel Tzemach: “I adjure in His great Name whoever’s soul longs to enter the chambers of this wisdom, that he accept upon himself to turn from evil and do good in several matters, among them that he intend during prayer the intentions as I shall write in the book of intentions.” And in Me’il Kodesh and Bigdei Yesha, glosses and explanations on Etz Chaim: “For if this is not truly his intention, he should not enter to study this wisdom, and let him not transgress the command written regarding the oath by which Rabbi Chaim Vital adjured.”

What is the basis for saying Kabbalah is true? Does anyone believe that the Book of Zohar was written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai or that Sefer Yetzirah was written by Adam?

What connection is there between those questions?

As a continuation of Dvir’s words, I’ll quote Ramchal’s wording from The Philosopher and the Kabbalist, where Ramchal explicitly rejects what the Leshem mistakenly attributed to him. This is what he writes in sections 53–54: “Philosopher: This is called speaking allegorically, and it turns out that these things have no existence except in thought. Kabbalist: Now you are mistaken even in your inquiry. This I will tell you as a general introduction to all matters of this wisdom: one who wishes to understand the matters of the sefirot should take before his eyes the human soul and its nature. The soul is not merely a matter of thought, but a real power. True, it is subtle and does not fall under the senses, but in any case it is a power, and all the powers and attributes that it contains are real things within it, not by way of allegory, and they are actual matters that exist in its constitution.”

One may also add to the discussion the words of Baal HaSulam, who said that the worlds are built in the form of root and branch, and as in Nachmanides’ well-known words, that Scripture speaks of the lower realms and hints at the upper ones. According to this, we understand that when the subject being studied is God’s governance and man’s service in this world, then the sefirot serve as an allegory to understand the underlying referent that is the subject in question. But if the subject is the worlds and the sefirot, then God’s governance and man’s service in this world become the allegory for understanding that matter.

As for the source of the wisdom, one can explain simply that what we received at Sinai, besides the language Moses used and besides the practical side, also included the fundamental principles of these matters and their spirit. And every so often there are those who attain especially abundant spiritual apprehension, and they are the ones who transmit the wisdom from generation to generation.

A. You wrote above that although prophecy ceased, divine inspiration did not, but that is not what the sources say:

“When the last prophets—Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—died, divine inspiration ceased from Israel” (Sanhedrin 11a; Tosefta Sotah 13:4).
“One of the five things that were hidden away was the Ark, the menorah, the fire, and divine inspiration… and when the Holy One, blessed be He, returns in His mercy and builds His House and Sanctuary, He will restore them” (Midrash Rabbah, Beha’alotekha 15:10; see Yoma 21b).

B. You wrote that what is remarkable is the rather surprising similarity between different mystical systems.
I don’t know whether you’ve read Shadal’s The Debate over the Wisdom of Kabbalah, where he shows how plainly Kabbalah took philosophical concepts and sanctified them—the concept of the Infinite, the active intellect, the dispute between Averroes and Avicenna, etc.
So it is no wonder that various kabbalistic matters, which are overall built on philosophers of one kind or another, would be similar.

You’re just being stubborn. I don’t see any point in this discussion. See a survey of divine inspiration here: https://www.hamichlol.org.il/%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%97_%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%93%D7%A9#%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%97_%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%93%D7%A9_%D7%9C%D7%90%D7%97%D7%A8_%D7%94%D7%A0%D7%91%D7%95%D7%90%D7%94

See here on the Rational Belief website—they did a much more serious and higher-quality survey:
https://rationalbelief.org.il/%d7%aa%d7%95%d7%93%d7%a2%d7%94-%d7%95%d7%a0%d7%91%d7%95%d7%90%d7%94-%d7%91%d7%99%d7%94%d7%93%d7%95%d7%aa/

Since we haven’t gotten a column in a long time, and here there’s a topic that could develop, maybe the Rabbi could write something about Kabbalah? Maybe take a kabbalistic passage and explain / critique it with God’s good hand upon him (like you do on lots of other topics)? It would be cool to see your analysis, and finally understand what a rationalist found in Kabbalah. If you do decide to write it in the end, dedicate it to me 🙂

See column 267-8, and in the series here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBFOeyQHoDOoMAb6lQbAxbNRKqeMz8Ui_