Q&A: The Truth of Kabbalah
The Truth of Kabbalah
Question
On the one hand, I’m very put off by the teachings of Kabbalah, and I very much love rational Judaism (like Maimonides, Abarbanel, Rabbi Saadia Gaon) and cultural Judaism (like Rabbi Kook). On the other hand, there’s almost no book without quotations from the Zohar—even in the most rational books, like Malbim on the portion of Terumah, like Abarbanel on the portion of Tetzaveh, and all the books are full of Kabbalah. It feels as though if I want to separate myself from Kabbalah, I’m really separating myself from Judaism. Another point: does the fact that Kabbalah became a consensus validate it, and mean that it’s probably true? On the other hand, Professor Rachel Elior says that Kabbalah developed because of the traumas of the expulsion from Spain, and that’s why there’s all the propaganda around the messiah. I checked the weekday prayer service and also the Sabbath one, and there isn’t a word about the messiah. And besides, you can’t hang kabbalistic ideas on the twenty-two letters and the forms of the letters, since this is a language and shapes that were created at a certain period in human history. I’d be happy to hear an answer.
Answer
I’ll ignore the nonsense of this or that scholar. I’ve written more than once about Kabbalah, and you can search for it. In general, you can deny it, and if that’s your view then that’s your view. But in my understanding, it contains some correct foundations whose source is the spiritual intuitions of the kabbalists, and perhaps also something from Sinai.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t have a team. The answers here are all mine.
Mordechai, I really feel you. I also think all of Kabbalah is nonsense, and especially the Zohar, but as you said, Kabbalah has gotten into everything. Nothing to do—this is what there is.
Mordechai, on the one hand you come out against Kabbalah and connect with “rationality,” and on the other hand you bring the scholar you mentioned here…
I suggest you check who she is and what kinds of things she writes about.
The peer reviews of her work are very harsh.
With God’s help, 13 Iyar 5784
Belief in the coming of the messiah was established in Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles. It is mentioned in the words of the prophets, for example in Isaiah: “And a shoot shall come forth from the stump of Jesse.” In the prayer service, the blessing “Cause the shoot of David Your servant to flourish speedily” is devoted to it. Matters of the “secrets of the Torah,” such as the “Work of Creation” and the “Work of the Chariot,” are mentioned in the Mishnah in the chapter “One may not expound” (in tractate Hagigah).
With blessings, Fish”l
Hello Mordechai.
Kabbalah has no halakhic authority whatsoever, and therefore in my opinion one may ignore any Jewish law whose source is there. Personally, I also ignore all the kabbalistic texts in the prayer book (such as “for the sake of the unification”). You don’t need Professor Rachel Elior to know that the Zohar did not originate with Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, but is from a later period. Of course there are many disputes about who wrote it and exactly what, but certainly not Rashbi. In general, Kabbalah is a whole corpus of writings, and as such, certainly one can find things in it that are more correct and things that are less correct (and of course things that seem to clash head-on with belief in divine unity in the style of Maimonides). In my opinion, relate to it as things Jews thought up for themselves, like another philosophy. In my opinion, there is no problem being a Jew nowadays and ignoring it completely.
It’s a shame to read the Zohar without learning how to read it. To an outside observer it looks like nonsense, but religion also looks fanatical from the outside. It’s very worthwhile to learn how to read Kabbalah from the book The Investigator and the Kabbalist by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto [found at the beginning of Shaarei Ramchal], which presents a debate between the investigator—the rationalist—and the mystic kabbalist. There too you can see that as much as Ramchal was a kabbalist, he was very grounded. The book gives a completely different perspective on Kabbalah, and in my opinion [and maybe in yours too if you read the book], someone who believes in religion without believing in Kabbalah is the exact opposite of rational.
Hello, I’m Mordechai, the one who posted the question here. I was really moved to see that it sparked interest, and thank you to each and every one who responded and added something. Thank you Shimon, thank you Ket’ulehu, thank you The Shoot of David, thank you to Moshe Sellam, thank you to Yoni.
Whoever studies the Zohar with the Metok MiDevash commentary understands the superhuman order and connections required to compose such a work, even from a purely literary standpoint. And that alone points to something hidden from us.
Who answered—you or your team?