The Kabbalah
By Christian D. Ginsburg
Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, London, 1865, Second impression, George Routledge & Sons, London, 1920
In the public domain
About this text
Ginsburg’s essay on the Kabbalah: its doctrines of the infinite God, the sefirot, creation and the soul; the date and origin of the Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar; and its schools and literature. Dated and often sceptical, it gives careful English versions of the texts it discusses. The reader gives it in full.
How to cite
Christian D. Ginsburg. The Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development, and Literature. Second impression, George Routledge & Sons, London, 1920. Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, London, 1865.
Cited in Metanoia
- Cabala and QabalahIn the Renaissance, Christian scholars took up the Kabbalah as a key to their own faith; in the nineteenth century, occultists made it into the Hermetic Qabalah. The last of seven essays on Kabbalah follows Pico, Reuchlin and the Golden Dawn, and asks what was kept and what was lost when the tradition of receiving was received by strangers.
- CleavingThe Kabbalists called the nearness to God they sought devekut, cleaving. The sixth of seven essays on Kabbalah follows it from the rabbis’ question of how anyone can cleave to a consuming fire, through Maimonides and Abulafia’s meditation on the divine name, to the Baal Shem Tov, who taught that it could be lived in every moment, and asks whether it means communion or union.
- SafedIn the sixteenth century a small town in Galilee became the most intense centre of mystical life in Jewish history. The fifth of seven essays on Kabbalah follows Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria to Safed, and to Luria’s great story: the Infinite withdraws to make room for a world, the vessels of light shatter, and human beings are called to repair what was broken.
- The Zohar and the ShekhinahIn the last decades of the thirteenth century a book began to circulate in Castile that claimed to be the secret teaching of a second-century sage. The fourth of seven essays on Kabbalah reads the Zohar: who wrote it, how it reads the Torah, and its image of the divine presence, the Shekhinah, as a feminine power in exile and awaiting union.
- Ein Sof and AyinAbove the ten sefirot the Kabbalists placed what no name can reach: Ein Sof, the Endless, so far beyond thought that it can be called Ayin, Nothing. The third of seven essays on Kabbalah reads how the tradition spoke of the God of whom nothing can be said, and why it found the same nothing at the root of the soul.
- The Ten SefirotIn twelfth-century Provence the ten numbers of the Book of Creation became something new: the ten powers of the divine life, arranged as a tree, a body and a balance. The second of seven essays on Kabbalah follows the sefirot from the Bahir and Isaac the Blind to the Tree of Life, and asks why a map of God should also be a map of the soul.
- ReceivingKabbalah means “receiving”. The first of seven essays on the Jewish mystical tradition asks what it means for a mysticism to call itself received, and reads its oldest roots: the forbidden study of Ezekiel’s chariot, the four sages who entered the garden, and the Book of Creation, in which the world is made of ten numbers and twenty-two letters.
Cite this entry
“The Kabbalah.” Source. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 8, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/sources/kabbalah-ginsburg.
“The Kabbalah,” source, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 8, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/sources/kabbalah-ginsburg.
“The Kabbalah.” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 8 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/sources/kabbalah-ginsburg.
@misc{sources-kabbalah-ginsburg, title = {{The Kabbalah}}, howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society}, note = {Source. Last modified November 8, 2026}, year = {2026}, url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/sources/kabbalah-ginsburg} }