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Tradition

Kabbalah

The Jewish mystical tradition of the hidden God and the divine emanations (sefirot).

Also called Qabbalah, Jewish mysticism

A tradition of Judaism

Introduction

Kabbalah, “tradition” or “what is received”, is the name of the Jewish mystical tradition that emerged in Provence and Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It speaks of Ein Sof, the infinite and hidden God, beyond all knowledge, and of the ten sefirot, the powers through which the hidden God becomes manifest, creates and governs the world.

The Kabbalists read the Torah as a body of mysteries, in which every word speaks of the inner life of God. Human actions, above all the commandments and prayer performed with right intention (kavvanah), affect the divine realm: they unite the sefirot, bring together the Holy One and the Shekhinah, and draw down blessing on the world.

Kabbalah is not only speculation. It includes practices of prayer and meditation, the contemplation of divine names, and an ethics of holiness. Its ideas came to shape Jewish liturgy, custom and ethics, and they reached far beyond Kabbalists themselves.

History

Historical

Earlier Jewish mysticism included the visions of the divine chariot and throne in the Hekhalot literature, and the cosmology of the Sefer Yetzirah. The first Kabbalistic text, the Bahir, appeared in Provence in the late twelfth century. Kabbalists in Gerona, among them Naḥmanides, developed its ideas, and Abraham Abulafia taught a prophetic Kabbalah of meditation on divine names.

In late thirteenth-century Castile the Zohar appeared and became the central text of Kabbalah. After the expulsion from Spain in 1492, Kabbalists gathered in Safed, in Galilee, where Moses Cordovero systematized the tradition and Isaac Luria transformed it with his teaching of tzimtzum, the shattering of the vessels and tikkun.

Lurianic Kabbalah spread through the Jewish world, fed the messianic movement around Sabbatai Zevi in the 1660s, and was taken up by Hasidism. Modern critical study of Kabbalah was founded in the twentieth century by Gershom Scholem, and continued by scholars such as Moshe Idel.

  1. late 12th c.The Bahir appears in Provence
  2. 13th c.The Kabbalists of Gerona; Abraham Abulafia
  3. c. 1280–1300The Zohar circulates in Castile
  4. 1492Expulsion from Spain; Kabbalists gather in Safed
  5. 1570–1572Isaac Luria teaches in Safed
  6. 1941Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

Major thinkers

Key concepts

Important texts

Convergence and divergence

Resemblance and difference, given equal room. Each note is marked with the kind of statement it makes.

Areas of convergence

  • Ein Sof, with Neoplatonism

    Scholarship

    Ein Sof, beyond all attributes, has been compared with the Neoplatonic One, and medieval Kabbalah drew on Neoplatonic ideas of emanation.

Areas of divergence

  • Sefirot, with Neoplatonism

    Scholarship

    Kabbalah is bound to the Torah and commandments; its sefirot are within God and are moved by human acts, where the Neoplatonic emanations are not.

Cite this entry
Chicago (bibliography)

“Kabbalah.” Tradition. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 7, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/kabbalah.

Chicago (note)

“Kabbalah,” tradition, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 7, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/kabbalah.

MLA

“Kabbalah.” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 7 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/kabbalah.

BibTeX
@misc{traditions-kabbalah,
  title = {{Kabbalah}},
  howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society},
  note = {Tradition. Last modified November 7, 2026},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/kabbalah}
}

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