Notes about the Kabbalah Teachings
The Kabbalah and the Talmud - All these Rabbis, were the actual representatives of true Talmudic Judaism, there must have been something in the Kabbalah that attracted them. It can not have been its metaphysics; for Talmudic Judaism was not greatly interested in such speculations. It must be, then, that the psychology of the Kabbalah, in which a very high position is assigned to man, appealed to the Jewish mind. While Maimonides and his followers regarded philosophical speculation as the highest duty of man, and even made the immortality of the soul dependent on it; or, speaking more correctly, while immortality meant for them only the highest development of “active intellect” (Olam ha-Sehel) in man, to which only a few attained. The Kabbalists taught not only that every man might expect a great deal in the future world, according to his good and pious actions, but also even that he is the most important factor in nature in this world. Not man’s intelligence, but his moral nature, determines what he is. Nor is he merely a spoke in the wheel, a small, unimportant fragment of the universe, but the center around which everything moves. Here the Jewish Kabbalah, in contrast to alien philosophy, tried to present the true Jewish view of life, and one that appealed to Talmudic Judaism.
The Kabbalah and Philosophy - The Jew as well as the man was recognized in the Kabbalah. No with standing the strongly pantheistic coloring of its metaphysics, the Kabbalah never attempted to belittle the importance of historic Judaism, but, on the contrary, emphasized it. Like the school of Maimonides, the Kabbalists also interpreted Scripture allegorically; yet there is an essential difference between the two. Abraham and most of the Patriarchs are, for both, the symbols of certain virtues, but with this difference. Namely, that the Kabbalah regarded the lives of the Patriarchs, filled with good and pious actions, as incarnations of certain virtues—e.g., the life of Abraham as the incarnation of love—while allegorical philosophy sought for exclusively abstract ideas in the narratives of Scripture. If the Talmudists looked with horror upon the allegories of the philosophical school, which, if carried out logically—and there have always been logical thinkers among the Jews—would deprive Judaism of every historical basis, they did not object to the Kabbalistic interpretation of Scripture, which here also identified ideality with reality.
The same holds good in regard to the Law. The Kabbalists have been reproved for carrying to the extreme the allegorizing of the ritual part of the Law. But the great importance of the Kabbalah for rabbinical Judaism lies in the fact that it prevented the latter from becoming fossilized. It was the Kabbalah that raised prayer to the position it occupied for centuries among the Jews, as a means of transcending earthly affairs for a time and of feeling oneself in union with God. And the Kabbalah achieved this at a period when prayer was gradually becoming a merely external religious exercise, a service of the lips and not of the heart. And just as prayer was ennobled by the influence of the Kabbalah, so did most ritual actions cast aside their formalism, to become spiritualized and purified. The Kabbalah thus rendered two great services to the development of Judaism: it repressed both Aristotelians and Talmudic formalism.
Kabbalah Psychology - The influence exercised by Neoplatonism on the development of the Kabbalah is particularly noticeable in the psychological doctrines found in the Zohar. These, but for the mystic garb in which they are clothed and the attempt to connect the soul with the all-pervading Sefirot, are the same as those professed by the Neoplatonists. The soul teaches the Zohar, has its origin in the Supreme Intelligence, in which the forms of the living existences may already be distinguished from one another; and this Supreme Intelligence may be termed “universal soul. “At the time the Holy One, blessed be He! Desired to create the world, it came in His will before Him, and He formed all the souls which were prepared to be given afterward to the children of men; and all were formed before Him in the identical forms in which they were destined to appear as the children of the men of this world; and He saw every one of them, and that the ways of some of them in the world would become corrupt” (Zohar i. 96b). The soul is constituted of three elements: the rational (”Neshamah“), the moral (”Ruah“), and the vital (”Nefesh“). They are emanations from the Sefirot; and as such each of them possesses ten potencies, which are subdivided into a trinity of triads. Through the rational element of the soul, which is the highest degree of being, and which both corresponds to and is operated upon by the highest Sefirah, the “Crown,” man belongs to the intellectual world (Olam ha-Sehel). Through the moral element, which is the seat of the ethical qualities, and which both corresponds to and is operated upon by the Sefirah “Beauty,” man pertains to the moral world (Olam ha-Asyya). Through the vital element, which is the lowest of the three, being directly connected with the body, and which both corresponds to and is operated upon by the Sefirah “Foundation,” man is associated with the material world . In addition to these three elements of the soul there are two others of a different nature: one is inherent in the body without mingling with it, serving as an intermediary between the latter and the soul; and the other is the principle which unites them both. “At the moment,” says the Zohar, “when the union of the soul and the body is being effected the Holy One sends on earth an image engraved with the Divine Seal. This image presides over the union of man and wife; a clear-sighted eye may see it standing at their heads. It bears a human face; and this face will be borne by the man who is about to appear. It is this image which receives us on entering the world, which grows as we grow, and which quits the earth when we quit it” (Zohar iii. 104a). The descent of the soul into the body is necessitated by the finite nature of the former: it is bound to unite with the body in order to take its part in the universe, to contemplate creation, to become conscious of itself and its origin, and, finally, to return, after having completed its task in life, to the inexhaustible fountain of light and life—God.
According to the Zohar, there are male souls and female souls, the former proceeding from the masculine Sefirot, which are concentrated in the Sefirah of “Grace,” the latter from the feminine Sefirot, which are concentrated in that of “Justice.” Before their descent to earth they are paired; but at the moment of their appearance in this world they become separated (Zohar i. 91b). The Zohar to a burning lamp compares the relation of the three elements of the soul to one another and to the body. Two lights are discernible in the flame of the lamp: a white and a dim one. The white light is above and ascends in a straight line; the dim one is below, and seems to be the seat of the other. Both, however, are so indissoluble connected that they form one flame. On the other hand, the dim light proceeds directly from the burning material below. The same phenomenon is presented by the human soul. The vital or animal element resembles the dim light, which springs directly from the burning material underneath; and just as the flame gradually consumes that material, so the vital element consumes the body, with which it is closely connected. The moral element is comparable to the higher, white light, which is always struggling to disengage itself from the lower one and to rise higher; but so long as the lamp continues to burn it remains united to it. The rational element corresponds to the highest, invisible part of the flame, which actually succeeds in freeing itself from the latter and rises in the air (Zohar i. 83b).
Harmful Tempts - These beneficial influences of the Kabbalah are, however, counter-balanced by several most pernicious ones. From the metaphysical axiom, that there is nothing in the world without spiritual life, the Kabbalists developed a Jewish Magic. They taught that the elements are the abode of beings which are the dregs or remnants of the lowest spiritual life, and which are divided into four classes; namely, elemental beings of fire, air, water, and earth; the first two being invisible, while the last two may easily be perceived by the senses. While the latter are generally malicious imps who vex and mock man, the former are well disposed and helpful. Demonology, therefore, occupies an important position in the works of many Kabbalists for the imps are related to those beings that are generally designated as demons (Shedim). Being endowed with various supernatural powers and with insight into the hidden realms of lower nature, and even occasionally into the future and the higher spiritual world. Magic may be practiced with the help of these beings, the Kabbalists meaning white magic in contrast to the black art (ma’ase ha-kishuf) .
Natural magic depends largely on man himself; for, according to the Kabbalah, all men are endowed with insight and magical powers, which they may develop. The means especially mentioned are: “Kavanah” = intense meditation, in order to attract the higher spiritual influence; a strong will exclusively directed toward its object; and a vivid imagination, in order that the impressions from the spiritual world may enter profoundly into the soul and be retained there. From these principles many Kabbalists developed their theories on casting of lots, Necromancy, Exorcism, and many other superstitions. Bibliomancy and the mysticism of numbers and letters were developed into complete systems.
Kabbalistic Superstition - The metaphysical conception of the identity of the real with the ideal gave rise to the mystical conception that everything beheld by our senses has a mystical meaning; that the phenomena may instruct man as to what takes place in the divine idea or in the human intellect. Hence the Kabbalistic doctrine of the heavenly alphabet, whose signs are the constellations and stars. Thus Astrology was legitimized, and Bibliomancy found its justification in the assumption that the sacred Hebrew letters are not merely signs for things, but implements of divine powers by means of which nature may be subjugated. It is easy to see that all these views were most pernicious in their influence on the intellect and soul of the Jew. But it is equally true that these things did not originate in the Kabbalah, but gravitated toward it.