How did Kabbalah begin?
At the center of Kabbalah and by that I mean an ancient mystic stream of Judaism
not this place in LA.
At the center of Kabbalah is a book called the Zohar
which is a book that collects knowledge from even older
Jewish mystical works.
It looks at verses in the Bible and ideas in Judaism
through the lens of the ten sefirot.
Put simply each of these sefirot is a way to interact
with an aspect of God
Through these sefirot, the Zohar created new ways
to think about lots of the Bible and really to think about Judaism in general.
Mystical ways.
Now the Zohar was written in the 13th century
in a culture where there was both intellectual curiosity and deep religious fervor.
In this culture this was in northern Spain on one hand they
were influenced by the teachings of Maimonides
who was a Jewish thinker with a Greek philosophical perspective.
So, he said you can't ever know what God does
just what God doesn't do.
In other words you shouldn't ever assume God's actions
have a direct effect on you.
It's an intellectual way to approach God.
and then they were influenced by Christian Europe's religious fervor.
God has a direct effect on me.
so how can God simultaneously have an effect and not have an effect?
Mysticisms answer is there are multiple aspects to God.
We can't interact with God who is unknowable at say the Ein Sof but we
can interact with 10 constricted aspects of God, the sefriot.
A small group of people wrote about this in 13th century northern Spain.
One was Nachmanides and his interpretations of the Torah
and the other was Moshe de Leon who collected
older texts that formed into the Zohar.
These older texts focused on trying to
understand some difficult sections in the Bible
like the logic behind creation
or the chariot vision of Ezekiel and the apocalyptic visions of Daniel.
Notably only a small group of scholars are read any of the Kabbalistic text including
the zohar as it was generally accepted that studying them might drive you mad.
That is until two hundred and fifty years later.
So 60 years after the Spanish Inquisition,
Isaac Luria in Safed entered the picture.
To greatly generalize, at this time Jews were in a down place.
The whole focus of the religion was on living in the past
and being sad about where we are now, not in Spain having fun.
Lauria had this revelatory idea to take the principles
of Kabbalahism found in the Zohar and evolved them
instead of it mostly being about understanding the sefriot,
Kabbalahism was now about collecting sparks
Lauria said the world was originally a perfect vessel but it was
destroyed and it's up to us to collect all of the pieces.
Each time we do a good deed,
we're collecting these sparks and taking another step towards the Messiah.
For instance the way a person held a kiddush cup could create a spark as
holding it in a certain way showed off God's name.
Lots of traditions Jews do to this day were created by Lauria
and people that followed him.
Kabbalat Shabbat for instance.
So with Lauria instead of being sad about the past
suddenly Judaism was about looking towards the future
and the hope of salvation by the Messiah
and these thoughts were wildly popular.
It got people to follow many more traditions and it's significantly spread Kabbalah.
It continued to grow until it brought about the Messiah.
Well it it brought
about someone who claimed to be the Messiah and this through a major wrench
in people's faith in the movement
so the story continues with this guy Sabbatai Zevi
he was a false messiah he was a person who almost brought down Judaism.