THE KABBALAH

THE KABBALAH
by Ian Ellis-Jones
REVISED PRECIS OF AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED BEFORE THE SYDNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH
SUNDAY, 23 OCTOBER 2005

Every religion has its esoteric side. Islam has its more esoteric side in the
mystical teachings of Sufism, Hinduism in Yoga, Christianity in, among other
things, the teachings of the Christian mystics, the Liberal Catholic Church,
Rosicrucianism and certain orders of Freemasonry such as the Rose Croix.
Judaism has its more esoteric side in the mystical system of Kabbalah.

Now, there are, in the Jewish tradition, three “grades” of knowledge (as
opposed to actual sources of law or teaching material):

 Firstly, there is the Torah (or Pentateuch), supposedly inspired by God
and written down by Moses. The Torah normally refers to the
contents and documents of the first 5 books of the Hebrew
Scriptures, but more loosely also refers to the books of the
Prophets and the Holy Writings (that is, the whole of what
Christians refer to as the “Old Testament”). This knowledge is
intended to be mastered by all members of the Jewish faith.
 Secondly, there is the Talmud, which comprises the accumulated
commentaries on the Mishnah (the primary oral law) as well as the
comments on and discussion surrounding the Mishnah (known as
the Gemara). The Talmud is intended to be studied by priests and
rabbis.
 Thirdly, there is what is referred to as the Kabbalah, which traditionally
was imparted to so-called “initiates” only.1 The Kabbalah is the
body of mystical knowledge of the Jewish people. Rabbi Shimon
Leiberman writes, “Kabbalah is to Torah what philosophy is to

1
The Kabbalah was traditionally not taught to people until the age of 40, when they had
completed their study of both the Torah and the Talmud.

2

science.”2 The Kabbalah goes beyond the exoteric part of the
Torah and reveals its inner meaning and purpose as well as its
effects.

The Kabbalah (also “Kabalah”, “Cabala”, “Quabalah”, and “Qabalah”), called
in Hebrew QBLH [Hebrew for “tradition”, or “receiving”], is derived from the
root QBL, Qibel, meaning “to receive” or “to reveal”, and refers to the custom
of handing down supposedly esoteric knowledge and tradition by oral
transmission. There is a saying in the Kabbalah - it’s adapted from the Zohar
(the chief work of the Kabbalah movement) - “God conceals Himself from our
minds, but reveals Himself to our hearts”.

As to the origin of the Kabbalah, Rabbi H Geffen writes:

The Kabbalah originated with the Essenes, and also with the initiated
Talmudists, who arranged Kabbalistic schools that followed Akiba and Simon
Ben Jochai, who consolidated it into a scientific system in the Books, Jetzirah
and Zohar.

The two chief classics of the Kabbalah, Jetzirah and Zohar, attributed
respectively to Akiba and Simon Ben Jochai, reveal the basis of the occult
religion of the Hebrews. The most ancient and most comprehensive is the
Sefer Jetzirah, probably written by Rabbi Akiba. The Zohar teaches us that
true Torah, or Law of Moses, is not in the literal but in the allegorical
interpretation of the Pentateuch.3

Prior to the 13th century, the term Kabbalah referred only to the writings of the
Prophets and the oral law. However, since then, the term Kabbalah has come
to be an overall designation for Jewish mysticism.

The Kabbalah movement flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries, being
centred in the mountain city of Safed in Israel. Later, the movement had an
influence on the Hasidic movement, an 18th century east European religious-
mystical-revival movement in Judaism. (There is a wonderful Hasidic saying,
“God requires no synagogue - except in the heart.”) In the last 20 or so years

2
Shimon Leiberman, “What is Kabbalah?” [Online]
http://www.templesanjose.org/JudaismInfo/tradition/kabbalahindex.htm [accessed
12/09/2005].
3
H Geffen, “The Occultism of the Bible and the Kabbalah”, The New Age, February 1950
[Online] http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/masonry_kabbalah.html [accessed 11/09/2005].

3

the Kabbalah movement has enjoyed a phenomenal revival. In all, the
movement has gone through many stages of revelation, even preceding the
time of the giving of the Torah.

Kabbalah consists of four sections: meditative, devotional, mystical, and
“magical” (the last two being of special interest to present-day New Agers).

The very first work of Kabbalah Sefer Yetzirah, the “Book of Formation”, is
attributed to Abraham, and sets forth the principal symbol of the Kabbalah
which is Etz Hayim (the “Tree of Life”). The Tree of Life consists of three
pillars or columns. The one on the right is often referred to as the "Column of
Mercy" - the active column, representing our positive inclinations and
impulses (the yetzer hatov). That on the left is called the "Column of
Severity" - the passive column, representing our negative inclinations (the
yetzer harah). The central column is called the "Column of Consciousness" -
the “neutral” column, or the column of equilibrium, the purpose of which is to
keep the other two in balance.

According to the Kabbalistic Rabbi Joseph P Gelberman:

The spheres lining this middle section of the tree gain their significance from
the other globes to which they are connected via twenty-two lines called
“paths.”4

The three pillars or columns all terminate in and depend for their efficacy on the
Divinity at the top of the central column.

Gelberman also writes:

The Tree of Life blooms because it is in harmony. It teaches us a lesson
about the great value of staying in balance. Harmony comes when resistance
is faced with love instead of confronted with opposition.5

The Book of Formation explains the 32 paths of wisdom that are all operative
and functional in the process of creation. The 32 paths are comprised of 10
sefirot (“spheres” or emanations), Divine lights (from the Tree of Life), which

4
Joseph P Gelberman, with Lesley Sussman, Physician of the Soul: A Modern Kabbalist’s
Approach to Health and Healing (Freedom CA: The Crossing Press, 2000), p 114.
5

4

act as creative and conscious channels of creation, and the 22 letters of the
Hebrew alphabet. Of the 10 spheres, the spheres of Wisdom, Compassion
and Victory correspond to the right side of the body, the spheres of
Knowledge, Judgment and Glory in splendour correspond to the left side of
the body, with the other spheres being the Kingdom, Foundation, Beauty and
the Crown (the entrance way to the Tree of Life, the holy light that shines
through all the other spheres). Rabbi Gelberman writes:

The Tree of Life

1 Kether (Crown) or Kether Elyon (Supreme Crown) 2 Hokhmah (Wisdom) 3 Binah (Understanding or
Intelligence) 4 Hesed (Mercy or Grace) or Gedullah (Greatness) 5 Gevurah (Severity or Power), Din (Judgement)
or Pahad (Fear) 6 Tifereth (Beauty) or Rahamim (Mercy) 7 Netsah (Victory or Constancy) 8 Hod (Glory or
Majesty) 9 Yesod (Foundation) or Tsedek (Justice) 10 Malkuth (Kingdom) or Shekhinah (Divine Immanence)

5

The Crown represents the highest divinity – all that God is as a metaphysical
concept. And since, according to the Kabbalistic tradition, you and God are
always in a partnership, then the Crown also represents you.6

These are the basic building blocks, called the vessels, and include all the
combinations and permutations with which God creates the world with words,
for Kabbalah teaches that words, permutations and combinations of letters
are the vessels through which the creative process takes place. The very
beginning of comprehension of the creative process is described in Sefer
Yetzirah.

According to Gelberman:

The study of Kabbalah is a lifelong commitment. It is a complex metaphysical
system that includes the use of numbers – gematria – and the letters of the
Hebrew alphabet, which are considered sacred by the Kabblistic mystics.7

It has been written, with some justification, that modern Freemasonry is a
codification of the Hermetic/Kabbalistic tradition which formed the intellectual
essence of Renaissance thought.8 One thing is clear, Kabbalists have been
an accepted part of Jewish culture since the 12th century. Though their
mystical beliefs, which focused on the individual's direct communion with God
through solitary study, sometimes set them apart from their mainstream
coreligionists, many Kabbalists were teachers and judges highly respected by
all Jews. The emphasis on secret knowledge and mysticism have also long
endeared the study of Kabbalah to occultists of other persuasions, kicking off
a Kabbalist fad among gentiles in Renaissance Europe - and giving us words
like "cabal".

6
7
Approach to Health and Healing (Freedom CA: The Crossing Press, 2000), p 20. The
numbers 7 and 3 are important Kabbalistic numbers. The number 7 is the Divine Number,
referring to fullness, individual completeness and the perfection of the human soul. The
number 3 (cf the triangle) refers to self-expression, the outgrowth of the numbers 1 (the male
number) and 2 (the female number).
8
See, eg, H Geffen, “The Occultism of the Bible and the Kabbalah”, The New Age, February
1950 [Online] http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/masonry_kabbalah.html [accessed
11/09/2005]; W Kirk MacNulty, “Kabbalah and Freemasonry”, Heredom, vol 7, 1998. Geffen
writes: “Our Masonic spiritual allegories are based on the Kabbalah, which is known to us
moderns as the Kabbalistic Doctrine.”

6

In the United States of America, Kabbalism made a big comeback in the
1960s, when it was championed by one Philip Berg, an American former rabbi
who began studying Kabbalah whilst on a visit to Israel in 1962. Under Berg's
leadership, Kabbalah in the United States of America has greatly expanded.
There are now innumerable Kabbalah centres around the country, with many
prominent followers including Jews such as Elizabeth Taylor and Monica
Lewinsky as well as gentiles such as the singers Madonna, Britney Spears
and Mick Jagger. However, many of the faddish versions of Kabbalah are
almost a total perversion of true Kabbalah. Whereas traditional Kabbalah
emphasizes mysticism as an integral part of devoted Judaism, the modern
Kabbalah movement tends to focus almost exclusively on self-absorption,
personal improvement and spiritual happiness, targeted to "people of all faiths
and no faiths" - a smorgasbord of self-help pop psychology, numerology,
astrology and other forms of superstition. Rabbi Leiberman writes:

Kabbalah reduced to spiritual or philosophical symbolism, stripped from the
observance of the mitzvot [the commandments of the Torah], is worthless
mumbo-jumbo, an empty shell.9

True Kabbalah is concerned with coming close to God, the divine creator of
the universe. In order to come close to God, one has to intellectually
comprehend the stages of the continual recreation of reality. At every
moment, God creates all of reality anew, and we are said to co-creators with
God. Rabbi Gelberman writes:

Basically the Kabbalah teaches us that our mission on earth is to be in
partnership with God. The Almighty did His/Her part, and now you do your
part.10

We are Shutaf Elohim. We are in partnership with God. Indeed, the purpose
of Kabbalah is to become one as a partner with God in the creative process of
life itself, which is to make the world a dwelling place for God's Infinite Light
and God’s Absolute Essence. But who or what, according to Kabbalistic

9
12/09/2005].
10

7

teaching, is this “God”? Writing from a kabbalistic point of view, Rabbi David
A Cooper, like many other “modern” religious leaders and teachers, has
challenged contemporary views as to the nature of God:

What is God? In a way, there is no God. Our perception of God usually leads
to a misunderstanding that seriously undermines our spiritual development.

God is not what we think It is. God is not a thing, a being, a noun. It does not
exist, as existence is defined, for It takes up no space and is not bound by time.
Jewish mystics often refer to It as Ein Sof, which means Endlessness.

Ein Sof should never be conceptualized in any way. It should not be called
Creator, Almighty, Father, Mother, Infinite, the One, Brahma, Buddhamind,
Allah, Adony, Elohim, El, or Shaddai; and It should never, never be called He.
It is none of these names, and It has no gender.11

Cooper goes on to say:

The closest thing we can come to thinking about God is as a process rather
than a being. We can think of it as “be-ing,” as verb rather than noun. Perhaps
we would understand this concept better if we renamed God. We might call It
God-ing, a process, rather than God, which suggests a noun.12

Ein Sof means “without end”. It is written:

Ein-Sof [sic], the Infinite God, has no static, definable form … Ein-Sof must be
constantly redefined, as by its very nature, it is in a constant process of self-
creation and redefinition … God is the origin of the world, the reality of the
world, or the totality of all things …13

The pursuit of “wisdom” is paramount in the Kabbalah. In the words of
Gelberman:

The Kabbalists considered Wisdom to be a more positive attribute than
Knowledge because of the Biblical story of King Solomon who, when asked
by God what he wanted the most, replied “Wisdom.”14

11
David A Cooper, God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism (New York:
Riverhead Books, 1997), p 65.
12
David A Cooper, God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism (New York:
Riverhead Books, 1997), p 69.
13
“Ein-Sof” The Lurianic Kabbalah http://www.newkabbalah.com/einsof.html [accessed
10/11/2004].
14
Approach to Health and Healing (Freedom CA: The Crossing Press, 2000), p 119. AS a
sidelight, the symbolism associated with the building of King Solomon’s Temple is central to
Freemasonry (“a system of morality, veiled in allegory, and illustrated by symbols”). We are
all building a spiritual temple, a temple not made by human hands, nor built in any locality on

8

Abraham passed his wisdom on to his son, Isaac, who passed it on to his son,
Jacob and then to the 12 Tribes. Seven generations after Abraham, Moses
received the Torah on Mount Sinai. According to the Kabbalah, certain
mystical doctrines were given to Moses on Mount Sinai; those doctrines are
said to be hidden in the Torah and the oral law.

Kabbalists also assert that the Torah has two dimensions:

1. The body of the Torah, comprising the manifestation of the laws
and will of God. These laws express the will of God for our ultimate
and absolute good in this world and all worlds.
2. The soul of the Torah, being the inner dimension (nistar, the
esoteric part of the Torah), the Kabbalah, comprising the
comprehension of the “secrets” of creation, that is, the manner or
mode in which God is said to work in creation.

Rabbi Leiberman writes, “As a body cannot function without a soul, so the
soul is ineffective without the body.”15 Actually, it’s a bit more complicated
than that. Kabbalah itself has many dimensions, one inside the other. There
are said to be secrets, mysteries, secrets of secrets, mysteries of mysteries,
and many dimensions of soul within soul. The soul itself, according to
Kabbalists, possesses five levels, one inside the other. Even within the
Kabbalah, there were two traditions, one exoteric and the other esoteric.
Writing from both a Kabbalistic and Masonic point of view, Geffen writes:

There were two traditions in the Occult Kabbalah, an exoteric tradition
perpetuated and an esoteric tradition wherein the Kabbalah was transmitted.
The exoteric tradition is permeated with Kabbalism. One must be a studious
Mason to discern the esoteric direction from the exoteric customs having no
divine object.16

earth. It is built in silence, and in confidence and strength, in the “secret place”, that is, in the
sanctuary of the human heart. Esotericists regard Solomon, the third and last king of united
Israel, as an emblem of SOL, the “Solar Initiate”. Solomon is a Kabbalistic composition,
symbolizing Divine Wisdom.
15
12/09/2005].
16
H Geffen, “The Occultism of the Bible and the Kabbalah”, The New Age, February 1950
[Online] http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/masonry_kabbalah.html [accessed 11/09/2005].

9

The Kabbalah is not, however, a speculative philosophy based on human
insight and intuition. Its theories are not derived from human reasoning but
are said to have been derived from revelation.17 Kabbalists state that God
gives us wisdom and understanding, if we truly want and seek them. In that
regard, much emphasis is placed on prayer and meditation in all their various
forms. Kabbalists further state that it is God’s will that we become a part and
partner with God in the ongoing process of creation through doing God’s will
in the world. We carry out God's will through the mitzvot [the commandments
of the Torah] (the body of the Torah), while the soul of the performance of
God’s will is to become a partner with Him in the continual process of
creation, bringing additional light into the world. This light is a transcendent
one, being infinite and above creation. It became part of our active
consciousness with the giving of the Torah.

In about 100 CE Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (Rashbi) revealed the more
esoteric teachings of Kabbalah. He explained the functions of all the sefirot,
and how they manifest in every verse of the Torah and every phenomenon of
nature. Rashbi wrote the great classic text of Kabbalah - the heart of Jewish
mystical teaching - the Zohar (more fully, the Sefer Hazohar, the “Book of
Brilliance”), which dates (at least in part) to the 2nd century. The Zohar
includes Rashbi's revelations of Kabbalah as taught to his “disciples”.

As Rabbi Shimon Leiberman points out, the Kabbalah is essentially “a study,
as it were, of Divinity and of the relationship between God and His Creation,
based on the premises of revealed truth”.18 According to the Kabbalah, God,
or Divinity, is pure Light, infinite and spiritual. Its emanations are responsible
for all manifestation. As Although God is said to be essentially unknowable,
there are, nevertheless, various ways in which, according to the Kabbalists,
we can come to understand certain aspects of God’s being. I have already
referred to the sefirot, which are identified with the more important of these
aspects (for example, Wisdom, Understanding, Judgment, Mercy, and so
17
See Shimon Leiberman, “What is Kabbalah?” [Online]
12/09/2005].
18
12/09/2005].

10

forth). The Kabbalah also places considerable emphasis on what is known as
the "Shekhinah”, which means "presence of God". The Shekhinah relates to
the feminine aspect of God as well as Divine Immanence.

The basic purpose of the Kabbalah is the refinement of one’s personality and
character traits through drawing closer to this God whose attributes are
manifest and revealed in reality. The study of Kabbalah is ultimately directed
at the Divinity of God, so as to be able to emulate God in our lives. The more
one studies Kabbalah properly, the closer one comes to God, and the more
one refines one’s character. Thus, God is, in the words of Martin Buber, an
inner potentiality in us. The Kabbalah, in its more modern forms, is very much
a “theology of man” or, perhaps more correctly, a theology of God in terms of
man. In truth, it is the only kind of theology which makes it possible for
humans to commune with God. Indeed, Kabbalists consider that the
Kabbalah is important for all people, not just Jews. According to the
Kabbalah, all life is one and interconnected. This is reflected in the Shemah
Yisrael: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Dt 6:4).

Kabbalists, along with others devoted to esoteric spirituality, insist that the
Scriptures must be interpreted allegorically and spiritually. Reincarnation
(transmigration of souls) is one of the more mystical Kabbalistic doctrines,
something that is alluded to in this prayer known as “The Bedtime Shema”:

Master of the universe, I hereby forgive anyone who angered or antagonized
me or who sinned against me - whether against my body, my property, my
honour or against anything of mine; whether they did so accidentally, wilfully,
carelessly, or purposely; whether through speech, deed, thought, or notion;
whether in this transmigration or another transmigration - I forgive every
person. May no one be punished because of me. May it be Your will, Lord,
my God and the God of my forefathers, that I may sin no more. Whatever
sins I have done before You, may You blot out in Your abundant mercies, but
not through suffering or bad illnesses. May the expressions of my mouth and
the thoughts of my heart find favour before You, Lord, my Rock and My
Redeemer.19

19
The ArtScroll Tehillim, trans Rabbi Hillel Danziger (Brooklyn NY: Mesorah Publications,
1988), p 29, adapted.

THE KABBALAH

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