What Is Kabbalah? Sources, the Zohar and Who May Study

Zohar, sefirot, the red string, celebrity “Kabbalah”: the word is everywhere, and it covers almost everything, from the most profound to the most fanciful. What does it really mean in Judaism? Which Talmudic texts is it based on, what do its great books contain, why do the masters restrict its study, and what should one make of the fashions that claim its name? This article follows the sources one by one, with their references, and points out where opinions differ.

Kabbalah (in Hebrew Kabbalah, “reception”) is the mystical tradition of Judaism: the teaching received from master to disciple about the hidden dimension of the Torah, about the way G-d relates to the world, about the structure of creation and about the role of man. It rests on the Torah and the Talmud, never against them. Its major texts are the Sefer Yetzirah (the “Book of Formation”), the Zohar (the “Book of Splendor”) and the writings of the Safed school in the sixteenth century, around the Ari. Its study has been restricted since the Mishna itself (Chagigah 2:1): most halachic authorities reserve it for one who has first filled his “belly” with Talmud and halacha, some cite the age of forty, and all warn against talismans and the trade in “mystery.”

What Does “Kabbalah” Mean?

The word comes from the root kibel, “to receive.” It speaks first of transmission: one does not invent it, one receives it. The first mishna of the Ethics of the Fathers begins with this verb: “Moshe received (kibel) the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Yehoshua…” (Pirkei Avot 1:1). In the Talmud, “divrei kabbalah” designates a different domain: the books of the Prophets and the Writings, as opposed to the Written Torah. Concerning Gedaliah ben Achikam, the Gemara concludes: “It is a word of Kabbalah, and words of Kabbalah are like the words of the Torah” (Rosh Hashanah 19a; see also Chullin 137a). For centuries, “Kabbalah” therefore designated the whole received tradition. Only in the Middle Ages did the word come to name more specifically the tradition of hidden wisdom, the chochmat ha-nistar.

Rav Raphaël Benizri notes, in his lecture Pirkei Avot: The Chain of Transmission, that the verb “to receive” has a precise bearing: one receives only what one is able to receive, and reception is always partial compared with transmission. This holds for the whole Torah; it holds all the more for Kabbalah, which demands patience and humility.

The Hidden and the Revealed: Nigleh and Nistar

Jewish tradition distinguishes two dimensions of teaching: the nigleh, “what is revealed,” and the nistar, “what is hidden.” The biblical foundation is a verse in Devarim: “The hidden things belong to the L-rd our G-d; and the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, that we may carry out all the words of this Torah” (Devarim 29:28). The verse sets a priority: the revealed is made to be applied. The hidden exists, but it never exempts from practice.

The Writings speak of it too: “It is the glory of G-d to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search it out” (Mishlei 25:2); “The secret of the L-rd is for those who fear Him” (Tehillim 25:14). The word “secret” is sod, and it is this word that will give its name to the fourth level of reading the Torah.

This distinction does not set two Torahs against each other. The Ramban expresses it at the head of his commentary on the Torah: according to a tradition he reports, the Torah was written in black fire on white fire, and the whole Torah is made of the Names of the Holy One, blessed be He (Ramban’s Introduction, paragraphs 5 and 14). The Torah we read is thus, from the outset, more than its narrative.

Ma’aseh Bereshit and Ma’aseh Merkavah: The Roots in the Mishna and the Talmud

The restrictions on the study of the hidden are found in Mishna Chagigah 2:1: “One does not expound the forbidden sexual relations before three, nor the Ma’aseh Bereshit (the work of creation) before two, nor the Merkavah (the chariot) before one alone, unless he is wise and understands on his own (chacham u-mevin mi-da’ato).” The Merkavah designates the vision of G-d’s chariot in chapter 1 of Yechezkel; the Ma’aseh Bereshit, what concerns the creation of the world.

The Gemara (Chagigah 11b-13a) develops, while balancing them, the prohibition and the opening. Rashi explains that “wise and understanding on his own” designates someone who does not need the teacher to set out the principle for him: he grasps it alone (Rashi, Chagigah 11b). On page 13a, the Gemara cites Ben Sira: “Do not seek what is too wondrous for you, do not investigate what is hidden from you; what you have been permitted, meditate on it: you have no business with hidden things.” It specifies that the Merkavah is transmitted only to the head of the court and to one whose “heart is anxious within him,” and only by “chapter headings” (rashei perakim); Rashi understands: the major divisions of the subject, not its development.

The same sugya nevertheless contains one of the most beautiful pages of the Talmud on creation. According to Rav Zutra bar Tuvia in the name of Rav, “the world was created by ten things: by wisdom, understanding and knowledge, by strength, rebuke and power, by righteousness and justice, by kindness and compassion” (Chagigah 12a). The kabbalists will see in this a prefiguration of the ten sefirot; the Talmud itself does not say so. A little earlier (12a), Rabbi Elazar teaches that the original light, with which the world was created, was hidden away for the righteous.

The sugya also contains cautionary tales: Chananiah ben Hezekiah and the book of Yechezkel, and that young man who, while studying the chashmal, was consumed by fire (Chagigah 13a). For Rashi, the reserved verses are those that describe the divine Form.

On page 14b, Rabbi Elazar ben Arach expounds the Merkavah before Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai: a fire descends, and the trees of the field break into the song of Tehillim 148. Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Yose Ha-Kohen are also cited: a rainbow appears in the cloud, and angels gather to listen. The Gemara describes a chain: Rabbi Yehoshua with Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Akiva with Rabbi Yehoshua, Chananiah ben Chachinai with Rabbi Akiva.

The Rambam gives all this a precise framework. He calls “Ma’aseh Merkavah” chapters 1 and 2 of Yesodei Ha-Torah (2:11) and “Ma’aseh Bereshit” chapters 3 and 4 (4:10), and he writes that the Ma’aseh Bereshit is taught only to one person at a time. He then distinguishes the two domains (4:11), and explains that contemplation of creation leads to love and fear of G-d (4:12; see also 2:2). In the Guide for the Perplexed, he identifies the Ma’aseh Bereshit with natural science and the Merkavah with metaphysics, citing Chagigah 11b (Guide, Introduction). This is a philosophical reading; the kabbalists will take another.

The Maharal of Prague reads the sugya with the same rigor: the verse of Ben Sira “do not seek what is too wondrous for you” does not condemn all inquiry into creation, but only that which exceeds what man is equipped to understand; and “what you have been permitted, meditate on it” is for him an exhortation to study creation (Maharal, Chiddushei Aggadot on Chagigah 13a).

The Four Who Entered the Pardes

At the summit of the sugya, the Gemara tells (Chagigah 14b): “Four entered the Pardes: Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Acher and Rabbi Akiva.” Rabbi Akiva had told them: “When you arrive near the stones of pure marble, do not say: water, water!”, for it is written: “One who speaks lies shall not endure before My eyes” (Tehillim 101:7). Rashi explains that they had ascended to the firmament by means of a divine Name, and that marble gleams like water. The Tosafot (14b) specify that they did not actually ascend: the ascent merely appeared to them that way.

Then comes the fate of each. Ben Azzai “looked and died”: “Precious in the eyes of the L-rd is the death of His faithful” (Tehillim 116:15). Ben Zoma “looked and was stricken”: “Have you found honey? Eat only what you need, lest you be sated and vomit it” (Mishlei 25:16); Rashi understands that his mind was affected. Acher “cut down the plantings.” Rabbi Akiva “entered in peace and came out in peace.”

The Jerusalem Talmud (Chagigah 2:1) presents a different version: it is Ben Azzai who is “stricken” (Mishlei 25:16) and Ben Zoma who dies (Tehillim 116:15), and Acher is described there as destroying teachers of Torah. The Tosefta (Chagigah 2:3) also reports the episode. The ancient tradition therefore does not transmit a single version.

Later (15a), Acher sees Metatron seated and wonders: “Perhaps there are two powers?” A heavenly voice proclaims: “Return, rebellious children (Yirmiyahu 3:22),” except Acher. His disciple Rabbi Meir nevertheless continues to listen to him: “He found a pomegranate, ate the inside and threw away the peel” (15b). The Talmud thus teaches discernment: even from one who has fallen, there may be a teaching to gather.

Rav Benizri dwells on Rabbi Akiva’s warning. In his lecture Lag Ba’Omer, he reads “do not say: water, water” as a call to faith, emunah, and to the way of entering in peace and leaving in peace.

The Rambam draws a halachic conclusion from it: “It is not fitting to walk in the Pardes except for one who has filled his belly with bread and meat,” that is, with knowledge of what is forbidden and permitted and of the other commandments (Yesodei Ha-Torah 4:13). He also writes, in Hilchot Talmud Torah 1:12, that “the subjects called Pardes are part of the Gemara.”

PaRDeS: The Acronym of the Four Levels

The word pardes, “orchard,” gave rise to an acronym that has become common: peshat (the plain meaning), remez (the allusion), derash (the interpretation) and sod (the secret). The idea that Scripture is read on several levels is ancient. The Talmud states that “a verse does not depart from its plain meaning” (Shabbat 63a; Yevamot 24a), and Rashi writes that he has come “only for the plain meaning of the verse and for the aggadah that fits the words of the verse” (Rashi, Bereshit 3:8). Neither speaks of the Pardes.

Three things that are often confused must be distinguished. The Pardes of the Talmud (Chagigah 14b) is not a method of exegesis. The acronym PaRDeS is later: it is explicit in Chaim Vital, who writes that PaRDeS is the acronym of peshat, remez, derash, sod, and that one must toil in all four and “make oneself a master” (Sha’ar Ha-Mitzvot, introduction; Sha’ar Ha-Gilgulim, introduction). Scholars attribute its first use to Moshe de León; we have not verified this in the texts and give it as an opinion of specialists.

Rabbenu Bachya ben Asher is often cited in this connection, but wrongly: his introduction describes four paths of interpreting the Torah (the plain meaning, the midrash, the “sechel,” that is, the way of philosophy, and the way of Kabbalah, the “derech Hashem” of the Ramban). These are four approaches, not the acronym PaRDeS.

Rav Benizri presents these four levels as the four rivers of the Garden of Eden (Bereshit 2:10), in his lecture on Lag Ba’Omer.

The Sefer Yetzirah: The Oldest Text

The Sefer Yetzirah is a short treatise that opens as follows: “With thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom, Yah, the L-rd of hosts, engraved and created His world with three books: with writing (sefer), with number (sefar) and with story (sippur)” (Sefer Yetzirah 1:1). The Hebrew word is pelioth, “wondrous.” The thirty-two paths are the ten sefirot belimah, “without anything” (1:2), and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet: “three mothers, seven doubles, twelve simples.” The treatise then describes how G-d formed the world through combinations of letters. It specifies (1:5) that the Master is “unique, El, faithful King, who rules over all”: the sefirot are not deities.

Its date is uncertain: scholars place it between roughly the second and sixth centuries; tradition attributes it to Avraham Avinu, and the Kuzari (IV:25) says so explicitly and comments on the triad sefer, sefar, sippur. Several versions exist (short, long, the version of Saadia Gaon, the version of the Vilna Gaon) and commentaries from the tenth century on, including that of Saadia Gaon.

The Talmud also knows a use of these “laws of creation.” “Rava created a man and sent him to Rabbi Zeira”; the latter spoke to him, he did not answer, and Rabbi Zeira said to him: “You come from the companions; return to your dust” (Sanhedrin 65b). Rabbi Chanina and Rabbi Oshaya, for their part, studied the “laws of creation” (hilchot yetzirah) every Friday afternoon before Shabbat and made themselves a three-year-old calf, which they ate (Sanhedrin 67b). Rashi specifies (67b) that this was not sorcery, because it was done by the holy Name. The Talmud therefore does not present it with reserve: it presents it as permitted.

From the Merkavah to Gerona: The First Schools

Between the Talmud and the Zohar stretches a long thread. The Hechalot literature (the “palaces”) describes celestial ascents and dates, according to specialists, from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. The Sefer Ha-Bahir, first mentioned in Provence and Languedoc toward the end of the twelfth century, is attributed to Rabbi Nechunya ben Ha-Kanah. One already finds in it images destined to become central. In the thirteenth century, the school of Gerona and the Ramban give these teachings a more orderly form, though still a discreet one.

The Ramban in fact makes a famous promise in the introduction to his commentary: he binds his readers by a “faithful covenant” not to reason about his allusions, “except from the mouth of a sage who has received, for the ear of an understanding disciple” (Ramban’s Introduction, paragraph 17). This is not a taste for secrecy: it is the recognition that this teaching is not read from a book alone.

The Zohar

The Zohar is a commentary on the Torah in Aramaic, which stages Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Rashbi) and his disciples. According to the Talmud, Rabbi Shimon spent twelve years hidden in a cave, nourished by a carob tree and a spring (Shabbat 33b); the image of the solitary master feeds the whole legend of the Zohar.

The Zohar was first printed in Mantua and Cremona in 1558-1560. It is composed of several layers: the main body, the Tikkunei Zohar (“Corrections of the Zohar”), the Zohar Chadash, the Ra’aya Meheimna (“the faithful shepherd”), the Idra Rabba and the Idra Zuta, the Sifra di-Tzni’uta, and the Midrash Ha-Ne’elam, partly in Hebrew.

A few passages set the tone (Sefaria references).

– On reading the Torah: “Woe to the man who says that this Torah came only to show stories and ordinary words” (Zohar III, 152a; Sefaria, Beha’alotecha 12:3). The stories are the garment, the law is the body, and there is the soul of the Torah and, beyond it, “the soul of the soul of the Torah.”

– On unity: “There are three degrees that are bound to one another: the Holy One, blessed be He, the Torah and Israel” (Zohar, Acharei Mot 50:3).

– On the infinite: in the prayer of Patach Eliyahu, at the beginning of the Tikkunei Zohar (17a): “Master of the worlds, You are One, but not according to a count… You are above all that is high, hidden beyond all that is hidden: no thought grasps You at all.”

– On the beginning: “At the beginning of the King’s will, He engraved engravings in the supernal light; a spark burst forth from within the most hidden of the hidden, from the head of the infinite (rosh ein sof)” (Zohar I, 15a; Sefaria, Bereshit 1:1).

– On the Zohar itself, in the layer of the Ra’aya Meheimna: the verse of Daniel 12:3 (“The wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament”) is applied to “this book which is the Book of the Zohar” (Zohar, Nasso 6:1).

A frequently cited passage (Zohar I, 117a; Sefaria, Vayera 30:7) says that in the year 600 of the sixth millennium (5600, that is 1839-1840), “the gates of the wisdom above and the wellsprings of the wisdom below will open.” How authorities have made use of it could not be verified here.

Who Wrote the Zohar?

Two positions exist. Tradition attributes it to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his circle, in the second century. But the book appears in Spain at the end of the thirteenth century, around Moshe de León (c. 1240-1305, died at Arévalo), and modern scholarship sees in it, essentially, a composition of that period.

The debate is old. The Sefer Yuchasin of Abraham Zacuto (composed in 1504, printed in 1566) reports, on the basis of the Divrei Ha-Yamim of Rabbi Yitzchak of Acre (now lost), that when the wife of Yosef of Ávila questioned her, the widow of Moshe de León is said to have answered that her husband had never possessed such an ancient book and had written everything out of his own head. The reliability of this account is debated, and it is not enough to settle the question.

Later, Rabbi Yaakov Emden (Mitpachat Sefarim, Altona, 1760s) argues that a considerable part of the Zohar postdates Rabbi Shimon. Leon of Modena (1571-1648), in his Ari Nohem (published in 1840), called into question the antiquity of Kabbalah and of the Zohar.

In the twentieth century, Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941), attributes the bulk of it to Moshe de León; Yehuda Liebes (born 1947), in Studies in the Zohar, sees rather the work of a circle of thirteenth-century Spanish kabbalists to which Moshe de León belonged. Isaiah Tishby produced The Wisdom of the Zohar, an anthology translated into English by David Goldstein. Most scholars place the composition in the 1280s.

For the living tradition, the question of date is less decisive than that of reception: what this book has become in the study and prayer of the Jewish people. The two readings, historical and religious, do not always coincide, and it is honest to acknowledge it.

The Sefirot Explained Simply

The sefirot are the ten “emanations” or “attributes” through which, according to Kabbalah, the Infinite relates to the world: Keter (crown), Chochmah (wisdom), Binah (understanding), then Chesed (kindness), Gevurah (strength), Tiferet (splendor), Netzach (victory), Hod (majesty), Yesod (foundation) and Malchut (kingdom).

The verse that serves as support for the seven lower sefirot is in Divrei Ha-Yamim: “Yours, L-rd, is the greatness (gedulah), the strength (gevurah), the splendor (tiferet), the glory (netzach) and the majesty (hod), for all (kol) that is in heaven and on earth… Yours, L-rd, is the kingdom (mamlachah)” (I Divrei Ha-Yamim 29:11). The Zohar unfolds it thus: gedulah, gevurah, tiferet, netzach, hod, then yesod (the “kol“) and malchut (Zohar, Terumah 54:3; see also Mishpatim 12:7). This verse therefore does not summarize the ten sefirot, but the seven lower ones. It is these seven that Rav Benizri connects with the seven virtues of man in his lecture on the Omer.

In Etz Chaim, Chaim Vital describes two ways of ordering them. One is a hierarchy in three lines: on the right Chochmah, Chesed and Netzach; on the left Binah, Gevurah and Hod; in the center Keter, Tiferet, Yesod and Malchut. The other is that of concentric circles. He concludes: “these and those are the words of the living G-d” (Etz Chaim, Sha’ar Ha-Klalim, paragraph 1). The Infinite has neither high nor low: these images express an order of influence, not a geography.

The decisive point is this: the sefirot are not ten gods. The Sefer Yetzirah rules it out (1:5), and the Tikkunei Zohar say: “You are One, but not according to a count.” The sefirot are a way of speaking of G-d’s action in the world, without claiming to describe His essence.

Rav Benizri, in The Month of the Omer, connects the sefirot with man: the seven virtues govern man as well as the world, and the word sefirah comes from sapir, sapphire, transparency.

Safed, the Ari and Lurianic Kabbalah

In the sixteenth century, Safed, in the Galilee, became the center of Kabbalah. There one finds Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz (author of Lecha Dodi), Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (Pardes Rimonim), Rabbi Yosef Karo (author of the Shulchan Aruch) and Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the Ari. The Kesef Mishneh of Rabbi Yosef Karo cites the Zohar (Va’etchanan) regarding the writing of the word Shaddai on the outside of the mezuzah (Kesef Mishneh on Hilchot Mezuzah 5:4-6), and the Shulchan Aruch draws the halacha from it: “on the outside, one writes Shaddai” (Yoreh De’ah 288:15). Kabbalah thus nourished halacha; it did not replace it.

The Ari (born in Jerusalem in 1534, arrived in Safed in 1570, died in 1572) wrote almost nothing himself. It was his disciple Chaim Vital who gathered his teaching, notably in the Shemonah She’arim, of which Etz Chaim is a part. Three ideas from it became famous.

The tzimtzum (contraction). Before creation, the light of the Infinite filled all reality. When “it arose in His simple will to create the worlds, He contracted His being, the Infinite, into the central point”: a “vacant space” remained (Etz Chaim, Sha’ar Ha-Klalim, paragraph 2). The contraction is circular.

Must this be understood literally, G-d withdrawing from somewhere? Chaim of Volozhin answers that it must not. In Nefesh Ha-Chaim, he writes that the tzimtzum “is not a withdrawal or a movement from one place to another… but a veiling and a concealment,” and he adds “G-d forbid” (Nefesh Ha-Chaim, gate 3, chapter 7). He then writes that it is forbidden to try to grasp the essence of the tzimtzum, and refers to Chagigah 11b (chapter 8). This reserve has a meaning: it prevents attributing to G-d a place and a movement.

The shevirat ha-kelim (the breaking of the vessels). In the part dealing with the worlds of Nekudim, the vessels of the seven “kings” cannot bear the light: they shatter and fall (Etz Chaim, Heichal 2, Sha’ar 2, paragraph 9:2 of Sefaria). From their dross are born the kelipot, the “shells.”

The tikkun (repair). Etz Chaim treats repair in the Sha’ar Ha-Tikkun and then in the Sha’ar Ha-Melachim. The world is presented as a repair site in which man takes part. In Nefesh Ha-Chaim (gate 1, chapters 3-4), Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin develops the idea that man’s actions build or destroy higher worlds.

In this reading, halacha thus takes on a cosmic bearing: every mitzvah takes part in the repair. This does not authorize altering practice; it increases its weight.

The Ramchal, Chasidut and the Modern Period

In the eighteenth century, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (Ramchal) gave a limpid exposition of kabbalistic thought. In the Derech Hashem, he states that “the purpose of creation was to do good, from His goodness, to others than Himself” (Derech Hashem, part one, chapter 1). In the Da’at Tevunot, he writes that the divine concealment exists “only in order to be revealed”: a term is set to the days of free choice, and the world will be repaired with a complete repair (Da’at Tevunot 40). His Mesillat Yesharim remains a classic of moral work.

Chasidut, born in the eighteenth century around the Baal Shem Tov, transposes these themes into daily life: joy, prayer, attachment to G-d. The teachings attributed to the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezritch are gathered in the Tzava’at Ha-Rivash; there one reads that prayer said in great joy is “certainly more acceptable before Him than prayer in sadness and tears” (Tzava’at Ha-Rivash 107). In the Tanya (Likkutei Amarim 2), Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi writes that “the second soul in Israel is a part of G-d from above, truly.”

Chasidut met the opposition of the Mitnagdim, among them the Vilna Gaon. His student, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, author of Nefesh Ha-Chaim, sets out in that book a kabbalistic thought without cutting it off from the study of Torah, as we saw for the tzimtzum.

Who May Study Kabbalah?

This is the most frequent question, and the answer has several layers.

The primary source is Mishna Chagigah 2:1: “unless he is wise and understands on his own.” The Rambam extends it: one walks in the Pardes only after having filled one’s belly with bread and meat (Yesodei Ha-Torah 4:13).

The text of the Shulchan Aruch of Rabbi Yosef Karo (Yoreh De’ah 246:4) does not speak of the Pardes. It is the gloss of the Rema that deals with it: a person must first study the Bible, the Mishna, the Gemara and the halachic authorities; the other sciences are studied only occasionally, and not the books of heretics. He adds: “and this is what is called, among the sages, walking in the Pardes, and a person should not walk in the Pardes before having filled his belly with meat and wine.” One must read exactly: the Rema speaks of “meat and wine” (and not bread and meat), and his context concerns first the other sciences, not Kabbalah alone.

It is the Shach (Siftei Kohen on Yoreh De’ah 246:6) who makes this more precise: he finds that “the wording of the Rav is not well ordered,” understands it as aimed at “the books of the philosophers, astronomy and Kabbalah,” cites the Rambam on bread and meat, then writes: “The kabbalists and the other Acharonim insisted on not studying the wisdom of Kabbalah before having filled one’s belly with Shas; and some have written that it should not be studied before the age of forty.” The Be’er Heitev (246:3) repeats it and adds that one needs “holiness, purity, zeal and cleanliness,” and that most of those who rushed in before the time were “struck down out of season.” The Vilna Gaon makes the same remark as the Shach on the Rema’s wording (Be’ur Ha-Gra, Yoreh De’ah 246:18). The Pitchei Teshuvah (246:4) cites the Chavot Yair (§ 210) on the need to keep away from the study of Kabbalah, because “our knowledge is short.”

One important clarification: the Shach does not cite the verse “at forty, understanding” (Pirkei Avot 5:21). This frequent connection is later and does not appear in his text. The age of forty is a reported opinion (“some have written”), not a unanimous rule.

The kabbalists themselves give warnings. Chaim Vital writes that one must toil in the four levels of the PaRDeS and make oneself a master. The Ramban asks that nothing be reasoned out from his allusions apart from oral reception.

Rav Benizri says it simply in Lag Ba’Omer: “One does not give access to the teaching of the Zohar before 40,” because a certain maturity acquired through the study of Torah is needed. He illustrates the idea with Rabbi Akiva, who was for forty years an ordinary man of the people before throwing himself into study: the Torah of Rabbi Akiva gives access to that of Rabbi Shimon.

In practice, tradition allows a few criteria to be formulated: having studied Torah, Mishna, Talmud and halacha steadily; having a regular practice of the mitzvot; having a master; approaching the texts in order to serve G-d and not out of curiosity; starting with reliable introductions rather than with the Zohar. This is not an absolute prohibition for everyone, but a discipline; questions of detail are for a rav.

The Rationalist Rambam and the Mystical Tradition

The Rambam and the kabbalists are often presented as adversaries. The reality is more nuanced, but the tension exists.

In the Guide for the Perplexed (I:34), the Rambam lists five reasons why one does not begin study with metaphysics. He identifies, as we have seen, the Ma’aseh Bereshit with physics and the Merkavah with metaphysics (Guide, Introduction). And he teaches (I:58) that one can speak of G-d only through negative attributes.

The kabbalists, by contrast, seek to describe, in images, the way G-d relates to the world. This fed tensions. The controversy over the Rambam’s writings erupted in 1232, with the ban issued by Solomon of Montpellier and Jonah of Gerona and the burning of books; in 1305, the Rashba in Barcelona forbade the study of philosophy before the age of twenty-five. These quarrels concern philosophy first, but they show how heavily the question of the limits of reason before mystery weighed on the community.

The Rambam and the kabbalists agree on the essentials: G-d is One and without a body, and study of the realms above does not dispense with practice. They differ on the path: the intellect for one, a received tradition for the others. The Nefesh Ha-Chaim, with its refusal of any spatial reading of the tzimtzum, in effect joins the Rambam’s concern to rule out all corporeal language.

A stone alley in the old city of Safed, in the Galilee, at dusk

What Rav Raphaël Benizri teaches

Rav Benizri did not devote an entire lecture to Kabbalah as such, but several of his lectures, on Lag Ba’Omer, the Omer, creation, Tu Bishvat and Pirkei Avot, take up its themes. Here are the main ideas, summarized from the published lectures.

Sod, or the Torah That Gathers

In Lag Ba’Omer: The Fires and the Light of the Zohar, the Rav explains the four levels of the Torah: peshat, remez, derash, sod. He proposes a reading of the word sod from a verse of Yaakov: “Let my soul not enter their secret (besodam); let my honor not be united with their assembly (bikhalam)” (Bereshit 49:6). For the Rav, there is a parallel between sod and kahal, the assembly: the secret is what gathers. Whoever cuts up and separates a teaching is left with only his own Torah, whereas the Torah of Hashem is the one that gathers all currents together.

A Torah That Renews Itself

For the Rav, the Zohar is a Torah of hitchadshut, of renewal: halacha is settled, it no longer moves, whereas sod is renewed every day, as the Creator renews His creation. The point is to combine rational thought with prophetic thought.

Mercy and Fire

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, he explains, brings mercy (rachamim): after a Torah of erudition that may have ravaged the twenty-four thousand disciples of Rabbi Akiva, each confining himself to his own teaching without being able to integrate that of the other, he teaches that through mercy one can spare the world from judgment, and that the Song of Songs, the hymn to love, is the whole Torah. The fire of Lag Ba’Omer, he adds, has a long history in the Torah: that of the covenant between the pieces (Bereshit 15), that of the altar that is never extinguished, that of the western lamp of the menorah, always lit. That of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is the fire of transparency, which unites through love all the elements of the people of Israel.

The Sefirot and Man

In The Month of the Omer: Counting in Order to Count Ourselves, the Rav connects the sefirot with the measure of man. Each day carries a structure of seven, and these seven virtues, these sefirot, govern man as well as the world, the Torah moreover calling the universe “Adam.” The word sefirah comes from sapir, sapphire: to count is to give back to a thing its transparency.

Elokim, the Zohar and the Infinite

In the lecture Bereshit: The Beginning of Creation, the Rav takes up a reading of the Zohar on the name Elokim: the Zohar reads eleh mi, “these things: who?” Elokim is first of all a question about the origin of creation. He also notes the numerical value of or, “light” (207), identical to that of ein sof, the infinite: when man decides his trajectory, no longer along the horizontal but in a spiral, he becomes G-d’s partner in the realization of the universe. He also points out the reading of the kabbalists according to which actual creation begins not on the first day but on the fourth, when things are set in motion.

The Fruits of Tu Bishvat

In his lecture on Tu Bishvat, the Rav mentions the custom of the kabbalists to eat many fruits: for some, forty fruits, ten for each of the stages of creation, from nobility to concrete reality. He sees in it a call to keep only the inside and to discard the shell, the klipah.

Receiving What One Can Receive

Finally, in Pirkei Avot: The Chain of Transmission, the Rav notes that the verb of reception, kabbalah, says less than transmission: reception is partial. That is why, he recalls, Ezra had to institute principles for the generations that would have to rediscover the Torah on their own. A lesson in humility for anyone approaching Kabbalah.

Common Misconceptions About Kabbalah

“Kabbalah Is Magic”

No. The Torah expressly forbids divinatory and magical practices (Devarim 18:10-13), and the Rambam devotes an entire chapter of Avodah Zarah to it (chapter 11). He goes as far as writing, in Hilchot Mezuzah 5:4, that whoever writes inside the mezuzah names of angels or verses as a talisman “has no share in the World to Come”: these are fools who make an amulet out of a commandment. He specifies there that the word Shaddai is written on the outside. A practice is not kabbalistic because it is called “secret.”

“The Golem, Gematria, Letter Combinations”

The Talmud speaks of beings created by the laws of Creation (Sanhedrin 65b, 67b) and, as we have seen, does not present them as sorcery. Gematria is an ancient method of exegesis. Rashi notes, for example, that the 318 men of Avraham (Bereshit 14:14) correspond to the numerical value of the name Eliezer, according to Nedarim 32a. Gematria illuminates a text; it does not replace it and does not found a law.

“The Red String Protects From the Evil Eye”

The red string worn on the wrist has become a popular symbol associated with Kabbalah. Here is what can be established. No text of the Torah, of halacha or of the great books of Kabbalah requires it; the practice was popularized in the late 1990s by figures linked to the Kabbalah Centre. The scarlet thread of Tamar (Bereshit 38) is a biblical motif with no direct connection to this practice.

The ancient source that is cited is a discussion in the Tosefta (Shabbat 8:4, in the Sefaria text): concerning someone who ties a red thread, Rabban Gamliel says that this is not among the “ways of the Amorite” (that is, superstitions), whereas Rabbi Elazar bar Tzadok says that it is. Both opinions appear in the same source: the question is therefore an old one.

Later authorities are divided. According to the compilation of sources gathered by Rav Mordechai Zion (Avinerpedia), the Be’er Moshe (8:36) and the Rivevot Ephraim (8:51) tolerate the practice as an ancient custom of women; the Rav Pe’alim (Yoreh De’ah 2:29) notes that the Tosefta does not forbid it; the Chavot Yair (234) writes that what has spread among women, “leave it to Israel.” On the other hand, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach discouraged it, Rav Chaim Kanievsky said not to tie it on the wrist, and Rav Avigdor Nebenzahl called it nonsense. We cite these opinions from this compilation, without having rechecked them at the source. The custom of encircling Rachel’s tomb with a thread is mentioned there in the same context. A rav will answer according to his own tradition; in any case, it is not a halacha received from Sinai.

“Amulets Are Kabbalah”

Mishna Shabbat 6:2 considers going out on Shabbat with an amulet when it is from a proven expert (muman), which shows that the practice existed; but the Mishna (6:10) classes other practices among the “ways of the Amorite,” which the Sages forbid (see Shabbat 67a). The existence of a popular custom does not turn it into Kabbalah.

“The Kabbalah Centre Is Kabbalah”

The Kabbalah Centre was founded in 1965 by Philip Berg. The Los Angeles Jewish Journal reported the opinion of Rav Yitzchak Kaduri, according to which Kabbalah is intended only for Jewish men who have completed the whole Talmud, and supporting Berg puts the soul in danger. Other critical rabbis are cited in the same article. We do not take up here the organization’s legal controversies. Let us retain this: offering Kabbalah detached from the study of Talmud and halacha is exactly what the sources above advise against.

“Christian Kabbalah Is the Same Thing”

No. The “Christian Cabala” of the Renaissance, with Pico della Mirandola, uses kabbalistic texts within a Christian framework: it is another chapter in the history of ideas.

“Everything Must Be Read Literally”

The kabbalists themselves say the opposite: the sefirot speak of G-d in images, because He cannot be described. Taking these images literally, as organs or places, is the error against which the Nefesh Ha-Chaim warns regarding the tzimtzum.

What Kabbalah Has Left in Practice

Kabbalah does not live only in books. Lecha Dodi, which is sung on Friday evening, was composed in Safed in the sixteenth century by Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz. The custom of staying awake the night of Shavuot to study (Tikkun Leil Shavuot) has its source in the Zohar. The counting of the Omer is connected to the sefirot, as Rav Benizri explains. And Tu Bishvat took on among the kabbalists the form of a seder of fruits.

Frequently Asked Questions About Kabbalah

Is Kabbalah Forbidden?

No. Its study is restricted, not forbidden: the Mishna, the Rambam, the Rema and the Shach set conditions for it. But no one makes it an absolute taboo.

At What Age May One Study Kabbalah?

The age of forty is an opinion reported by the Shach (Yoreh De’ah 246:6) and the Be’er Heitev (246:3); it does not appear in the Shulchan Aruch itself. Rav Benizri cites it in his lecture on Lag Ba’Omer. More than age, it is the maturity acquired through study and practice that counts.

Must One Know Hebrew?

For general ideas, reliable introductions and translations are enough. But the Zohar is written in Aramaic, and reading the texts presupposes Hebrew and a knowledge of rabbinic literature. In every case, a master is needed.

Was the Zohar Written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai?

Tradition says so; modern scholarship places the main composition in Spain at the end of the thirteenth century, and Rabbi Yaakov Emden himself raised the question for part of the book. The two readings, religious and historical, do not always coincide.

Are the Sefirot Gods?

No. The Sefer Yetzirah (1:5) and the Tikkunei Zohar (“You are One, but not according to a count”) rule it out. The Nefesh Ha-Chaim specifies that the tzimtzum does not mean that G-d withdraws or moves.

What Should One Think of the Red String?

It is a popular custom with no foundation in the major sources of Kabbalah. Halachic authorities are divided between tolerance and disapproval (see above); it is not a mitzvah.

Does Kabbalah Contradict the Rambam?

There is a real tension over the way of speaking about G-d; but they agree on the unity of G-d and on the place of practice. See above the controversies of 1232 and 1305.

What Should One Read First?

A serious introduction, after a foundation of Torah and halacha, and with a master: the beginning of the Sefer Yetzirah, chapters 2 and 4 of the Rambam’s Yesodei Ha-Torah, then authors such as the Ramchal, before approaching the Zohar.

What Is Kabbalah and Who May Study It?