• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 460 0

is centered in the locus called tif'eret (“glory”), and is often called by that name. The last of the ten, as I have already indicated, is shekhinah, the feminine consort or bride of the Holy One. In classical Kabbalah she is depicted as a truly liminal figure, straddling the “upper” (inner divine) and “lower” universes; she is the source in which all the divine energy is gathered, thence to be distributed to the lower worlds. In later Hasidism, however, the old rabbinic meaning of the term shekhinah is revived, and she is taken again to represent the immanent presence of divinity throughout this world. In that sense the world is understood to exist “within” God, rather than being entirely “other.”

The Kabbalists chose to occupy themselves with a series of contemplative exercises that both described and taught one how to traverse an increasingly complicated realm that divided the fragmented consciousness of this-worldly perception from the unitive reality of God. The notion of four “worlds,” each of them conceived in the same decadic structure, was one vehicle for this more richly elaborated cosmic picture. So too was the notion that each of the ten sefirot was itself divisible into ten, containing by implication all the others within it. This led, especially in the most fully articulated system of Rabbi Moses Cordovero (1522-1570), to an essential symbolic “grid” of some four hundred combined entities, rather than ten sefirot. Devotional exercises and interpretation of prayers all had to be fitted to a particular locus within an increasingly complicated cosmic map.

This complicating of the contemplative system or “filling up” of cosmic space went much farther in the new Kabbalah promulgated by the disciples of Isaac Luria (1534-1572).45 Luria was a bold and innovative mythical thinker, one who focused devotional attention on the process of tiqqun, or the repair and restoration of the broken universe (or the exiled shekhinah), with much greater specificity than any previous Kabbalist. As his system came to dominate, this delineation of multiple cosmic realms and inner stages of “maturation” in each of these led to a virtual atomization of the spiritual universe, each step in the uplifting and restoration of the cosmos associated with intensive concentration on devotional exercises attached to the prayer book, to the commandments, to alternative spellings and vocalizations of the divine name, or to particular moments on the Jewish religious calendar. The mystical oneness of God that underlay the whole system, flowing through and nurturing the cosmos, was largely obscured by the “crowded” heavens and the great attention the worshipper needed to pay to the particular details underlying each “unification” of the upper realms. The essential insights of Kabbalah, soon to be weakened from within by mystical heresies and challenged from without by the rise of modern science, also partially collapsed under the weight of their own overelaboration.

From the late sixteenth century, Kabbalah became the dominating language of Jewish theology for some two hundred years. Hasidism, the next important stage in the development of Jewish God-consciousness, is both a continuation of and a rebellion against this growing Kabbalistic consensus.46 The great teachers of Hasidism were religious revivalists, out to provide simple and direct access to the transformative vision of the Ba'al Shem Tov (or BeShT, 1700-1760) by which they had been captivated. That vision is best encapsulated by the ancient phrases that became daily watchwords of the new Hasidic piety: “The whole earth is filled with His glory! There is no place devoid of Him!” The BeShT described a world overflowing with the bounteous presence of God, accessible everywhere and at each moment to any Jew with inner eyes and ears open.47 This vision, to be celebrated in joyous transformation of everyday life, was the essential message of Torah. All the rest of Jewish teaching was to serve as a vehicle for bringing about this awareness (da'at). The ensuing generations of Hasidic preachers,