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What Kabbalah is all about. Its history, concept, and practice.
It serves as the cornerstone of Judaism's mystical religious views.
Jewish Kabbalists frequently refer to classical Jewish scriptures to clarify and illustrate their mystical teachings. They originally formed their own transmission of sacred writings within the context of Jewish tradition. These teachings are used by Kabbalists to explain the importance of Jewish religious practices, as well as the hidden, transmitted nature of both the Hebrew Bible and traditional rabbinic literature.
According to traditional adherents, it originated before world faiths and served as the original model for all of Creation's philosophies, religions, sciences, arts, and governmental structures. In the past, the Kabbalah developed from earlier types of Jewish mysticism in the 12th to 13th centuries in Spain and Southern France. It was then reinterpreted in Ottoman Palestine in the 16th century. The founding text of Kabbalah, The Zohar, was written in the late thirteenth century. Modern Kabbalah is credited to Isaac Luria of the 16th century; Hasidic Judaism, which emerged in the 18th century, popularized Lurianic Kabbalah. The development of historical research on Kabbalah in the field of Judaic studies throughout the 20th century, was sparked by scholarly interest in Kabbalistic literature, which was principally driven by the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem.
According to the Zohar, a foundational text for kabbalistic thought, Torah study can proceed along four levels of interpretation (exegesis). These four levels are called pardes from their initial letters (PRDS Hebrew: פַּרדֵס, orchard).
Peshat (Hebrew: פשט lit. "simple"): the direct interpretations of meaning.
Remez (Hebrew: רֶמֶז lit. "hint[s]"): the allegoric meanings (through allusion).
Derash (Hebrew: דְרָשׁ from Heb. darash: "inquire" or "seek"): midrashic (rabbinic) meanings, often with imaginative comparisons with similar words or verses.
Sod (Hebrew: סוֹד lit. "secret" or "mystery"): the inner, esoteric (metaphysical) meanings, expressed in kabbalah.
Yesod (Hebrew: יסוד lit. the consummation, the final and highest realization of the mind God, the infinity, Ain Soph.
Kabbalah is seen by its adherents as an essential component of Torah study, which is a responsibility of observant Jews to learn the Torah (the Tanakh and rabbinic literature). Modern academic-historical study of Jewish mysticism reserves the term "kabbalah" to designate the particular, distinctive doctrines that textually emerged fully expressed in the Middle Ages, as distinct from the earlier Merkabah mystical concepts and methods. According to this descriptive categorization, both versions of Kabbalistic theory, the medieval-Zoharic and the early-modern Lurianic Kabbalah together comprise the Theosophical tradition in Kabbalah, while the Meditative-Ecstatic Kabbalah incorporates a parallel inter-related Medieval tradition. A third tradition, related but more shunned, involves the magical aims of Practical Kabbalah. Moshe Idel, for example, writes that these 3 basic models can be discerned operating and competing throughout the whole history of Jewish mysticism, beyond the particular Kabbalistic background of the Middle Ages. They can be readily distinguished by their basic intent with respect to God:
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