Daily Times

Kabbalah is the teaching of that which is secret, since it is hidden from the average reader and becomes revealed only under very special conditions.

Kabbalah, often referred to as “the secrets” of Torah, has been closely guarded for millennia. This esoteric tradition traces itself at least as far back as the Giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, and yet has been rarely taught openly, instead remaining a closely guarded tradition passed from teacher to student.

The Zohar, written in ancient Aramaic, is very obscure, often utilizing compounded poetic metaphors to convey profound understandings of the workings of Creation, and the most central passages of the Zohar were not clarified until Rabbi Yitzchak Luria taught them to his most trusted students in the mid-sixteenth century in Tzfat, Israel. The combined factors of the tumultuous history of the Jewish people and a fear that these teachings could be misunderstood and thus misused resulted in the further concealment of the Kabbalah well into the twentieth century.

Not only that, but ancient tradition teaches that as the world approaches the age of universal redemption and the Messianic Era our ability to access this hidden wisdom becomes greatly enhanced.

Basically, kabbalists wanted to transform Judaism into a more profound inner experience; an experience, so they believed, that could not be attained through a rational and intellectual approach to religion. For them Judaism was a system of mystical symbols reflecting the mystery of God and the universe, and their aim was to discover keys to the understanding of this symbolism.

The Kabbalah in Safed developed in two stages. The doctrine introduced by Moses Cordovero was a concise synthesis of the trends prevalent up to his time, whereby he sought to construct a speculative kabbalistic system which he later presented in his works, particularly in Pardes Rimmonim (Garden of Pomegranates). Then, after Cordovero’s death, Isaac Luria Ashkenaz founded his own school, teaching extremely complicated theories intended only for a small circle of initiates.

The sensory organs we were created with are able to perceive only a small part of the entire creation, known as “our world.” All the mechanisms we have invented widen the range of our sensory organs. We are unable to imagine which sensory organs we lack because we do not feel any deprivation from their absence.

This can be compared with not feeling the need for a sixth finger on one’s hand. Since we don’t have the senses required to perceive other worlds, we cannot sense them. Therefore, despite our being surrounded by such a rich environment, we are able to see only a small fragment of it. In addition, even the fragment we perceive is quite distorted, since we can only grasp a small portion of it.