Anthropomorphism in Kabbalah - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Kabbalah

Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...

, the central system in Jewish mysticism, uses subtle anthropomorphic analogies and metaphors to describe God in Judaism

God in Judaism

The conception of God in Judaism is strictly monotheistic. God is an absolute one indivisible incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence. Jewish tradition teaches that the true aspect of God is incomprehensible and unknowable, and that it is only God's revealed aspect that...

. These include male-female influences in the Divine. Kabbalists repeatedly warn and stress the need to divorce their notions from any corporeality, dualism, plurality, or spatial and temporal connotations. As "the Torah speaks in the language of Man", the empirical terms are necessarily imposed upon man's experience in this world. Once the analogy is described, its limitations are then related to, stripping the kernel of its husk, to arrive at a truer conception.

Due to the danger of impure material analogy, Kabbalists traditionally restricted oral transmission

Oral Torah

The Oral Torah comprises the legal and interpretative traditions that, according to tradition, were transmitted orally from Mount Sinai, and were not written in the Torah...

to close circles, with sincere motives, advanced learning and elite preparation, while also seeking possible dissemination from the 16th century to further Messianic preparation. Understanding Kabbalah through its unity with complete mainstream Talmudic, Halachic and philosophical

Jewish philosophy

Jewish philosophy , includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or, in relation to the religion of Judaism. Jewish philosophy, until modern Enlightenment and Emancipation, was pre-occupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism; thus organizing...

proficiency was a traditional prerequisite to avoid the false dangers. They attributed 17th-18th century Sabbatean mystical heresies to false corporeality of Kabbalah through unworthy motives. Later Hasidic thought saw its communal popularisation as a safeguard against esoteric corporeality, by its new internalisation of Jewish mysticism through the psychological spiritual experience of man.

Kabbalah emerged parallel to, and soon after, the rationalist tradition of Medieval Jewish philosophy

Jewish philosophy

. Maimonides articulated normative Jewish theology in his philosophical stress against any false corporeal interpretation of references to God in the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic literature

Rabbinic literature

Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, can mean the entire spectrum of rabbinic writings throughout Jewish history. However, the term often refers specifically to literature from the Talmudic era, as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic writing, and thus corresponds with the Hebrew term...

, encapsulated in his 3rd principle of faith

Jewish principles of faith

The concept of an explicit, paramount definition of faith does not exist in Judaism as it does in other monotheistic religions such as Christianity. Although Jews and religious leaders share a core of monotheistic principles, and there are many fundamental principles quoted in the Talmud to define...

and legal codification

Mishneh Torah

The Mishneh Torah subtitled Sefer Yad ha-Hazaka is a code of Jewish religious law authored by Maimonides , one of history's foremost rabbis...

of Monotheism

Monotheism

Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...

. He formulated the philosophical transcendence of the Godhead

Godhead (Judaism)

Godhead is used to refer to "God as He is in Himself." This is the aspect or substratum of God that lies behind His actions or properties, i.e., the essence of God, and its nature has been the subject of long debate in every major religion.-Terminology:...

through negative theology

Negative theology

Apophatic theology —also known as negative theology or via negativa —is a theology that attempts to describe God, the Divine Good, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God...

. Kabbalists agreed with this but gave a radical, different immanent approach to God by relating to Divine emanations

Ohr

Ohr is a central Kabbalistic term in the Jewish mystical tradition. The analogy of physical light is used as a way of describing metaphysical Divine emanations...

. These involved Medieval Zohar

Zohar

The Zohar is the foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah and scriptural interpretations as well as material on Mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology...

ic notions of Divine attributes and male-female powers, recast though 16th century Lurianism as cosmic Withdrawal

Tzimtzum

Tzimtzum is a term used in the kabbalistic teaching of Isaac Luria, explaining his concept that God began the process of creation by "contracting" his infinite light in order to allow for a "conceptual space" in which a finite and seemingly independent world could exist...

, exile-redemption

Tohu and Tikun

Olam HaTohu and Olam HaTikun are the two general stages, and states of being in Creation, in the Kabbalistic system of Isaac Luria , the father of modern Kabbalah....

and Divine Personas

Partzufim

Partzufim/Partsufim , meaning Divine "Personae/Visages/Faces/Forms/Configurations", are particular reconfigured arrangements of the 10 sephirot Divine attributes/emanations of Kabbalah into harmonised interactions in Creation. Their names derive from mystical discourses in the Zohar, the...

, further emphasising the non-corporeal nature of its personified doctrines which became dominant in early-modern Judaism. Nonetheless, Kabbalists carefully chose their terminology to denote subtle connotations and profound relationships in the Divine spiritual influences. More accurately, as they describe the emanation of the Material world from the Spiritual realms

Four Worlds

The Four Worlds , sometimes counted with a prior stage to make Five Worlds, are the comprehensive categories of spiritual realms in Kabbalah in the descending chain of Existence....

, the analogous anthropomorphisms and material metaphors themselves derive through cause and effect

Ohr

Ohr is a central Kabbalistic term in the Jewish mystical tradition. The analogy of physical light is used as a way of describing metaphysical Divine emanations...

from their precise root analogies on High.

The metaphor of sexuality in Kabbalah

Divine Names and Sephirot in Meditative Kabbalah

See also