Reputed source of secret Jewish wisdom. Although the Hebrew word kabbalah actually means “tradition” and referred originally to the legal practices of Judaism, it has become associated with mystical Judaism; in particular, it refers to a system of obscure and mysterious practices that were formulated in the medieval period. The most famous of the kabbalistic texts, known as the Zohar, was composed by the scholar Moses de Leon around the year 1290. Jewish students of the kabbalah in southern Europe stressed speculation about the nature of the universe, while those in northern Europe applied the practices to social, ethical, and even magical themes. The study of the kabbalah spread during later medieval and Renaissance times, especially among the Jewish communities that were expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1495. Jewish mystics such as Isaac ben Solomon Luria in the 16th century and Sabbatai Zevi in the 17th century used the kabbalah as the foundation for new schools of thought and the basis for personal messianic status. Luria’s work with the kabbalah formed the core of Hasidic Judaism.
Medieval Jewish thinkers derived the kabbalah from the Old Testament, using symbolic techniques based on combinations of letters and numbers. From the material revealed by these techniques, the kabbalists worked out some singular beliefs about the creation of the world and the redemption of humankind. They theorized that the world radiated from an unknowable God in a series of creations. They believed that there had been four of these creations, each one interlocking with the next. When Adam sinned, the immanent spirit or divine presence of God was exiled from the current creation. This divine presence, which the kabbalists regarded as female, would bring about harmony and redemption to the universe when reunited with the transcendent aspect of the divinity.