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But above all, Jewish Kabbalah is a set of sacred and magical teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God—the mysterious Ein Sof (אֵין סוֹף , 'The Infinite') [30] [31] —and the mortal, finite universe (God's creation). [2] [30]
Lurianic Kabbalah became the dominant system in Jewish mysticism, displacing Cordovero's, and afterwards, the Zohar was read by Jewish Kabbalists in its light. Medieval Kabbalah depicts a linear descending hierarchy of Ohr "Light", the ten sefirot or divine attributes emerging from concealment in the Ein Sof "Divine Infinity" to enact Creation ...
The creative power of letters is particularly evident in Sefer Yetzirah (Hebrew: book of creation), a mystical text that tells a story of the creation which is based on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, a story which diverges greatly from that in the Book of Genesis. The creative power of letters is also explored in the Talmud and Zohar. [9] [10]
The Rabbinic ban on studying Kabbalah in Jewish society was lifted by the efforts of the 16th-century kabbalist Avraham Azulai (1570–1643). I have found it written that all that has been decreed Above forbidding open involvement in the Wisdom of Truth [Kabbalah] was [only meant for] the limited time period until the year 5,250 (1490 C.E.).
Jewish mysticism, from early Hekhalot texts, through medieval spirituality, to the folk religion storytelling of East European shtetls, absorbed motifs of Jewish mythology and folklore through Aggadic creative imagination, reception of earlier Jewish apocrypha traditions, and absorption of outside cultural influences.
According to Jewish mythology, in the Garden of Eden there is a tree of life or the "tree of souls" [11] that blossoms and produces new souls, which fall into the Guf, the Treasury of Souls. The Angel Gabriel reaches into the treasury and takes out the first soul that comes into his hand.
Keter or Kether (Hebrew: כֶּתֶר ⓘ, Keṯer, lit. "crown") is the first of the ten sefirot in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, symbolizing the divine will and the initial impulse towards creation from the Ein Sof, or infinite source.
The noun merkavah "thing to ride in, cart" is derived from the consonantal root רכב r-k-b with the general meaning "to ride". The word "chariot" is found 44 times in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible—most of them referring to normal chariots on earth, [5] and although the concept of the Merkabah is associated with Ezekiel's vision (), the word is not explicitly written in Ezekiel 1.