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The understanding of the word Kabbalah undergoes a transformation of its meaning in medieval Judaism, in the books which are now primarily referred to as 'the Kabbalah': the Bahir, the Zohar, Etz Hayim etc. [29] In these books the word Kabbalah is used in manifold new senses.
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.
Focusing on the holiness of the text, Jewish mystics consider every nuance of the text to be a clue in discovering divine secrets, from the entire text to the accents on each letter. Once one can find such knowledge, one can use the text in mystical rituals to affect both the upper worlds (heavens) and the lower world (our world).
By the second century CE Jewish sages began writing down interpretations of the Bible; Orthodox Jews consider these writings to embody the "oral law." These writings take several forms: Talmud – An authoritative commentary on the Mishnah. Mishnah – An analysis of the laws and meaning of the Bible, containing information from the oral law.
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 ...
This article lists figures in Kabbalah according to historical chronology and schools of thought. In popular reference, Kabbalah has been used to refer to the whole history of Jewish mysticism, but more accurately, and as used in academic Jewish studies, Kabbalah refers to the doctrines, practices and esoteric exegetical method in Torah, that emerged in 12th-13th century Southern France and ...
Although the earliest extant Hebrew kabbalistic manuscripts dating to the late 13th century contain diagrams, including one labelled "Tree of Wisdom," the now-iconic tree of life emerged during the fourteenth century. [6] The iconic representation first appeared in print on the cover of the Latin translation of Gates of Light in the year 1516. [7]