Kabbalah By Ashley Arnold What is Kabbalah Kabbalah

Kabbalah By: Ashley Arnold

What is Kabbalah? • Kabbalah is the system of wisdom that teaches the truth about one God. He is known as the creator and great ruler of the universe • Kabbalah is a branch of Judaism but if focuses mostly on a more mystical side of the religion • Kabbalah is the name applied to the whole range of Jewish mystical activity. While codes of Jewish law focus on what it is God wants from man, in Kabbalah they try to find a deeper meaning to life and search for God’s essence

Meaning • The word Kabbalah is a Hebrew word from the root word Kabel which means receive • Kabbalah is a received teaching or tradition • Kabbalah refers directly to the body of received teachings of the Torah

How it got started • Kabbalah is an old religion reaching back to the time of patriarch Abraham. Who dedicated his life to searching for the one God and revealing him to the world • Abrahams journey brought him to supreme levels of wisdom, his teachings were passed down in Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation. Which is the most ancient of Kabbalistic work

Practices • Kabbalah follows most of the same practices and rituals as Judaism such as Sabbath, kosher dietary needs and following the morals and laws from the Torah • Some practices that are different from Judaism are meditations and devotions for use in prayer or when performing certain tasks, like eating the meal at Sabbath, celebrating Passover and some fasting

Scriptures • Bahir- Book of brightness or enlightenment, explains the mystical significance of Biblical verses • Zohar- Book of Splendor, is a group of books that deal with the mystery of creation, mythical cosmology and mystical psychology and the functions of the mystical evil and salvation of the soul

Tree of Life • The Tree if Life in Kabbalah is very important, the tree of life is a mystical symbol in Kabbalah of esoteric Judiasm to describe the path to God • Kabbalists developed this concept into a full model of reality using the tree to depict a map of creation that one must follow