World Religions › Medieval › Rabbinic Judaism
Kabbalah and the Zohar
Zohar c. 1280s· Scripture or text· Judaism, Christianity & Islam
Mostly agreed by scholarsMost historians agree; some details uncertain.
Kabbalah is Judaism's mystical tradition; its central book, the Zohar, appeared in Spain in the late 1200s.
See it on the World Religions map →What it is
Kabbalah ('received tradition') teaches that the hidden, infinite God (Ein Sof) reveals itself through ten sefirot, divine qualities such as wisdom, mercy and judgment, often drawn as a tree. Human deeds and prayer, it holds, affect harmony in the divine world. The Zohar, an Aramaic commentary on the Torah, was circulated by Moses de León in Castile; tradition credits the 2nd-century sage Shimon bar Yochai. In 1500s Safed, Isaac Luria added ideas of cosmic exile and repair (tikkun).
Why it matters
It shaped Jewish prayer, customs and Hasidism, and influenced Christian thinkers and today's popular spirituality. Luria's idea of tikkun, cosmic repair, fed the modern Jewish ideal of 'tikkun olam', repairing the world.
Sources and history
Medieval manuscripts and the first printed editions (Mantua and Cremona, 1558–60); linguistic analysis of the Zohar's Aramaic; and Gershom Scholem's twentieth-century scholarship, which founded its academic study.
Questions and debates
Traditional believers attribute the Zohar to Shimon bar Yochai; most scholars think Moses de León and his circle wrote it, and debate whether one author or several.
Connections (3)
▸Hasidism (Baal Shem Tov) popularized Kabbalah and the ZoharHistorical record
The connection
Kabbalah had been studied mainly by a learned few. Hasidism, drawing especially on Isaac Luria's Kabbalah, turned ideas like divine sparks hidden in all things into everyday devotion: eating, working or singing with the right intention could lift those sparks back to God. Stories and songs replaced dense texts, bringing mysticism to ordinary Jews.
When and where
Podolia and Volhynia, now Ukraine, from the 1740s; spread by the Baal Shem Tov's disciples, notably Dov Ber of Mezeritch, across Eastern Europe by about 1800.
Historical evidence
Early Hasidic books, such as Toldot Yaakov Yosef (1780), cite Lurianic Kabbalah and the Zohar throughout; scholars from Gershom Scholem on trace the borrowing.
Questions and debates
Scholem saw Hasidism as defusing Kabbalah's messianic tension; Moshe Idel and others argue it drew on older and broader mystical traditions.
▸Kabbalah and the Zohar is the mystical stream of Rabbinic JudaismHistorical record
The connection
Kabbalah grew inside rabbinic Judaism, not outside it: kabbalists were usually Talmud scholars who kept Jewish law and explained it mystically, teaching that each commandment and prayer helps repair the divine world. Through Luria's followers and later Hasidism, Kabbalah entered mainstream prayer books and customs, such as the Friday-night hymn Lekha Dodi.
When and where
Provence and Spain in the 1100s–1200s, then Safed in the 1500s; figures include Nahmanides, Moses de León, Joseph Karo and Isaac Luria.
Historical evidence
Kabbalists' writings cite and explain the Talmud; Joseph Karo wrote both the main law code and a mystical diary; prayer books contain kabbalistic texts.
Questions and debates
Scholars debate whether Kabbalah grew from older Jewish mysticism or new medieval influences like Neoplatonism; some rabbis, then and now, have opposed it.
▸New Age spirituality borrowed from Kabbalah and the ZoharMostly agreed by scholars
The connection
Western occultists had already reworked Kabbalah's Tree of Life, the ten sefirot, into a map for tarot and magic. From the 1970s, groups such as the Kabbalah Centre taught simplified Kabbalah to non-Jews as a self-help spirituality, apart from Jewish law; celebrity followers and red-string bracelets made it famous in the 1990s.
When and where
London, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn from 1888; Philip Berg's Kabbalah Centre, Los Angeles from 1984; Madonna and other celebrities in the late 1990s.
How do we know?
The Kabbalah Centre's own materials and press coverage, and studies such as Jody Myers's 'Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest' (2007).
Questions and debates
Many rabbis and scholars see popular Kabbalah as a dilution, since tradition reserved its study for learned Jews; whether it counts as authentic Kabbalah is debated.