Expert: Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner - 9/1/2004

Question
Age: 24
Religious Affiliation: Southern Baptist

I work with a guy who was raised mormon. Lately he has been studying a lot of kabbalah. The other day he told me that circumcision comes from Lilith and it was instituted to appease her. He claimed that the Talmud taught this, as well as the fact that she was Adam's first wife. I'm pretty familiar with what I as a Christian hold to as the Old Testament. From my own studies I would think that if the Talmud did teach this it would undermine quite a bit of Jewish theology.

I know that I am not Jewish, but I would greatly appreciate any help you could give me on these answers. Also any thoughts on kabbalah would be helpful.

thank you

Answer
Dear Michael,

Thanks for writing.

Your friend studying kabbalah is as silly as Madonna studying kabbalah. It is part of a misunderstanding as to the meaning of Jewish mystical traditions.

Judaism requires one to know the Hebrew language fluently, deal with the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew without the need for any translation, be a scholar in Mishna-Talmud-Midrash BEFORE beginning any of several different mystical interpretations of the Biblical tradition.

In addition, one needs to know Jewish history thoroughly in order to place the mystical tradition in the context of the other interpretative traditions of the Bible.

We also speak frequently of the age of 40 and marriage to reflect the obligation to be stable emotionally, mature, etc.

I doubt that your friend has these qualities. He is probably falling under the influence of the popular craze of Kabbalah Centers and the "translations" of kabbalistic literature, missing. It is unfortunate that he thinks he is studying kabbalah, but even more so that others are encouraging him to believe that he is on theright path.

Regarding kabalah and Jewish mysticism, please read Gershon Scholem and various books, and the appropriate entries in jewishencyclopedia.com on-line or in the library.

A small section from the Encyclopedia Judaica may also be of assistance:

Rabbi Dov

Also:   Cabbalah;  Christian Kabbalah;  Hokhmah penimit;  Jewish mysticism;  Mysticism;  Practical Kabbalah;  Qabbalah;  Speculative Kabbalah;  Theosophy;  Esoterics
KABBALAH
INTRODUCTION
GENERAL NOTES
"Kabbalah" is the traditional and most commonly used term for the esoteric teachings of Judaism and for Jewish mysticism, especially the forms which it assumed in the Middle Ages from the 12th century onward. In its wider sense it signifies all the successive esoteric movements in Judaism that evolved from the end of the period of the Second Temple and became active factors in the history of Israel.
Kabbalah is a unique phenomenon, and should not generally be equated with what is known in the history of religion as "mysticism." It is mysticism in fact; but at the same time it is both esotericism and theosophy. In what sense it may be called mysticism depends on the definition of the term, a matter of dispute among scholars. If the term is restricted to the profound yearning for direct human communion with God through annihilation of individuality (bittul ha-yesh in hasidic terminology), then only a few manifestations of Kabbalah can be designated as such, because few kabbalists sought this goal, let alone formulated it openly as their final aim. However, Kabbalah may be considered mysticism in so far as it seeks an apprehension of God and creation whose intrinsic elements are beyond the grasp of the intellect, although this is seldom explicitly belittled or rejected by the Kabbalah. Essentially these elements were perceived through contemplation and illumination, which is often presented in the Kabbalah as the transmission of a primeval revelation concerning the nature of the Torah and other religious matters. In essence, the Kabbalah is far removed from the rational and intellectual approach to religion. This was the case even among those kabbalists who thought that basically religion was subject to rational enquiry, or that, at least, there was some accord between the path of intellectual perception and the development of the mystical approach to the subject of creation. For some kabbalists the intellect itself became a mystical phenomenon. So we find in Kabbalah a paradoxical emphasis on the congruence between intuition and tradition. It is this emphasis, together with the historical association already hinted at in the term "kabbalah" (something handed down by tradition), that points to the basic differences between the Kabbalah and other kinds of religious mysticism which are less closely identified with a people's history. Nevertheless, there are elements common to Kabbalah and both Greek and Christian mysticism, and even historical links between them.
Like other kinds of mysticism, Kabbalah too draws upon the mystic's awareness of both the transcendence of God and His immanence within the true religious life, every facet of which is a revelation of God, although God Himself is most clearly perceived through man's introspection. This dual and apparently contradictory experience of the self-concealing and self-revealing God determines the essential sphere of mysticism, while at the same time it obstructs other religious conceptions. The second element in Kabbalah is that of theosophy, which seeks to reveal the mysteries of the hidden life of God and the relationships between the divine life on the one hand and the life of man and creation on the other. Speculations of this type occupy a large and conspicuous area in kabbalistic teaching. Sometimes their connection with the mystical plane becomes rather tenuous and is superseded by an interpretative and homiletical vein which occasionally even results in a kind of kabbalistic pilpul.
In its form the Kabbalah became to a large extent an esoteric doctrine. Mystical and esoteric elements coexist in Kabbalah in a highly confused fashion. By its very nature, mysticism is knowledge that cannot be communicated directly but may be expressed only through symbol and metaphor. Esoteric knowledge, however, in theory can be transmitted, but those who possess it are either forbidden to pass it on or do not wish to do so. The kabbalists stressed this esoteric aspect by imposing all kinds of limitations on the propagation of their teachings, either with regard to the age of the initiates, the ethical qualities required of them, or the number of students before whom these teachings could be expounded. Typical of this is the account of the conditions for initiates in Kabbalah found in Moses Cordovero's Or Ne'erav. Often these limitations were disregarded in practice, despite the protests of many kabbalists. The printing of kabbalistic books and the influence of Kabbalah on widening circles broke down such restrictions, especially as far as the teachings on God and man were concerned. Nevertheless, there remained areas where these limitations were still more or less adhered to; for example, in the meditations on the letter-combinations (hokhmat ha-zeruf) and practical Kabbalah.
Many kabbalists denied the existence of any kind of historical development in the Kabbalah. They saw it as a kind of primordial revelation that was accorded to Adam or the early generations and that endured, although new revelations were made from time to time, particularly when the tradition had been either forgotten or interrupted. This notion of the nature of esoteric wisdom was expressed in apocryphal works like the Book of Enoch, was again stressed in the Zohar, and served as the basis for the dissemination of kabbalistic teaching in Sefer ha-Emunot by Shem Tov b. Shem Tov (c. 1400) and in Avodat ha-Kodesh by Meir b. Gabbai (1567). It became widely accepted that the Kabbalah was the esoteric part of the Oral Law given to Moses at Sinai. Several of the genealogies of the tradition appearing in kabbalistic literature, which were intended to support the idea of the continuity of the secret tradition, are themselves faulty and misconceived, lacking in any historical value. In actual fact, some kabbalists themselves give concrete instances of the historical development of their ideas, since they regard them either as having deteriorated to some extent from the original tradition, which found its expression in the increase of kabbalistic systems, or as part of a gradual progress toward the complete revelation of the secret wisdom. Kabbalists themselves rarely attempt to attain a historical orientation, but some examples of such an approach may be found in Emunat Hakhamim by Solomon Avi'ad Sar-Shalom Basilea (1730), and in Divrei Soferim by Zadok ha-Kohen of Lublin (1913).
From the beginning of its development, the Kabbalah embraced an esotericism closely akin to the spirit of Gnosticism, one which was not restricted to instruction in the mystical path but also included ideas on cosmology, angelology, and magic. Only later, and as a result of the contact with medieval Jewish philosophy, the Kabbalah became a Jewish "mystical theology," more or less systematically elaborated. This process brought about a separation of the mystical, speculative elements from the occult and especially the magical elements, a divergence that at times was quite distinct but was never total. It is expressed in the separate usage of the terms Kabbalah iyyunit ("speculative Kabbalah") and Kabbalah ma'asit ("practical Kabbalah"), evident from the beginning of the 14th century—which was simply an imitation of Maimonides' division of philosophy into "speculative" and "practical" in chapter 14 of his Millot ha-Higgayon. There is no doubt that some kabbalistic circles (including those in Jerusalem up to modern times) preserved both elements in their secret doctrine, which could be acquired by means of revelation or by way of initiation rites.