The History of Kabbalah
Some of the earliest traces of Jewish mysticism appear in the Old Testament apocryphal work called the Book of Enoch. Enoch’s vision of God borrows from and builds upon the imagery found in Ezekiel’s description of God and his divine chariot. It expands upon Ezekiel’s account to produce a hierarchical depiction of the world and the various heavens.[1] Enoch also speculates at great length about demons and archangels. Each of these features becomes foundational for later Kabbalistic traditions: the exposition of Ezekiel’s vision, the delineation of a hierarchical cosmology, and speculation about a variety of angels and demons.
In the first few centuries CE, the exposition of Ezekiel’s vision became a very popular theme in Jewish literature. Daniel C. Matt writes, “An entire literature developed recounting the visionary exploits of those who followed in Ezekiel’s footsteps, among them some of the leading figures in rabbinic Judaism. The journey was arduous and dangerous, requiring intense, ascetic preparation and knowledge of secret passwords in order to be admitted to the various heavenly palaces guarded by menacing angels. The final goal was to attain a vision of God on the throne.”[2]
Particularly significant in the development of this genre was the account of Rabbi Aqiba’s vision of the divine chariot and palaces, dating to around the first half of the second century. This story is transmitted in the Talmud as follows:
Four entered pardes (paradise): Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Aher, and Rabbi Aqiba. Ben Azzai glimpsed and died. Ben Zoma glimpsed and went mad. Aher cut the plants. Rabbi Aqiba emerged in peace.[3]The story of the four sages became the basis for an early mystical work called Heikhalot Zutartey (The Smaller Book of Celestial Palaces). This work was imitated by Heikhalot Rabbati (The Greater Book of Celestial Palaces), a book about a similar experience had by Rabbi Ishmael. Both of these books (and the stories from the Talmud which are their basis) merely expand upon earlier trains of mystical thought. But into the midst of this mystical foment burst a new idea that was to profoundly impact the later kabbalists. This new theme is explored in a document called the Shi’ur Qomah (The Measurement of the Divine Height). The Shi’ur Qomah describes God in anthropomorphic imagery of extreme portions. Each limb is millions of times longer than the earth is wide, and each is given a magical name. There are three elements here that influenced later Jewish mystics. First, anthropomorphic descriptions of God would become common in kabbalistic works. Second, kabbalah is very concerned with mystical investigation into the nature of God. And third, kabbalah is also interested in magical names and incantations.[4]
Another work that paved the way for kabbalah was written around the fourth century C.E. Called Sefer Yesirah (Book of Creation), this work is the first to use the term “sefirot” that would become so central to kabbalah. The sefirot of this short tract, like the later sefirot, are ten in number. But here they represent cosmological dimensions (up, down, east, west, north, south, beginning, end, good, and evil), whereas the later sefirot are ten emanations of God.[5]
The first full-fledged kabbalists lived in the twelfth century. Avraham ben David and Ya’aqov the Nazirite were the among the best-known early authorities. They were followed later by the famous philosopher Moses Maimonides and his students. The twelfth-century Kabbalists were very secretive and elitist, but at the beginning of the thirteenth century the movement came more out into the open. The Sefer ha-bahir (The Book of Brightness), generally considered the first kabbalistic book, was produced during this period. It was falsely ascribed to a second-century sage. Shortly thereafter an anonymous group of Spanish Jews produced a number of short, speculative treatises known as the ‘Iyyun literature. Some of these combined ancient expositions of Ezekiel’s chariot vision with Neoplatonic philosophy. Another described in detail the structure of the demonic world.[6]
The ideas expressed in these early treatises were collected by a Spanish Jewish mystic named Moses de Leon and incorporated by him into the Sefer ha-Zohar. The Zohar was written in lyrical Aramaic in imitation of the style of ancient Talmudic literature. It is replete with obscure symbols and erotic imagery. It is a work of mythical fiction, about the adventures of one Rabbi Shim’on. Shim'on and his companions wander throughout Galilee, mystically expounding scripture and exchanging esoteric wisdom with characters they encounter during their journeys. Moses de Leon claimed to be no more than a scribe, conveying wisdom he had copied from an ancient book. Matt suggests he may have composed the Zohar through “automatic writing”, a technique in which one meditates on the divine name, enters a trance, and writes whatever comes to mind. But however the Zohar was written, it is clear that Leon was more than a scribe; he was the actual composer.[7]
The Zohar was eventually accepted as canonical by Spanish kabbalists. Because of the expulsion of Jews from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, Jewish sages carried the Zohar from Spain into every corner of Europe and the Mediterranean. Palestine then became the center of kabbalistic thought. In the mid-sixteenth century a Palestinian sage named Isaac Luria told the creation story that would be the foundation for virtually all kabbalists after his time.
According to Luria, the initial movement in the process of creation consisted of the withdrawal of the all-pervading godhead into itself, leaving a point in which the world would come to exist. This withdrawal or contraction (tsimtsum), made possible the elimination of “evil” elements inherent in the godhead. (The evil elements that left the godhead during tsimtsum formed the “material domain.”) This cathartic event was followed by a series of emanations from the godhead that were intended to constitute the created world. As the emanations proceeded from their divine source, a catastrophic event occurred—the breaking of the vessels that carried them. Sparks of the divine light fell into the material domain where they were imprisoned in shells of matter. The task of the kabbalist was to liberate the sparks in order to reconstitute the divine configuration, the primordial man (adam qadmon), a goal with eschatological overtones.[8]
Modern kabbalah is essentially Lurianic, though it has been modified in minor ways by other sages since his time. Avraham Yitshaq Kook, for example, introduced a more pantheistic element into the tradition. In some circles there is also a renewed interest in ecstatic kabbalah.[9]
Theosophy and Theurgy
The Encyclopedia of Religion defines kabbalah in terms of two major characteristics:
(1) A theosophical understanding of God combined with a symbolic view of reality and the theurgical conception of religious life, and (2) the way to attain a mystical experience of God through the invocation of divine names.[10]
In order to understand kabbalah, then, we must understand “theosophy” and “theurgy”. It is to these terms, then, that we will now turn our attention.
“Theosophy” has been variously defined. One source says it is “A body of doctrine relating to deity, cosmos, and self… and sometimes associated with mysticism, pantheism, and magic.”[11] According to the Encyclopedia of Religion, it is concerned with the hidden mysteries of the divinity and—by extension—the universe.[12] “Theosophy” means literally “God-wisdom” or “God-sage”, and in this case refers especially to hidden wisdom. The term also carries a very pluralistic connotation, particularly since it is commonly associated with the Theosophical Society, a religious and philosophical society based in Pasadena, California that teaches the basic unity of all religions.
Kabbalah’s very roots are theosophical in nature. It speculates about the nature and structure of the godhead, as well as of the created universe. It is also pluralistic. Kabbalist Leo Schaya argues that “the essential principles of the various orthodox revelations are identical, a fact which can be discovered by metaphysical penetration of dogmas and symbols.”[13] Rabbi David A. Cooper agrees, “Although the base of information (in Kabbalah) is from a Jewish point of view, the insights overflow into Christian and Muslim traditions, for the teachings are universal.”[14]
The other important term, “theurgy”, means something like “actuating the divine.” The Encyclopedia of Religion says it “refers to actions that induce or bring about the presence of a divine or supernatural being.”[15] Among the Neoplatonists, its goal was to raise the soul to fellowship with the supreme God. Another dictionary adds that theurgy is “a human act, process, power, or state of supernatural efficacy or origin.”
Theurgy in kabbalism, like Neoplatonism, is the unification of the human soul with the transcendent divine being. Remember Luria’s description of the divine sparks that fell to earth and became part of the material world? The sparks are human souls. Through the process of tiqqun (repair), these sparks can be raised and restored to the transcendent being. All human actions either promote or impede this process, depending on whether they are morally good or evil. When tiqqun is sufficiently accomplished, the Messiah will come.[16]
Until tiqqun is accomplished, human souls continue to be reincarnated. The doctrine of transmigration was present in kabbalah since its earliest times. The earliest and most explicit references to it are found in the book Bahir, written in the first part of the thirteenth century.[17] Moses Maimonides believed that Job had to suffer because he had committed sins in an earlier life. He also contended that when a male soul inhabits a female body, the woman is sterile. This early school of kabbalist thought had no concept of transmigration into the bodies of animals (though this idea would appear among some kabbalists at a later date).[18]
The above definition of theurgy, however, is remarkably narrow. It is much too human-centered, for the kabbalist believes that by his or her actions the godhead itself may benefit. Matt explains, “Ethical and spiritual behaviors unite the sefiroth (the parts of the godhead), ensuring a flow of blessing and emanation to the lower worlds; unethical or evil human activities disrupt the union above, empowering the demonic forces.”[19] Thus human actions actually have the ability to alter the structure of the divine being. The Encyclopedia of Religion elaborates,
Kabbalistic obervance of the commandments constitutes a theurgic activity, since its aim is the restructuring of God. This view of the commandments represents a sophisticated presentation of an ancient trend in Jewish thought that found its earliest expression in Talmudic and Midrashic literature, in which God is sometimes presented as requesting Moses’ blessing, desiring the prayer of the righteous, and even increasing or decreasing his power in accordance with the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the commandments by Israel. With the emergence of Lurianic kabbalah, the emphasis was transferred to the extraction of the divine sparks (nitsotsot) from the material, demonic world as a progressive eschatological activity whose ultimate aim is to restore the primeval anthropomorphic configuration of the divinity.[20]The Sefiroth and the Nature of God
The sefiroth (“numbers”) are the central concept of kabbalah. They are ten emanations of the Ein Sof (“without end”), the hidden transcendent deity. The Ein Sof does not actually act or do anything. He/she/it has no defining characteristics. All those things we would normally think of as characteristics of Ein Sof—God—are actually characteristics of the sefiroth (or of the angels).[21]The sefiroth emanate from Ein Sof and comprise the highest of four realms of existence: the realm of emanation. The second realm, the world of creation, consists of the higher angels and the divine chariot. The third is the world of formation and is composed of the rest of the angels, and the last is the material world.[22]
The sefiroth have been variously arranged in the different schemes of kabbalists throughout the centuries, but the above diagram represents the most traditional construction. It is also sometimes drawn in the shape of a tree, or more commonly a man, as below.
The arrangement is intended to emphasize the relationships between the sefiroth, as well as their respective functions. There is a hierarchy from the top down, and there is balance between the left and right. For example, Schaya says that grace is the “right arm” of God and law is his “left arm”, and that by these complementary methods he keeps all creation in perfect balance.[23]
There is also not only a hierarchy, but a logical progression. For example, Understanding produces Judgment whereas Wisdom produces Mercy, but ultimately Understanding and Wisdom are from the same place: the divine Crown. When all five of these are combined, they produce Beauty. Beauty then combines with the other attributes to form Eternity and Reverberation, which when combined with Beauty lay the Foundation, and ultimately bring about the divine Kingdom. This progression from the top down represents emanation from Ein Sof, but it can also be reversed to represent the soul’s ascent to the divine being.[24]
The all-important sense of balance in kabbalah also results in an understanding of God as being not genderless, but rather as being both male and female. The infinite being manifests the characteristics of both genders. One side of the sefirothic scheme is more female, the other more male. It is when the two genders are united together with the infinite creator that Beauty, Foundation, and the Kingdom are created. The Zohar teaches that in honor of the union of the supernal Mother and Father, a man is to cherish and rejoice in his wife. Additionally, when people are not with their spouses they are understood to be with a “heavenly mate” so that they “do not cease to be ‘male and female’.”[25]
Angels and Demons
Kabbalah has a fairly developed scheme of angels, many of which are given esoteric names that are used in incantations. These angels are nowhere near as central to the mystical system as the Ein Sof and the sefiroth, but a few of them are still very significant for this study. The first of these is Metatron.
Metatron is the highest angel in kabbalah. There is scarcely a duty or power on any plane of existence that is not assigned to him. He has been called “the lesser YHWH” and the one “whose name is like that of his Master.”[26] He absorbs many of the specific duties of the archangel Michael. According to Gershom Scholem, some kabbalists believe that when Enoch ascended to heaven he was transformed into Metatron.[27]
For Leo Schaya, however, Metatron takes on even more significance than this. When Ezekiel saw a form like a man sitting on the divine throne in his vision, it was Metatron. Metatron is the anthropomorphic representation of God. He is the manifestation of the Shekinah glory of Ein Sof. He is the source from which the divine sparks come. He is the only being in which all ten sefiroth are entirely present. Metatron is, clearly, a being. And yet he is more than that. Metatron is a prototype. He is “imminent man.” It is possible for man to transcend this created world and to become Metatron.[28] This explains why, in the tale of Enoch’s transformation, Metatron is the object of his meditation even before he himself becomes Metatron.[29] Man does not become “the Metatron” or even “a Metatron”; he is instead somehow united with or absorbed into Metatron.
There are other angels as well, and Jewish tradition describes an adversarial relationship between them and humans. Angels are jealous of humans because we have free will and they don’t. One tale says that the angels actually argued over whether humans should be included in creation. The angel of love was in favor of the idea, but the angel of truth was against it. The angel of earth refused to surrender dust for the creative act, lest the earth be despoiled by these new creatures. In the end, God had to create humans from the dust himself rather than send an angel to do it.[30]
Just as kabbalah has angels, it also has demons. Cooper explains,
The head of the demons is Satan, who is also named Samael and Beelzebub, while the king of demons is called Asmodeus. Asmodeus married Agrath, and they are attended by tens of thousands of other demons. Just as there are many types of angels, there are various types of demons, which include shedim (devils), se’irim (hairy demons, satyrs), mavet (death), dever (pestilence), and azazel (the demon to whom the scapegoat is sent on Yom Kippur).[31]Demons, Cooper goes on to explain, are between angels and humans. They have wings, can appear in different forms, eat, drink, propagate, and die. They can have sexual relations with humans, but since they do not have real bodies, they can only do so in dreams. Humans, he says, create new demons through their imaginations. He also says that if one knows how to capture a demon’s power, they can be put into service. One story says that Solomon subjugated Asmodeus and used a team of demonic builders in the construction of the First Temple.[32]
The Interpretation of the Torah
Kabbalists believe that the Torah must be interpreted spiritually. Schaya explains,
To understand the intellectual premises of the Kabbalah… one must be imbued with the idea that its doctrines have spiritual contemplation, pure inspiration, or ‘intellectual intuition’ as their point of departure and not the autocratic activity of reason.[33]All scripture can be interpreted in four senses, as represented by the consonants of the word pardes (paradise): PRDS.[34] Peshat is the literal sense, remez is allusion, derash is “homiletic exposition,” and sod is the secret or spiritual sense. In the sod method of scriptural interpretation, with which kabbalah chiefly concerns itself, the sefiroth become “supports for contemplation.” The interpreter invokes their names according to certain formulaic rules, and then his or her eyes are opened to the hidden mysteries in scripture.[35]
Sod is central to the Zohar. Matt explains,
The plot of the Zohar focuses ultimately on the sefiroth. By penetrating the literal surface of the Torah, the mystical commentators transform the Biblical narrative into a biography of God. The entire Torah is read as a divine name, expressing the divine being. Even a seemingly insignificant verse can reveal the inner dynamics of the sefiroth—how God feels, responds, and acts, how She and He relate intimately with each other and with the world.[36]For example, the opening chapters of Genesis describe not just the creation of the world, but also the emanation of the sefiroth. And when Isaiah says, “He smites the sea into seven streams” (11:15), the reference is to the seven lower sefiroth.[37]
Sod also involves numerology. Every Hebrew letter is assigned a numerical value, and by adding up the values of each letter of a word, one can determine the numerical value of that word. The numerical values may contain symbolic, spiritual meanings.
Ecstatic Kabbalah
Avraham Abulafia, the father of ecstatic kabbalah, recommended meditation as a tool to induce ecstatic experiences. It is not good enough to meditate on an abstract truth, he believed. What is better is to meditate on a pure form of a letter of the alphabet or on the name of God. These have no particular, concrete meaning, and so there is only the music of pure thought. In this way one can untie the knots in one’s soul and open oneself to an additional level of awareness.[38] Rabbi Cooper also recommends various forms of meditation, including mantras, mudras, t’ai chi, and controlled breathing. For Cooper, the goal of meditation is to attain a higher level of kavvanah, or intention. When one has good intentions, these intentions will be expressed in good actions, and good actions are the duty of every kabbalist.[39]
The great sage Isaac Luria was an ecstatic kabbalist. He was said to have had occult powers. He would reveal to each of his students his or her soul’s history and the transmigrations through which it had passed.[40]
Another famous ecstatic kabbalist was one of Luria’s students, Rabbi Hayyim Vital. His Book of Visions is a full-fledged mystical biography full of tales about his amazing exploits. Obsessed with learning about his destiny and with being assured of his own greatness, Vital dabbles in a number of different means of divination, including oil drop divination, conjuring angels and demons with mirrors, and geomancy. On one occasion, a sage of a previous generation (whose name is Piso) is conjured and possesses the body of one of Vital’s followers through the process of ‘ibbur (impregnation). Throughout the Book of Visions, Vital is visited by other sages and Biblical characters who appear to him by various means.[41]
The Reception of the Kabbalah
Kabbalah has been accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm by the Jewish community, but surprisingly enough it has rarely been widely denounced. Joseph Dan writes, “Considering the revolutionary nature of kabbalistic sybolism, it is really astonishing to note that few Jewish thinkers ideologically attacked the kabbalists throughout the Middle Ages and early modern times.”[42] The Hasidic Jews accepted many of its mystical teachings almost without question. Their traditional stories reflect an eclectic blend of orthodox and kabbalistic Judaism.[43]
Still, there has been some measure of opposition. Rabbi Cooper says that he “often” encounters objections to mystical teachings from his fellow Jews. Reincarnation and meditation are a particular source of embarrassment for some Jewish teachers.[44] Martin Buber’s collection of Hasidic tales contains another vestige of opposition:
Once when many wise men were gathered about his board, the rabbi of Rizhyn asked: why are the people so set against our master Moses ben Maimon? A rabbi answered: “Because in a certain passage he asserts that Aristotle knew more about the spheres of heaven than Ezekiel. So why should we not be set against him?”The purpose of the story, of course, is to defuse Jewish opposition to the kabbalah. But interestingly enough, the story could be taken in two ways. On the one hand, it confirms the validity of the kabbalah and its theosophical speculations. On the other hand, it minimizes the importance of these teachings. If Ezekiel’s approach is wiser than Aristotle’s, then perhaps all Jews should hurry past the kabbalah’s theosophy and focus instead on living rightly and ethically for the glory of God.
The rabbi of Rizhyn said: “It is just as our master Moses ben Maimon says. Two people entered the palace of a king. One took a long time over each room, examined the gorgeous stuffs and treasures with the eyes of an expert and could not see enough. The other walked through the halls and knew nothing but this: “This is the king’s house, this is the king’s robe. A few steps more and I shall behold my Lord, the King.”[45]
Notes
[1] Compare 1 Enoch 14,18 with Ezekiel 1.
[2] Daniel C. Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism (Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1997), 3-4.
[3] Aher was a famous heretic, and his “cutting the plants” of paradise was apparently a metaphor for his heresy. Cited in Ibid., 4. from Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 14b.
[4] Joseph Dan, Ronald C. Kiener, and Moshe Idel, The Early Kabbalah, ed. John Farina, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 2-3.
[5] Ibid., 7-8.
[6] Mircea Eliade and et al., The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 12 (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1987), 118.
[7] Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, 6-7.
[8] Eliade and et al., The Encyclopedia of Religion, 118-19.
[9] Ibid., 119.
[10] Ibid., 117.
[11] Philip Babcock Gove and et al., Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1986).
[12] Eliade and et al., The Encyclopedia of Religion, 465.
[13] Leo Schaya, The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1973), 10.
[14] David A. Cooper, God Is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism (New York: Riverhead Books, 1997), ix.
[15] Eliade and et al., The Encyclopedia of Religion, 481-82.
[16] Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, 15.
[17] Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (The Jewish Publication Society, 1987), 90.
[18] Ibid., 458.
[19] Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, 11.
[20] Eliade and et al., The Encyclopedia of Religion, 121.
[21] Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, 7.
[22] Eliade and et al., The Encyclopedia of Religion, 121.
[23] Schaya, The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah, 5.
[24] Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, 10-11.
[25] Gershom Scholem, Zohar, the Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), 36-37.
[26] These appellations were likely first applied to Jahoel, another angel whose name is literally “like that of his Master” in that it shares the same first two vowels. In the first few centuries BCE and CE, many of Jahoel’s duties and attributes were transferred to Metatron. See Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Meridian, 1974), 378.
[27] Ibid., 377-81. Scholem elsewhere elaborates on the tale: Enoch was supposed to have been a cobbler, and with every stitch he joined not only two pieces of cloth but also upper things and lower things. In other words, he meditated even while he worked, and glorified God in everything he did, thereby transforming profane action into ritual action. Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken Books, 1996), 132.
[28] Schaya, The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah, 119-23.
[29] Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 132.
[30] Cooper, God Is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism, 135-36.
[31] Ibid., 139.
[32] Ibid., 140.
[33] Schaya, The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah, 7.
[34] A great many words are used in this way. Particularly names of God or of angels are dissected to find the meanings hidden therein. For example, the consonants of YHVH are understand to represent the divine family: father, mother, son, and daughter. See Ibid., 151-52.
[35] Ibid., 18-19.
[36] Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, 7.
[37] Scholem, Zohar, the Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah, 80.
[38] Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, 12.
[39] Cooper, God Is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism, 172-74.
[40] Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, 14.
[41] Morris M. Faierstein, Jewish Mystical Autobiographies: Book of Visions and Book of Secrets, ed. Lawrence Boadt, Bernard McGinn, and et al., The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 23-26.
[42] Dan, Kiener, and Idel, The Early Kabbalah, 9.
[43] See Martin Buber, The Tales of the Hasidim, Book One: The Early Masters (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), 82.
[44] Cooper, God Is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism, viii.
[45] Martin Buber, The Tales of the Hasidim, Book Two: The Later Masters (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), 58.
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———. The Tales of the Hasidim, Book Two: The Later Masters. New York: Schocken Books, 1991.
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Dan, Joseph, Ronald C. Kiener, and Moshe Idel. The Early Kabbalah. Edited by John Farina, The Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1986.
Eliade, Mircea, and et al. The Encyclopedia of Religion. Vol. 12. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1987.
———. The Encyclopedia of Religion. Vol. 14. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1987.
Faierstein, Morris M. Jewish Mystical Autobiographies: Book of Visions and Book of Secrets. Edited by Lawrence Boadt, Bernard McGinn and et al., The Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1999.
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Scholem, Gershom. Kabbalah. New York: Meridian, 1974.
———. On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. New York: Schocken Books, 1996.
———. Origins of the Kabbalah. The Jewish Publication Society, 1987.
———. Zohar, the Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah. New York: Schocken Books, 1972.
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