Kabbalic Meditation

 

Jewish meditation can refer to several traditional practices, ranging from visualization and intuitive methods, forms of emotional insight in communitive prayer, esoteric combinations of Divine names, to intellectual analysis of philosophical, ethical or mystical concepts. It often accompanies unstructured, personal Jewish prayer that can allow isolated contemplation, or sometimes the instituted Jewish services. Its elevated psychological insights can give birth to dveikus (cleaving to God), particularly in Jewish mysticism. The accurate traditional Hebrew term for meditation is Hitbodedut/Hisbodedus(literally self “seclusion”), while the more limited term Hitbonenut/Hisbonenus (“contemplation”) describes the conceptually directed intellectual method of meditationIn its esoteric forms, “Meditative Kabbalah” is one of the three branches of Kabbalah, alongside “Theosophical” Kabbalah and the separate Practical Kabbalah.

It is a common misconception to include Meditative Kabbalah in Practical Kabbalah, which seeks to alter physicality, while Meditative Kabbalah seeks insight into spirituality, together with the intellectual theosophy comprising “Kabbalah Iyunit” (“Contemplative Kabbalah“).

Kavanot (mystical “intentions”) in Jewish prayer and performance ofmitzvot. Kabbalists reinterpreted the standard Jewish liturgy by reading it as esoteric mystical meditations and the ascent of the soul for elite practitioners. Through this, the border between meditative prayer and theurgic practice would be blurred if prayer becomes viewed as a magical process rather than supplication. However, Kabbalists censoredPractical Kabbalah for only the most holy, and were careful to interpret mystical prayer in non-magical ways; the Kabbalist is able to alter supernal judgements by suplicating a higher Divine Will. A term for this, Unifications – Yichudim unites Meditative Kabbalah withTheosophical Kabbalah doctrine of harmony in the Sephirot. Abraham Abulafia (1240–1291), leading medieval figure in the history of “Meditative Kabbalah”, the founder of the school of “Prophetic/Ecstatic Kabbalah”, wrote meditation manuals using meditation on Hebrew letters and words to achieve ecstatic states.

His teachings embody the non-Zoharic stream in Spanish Kabbalism, which he viewed as alternative and superior to the theosophical Kabbalah which he criticised. Abulafia’s work is surrounded in controversy because of the edict against him by the Rashba (R. Shlomo Ben Aderet), a contemporary leading scholar. However according to Aryeh Kaplan, the Abulafian system of meditations forms an important part of the work of Rabbi Hayim Vital, and in turn his master the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria. Kaplan’s pioneering translations and scholarship on Meditative Kabbalah trace Abulafia’s publications to the extant concealedtransmission of the esoteric meditative methods of the Hebrew prophets. While Abulafia remained a marginal figure in the direct development of Theosophical Kabbalah, recent academic scholarship on Abulafia by Moshe Idel reveals his wider influence across the later development of Jewish mysticism. In the 1500s Judah Albotini continued Abulafian methods in Jerusalem.^[