Jewish folks? Is Kaballah the study of magic in Judaism?

Question

What is it and if it is the study of magic, is it not a violation of Judaism? This is a honest question....please no nasty remarks! Thank you!

Look, I am not being critical, just want to know what it is. How it works and how old it is. If it went back to the days of Abraham. If he practiced it?

La Chaim: To raise the dead would be one massive magic trick! To turn a meal enough for one person into a meal that could feed thousands would be beyond what I have seen anyone do. If anyone could do this now we would have no reason for anyone to ever be hungry....would we? If there were any people who could do what Jesus did and heal the sick, there would be no need for doctors. Would there?

I mean, L' Chaim! So sorry! I am kind of tire and my spelling is off today!

lol! I mean tired. Sheesh!:)

Answer 1

Hi. The short answer to your question is: no, it is not. For a little more background, I'll post here an excerpt from the answer I just gave to a question very similar to yours, that I feel may shed some light on this issue. Enjoy.

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...witchcraft and divination are explicitly forbidden by the Torah. But kabbalah is neither witchcraft or divination. The aspect of kabbalah you're probably thinking of, "practical kabbalah," (like the story of the Maharal and the Golem of Prague?) is something rarely, if ever, used in our day, and only by men of great learning and piety who are essentially using their connection to the Creator, may He be blessed and His name be blessed, to affect the world around them in ways that circumvent nature. But to do this requires real belief and knowledge (anyone can "believe" on a superficial level - I'm talking about something that goes down to the very fiber of your being and that nothing can shake - very few people attain this level of spiritual greatness) that everything is from G-d. Such a person can perform miracles, because to them, the miracle is no more miraculous than the mundane, or should I say, the everyday is no less miraculous than an open miracle. It's all about G-d - we don't summon angels or demons, we don't predict the future (kosher foreknowledge of future events is called prophecy, and at present, there is no prophecy in the world).

Kabbalah today has been misused and abused in every conceivable manner. The "kabbalah" of Hollywood celebrities bears little resemblance to the real thing, because people treat it like it's its own philosophy or religion. In fact, kabbalah is just a deeper side of Torah, and it cannot be divorced from Torah. People like Madonna are living a contradiction when they cancel a Friday night show to have a Shabbat dinner (she's not Jewish, so technically, this is actually considered a violation of Torah law), but then Saturday night, give a risque performance while all but stripping on stage. Because the same Torah that brought us kabbalah, also teaches people to be modest.

An interesting little side note: Have you noticed the trendy red-string-around-the-wrist that seems to be popping up everywhere? The idea is that it's supposed to avert the evil eye. No doubt, most of the people wearing it don't know what the evil eye is. The evil eye is what someone gets when they squander their resources on foolish and frivolous things. Someone less fortunate will look at such a person with jealousy, the "evil eye," and that sets the wheels in motion in terms of the heavenly court. The spiritual powers-that-be will see that someone is misusing the resources that G-d gave them, and will simply reappropriate the funds. So these celebrities with the red string (which has itself, ironically, become a status symbol of sorts) engage in constant conspicuous consumption, buying crap they don't need and flaunting it to the world, doing everything possible to ATTRACT the evil eye, and then they propose to turn it away by wearing a red string?! The real way to ward off the evil eye is to live modestly, perhaps with a standard of luxury that's slightly less than they can afford, and of course, to give of their time and money to charitable causes. To me, this is the perfect example how American popular culture has taken the idea of kabbalah, separated it from its source, and twisted it beyond recognition. Kabbalah is like a beautiful flower, and the Torah is the good earth from which it derrives its strength. But when you cut a flower out of the ground, well, it's pretty look at at first, but before long, it will wither and die. Thats what pop culture does to kabbalah.

...40 is considered the appropriate age to commence the study of kabbalah. The idea is basically that kabbalah, like, I said, is made up of Judaism's esoteric teachings - it is to pshat Torah study (that is, learning the simple meaning of the text) what calculus is to arithmatic. So before one studies calculus, it is considered a pre-requisite to study arithmatic, and algebra, and geometry, and trigonometry, and of course, some schools offer courses in "pre-calc," and have a firm grasp on all of them. Similarly, before one studies kabbalah, he should have a firm grasp of the Tanakh (Torah, Nevi'im [Prophets] and Ketuvim [Writings], also known as the Hebrew Bible, or to Christians as the "Old Testament"), as well as the Mishnah and Gemara (The Talmud), and various other texts on Jewish law, ethics, and philosophy. One who isn't firmly rooted in Torah traditions, and who tries to take on kabbalah can easily be led astray into apostasy. That's why we wait until we're 40, so that we're firmly rooted in the basics. Gotta walk before you can run. Folks like Madonna and Britney Spears are basically assuming they can fly when they never learned how to crawl. To those of us Jews who at least know enough to know that we know nothing, the chutzpah of it all is a little irritating.

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I hope you found the above information helpful, and if you have any other questions on Judaism, well, if you like, you can ask me directly. For any question I don't know the answer to (there are a lot of those), I can point you to someone who does, a real Jewish scholar, as opposed to some random yahoo on Yahoo. (:

Answer 2

No,it isn't.

Ok, the explanation may seem to be going a bit off track- but bear with me, I promise it will make sense in the end!

The core of Judaism is the study of the Torah which contains two parts- the written part which is the Chamishe Sifrei Moshe (Five Books of Moses, often called the Chumash as well) and the Mishnah (oral law).

Now, the oral law is explained in the Gemorrah- and the two combined make uop the Talmud- but the oral law always traces back to the written law. So, interpreting the written law in order to understand the oral law and its deeper significance becomes the primary task of many commentators. As such- there are varying ways to understand the Torah
1) P'shat- the plain meaning. Simply put- this is taking the most literal interpretation of the text and explaining it according to that.
2) Remesh - the allusionary meaning- what is the text telling us via the not so obvious clues- why use one word instead of another, why is a word spelled one way instead of another (a letter may be missing, an extra letter may be present, a word may be repeated in the text etc). Gematria (the numeric value of words- in hebrew letters and numbers use the same symbols- thus each word has a numeric equivalent and finding patterns in the numbers, phrases of equal value related to each other etc teaches many things)
3) Halachic- in hebrew, words frequently have more than one meaning- and often a word may have a specific legal connotation that is related to its plain meaning, but different to it.
4) Sod- literally secret, this is the level of Kaballah. Teachings at this level derive into the secret and hidden meanings behind the text- what can be learnt from the subtle clues and hidden teachings.

So, Kaballah is essentially a different way of understanding God's blue print for creation and life- the Torah. where other means concentrate on what can be seen and understood - Kaballah concentrates on the hidden and the secrets God left for us in creation. Thing is, once you start understanding things at that level, you start to understand the spiritual underpinnings of reality- and how they interract. So, in theory if you know this information sufficently well, then you can utilise it to manipulate those spiritual underpinnings through specific spiritual means.

For this reason, the Rabbisput a lot of gezeirot (protections) around the study of Kaballah to prevent its misuse. So, having the knowledge is one thing (allowed), using it is another (not allowed). the purpose of Kaballah is to gain knowledge and understanding of the Torah. A similar example is over kesher (sorcery). It states in the Torah that a judge should study kesher so that when a person is accussed of practicing kesher and brought before him, he will be able to tell the genuine practitioner from the charlatan and not err in his judgement.

edit" Kaballah pre-dates the giving of the Torah on Sinai. The earliest oral Kaballah book (written down sometime in the 2nd century CE around the same time the oral law was written down to prevent it from being forgotten) is Sefer Yetzira- whose authorship as most commonly ascribed to Abraham (so yep, Abraham had knowledge of Kaballah). The oldest written book on Kaballah is the Book of Job- which is not taken as a literal story bt rather as an allegory of the heavenlyt trial after death and the purifying of the soul.

As for miracles- the Talmud records other people who resurrected the dead- but the practice is forbidden, as is all practices which involve the souls of the dead. Performing such magical feats is not an indicator of anything- The Torah in deuteronomy explictly forbids Jews from following a prophet who performs miracles and then wants to change the Torah- even a variation of a single letter invalidates the prophet.

Answer 3

RW is right on.

Fundamentalist reading / living of the transcendent isn't fun at all. It is often limiting.

EDIT: 1) Hocus-pocus/magic is not mysticism. It is an attempt to manipulate the environment with ones ego. People who attempt to use what was revealed through Spirit-ual insight (whether granted to themselves or others) for manipulation are hijacking true wisdom for use in hocus-pocus shortcuts, bereft of greater value. That's the no-no, and that's where discernment comes in. Maybe that's why one is advised to wait until they've had 40 years (literally or metaphorically) of life experience before delving into it.

2) L'Chaim, Jesus didn't do "magic."
I gotta tell ya, that's an inflammatory, dubious comment to make when addressing this question. It can also cause people to question the origin / validity of supernatural (dictionary definition) events described in Torah. You are already aware of this, perhaps?

Answer 4

as said, no its not.

theres 2 kinds of kabbalah at the moment. the pop celebrity, borderline cult-ish nonsense from the kabbalah center. (the whole red string bracelet crap) this is watered down beyond usefulness.

the real thing, is serious, and ancient.

its learning and studying and coming to understand the nature of the universe in a very fundamental way.

>>". kabbalah uses occultic practices and is considered to be a cult."<<

no its not. nobody calls the real thing a cult. and occult has nothing to do with cults. occult means hidden.

the understanding and Knowlege of the Kabbalah is very complex, and alot of it just won't make sense if you try to understand it before your ready, and other parts will be easily misunderstood.

think of it this way, you have a building, and a visitor is given the instructions of how to utilize the building's services and how to get where they are going and such. this is regular belief and such.

kabbalah is like... the blueprints of the building. the giant complex manual showing the very nature of the building's construction and how and why everything works.

this very question is WHY its an "occult"(hidden) practice. its very involved and proper understanding involves having alot of knowlege and connection to God and such things.

for example in Kabbalah generally reincarnation is a given, understanding how this fits into the more "mainstream" jewish concepts can be tricky.
the kabbalistic concept of God, is shared with Judaism, but it approaches it in a more detailed intimate specific way, and can appear almost pantheistic, if explained overly simplstically to someone who does not understand what it really means, and how its in fact, the utter pinnacle of monotheism and singularity.

there are, on the other hand, some magic practices that do utilize understandings from Kabbalah. which is jewishly, very questionable.

but at the same time, some inteperet the verses in the bible that prohibit magical practices, to actually have meant prohibiting negative use of magical things, or that the intent of the laws is to prevent idolotry and falling away from God. and that if you were to do things similar to those that are prohibited, with an intimate and specific mindfulness of God and doing it in God's way, using the knowlege and undestanding God has given them, to do such things, it is different.


edit for below: ummm, simply put... nonsense. real Kabbalah is from God and brings one closer to God.
the funny part is that Jesus was a Kabbalist. in fact theres probably few in history who were as kabbalistically gifted and knowlegeable as jesus was. he just lost his path at a bad spot.

"Mysticism is forbidden according to the word of God." nonsense.

some people do consider the nonsense stuff being called kabbalah that hte celebritys are getting into, a cult, and I can't entirely disagree. but the real stuff is entirely different.

feel free to mail me directly if you want to discuss this. I'm curious what you've found that you think is so ungodly, perhaps I can explain the confusion for you.

Answer 5

You're right about magic -- it is forbidden -- one of many reasons not to believe Jesus was the messiah.

Kaballah is the mystical/spiritual branch of Judaism. Mainstream Judaism is about Life here on earth and how we should live it. Kaballah is about creation and how to restore the earth to the perfection of the Garden of Eden.
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Answer 6

If It doesn't come from the word of God,which was written by Jewish people. It's a cult. If half of Hollywood Is practicing It It can't be good.
Not exactly sure what It Is,but I'm definatley going to check It out. I don't like to comment on things I don't know about. But I know It's a cult for sure. Blessings to you...
Edit: What I've read so far Is not of God. Anything that leads people away from the teachings of the word of God Is a cult, and you'll be deceived by half truths. Mysticism Is forbidden according to the word of God. That's what the Holy Spirit Is for. He leads you Into a deeper walk with God through Prayer and reading the word of God. He leads you Into ALL truth & knowledge. This Is a slippery slope. Don't be deceived by false doctrine.

Answer 7

the word kabbalah means "to receive" and refers revelation from God received by jews and passed to succeeding generations through oral tradition. the word was first used by mainstream judaism but later came to refer to those who believed that only a select few were given the secret knowledge from God as to the "true" meaning of scriptures. kabbalah uses occultic practices and is considered to be a cult.

Answer 8

No it is not.
Kaballah is Jewish mysticism, and we are not forbidden from learning it.
For more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah

Answer 9

No, it isn't.