Jewish Meditation - Meditation in Early Jewish Mysticism

Meditation in Early Jewish Mysticism

Historians trace the earliest surviving Jewish esoteric texts to Tannaic times. This "Merkavah-Heichalot" mysticism, referred to in Talmudic accounts, sought elevations of the soul using meditative methods, built around the Biblical Vision of Ezekiel and the Creation in Genesis. The destinctive conceptual features of later Kabbalah first emerged from the 11th century, though traditional Judaism predates the 13th century Zohar back to the Tannaim, and the preceding end of Biblical prophecy. The contemporary teacher of Kabbalah and Hasidic thought, Yitzchak Ginsburgh, describes the historical evolution of Kabbalah as the union of "Wisdom" and "Prophecy":

The numerical value of the word Kabbalah (קבלה-"Received") in Hebrew is 137...and is the value of the sum of two very important words that relate to Kabbalah: Chochmah (חכמה-"Wisdom") equals 73 and Nevuah (נבואה-"Prophecy") equals 64. Kabbalah can therefore be understood as the union (or "marriage") of wisdom and prophecy. Historically, Kabbalah developed out of the prophetic tradition that existed in Judaism up to the Second Temple period (beginning in the 4th century BCE). Though the prophetic spirit that had dwelt in the prophets continued to "hover above" (Sovev) the Jewish people, it was no longer manifest directly. Instead, the spirit of wisdom manifested the Divine in the form of the Oral Torah (the oral tradition), the body of Rabbinic knowledge that began developing in the second Temple period and continues to this day. The meeting of wisdom (the mind, intellect) and prophecy (the spirit which still remains) and their union is what produces and defines the essence of Kabbalah.

In the Kabbalistic conceptual scheme, "wisdom" corresponds to the sefirah of wisdom, otherwise known as the "Father" principle (Partsuf of Abba) and "prophecy" corresponds to the sefirah of understanding or the "Mother" principle (Parsuf of Ima). Wisdom and understanding are described in the Zohar as "two companions that never part". Thus, Kabbalah represents the union of wisdom and prophecy in the collective Jewish soul; whenever we study Kabbalah, the inner wisdom of the Torah, we reveal this union. It is important to clarify that Kabbalah is not a separate discipline from the traditional study of the Torah, it is rather the Torah’s inner soul (nishmata de’orayta, in the language of the Zohar and the Arizal). Oftentimes a union of two things is represented in Kabbalah as an acronym composed of their initial letters. In this case, "wisdom" in Hebrew starts with the letter chet; "prophecy" begins with the letter nun; so their acronym spells the Hebrew word "chen", which means "grace", in the sense of beauty. Grace in particular refers to symmetric beauty, i.e., the type of beauty that we perceive in symmetry. This observation ties in with the fact that the inner wisdom of the Torah, Kabbalah is referred to as "Chochmat ha’Chen", which we would literally translate as the wisdom of chen. Chen here is an acronym for another two words: "Concealed Wisdom" (חכמה נסתרה). But, following our analysis here, Kabbalah is called chen because it is the union of wisdom and prophecy...