Kabbala and "In the Turpentine Trees" (1982/1983)

Gershom Scholem was a unique exception in his field, as he persistently tried to investigate the relationship between 2 Enoch and the Jewish mystical traditions. Even though his observations on possible parallels between 2 Enoch and Jewish texts are not systematic, they are perceptive and can provide many insights for students of 2 Enoch. — Andrei A. Orlov, “Secrets of Creation in 2 (Slavonic) Enoch,” in From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism: Studies in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha (2007)

And the Lord appeared to him in the vale of Mambre as he was sitting at the door of his tent, in the very heat of the day. — Genesis 18:1

By faith Henoch was translated, that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had testimony that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh to God, must believe that he is, and is a rewarder to them that seek him. — Hebrews 11:5–6

This most stretched of minds may be your own, and you just have not noticed it yet.

Picking up on the recent discussion of Gnosticism, I want to write something about Lafferty and the Kabbalistic tradition. Gnosticism mattered deeply to Lafferty. Many major figures in his fiction are demiurgic—Snuffles, Atrox Fabulinus, Enniscorthy Sweeny, and so on. The notion of the artist as demiurge, whether taken as epistemological or as ontological, defines a signature difference between Lafferty and Tolkien. Tolkien sought to purge any hint of demiurgy from his art by developing the concept of subcreation—a theology of art in which human creativity mirrors, but never rivals, divine creation. Lafferty, by contrast, recognized how art and manufactured culture continually shape one another. That reciprocal influence conditions the fictionalization of history and creates the gnostic present. Usually, there are defenses. Flatland weakens those defenses. Because Lafferty wanted his own art to be centered on Prime rather than in an insulated subcreation, demiurgy was not to be banished but to be a means of enfiguring culture. For that reason, he battered down the kind of barrier Tolkien built into his legendarium.

But Lafferty’s interest was not limited to Gnosticism. He was also drawn to the Kabbalistic tradition. "In the Turpentine Trees" is not a well-known story. Its late publication, its overall approach, and its structure almost ensured that it would be forgotten. Unlike the stories that play with nostalgia or regional color—and so have stickiness—this one is more abstract, impersonal, and openly didactic. Just as real-world Valentinian Gnosticism is immensely complex and contested—and Lafferty draws on it as the foundation for “The All At-Once Man”—so too is Kabbalah, which he adapts for his own satirical ends. It should be clear that my concern lies less with those intricate traditions themselves than with how Lafferty plays with and transforms them for his own purposes. Still, some familiarity with their ideas is important for understanding his use of them. At the end of this post, I include an introductory timeline for readers interested in exploring the tradition more deeply.

First, some rough distinction between things Gnostic and things Kabbalistic. Lafferty had a deeper knowledge of secondary literature on Gnosticism than on Kabbalah, though he may well have read writers such as Gershom Scholem, Joseph G. Weiss, Joseph Dan, and Moshe Idel. It would not surprise me. He certainly would have known the entry in his Catholic Encyclopedia. If we simplify the differences in its entry and the one on Gnosticism and simplify the shared aims of the two traditions as much as possible, we can arrive at this kernel:

The main character of Lafferty’s story is one Shamus Eagnach—a pun on Enoch, the biblical figure who received mystical knowledge of God. Lafferty says that the name translates either as “James Wisdom” or “James Grumbling.” Shamus is a man driven to solve a mystery, which makes his first name fitting. His surname, however, carries a telling doubleness—one that becomes significant later, when we encounter the tram that moves in both directions at once and, finally, the moment of mental stretching that concludes the story.

My reading, which some may find contentious, takes Lafferty’s use of the name Shamus Eagnach as a pointed critique of the Jewish mystical tradition and its impulse to peer behind the words of the Torah in search of hidden knowledge. The story’s title alludes to the covenant God made with Abraham, and of God’s conversation with Abraham at Mamre. Lafferty’s narrator asks, “But are all the words that the Lord spoke at those times reported to us, or do only a very few people know the words in their entirety?” Spoken like a Kabbalist who believes in gematria and that Hebrew itself contains divine mystery.

Precisely because Lafferty makes his seeker Irish rather than Jewish, the critique will be oblique; had the protagonist borne an unmistakably Jewish name—say, Yitzhak ben Avraham Cohen or Shlomo HaLevi Stein—the satire would be a direct attack on the mystical tradition itself. Someone might object at once that Shamus is Irish—shouldn’t he be Jewish? Yes, but it is one of the curiosities of Lafferty’s treatment of Jewish themes that he often filters them through Irish characters and imagery. Think of the brotherhood of noses shared by Finnegan and Arnold Stein in Archipelago. This connection will likely become even clearer when the full text of In a Green Tree is published, which contains passages making the parallels more obvious. I suspect this move is partly playful, but it also exemplifies Lafferty’s habit of encoding meaning—of creating what I have called “antisecrets”—by disguising his most pointed commentary in humor and indirection. He leaves no stone unthrown but he makes sure the neighborhood lights are off.

Shamus is a man who both has access to wisdom and grumbles about it. He wants more. This leads us to the part of the story that, in my view, makes it unambiguously clear that the story is a criticism of the Kabbalistic tradition. Shamus gains access to the Ein Sof—the infinite—through the reading of a book. And not just any book, but one written in Ladino, the language of the Sephardic Jews of Spain.

The book has ultimate answers. Lafferty tells us it is written in Old Spanish and Hebrew characters. This is a clear allusion to the history of Kabbalah, whose most foundational text, the Zohar, was produced in the Jewish mystical culture of Sepharad, or medieval Spain. By making the language of the Spanish Jewish diaspora the key to unlocking cosmic secrets, Lafferty places Shamus’s modern metaphysical quest in the historical center of Kabbalistic thought.

The story’s big questions—“How did God get to be God?” along with its speculations on multiple universes and the nature of reality—are satirical takes on Kabbalistic inquiry and arrogance. These are the kinds of questions Kabbalah asks as it tries to understand the hidden workings of the divine, the process of creation from the infinite (Ein Sof), and the secret meanings concealed beneath scripture. Lafferty implies that it was also the kind of question asked by the morning star.

With that in place, we can now look more closely at the plot.

Lafferty tells us that Shamus Eagnach is a true amateur, someone who pursued every field “for the sheer love of it.” He was, among other things, “an amateur philosopher, an amateur tycoon, an amateur one-of-the-ten-richest-persons-in-the-world.” This is coded. Shamus made his fortune by building the “Happy Hot Dog World-Wide Rapid Transit Tramway System,” a network of trams that “ran through the air like rockets, through the earth like speeding moles, and through the water like rapid fish.” Hot Dog is coded. But Shamus is not a philistine. He chased wealth only so he could devote his life to answering what he calls The Paramount Questions. Chief among them is, “How did God get to be God?” He believes that if he could learn the big secret, “maybe I could pull it myself, aye, and with refinements.”

Over the course of the story, Shamus will have three wives. This is an area where Lafferty seems to be drawing on both Gnostic and Jungian elements, though it may also have a connection to the four worlds of Kabbalah. Shamus’s first wife, Cinderella Scholtz, is a pleasant but ambivalent figure who entertains metaphysical theories of her own. She wonders if humanity might be “only token people or under-people” in a “token or under-universe.” At her suggestion, Shamus founds an Institute to research his questions. She warns him, however, that institutes are “the human equivalents of computers . . . which is to say that they are narrow-minded.” This sets up a pattern that will repeat. Cinderella dies in a mangling accident caused by the non-safety doors of a tram-car, a feature she had begged Shamus to change. After her death, he installs genuine Bremmer Safety-Close Doors on all the cars.

The quest continues, and there will be more wives. His second wife, Pandora Riviera, has a love for the kind of material the Institute classifies as “‘Dogs,’ as ‘Shaggy Dogs,’ and as ‘The Ultimate in Shaggy Dogs.’” From this material, Shamus finds an advertisement that “quacked when he picked it up.” It offers lessons on “How to be God,” from a sender called “The Man Who Used to be God” in Los Angeles. It is amusing to note that while the Kabbalah Centre International was founded in 1965, it is now headquartered in Los Angeles.

The lessons Shamus receives are not the final answer, but they move him closer to it. Like the first wife, Pandora dies in a tram accident. This time, she tries to push a non-existent Override Push Button. Shamus installs the buttons and then marries his third wife, Anima Rubicunda Mannerly, noting that the transition had been almost automatic.

Anima Rubicunda announces that the Institute has detected the sound of the first shoe dropping: the ultimate answers exist in a book. But there is a catch. According to the folkloric information they have, anyone who reads and understands the book dies at once in the fullness of delight. Anima gives Shamus the book, saying she has already read it. He discovers that it is written in Ladino or Sephardic, a language he does not know but quickly learns in a half-hour lesson.

After his lesson, Shamus reads the book, The Terebinth Groves of Mamre. He finds that all the answers are plainly written out. He understands them completely and is filled with delight, crying out, “Oh, that’s wonderful!” Yet he “didn’t feel at all dead.” The truth becomes clear when he notices what he had mistaken for manikins in his penthouse: they are his and Anima’s dead bodies. He descends to the tram station, boards a special car marked Third Class Cargo – Turpentine, and sees a device on it “that would permit it to go in two opposite directions at the same time,” an invention he had worked on unsuccessfully for twelve years.

Onboard the tram, Shamus finds himself in a non-physical state. He is joined by his three dead wives. The car holds "an incredible number of persons . . . and yet it was not crowded" because, as he realizes, "We are not here in our bodies." His wives say that they are now in "the state of re-entrant time and re-entrant space . . . the state that makes becoming a God possible." As Shamus is washed over by "crowding waves of illumination," experiencing headaches whose radii had to be measured in billions of parsecs. He is being tortured as he is stretched. He and his wives settle in to play a four-handed game with a deck of "six hundred and sixty-six" Glory Cards, passing the aeons on their journey. Lafferty ends by saying the head being stretched could be your own.

The tram that goes two ways at once is an example of contrapasso by which a sinner’s punishment mirrors or symbolically enacts the nature of the sin. Shamus is punished because his sinful hubris. The final passages of the story act as a didactic lesson in how Lafferty believes one should approach the divine. They point to a humility that is not Kabbalistic. Instead, they affirm that all the wisdom one needs is already present in the deposit of faith, not hidden in a mystical tradition.

One last thought—interpretive, but I think correct: Lafferty takes the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, that intricate ladder of divine emanations, and turns it into a tram system.

If you know about Kabbalah, then you know about the Tree of Life. It is a symbolic diagram that represents the divine structure of creation and consciousness. It consists of ten Sefirot, the emanations through which the infinite divine essence, Ein Sof, expresses and sustains the universe. These Sefirot, such as Keter (Crown), Chokhmah (Wisdom), Binah (Understanding), Tiferet (Beauty), and Malkhut (Kingdom), are a representation that straddles the line between being a schematic of the relationship between God, humanity, and all existence, and a guide for contemplation.

They are linked by twenty-two paths, which are often associated with the Hebrew letters, which, in turn, represent channels of spiritual energy and inner ascent through contemplation, ethical development, and mystical awareness. it all refracts through the four worlds: atzilut, beriah, yezirah, assiah. Together, the Tree of Life and its Sefirot map both the cosmos and the human soul, the macrocosm and the microcosm. They are meant to guide spiritual refinement, balance, and union with the divine source. Or such is the theory.

A person ascends the Tree of Life, moving upward through the Sefirot toward union with the divine. Lafferty turns it into a grubby tram system. That's both funny and very Laffertyesque, and we see what it costs Shamus Eagnach. Hot dogging it indeed.

In the Turpentine Trees Notes.pdf

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Historical Timeline of Kabbalah Development and Scholarship

Antiquity (Origins in Early Jewish Mysticism)

Biblical and Second Temple Era: 

Kabbalah’s roots lie in earlier Jewish mystical speculations. Prophetic visions (e.g. Ezekiel’s chariot) and apocalyptic texts (like 1 Enoch) introduced themes of divine secrets and heavenly journeys. These influenced the Merkavah (Chariot) mystics of the late Second Temple and Talmudic period, who (by around the 2nd century CE) sought ecstatic ascent through the heavenly palaces (hekhalot) to glimpse the Divine Throne. Early mystical writings such as Heikhalot Rabbati and Shi’ur Qomah (which anthropomorphically describe the dimensions of God’s body) date from the 1st–6th centuries CE. Though their authors are unknown, these texts were pseudepigraphically ascribed to revered sages (like Rabbis Akiba and Ishmael), reflecting a secret transmission – indeed, the Talmud warns “not to expound the Work of the Chariot to more than one student,” indicating the esoteric nature of this lore.

Formative Texts (1st–8th centuries): 

An important early mystical work is Sefer Yetzirah (“Book of Creation”), a brief and cryptic text describing God’s creation of the universe via “32 paths of wisdom” – the 22 Hebrew letters and 10 primordial numbers or sefirot. Its date is uncertain (anywhere from the 1st to 9th century), but recent scholarship favors roughly the 6th century CE. Sefer Yetzirah stands as “proto-Kabbalah”: it significantly influenced later Kabbalists with concepts of the ten sefirot (here understood as cosmic dimensions) and the creative potency of letters. These early mystical traditions – Merkavah/hekhalot literature and the Sefer Yetzirah – laid the groundwork for medieval Kabbalah’s symbolic theology, establishing the idea of hidden knowledge (sod) handed down from antiquity.

Medieval Period (12th–15th Centuries – Classical Kabbalah)

Hasidei Ashkenaz (German Pietists, 12th century): 

On the eve of Kabbalah’s emergence, a mystical-ethical movement in Germany provided important background. The Hasidei Ashkenaz practiced strict asceticism and meditation, aiming for visionary experiences of the Shekhinah (divine Presence). Figures like Judah the Pious of Regensburg taught the yearning for God’s “Lower Glory” – a palpable indwelling of Divinity – through self-negation and prayer. Their writings (e.g. Sefer Hasidim) and focus on divine names influenced the nascent Kabbalistic circles in Provence and Spain. Notably, the Pietists’ contemporary, Rabbi Saadia Gaon (10th c.), had posited a distinction between a transcendent God and a visible “Glory” below, a theme that mystics elaborated. This shows the cross-pollination between Ashkenazi pietism and the new Kabbalah (“tradition of reception”) that was about to crystallize in medieval Europe.

Provençal Beginnings (late 12th century): 

The birth of Kabbalah as a distinct mystical theosophy is traced to Provence (Southern France) in the 1180s. Here, scholars in the orbit of Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières (the Rabad, a leading Talmudist) began committing an esoteric tradition to writing. The first landmark text was Sefer ha-Bahir (“Book of Brightness”), which surfaced anonymously in Provence (c. 1170–1200). The Bahir introduced the idea of the ten sefirot – conceived as ten “radiant emanations” of God’s inner being – and described them using symbols (for example, an inverted Tree of Life with roots in heaven). Medieval Kabbalists attributed the Bahir to an ancient sage, Nehuniah ben Haqanah, via pseudepigraphy, a practice later epitomized by the Zohar. Debate persists on how much of the Bahir draws on older sources, but its impact was decisive: it provided a new symbolic language of sefirot that became “the core of kabbalistic thinking and practice for centuries to come”. Key Provençal kabbalists included Rabbi Isaac the Blind (Yitzhak Sagi Nahor, d. c.1235), who penned a commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, and his disciples and relatives (such as Asher ben David). They elaborated the sefirotic system and concepts like the En Sof (Infinite) and the Shem ha-Mephorash (Divine Name), often as a mystical counterpoint to the era’s rationalist philosophy. In fact, scholars note that Kabbalah’s emergence was partly “in reaction to . . . Maimonides’” Aristotelian theology – a mystical critique of overly rationalist religion. Far from being marginal, these early Kabbalists operated at the heart of Jewish scholarship: the Rabad himself (known for his sharp glosses on Maimonides) supported this esoteric “Way of Truth,” indicating that by 1200 Kabbalah was gaining recognition among mainstream rabbinic elites.

The Gerona Circle and Spain (13th century): 

By the early 1200s, Kabbalah spread into Catalonia (northeastern Spain), which became a new center of mystical creativity. In the town of Gerona, disciples of Isaac the Blind further developed Kabbalah. Notable figures included Rabbi Azriel of Gerona and Rabbi Ezra of Gerona, who wrote commentaries weaving Kabbalistic ideas into Scripture and liturgy. They articulated doctrines of the Ein Sof (the unknowable infinite Godhead) emanating the sefirot, and taught that human actions (prayer, mitzvot) affect the flow of divine efflux through the sefirotic channels. At the same time in Castile (central Spain), other Kabbalistic schools formed. The greatest synthesis of medieval Kabbalah was the Sefer ha-Zohar (“Book of Splendor”), which appeared in Spain in the late 13th century. The Zohar is a sprawling mystical commentary on the Torah, written in stylized Aramaic and presented as teachings of 2nd-century Tanna Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his circle. In reality, it was composed c. 1280–1290 by a circle of Spanish Kabbalists, principally Rabbi Moses de León, drawing on earlier traditions. This bold pseudepigraphic frame lent the Zohar immense authority. It “becomes the fundamental book of Jewish mysticism for centuries to come,” eclipsing earlier texts. The Zoharic mythology enriched Kabbalah with new imagery, portraying the sefirot as dynamic divine personas, the union of the male and female aspects of God, and the drama of exile and redemption within the Godhead, among other concepts. By the 14th–15th centuries, Kabbalah (centered on study of the Zohar and Sefer Yetzirah) had spread through Spain, Provence, and into Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Major Spanish rabbis, such as Nahmanides (Ramban), were initiated Kabbalists – Nahmanides’ Bible commentary (1260s) explicitly hints at “hidden wisdom” and calls Kabbalah the “Way of Truth” underlying the Torah. Thus, by the end of the medieval period, Kabbalah was firmly entrenched in Jewish thought: it coexisted with (and sometimes clashed with) Jewish philosophy, and it set the stage for the explosive developments of the early modern era.

Early Modern Period (16th–18th Centuries – Safed, Messianism, Hasidism)

Renaissance Christian Kabbalah (15th–16th cc.): As Kabbalah flourished within Judaism, it also found an unlikely reception in Christian Europe. During the Renaissance, Christian humanists became fascinated by Jewish mysticism, believing it held ancient wisdom that confirmed Christian doctrines. Pioneers like Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) and Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522) learned Kabbalah from Jewish converts and texts, and reinterpreted it in a Christian framework. They posited, for example, that the 10 sefirot and the Hebrew divine names encoded the mystery of the Trinity and other Christian tenets. Through works such as Pico’s 900 Theses (1486) and Reuchlin’s De Arte Cabbalistica (1517), Kabbalistic ideas (often spelled Cabala in this context) spread among Christian scholars. Figures like Francesco Zorzi (Giorgi) in Venice, Athanasius Kircher in Rome, and Knorr von Rosenroth in Germany (who published the Latin Kabbala Denudata in 1677) further translated and “expanded these ideas, influencing later esoteric traditions” in Europe. By the 17th century, Christian Kabbalah’s theological influence waned – the Catholic Church remained wary, and mainstream Christian theology did not integrate these speculative links. However, “after the 18th century, Kabbalah became blended with European occultism.”.The Christian Kabbalists’ work laid a foundation for Hermetic and Rosicrucian secret societies to incorporate the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, angelology, and gematria into Western esoteric magia. (This occult thread will continue into the modern era, as noted below.)

Safed Mystical Renaissance (16th century): 

Within Judaism, the traumata of the late 15th century – especially the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain – propelled Kabbalah into a new phase. Refugee sages concentrated in Safed (Tzfat) in the Land of Israel, which under Ottoman rule became the vibrant center of mystical and legal scholarship. In Safed’s golden age (c. 1530–1570), Rabbi Joseph Karo authored the Shulchan Arukh (the preeminent law code) while also engaging in mystical ascetic practices, and Rabbi Moses Cordovero (1522–1570) produced encyclopedic works systematizing Kabbalah. The pinnacle of Safed Kabbalah was Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–1572), known as Ha-Ari (“The Lion”). In just a few years (1569–1572) of teaching a select circle, Luria completely reimagined Kabbalistic cosmology. Lurianic Kabbalah introduced daring new doctrines to explain creation and evil: notably Tzimtzum (God’s self-contraction to allow space for a world) and the Shevirat ha-Kelim (shattering of the vessels of divine light), which caused holy sparks to scatter into the material realm. Luria’s myth cast existence as a cosmic drama of exile and restoration: humans, through mystical kavanot (intentions in prayer and ritual), could raise the fallen sparks and repair the world (tikkun olam). According to scholar Gershom Scholem, Lurianic Kabbalah was in large part a “direct response to the afflictions of the Jewish people” after the expulsion – offering a theological answer for catastrophe and a messianic hope of redemption. After Luria’s premature death, his chief disciple Rabbi Hayim Vital recorded these teachings in works like Etz Chaim. By the 17th century, Luria’s ideas and unique terminology had spread across the Jewish world (to Europe, North Africa, the Middle East), “becoming a central pillar of traditional Jewish thought”. From this point on, Lurianic Kabbalah largely eclipsed earlier forms: virtually all later Jewish mysticism built upon Luria’s cosmology of tzimtzum, sefirotic worlds, reincarnation (gilgul), and the urgent expectation of tikkun leading to messianic era.

The Sabbatean Crisis (17th century): 

The wide diffusion of Lurianic Kabbalah, with its Messianic overtones, paved the way for one of the most tumultuous episodes in Jewish history. In 1665, a charismatic mystic named Shabbetai Tzvi (1626–1676) from the Ottoman Empire declared himself the long-awaited Messiah, spurred by Kabbalistic prophecies and the calculations of his prophet Nathan of Gaza. Sabbatai’s movement spread like wildfire; by 1666, a vast number of Jews across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East fervently believed redemption was at hand. This Sabbatean movement drew heavily on Kabbalah – for instance, Sabbatai was seen as performing the cosmic tikkun that Luria’s doctrine promised, and antinomian rituals were justified by mystical reinterpretations of law. However, in September 1666, confronted by the Sultan, Shabbetai Tzvi converted to Islam, shattering his followers’ hopes. This shocking apostasy “shook the religious world deeply”. The aftermath was traumatic: a messianic mass-movement powered by Kabbalah had ended in heresy and humiliation. In response, “deep tension [arose] around mystical study”. Many rabbis grew wary of Kabbalistic and messianic speculation, fearing it could lead to false prophets and upheaval. For decades, open teaching of Kabbalah was curtailed in some communities. (Strains of Sabbateanism lingered clandestinely – a minority of devotees, and later the Frankist sect in the 18th century, continued to espouse radical mystical heresies – but they were condemned by mainstream Judaism.) The Sabbatean debacle stands as a major theological controversy in Judaism: it forced a reckoning with the dangers of mystical charisma and contributed to a cautious approach to Kabbalah among traditional authorities thereafter.

Rise of Hasidism (18th century): 

Despite the suspicions following Sabbateanism, Kabbalah continued to inspire spiritual renewal. In the mid-1700s, Hasidism emerged in Eastern Europe – a populist mystical revival that made Kabbalah’s teachings accessible to the masses. Founded by Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, known as the Baal Shem Tov (c.1700–1760), Hasidism shifted the focus from academic study of esoteric texts to a living experiential mysticism for ordinary Jews. The early Hasidic masters (the Baal Shem Tov and his disciple Dov Ber of Mezeritch, etc.) drew upon Lurianic Kabbalah but emphasized devotion (devekut), joy in worship, and perceiving the divine spark in all aspects of life. They taught that God’s immanence suffuses even the physical world and that simple acts of heartfelt prayer or singing can achieve yichudim (unifications of the sefirot) as profoundly as scholarly kavanot. By bringing “mystical ideas to the mainstream”, the Hasidic movement spread rapidly through Poland, Ukraine, Galicia and beyond. It attracted the common folk with its message that every Jew could cleave to God and effect cosmic repair, not just the scholarly elite. Hasidic leaders produced accessible works (e.g. Toldot Yaakov Yosef, Noam Elimelech) that distilled Kabbalistic concepts into parables and practical teachings. This democratization of Kabbalah was not without opposition: the Mitnagdim (traditionalist opponents) led by figures like Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna (the Vilna Gaon) at first sharply criticized Hasidism. They objected to its ecstatic prayer, deviations from formal ritual, and the potential for charlatanism – essentially, a post-Sabbatean wariness of enthusiastic mysticism. The Vilna Gaon himself was a great Kabbalist, but he insisted on disciplined, text-based study rather than populist mysticism. A fierce controversy erupted in the 1770s–1780s, including bans against Hasidim, marking one of Judaism’s major internal conflicts. Over time, however, Hasidism endured and spread, eventually fusing Kabbalah with folk piety as an accepted (and today, dominant) form of traditional Judaism in Eastern Europe. By the early 19th century, numerous Hasidic dynasties (Chabad/Lubavitch, Breslov, Satmar, etc.) were teaching Kabbalistic cosmology in the vernacular via tales and sermons. Thus, the 18th century closed with Kabbalah firmly implanted in popular devotion through Hasidism, even as it remained a guarded scholarly tradition in more conservative circles (for example, the Bet El Kabbalist yeshiva in Jerusalem and other elite study groups persisted in secretive study of Lurianic texts during this time).

Modern Era (19th–Mid-20th Centuries – Enlightenment, Occultism, Scholarship)

Enlightenment and Backlash (19th century): 

The Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and the rise of Reform Judaism in the 19th century brought a sharp backlash against Kabbalah within segments of the Jewish community. Embracing rationalism and scientific historicism, leaders like Leopold Zunz and Abraham Geiger regarded Kabbalah as a repository of superstition inconsistent with modern sensibilities. As part of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (“Science of Judaism”) movement, they sought to scholarly analyze Jewish history – but often “were less than proud” of the mystical strand in that history. Influential historians dismissed Kabbalistic literature as charlatanism or a late degeneration of pure monotheism, and Hasidism was ridiculed for its emotional fervor. A telling anecdote: a prominent 19th-c. rabbi, when asked about the Kabbalistic books on his shelf, scoffed, “This trash? Why would I waste time on nonsense like this?”. Such was the prevailing attitude in academic Jewish studies before 1900 – mysticism was either ignored or scorned in favor of philosophy and law. At the same time, traditionalist communities (Lithuanian yeshivot, etc.) maintained Kabbalah as an esoteric pursuit for the select few (usually older scholars well-versed in Talmud). The Vilna Gaon’s 18th-century Kabbalistic works and the Ba’al Shem Tov’s Hasidic legacy were still revered in Orthodox circles. But the breach between modernist and traditionalist views of Kabbalah grew wide in the 1800s, reflecting a major controversy within Judaism: whether Kabbalah was an integral wisdom or a medieval obscurity best left behind.

Western Esoteric Revival (19th–early 20th c.): 

Ironically, as many educated Jews downplayed Kabbalah, European occultists enthusiastically embraced it. Christian Kabbalah, as noted, had survived in underground forms and now fed into a broader occult revival. Post-Enlightenment Romanticism spurred interest in magic and mysticism. In France, Éliphas Lévi (1810–1875) became a pivotal figure: he identified the “Cabale” as the secret key to all mystical sciences, blending it with alchemy, Tarot, and spiritism. Lévi famously linked the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet to the 22 Tarot trumps, marrying the Kabbalistic Tree of Life to a Tarot-based symbolic system. Through works like Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855), Lévi “formulated a link between Western magic and Jewish esotericism” that influenced generations of occultists. His ideas flowed into the English-speaking world via the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an initiatory society founded in 1887. The Golden Dawn made Hermetic Qabalah the core of its teachings: it synthesized the Ten Sephiroth (mapped onto a glyph called the Tree of Life) with concepts from Hermeticism, Egyptian deity lore, astrology, and the Enochian angelic system of John Dee. The Golden Dawn’s elaborate rituals and the works of its alumni (like Aleister Crowley, who incorporated Qabalistic diagrams and numerology into Thelema) spread a magical interpretation of Kabbalah widely in the early 20th century. This “Hermetic Qabalah” is essentially a creative adaptation – often far removed from the devotional and legal context of Jewish Kabbalah – yet it kept the terminology of sefirot, Ein Sof, klipot, etc. in circulation among Western esotericists. By the 1900s, one could find Kabbalistic diagrams in Theosophical literature, Freemasonic rites alluding to Solomon’s Kabbalistic wisdom, and occult fraternities teaching meditation on the Hebrew names of God. Thus, Kabbalah’s reception in non-Jewish contexts extended from Renaissance theology into modern occultism, creating a parallel lineage of “Cabala/Qabalah” in Western culture.

Scholarly Renaissance – Gershom Scholem (early–mid 20th c.): 

The early 20th century saw a dramatic turn in the academic study of Kabbalah, led by one towering figure: Gershom Scholem. In an intellectual environment still dominated by the skeptical attitudes of Wissenschaft, Scholem (1897–1982) boldly chose Kabbalah as his field of research. He later recounted how senior scholars in Weimar Germany viewed the Kabbalistic canon with such contempt that one rabbi called it “nonsense” unworthy of study. Undeterred, Scholem dedicated himself to showing that Jewish mysticism was a “legitimate part” of Judaism, “not some strange flower, but an indigenous growth.” He moved to British Palestine in the 1920s and became the first professor of Jewish Mysticism at Hebrew University (1925). Scholem’s exhaustive research – combining philology, manuscript study, and history of ideas – fundamentally transformed understanding of Kabbalah. He published critical editions of texts and landmark studies (in German and Hebrew) tracing the development of Kabbalah. His 1938 lectures in New York, published as Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, offered a groundbreaking historical synthesis from the Merkavah literature through Lurianism and Hasidism. Scholem debunked myths (e.g. he demonstrated the Zohar was written in the 13th century, not by a 2nd-century sage), and he illuminated the link between Kabbalah and broader Jewish history (such as the role of Sabbateanism, which he documented in his magnum opus Sabbetai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah). The impact of Scholem’s work was immense: virtually single-handedly, he created a new academic field. What had been “neglected” or derided became a vibrant subject of inquiry. By 1972, Scholem could note that though the field was still young, in the post-war decades Kabbalah studies had emerged as “a formidable branch of Judaic studies,” producing significant works of scholarship. Scholem trained students and inspired others worldwide; “the scholars who have done this work are the sons and daughters of Scholem,” as one assessment put it. Indeed, late 20th-century academics like Moshe Idel, Yehuda Liebes, Rachel Elior, Moshe Halamish, Elliot Wolfson, and many more built on (and sometimes challenged) Scholem’s findings, bringing new perspectives (phenomenological, structural, feminist, etc.) to the study of Jewish mysticism. The evolution of academic understanding, from the early polemical or dismissive accounts to critical historical scholarship, stands as one of the achievements of modern intellectual history. Kabbalah was no longer the “dirty little secret” of Judaism; thanks to researchers like Scholem, it was recognized as a profound, complex tradition worthy of “the rigors of academic disciplines”, on par with theology, philosophy, and law in its influence on Jewish civilization.

Contemporary Period (Late 20th–21st Centuries – New Currents and Globalization)

Neo-Hasidism and New Spiritual Trends: 

In the late 20th century, there has been a flowering of interest in Kabbalah and mysticism across many Jewish communities, including those influenced by modern culture. Several “independent waves of neo-Hasidic movements” arose, seeking to revivify spirituality within non-Orthodox or modern Orthodox Judaism. For example, in mid-20th-century America, thinkers like Hillel Zeitlin called for a neo-mystical fellowship, and in the 1960s–70s, figures such as Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach led an “Aquarian Age” neo-Hasidism, blending Hasidic teachings with 1960s counterculture and interreligious openness. Meanwhile, within Orthodoxy, a renewal of Hasidic study and kabbalistic learning has taken place in recent decades (sometimes dubbed the “teshuvah movement” or mystical revival). In Israel, especially, Kabbalah yeshivot and popular lecturers (such as Rabbi Moshe Weinberger in the U.S. and various Sephardic Kabbalists in Israel) have attracted young followers seeking depth beyond rote ritual. Translations of Kabbalistic texts have proliferated – notably Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag’s mid-20th-century Hebrew translation/commentary on the Zohar (the “Baal HaSulam” edition) opened Zohar study to a broad audience, and in the 2000s scholar Daniel C. Matt produced a 12-volume annotated English translation of the Zohar. Today, the Zohar and other kabbalistic works are widely available in multiple languages, no longer restricted to elite circles. This democratization, aided by the internet and print-on-demand, means interested laypersons can delve into the Kabbalah’s once-guarded mysteries (though often without a traditional guiding teacher). The result is a kind of “efflorescence of Jewish mysticism” in contemporary religious culture. At the same time, debates continue within Judaism about the proper boundaries of mystical study – echoing earlier eras’ concerns. Some ultra-Orthodox circles still caution that Kabbalah should be reserved for mature scholars (a vestige of the old rule that one must be 40 and learned in Talmud before studying Kabbalah). Nonetheless, the trend in the 21st century leans towards greater openness, with mysticism increasingly seen as a vital component of Jewish identity and practice rather than a dangerous or fringe pursuit.

Global Popularization and New Age Kabbalah: 

Perhaps the most dramatic development in recent times is the global popularization of “Kabbalah” beyond the bounds of the Jewish community, in what might be called a New Age or postmodern context. A key player in this was Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (1885–1954), one of the last great traditional kabbalists, who sought in the 1940s to modernize Kabbalah with a quasi-utopian social message. Ashlag’s commentary on the Zohar and his doctrine of “altruistic communism” reframed Kabbalah’s goal as transforming the human ego into a will to bestow, achievable through widespread study of Kabbalah to bring about both personal and societal redemption. Building on Ashlag’s ideas, Philip Berg (1927–2013) – an American disciple of Ashlag’s students – established the Kabbalah Centre in the late 1960s. Berg took Kabbalah to a radically new audience: he “reinterpreted [Ashlag’s teachings] . . . and integrated them with New Age concepts and practices,” opening the study of Kabbalah to non-Jews and to people with no Hebrew background. The Kabbalah Centre taught a universalist, simplified form of Kabbalah (sometimes criticized as a distortion by traditional scholars), emphasizing themes of self-help, healing energies, and mystical protection. By the 1990s, the Centre gained high-profile followers – pop culture celebrities famously wore the Centre’s red string bracelets and spoke about Kabbalah in talk shows. Madonna, for instance, became a devotee in the mid-90s, incorporating Kabbalistic imagery into her music and public persona. This celebrity endorsement fueled a surge of global interest: Kabbalah Centres opened in major cities worldwide, attracting tens of thousands of students seeking spirituality outside conventional religion. This phenomenon represents the reception of Kabbalah in a non-Jewish (or at least non-traditional) context taken to the extreme – some have likened it to the “yoga-fication” of Kabbalah, i.e. an ancient discipline repackaged for modern mass consumption. It has also sparked debate and controversy: many rabbis argue that what the Centre teaches is a trivialized or bastardized Kabbalah, stripped of halakhic framework and guru-led in a cult-like fashion. Scholars like Boaz Huss have noted that “the kind of stuff Madonna talks about – that’s not ‘real’ Kabbalah, is it?” – raising questions of authenticity and ownership of the Kabbalistic legacy. Nonetheless, the Kabbalah Centre’s prominence indicates how far Kabbalah has traveled: from guarded secret of medieval Jewish sages to a chic touchstone of Hollywood spirituality. More broadly, Kabbalistic ideas (like “tikkun olam” as world-repair, or concepts of sefirah and shekhinah) have entered global discourse and interfaith dialogue. Even in areas like modern psychology and literature, one finds references to Kabbalah (e.g. Carl Jung was deeply interested in Kabbalistic symbolism, and novelists like Jorge Luis Borges wove Kabbalistic themes into their stories). In sum, the late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen Kabbalah move from the periphery to the center of global mystical consciousness, though often in forms considerably removed from the traditional yeshiva study hall or ascetic circle in Safed.

Ongoing Scholarship and Interpretations: 

Contemporary academic study of Kabbalah is thriving and has become highly diversified. Following Scholem’s foundational work, scholars like Moshe Idel in the 1980s introduced new methodologies – Idel critiqued some of Scholem’s linear theories and emphasized multiple forms of mysticism (e.g. ecstatic vs. theosophical Kabbalah) developing in parallel. Research has also delved into previously neglected streams: the Kabbalah of the Yemenite and Oriental Jewish communities, the role of women and Kabbalah (examining if and how women participated or were portrayed – a question only now being substantially explored), and comparative studies linking Kabbalah with Christian mysticism, Sufism, or Eastern religions. Academic conferences (such as the International Congress on Medieval Studies’ Kabbalah sessions) and journals (Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, etc.) provide forums for the latest discoveries – from newly uncovered manuscripts to digital humanities analysis of Zoharic Aramaic. One noteworthy trend is the critical editing and translation of major Kabbalistic texts: for example, the ongoing publication of scholarly editions of the Zohar (Ha-Idra Rabba Kadisha and other sections with academic commentary) and the English Pritzker Zohar. These efforts are making primary sources more accessible and reliable for study. In the realm of interpretation, postmodern philosophy and Kabbalah have also intersected – thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Harold Bloom have engaged Kabbalistic concepts in their work, sometimes guided by scholars of mysticism. Meanwhile, within Israel, some prominent rabbinic figures (like Rav Kook in the early 20th c., or more recently Rav Yitzchak Ginsburgh) have integrated Kabbalah with contemporary issues, from theology of science to nationalist thought, generating new syntheses that continue to evolve the tradition’s theological developments.