Abstract

The Kabbalah (literally, ‘received’ or ‘tradition’) is a mystical, esoteric form of Judaism which flourished especially in Spain and southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Like so many forms of Judaism, it has also been influential on Christianity, and was studied by, among others, the Renaissance philosopher Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) and the German humanist Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522). The Kabbalah contains speculations about the nature of God and the relationship between God and the universe. Both its view of creation (resulting not from the overflowing of God’s goodness, but from an act of divine self-limitation that permits the world to emerge) and of redemption (‘the Kabbalah . . . made the salvation of God by man, the tikkun, as vital a matter as its contrary’1), are at first sight startling doctrines.