An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism

Why Study Mysticism?

Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem, at 38-9.

[T]he attempt to discover the hidden life beneath the external shapes of reality and to make visible that abyss in which the symbolic nature of all that exists reveals itself: this attempt is as important for us today as it was for those ancient mystics. For as long as nature and man are conceived as His creations, and that is the indispensable condition of highly developed religious life, the quest for the hidden life of the transcendent element in such creation will always form one of the most important preoccupations of the human mind.

Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays at 5

Metaphysics, or the attempt to conceive the world as a whole by means of thought, has been developed, from the first, by the union and conflict of two very different human impulses, the one urging men towards mysticism, the other urging them towards science. Some men have achieved greatness through one of these impulses alone, others through the other alone: in Hume, for example, the scientific impulse reigns quite unchecked, while in Blake a strong hostility to science co-exists with profound mystic insight. But the greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism.

Jewish Mysticism, Rachel Elior, at 2

Mysticism, which transcends the boundaries of time and space and refers to a reality not grasped by means of ordinary human cognition, is one of the central sources of inspiration of religious thought. It is one of the phenomena that generate meaningful cultural changes in the course of history, not despite but because of the obscurity of the sources of its inspiration and their complexity. In the traditional world mystical creativity served as a primary channel for introspection and reflection, attributing primary meaning to subjective experience free of conventional limitations. The manifestations of a dynamic inner life and of individual expression need not conform to a specific time and place. Mysticism was the obvious route for breaking down concrete and abstract structures, developing an alternative perspective on reality, crystallizing new forms of authority and leadership, and expressing yearnings for freedom and change. A number of these causal factors, both known and unknown and springing from the domains of spirit and creativity, played a decisive role in moulding the religious and social history of the traditional world. For these and other reasons, there is no doubt that the mystical corpus deserves study and discussion in the framework of cultural criticism and research on the diversity of spiritual creativity.

What Do We Mean When We Talk About "Mysticism"?

A. Some General Definitions

Merriam Webster Online Dictionary

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mysticism

Definition of mysticism

1: the experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality reported by mystics

2: the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (such as intuition or insight)

3a: vague speculation : a belief without sound basis

b: a theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or power

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Mysticism

https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/mysticism-nature-of/v-1/sections/defining-mysticism

Mysticism continues to elude easy definition, and its nature and significance remain the subject of intense debate. The terms ‘mystic’, ‘mystical’ and ‘mysticism’ have been used in an astonishing variety of ways by different authors in different eras.

Nevertheless, modern philosophical discussions have tended to focus on so-called ‘mystical experiences’, understood as certain states or modes of awareness, allegedly found within (and even outside) virtually all faith-traditions, and variously characterized as ‘consciousness without content’, ‘the experience of absolute oneness’, ‘union with the transcendent’, ‘immediate consciousness of the presence of God’, and so on. Philosophers are particularly interested in whether such experiences constitute a ‘way of knowing’, and whether they provide any support for either traditional religious beliefs or unusual metaphysical claims made by certain mystics (for example, that time is illusory). Some authors argue affirmatively, on the basis of an alleged ‘universal consensus among mystics’, for example, or the parallels between mystical consciousness and other modes of experience accepted as cognitive. Others, however, challenge these views, noting that mystics often appear to disagree precisely along the lines of their prior religious convictions, that mystical awareness seems capable of explanation in terms of natural causes, that mystical claims (like claims about one’s private feelings) do not admit of ordinary testing, or that the alleged ‘ineffability’ of mystical states frustrates any attempt at rational analysis.

B. Definitions of Jewish Mysticism

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism at 3-10:

[W]hat is Jewish mysticism? What precisely is meant by this term? Is there such a thing, and if so, what distinguishes it from other kinds of mystical experiences?....It is a curious fact that although doubt hardly exists as to what constitutes the phenomena to which history antd philosophy have given the name of mysticism, there are almost as many definitions of the term as there are writers on the subject....Dr. Rufus Jones, in his excellent, "Studies in Mystical Religion" defines his subject as follows: "I shall use the word to express the type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with God, on direct and intimate consciousness of the Divine Presence. It is religion in its most acute, intense and living stage." Thomas Aquinas briefly defines mysticism as cognitio dei experimentalis, as the knowledge of God through experience. In using this term he leans heavily, like many mystics before and after him, on the words of the Psalmist (Psalm XXXIV, 9): "Oh taste and see that the Lord is good." It is this tasting and seeing, however spiritualized it may become, that the genuine mystic desires. What forms the essence of this experience, and how it is to be adequately described--that is the great riddle which the mystics themselves, no less than historians, have tried to solve.

For it must be said that this act of personal experience, the systematic investigation and interpretation of which forms the task of all mystical speculation, is of a highly contradictory and even paradoxical nature. Certainly this is true of all attempts to describe it in words and perhaps, where there are no longer words, of the act itself. What kind of direct relation can there be between the Creator and His creature, between the finite and infinite; and how can words express an experience for which there is no adequate simile in this finite world of man? Yet it would be wrong and superficial to conclude that the contradiction implied by the nature of mystical experience betokens an inherent absurdity.

To the general history of religion this fundamental experience is known under the name of unio mystica, or mystical union with God. The term, however, has no particular significance. Numerous mystics, Jews as well as non-Jews, have by no means represented the essence of their ecstatic experience, the tremendous uprush and soaring of the soul to its highest plane, as a union with God. To take an instance, the earliest Jewish mystics who formed an organized fraternity in Talmudic times and later, describe their experience in terms derived from the diction characteristic of their age. They speak of the ascent of the soul to the Celestial Throne where it obtains an ecstatic view of the majesty of God and the secrets of His Realm. A great distance separates these old Jewish Gnostics from the Hasidic mystics one of whom said: "There are those who serve God with their human intellect, and others whose gaze is fixed on Nothing....He who is granted this supreme experience loses the reality of his intellect, but when he returns from such contemplation of the intellect, he finds it full of divine and inflowing splendor." And yet it is the same experience which both are trying to express in different ways....There is no mysticism as such, there is only the mysticism of a particular religious system, Christian, Islamic, Jewish mysticism, and so on.

C. Is "Mysticism" a Useful Term in a Jewish Context?

Arthur Green, The Guide to the Zohar at 5

What do we mean by the term Jewish mysticism? The word mysticism itself is of Greek and Christian origins and is therefore not native to the traditions of which we speak, none of which saw themselves as "mystical." The equivalent Hebrew terms---sod ('secrets"), hokhmah nistarah ("hidden wisdom"), and kabbalah ('tradition")---refer to the esoteric nature of these teachings. Mysticism is generally taken to describe primarily a certain category of religious experiences, and secondarily all the theology, textual sources, religious movements, and so forth that derives from these experiences. Applying the term mysticism to the Zohar or to Jewish sources thus requires some adjustments in its usage and certain reservations about the meanings implied.

The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, Peter Schafer, at 1-2.

Any attempt to define mysticism in a way that allows the definition to be generally accepted is hopeless. There is no such thing as a universally recognized definition of mysticism, just as there is no such thing as a universally recognized phenomenon of mysticism or notion of mystical experience. In fact, there are almost as many definition of the terms as their are authors--if the authors even bother to define the object of their study at all. Mystical experiences differ greatly from culture to culture; the particular cultural and religious conventions within which a "mystic" lives makes his or her mystical experience culturally specific. This becomes immediately clear from the very use of the words 'mysticism" or "mystic" which derive from the Greek root myein, meaning "to shut the eyes": accordingly, the mystikos is someone who shuts his or her eyes in order to shut out the mundane world and experiences other realities. Hence the derivative myeo, "to initiate into the mysteries," and more frequently the passive myeomai, "to be initiated." More specifically, the mystes is the one who is initiated into the Greek mystery cults and who participates in secret rituals that dramatize certain myths....Hence, despite its explicit connection with ancient mystery cults, "mysticism" is, in modern scholarly terminology, not an emic but an etic term, that is, a term that was not actually used by the people who practices mysticism (clearly not in antiquity) but was invented by modern scholars in order to define and classify certain religious experiences.

Jewish Mysticism in the University: Academic Study or Theological Practice? Boaz Huss, at 2

http://www.zeek.net/712academy/

The word "mysticism" is essentially a Christian theological term. Its etymology, of course, is Greek, but the meaning of the term, as it is used today, is rooted mainly in medieval and early modern Christian theology. In the modern period, the term's meaning became broader, and it is now used to refer to various phenomena in non-Christian cultures, as well, including Indian, Chinese, Muslim and Jewish cultures. The expansion of the semantic field of the term "mysticism", and its use to refer to cultures that knew nothing of this term, have been made in the context of Western Imperialism and colonialism, and in the framework of using European discursive terms in the formation of non-European national identities. I would like to emphasize that it is not only that the etymology of the term "mysticism" is rooted in Christian theology, but even today, the use of the term is inextricable connected with theological presuppositions. Numerous different definitions have been offered for the word mysticism. Almost all of them are based on the assumption that the common cause of 'mystical" phenomena is the experience of an interaction or a union, with a metaphysical reality--an experience that entails a unique state of consciousness, and is considered to be the epitome, or the peak of the religious experience.

Does Mysticism have Common Features Across Different Religions?

A. Some Say Yes

In this general experience of a unity which the mystic believes to be in some sense ultimate and basic to the world, we have the very inner essence of all mystical experience. It is, as has been said, the nucleus round which the other and more peripheral characteristics revolve.

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience at 371-2

1. Ineffability. -- The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.

2. Noetic [noetic: From the Greek noēsis/ noētikos, meaning inner wisdom, direct knowing, intuition, or implicit understanding.] quality. -- Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.

These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use the word. Two other qualities are less sharply marked, but are usually found. These are: --

3. Transiency. -- Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.

4. Passivity. -- Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. This latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance. When these latter conditions are well pronounced, however, there may be no recollection whatever of the phenomenon, and it may have no significance for the subject's usual inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mere interruption. Mystical states, strictly so-called, are never merely interruptive. Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the inner life of the subject between the times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region are, however, difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and mixtures.

These four characteristics are sufficient to mark out a group of states of consciousness peculiar enough to deserve a special name and to call for careful study. Let it then be called the mystical group.

Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays at 10-11

Mystical philosophy, in all ages and in all parts of the world, is characterised by certain beliefs which are illustrated by the doctrines we have been considering. There is, first, the belief in insight as against discursive analytic knowledge: the belief in a way of wisdom, sudden, penetrating, coercive, which is contrasted with the slow and fallible study of outward appearance by a science relying wholly upon the senses....The mystic insight begins with the sense of a mystery unveiled, of a hidden wisdom now suddenly become certain beyond the possibility of a doubt. The sense of certainty and revelation co mes earlier than any definite belief....The first and most direct outcome of the moment of illumination is belief in the possibility of a way of knowledge which may be called revelation or insight or intuition, as contrasted with sense, reason, and analysis, which are regarded as blind guides leading to the morass of illusion. Closely connected with this belief is the conception of a Reality behind the world of appearance and utterly different from it....The second characteristic of mysticism is its belief in unity, and its refusal to admit opposition or division anywhere....A third mark of almost all mystical metaphysics is the denial of the reality of Time. This is an outcome of the denial of division; if all is one, the distinction of past and future must be illusory....The last of the doctrines of mysticism which we have to consider is its belief that all evil is mere appearance, an illusion produced by the divisions and oppositions of the analytic intellect. Mysticism does not maintain that such things as cruelty, for example, are good, but it denies that they are real: they belong to that lower world of phantoms from which we are to be liberated by the insight of the vision.

Jewish Mysticism, Rachel Elior, at 2-3

Mysticism has many definitions. These depend not only on the traditional religious context in which it functions and the cultural, social, and historical circumstances in relation to which it is examined, but also on the standpoint of those who try to analyze it: the essence of mysticism as seen from the viewpoint of the mystic differs from that of outside observers. Despite diverse starting points, it is possible to find a common denominator for the different definitions. Mysticism presupposes that there is a hidden world beyond the revealed world and that there is a way for a human being to attain this hidden world spiritually through imagination and contemplation and to have a deep inner experience of uniting with the higher reality....Mysticism deals mainly with another reality that exists beyond the perceptible world, a reality that is revealed to visionaries when the veils obscuring everyday consciousness are lifted. Mystics argue that visions of the imagination as well as entities perceived to transcend the natural order of things are real. From time to time mystics have direct spiritual contact with those entities, since the essential goal of mysticism may be conceived of as a particular kind of heightened encounter between God and the human, between the Infinite spirit and the finite human spirit, or between the hidden and the revealed. This 'other reality', which bestows sense and meaning on different dimensions of human experience, is not fixed and one dimensional. Rather, it reshapes itself in the mystical imagination, influenced by external and internal, historical and spiritual changes. This other reality is perceived by means that lie between the concrete and the verbal, characterizing the physical world, and the abstract and imaginative, which go beyond it. The hidden reality--whether revealed in a dream or a vision, in the imagination or the psyche, in symbol or metaphor, or in the depths of language and the insights of poetry--has different visual realizations in different historical periods. In Jewish mysticism it relates to secret theological and cosmological systems that add hidden structure, inner sense, depth, flexibility, and secret meaning to revealed reality, a reality assumed not to be subject to any change.

The Foundations of Mysticism, Bernard McGinn, pp. XI ff (as summarized in The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, Peter Schafer, at 7-8)

1. Mysticism is always a part or element of religion. All mystics believed in and practiced a religion (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism), not "mysticism; that is, mysticism is a subset of religion, part of a wider historical whole. Even when it reaches a level of explicit formulation and awareness, it remains inseparable from the larger whole, never becoming independent of religion.

2. Mysticism is a process or way of life. The goal of the mystic (whatever this is) shall not and cannot be isolated from the life of the individual. The individual is part of a community, and this relationship between individual and community also needs to be determined in any proper evaluation of the individual's mysticism.

3. Mysticism is an attempt to express a direct or immediate consciousness of the presence of God.

Arthur Green, A Guide to the Zohar, at 6

The experiences that lies at the heart of mysticism has been the object of much study and discussion by scholars of religion. Various characteristic types of mystical experience have been outlined and shown to exist across the borders that historically have define religious traditions and separated them from one another. Mystical experience, whatever its ultimate source, represents a transformation of ordinary human consciousness. Mystics speak of reaching toward another plane of reality. Some of their experiences reflect a slowing down of mental activity to a more restful and contemplative pace: others results from a speeding up of the mind in a rush of ecstatic frenzy. Some mystics describe a fullness of divine presence that overwhelms and floods the mind, while others speak of utter emptiness, a mind that becomes so devoid of content that it can transcend its own existence. There are mystics who see their experiences conveyed by beings outside themselves: God, angels, or heavenly voices speak to them. Others view the experience more internally: a deeper level of the soul is activated, revealing truths or insights that the person was unable to perceive when in an ordinary state of mind. Most of these experiences, as described by those who undergo them, contain some element of striving toward oneness, a breaking down of illusory barriers to reveal a great secret of the unity of all being. The nature of this oneness and its relationship to the phenomenal world that appears before us are described in a great variety of ways, depending on both the personality of the individual mystics and the theology of the traditions out of which he or she speaks.

B. Some Say No

Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism, Steven Katz, in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis Steven Katz (ed.) at 26, 59

There are NO pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences. Neither mystical experience nor more ordinary forms of experience give any indication, or any grounds for believing, that they are unmediated. That is, to say, all experience is processed through, organized by, and makes itself available to us in extremely complex epistemological ways. The notion of unmediated experience seems, if not self-contradictory, at best empty. This epistemological fact seems to me to be true, because of the sorts of beings we are, even with regard to the experiences of those ultimate objects of concern with which mystics have intercourse, e.g. God, Being, nirvana, etc: This 'mediated' aspect of all our experience seems an inescapable feature of any epistemological inquiry, including the inquiry into mysticism, which has to be properly acknowledged if our investigation of experience, including mystical experience, is to get very far. Yet this feature of experience has somehow been overlooked or underplayed by every major investigator of mystical experience
whose work is known to me. A proper evaluation of this fact leads to the recognition that in order to understand mysticism it is not just a question of studying the reports of the mystic after the experiential event but of acknowledging that the experience itself as well as the form in which it is reported is shaped by concepts which the mystic brings to, and which shape, his experience....

[T]he mystic even in his state of reconditioned consciousness is also a shaper of his experience; that he is not tabula rasa on which the 'ultimate' or the 'given' simply impinges itself---whatever ultimate he happens to be seeking and happens to find. This much is certain: the mystical experience must be mediated by the kind of beings we are. And the kind of beings we are require that experience be not only instantaneous and discontinuous, but that it also involved memory, apprehension, expectation, language, accumulation of prior experience, concepts, and expectations, with each experience being built on the back of all these elements and being shaped anew by each new fresh experience. Thus experience of x--be x God or nirvana--is conditioned both linguistically and cognitively by a variety of factors including the expectation of what will be experienced.

MYSTICISM AND THE POETIC-LITURGICAL COMPOSITIONS FROM QUMRAN A Response to Bilhah Nitzan, ELLIOT R. WOLFSON, in THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, LXXXV, No. 1-2 (July-October, 1994) at 185

In spite of the fact that the academic study of Jewish mysticism has proliferated in this century, indeed represents one of the fastest growing subdisciplines of Jewish studies on the university scene, the fact is that there still is no satisfactory definition of the term. As is well known, Gershom Scholem, the scholar most responsible for the legitimacy and credibility accorded Jewish mysticism in the world of the academy, never attempted to provide a general definition of this phenomenon (if one can properly speak of a singular phenomenon at all) and thus left open the question of what is the common thread that links together the different systems of thought that he grouped together under the rubric of the major trends in Jewish mysticism. No scholar to date has attempted to provide a definition of Jewish mysticism that is both comprehensive and exclusive; we continue to use the term mysticism to refer to the personalities and texts discussed by Scholem without clarifying the use of this terminology. The situation is no more satisfactory with respect to the term "mysticism" in general. A growing consensus has emerged in the last several decades that one should speak only of mysticism in a particular religious context, but there is little agreement regarding the precise nature of the phenomenon that is manifest in the various socio-cultural settings. Definitions of key terms in the history of religions, such as mysticism, messianism, apocalypticism, gnosticism, magic, and so on, are notoriously difficult to determine with any precision. What a scholar can best hope for is a measure of internal consistency, i.e., one must determine how one is using a given term with respect to the limited corpus of material that one has isolated for study.

Jewish Mysticism in the University: Academic Study or Theological Practice? Boaz Huss, at 3

http://www.zeek.net/712academy/

The use of the modern theological term “mysticism” to describe and categorize Jewish cultural formations began in the nineteenth century, and became widespread towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Due to the work of Gershom Scholem, it became the founding term of an academic field dedicated to the study of “Jewish Mysticism,” which gained considerable prestige in the Israeli, American and European Academy. The very use of a Christian theological term to denote phenomena in other cultures should raise questions in our mind (and indeed, a number of scholars have raised this question; though they have not come to the conclusion that we should avoid the term). Throughout Jewish history, people have described occurrences such as visits to the Palaces [hekhalot] of Heaven; seeing the Appearance of God; hearing the Divine Presence [Shekhina] speaking out of their throats; or raising their thoughts up to the point of Nothingness [ayin]. However, they never described these occurrences as “mystical experiences” (at least, not until the twentieth century). Not only is the term “mystical” foreign to Jewish sources, but also the word “experience” [Havaia] did not exist in Hebrew, until the twentieth century. I do not think that academic scholars are obliged to use exclusively concepts and categories that have been used by the subjects of their studies; nonetheless, there is no justification for an uncritical use of a Christian theological term as a universal category in academic research.

Furthermore, I believe that there is no common denominator between the various above-mentioned Jewish phenomena, unique to them alone, apart from the assumption of scholars that they all belong to the category “Jewish mysticism,” and that they are all expressions of an encounter with a transcendental reality. Indeed, while one can find common features between some of the phenomena subsumed under this name, visiting the Heavenly Palaces, seeing the appearance of God, hearing the voice of the Divine Presence, and raising one’s thoughts up to the point of Nothingness have no more commonalities with each other than they do with many other phenomena, which are not perceived as “mystical.”

C. Is Union With God a Central Part of Jewish Mysticism?

No

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism at 123:

[T]he fact remains that, even leaving aside the distinction between earlier and later documents of Jewish mysticism, it is only in extremely rare cases that ecstasy signals actual union with God, in which the human individuality abandons itself to the rapture of complete submersion in the divine stream. Even in this ecstatic frame of mind, the Jewish mystic almost invariably retains a sense of the distance between the Creator and His creature. The latter is joined to the former, and the point where the two meet is of the greatest interest to the mystic, but he does not regard it as constituting anything so extravagant as identity of Creator and creature. Nothing seems to me to express better this sense of the distance between God and man, than the Hebrew term which in our literature is generally used for what is otherwise called unio mystica. I mean the word devekuth, which signifies "adhesion," or "being joined," viz., to God. this is regarded as the ultimate goal of religious perfection. Devekuth can be ecstasy, but its meaning is far more comprehensive. It is a perpetual being-with-God, an intimate union and conformity of the human and the divine will. Yet even the rapturous descriptions of this state of mind which abound in later Hasidic literature retain a proper sense of distance, or, if you like, of incommensurateness.

Yes

Moshe Idel, Kabbalah New Perspectives at 59-60

One of the most widely accepted theses regarding Jewish mysticism asserts the reticence of Kabbalists to express their experiences in terms that could be understood as pointing to a total union of the mystic with God....Gershom Scholem stressed, time and again, that a total union with the Divine is absent in Jewish texts....This assessment offered by such a fine scholar of Jewish mysticism has reverberated in a long series of studies and has been endorsed by most of Scholem's followers, as well as by scholars of general mysticism....Some scholars did attempt to qualify this generalization, but even they regarded the Kabbalists who expressed "audacious stands on unio mystica as exceptions that might slightly modify Scholem's view without, however, necessitating an overall reassessment of its validity. Scholem himself was not convinced by these exceptions and tended to interpret them in a less radical manner. To amy knowledge, no attempts at revising Scholem's thesis as such has been undertaken by scholars of Kabbalah, and notwithstanding certain minor reservations, it has remained the regnant view in Kabbalah research....I shall propose an alternative view on expressions of unio mystica in Kabbalah: far from being absent, unitive descriptions recur in Kabbalistic literature no less frequently than in non-Jewish mystical writings, and the images used by the Kabbalists do not fall short of the most extreme forms of other types of mysticism.

Different Forms of Jewish Mysticism

A Guide to the Zohar, Arthur Green, at 6-7.

The history of Jewish mysticism reveals a variety of experiential types as well as widely differing styles of recording such experiences and integrating them within the normative canon of Jewish religious life. We should bear in mind that in Jewish mysticism, or even within the specific traditions known as Kabbalah, we do not have before us a single linear development of a particular type of mysticism, but rather a variety of mysticisms against the shared background of Judaism, including its sacred texts, its praxis, its interpretive traditions, and the panorama of Jewish history and life experience in the periods under discussion.

A, Early Jewish Mysticism

Major Themes in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem at 40-44

The first phase in the development of Jewish mysticism before its crystallization in the mediaeval Kabbalah is also the longest. Its literary remains are traceable over a period of almost a thousand years, from the first century B.C. to the tenth A.D., and some of its important records have survived. In spite of its length, and notwithstanding the fluctuations of the historical process, there is every justification for treating it as a single distinct phase. Between the physiognomy of early Jewish mysticism and that of mediaeval Kabbalism there is a difference which time has not effaced....What was the central theme of these oldest of mystical doctrines within the framework of Judaism? No doubts are possible on this point: the earliest Jewish mysticism is throne-mysticism. Its essence is not absorbed contemplation of God's true nature, but perception of His appearance on the throne, as described by Ezekiel, and cognition of the mysteries of the celestial throne-world. The throne world is to the Jewish mystic what the pleroma, the "fullness", the bright sphere of divinity with its potencies, aeons, archons and dominions is to Hellenistic and early Christian mystics of the period who appear in the history of religion under the names of Gnostics and Hermetics. The Jewish mystic, though guided by motives similar to theirs, nevertheless expresses his vision in terms of his own religious background. God's pre-existing throne, which embodies and exemplifies all forms of creation, is at once the goal and the theme of his mystical vision.

Joseph Dan, Gershom Scholem and the Mystical Dimension of Jewish History at 38-9.

If mysticism is defined only as the individual's religious quest for union with the Godhead, the investigation of the beginning of a mystical trend becomes, in fact, a problem in literary analysis, i.e., can certain verses or chapters in the Bible, for instance, be interpreted as expressing mysticism? It is possible that several chapters in the Psalms, and some prophetic visions, can be perceived as an expression of a mystical trend. If one follows this method, it is possible to trace mystical inclinations throughout Jewish religious literature, from the Bible through the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the apocalyptic literature, Philo, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the works of the early Christian writers, and so on; indeed no period in the development of Jewish religious expression could be excluded. While it is possible to find some scattered mystical expressions in ancient Jewish literature, it is impossible to characterize any group of Jewish writers, or even a single extensive work, as being completely mystical. Neither the books of Isaiah and the Psalms, nor the Enoch literature or the Gospels, can be described as mystical works, even though one may maintain that they contain certain mystical elements. In order to find a whole body of literary works which can be described as mystical, representing the spiritual cravings and achievements of a mystical group, one has to turn to the Hekhalot and Merkabah literature, written by the Jewish mystics of the Talmudic period, sometime between the end of the second century CE. to the fifth or sixth centuries.

The Study of Heikhalot Literature: Between Mystical Experience and Textual Artifact,

Currents in Biblical Research, Vol. 6.1, Ra'anan S. Boustan at 130-31

Heikhalot literature forms the earliest extensive and (semi-) systematic collection of Jewish mystical and magical sources. This loose body of texts, written primarily in Hebrew and Aramaic with a smattering of foreign loan words, took shape gradually during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages (c. 300-900), and continued to be adapted and reworked by Jewish scribes and scholars throughout the Middle Ages and into the early Modern Period (900-1500). While Heikhalot literature does contain some material that dates to the ‘classic’ rabbinic period (c. 200–500 CE), this literature seems to have emerged as a distinct class of texts only at a relatively late
date, most likely after 600 CE and perhaps well into the early Islamic period
(Boustan 2006). The term ‘heikhalot’ comes from the Hebrew word for the celestial
‘palaces’ (היכלות) within which God is said in this literature to sit enthroned
and through which the visionary ascends toward him and his angelic host. This form of religious praxis and experience is often referred to as Merkavah mysticism’ because of its general preoccupation with Ezekiel’s vision of the divine chariot-throne
(the merkavah of Ezekiel 1 and 10; also Daniel 7). Heikhalot literature presents instructions for and descriptions of human ascent to heaven and angelic descent to earth. In both cases, this movement between the earthly and heavenly realms is achieved through active human agency, that is, the meticulous performance of ritual speech and action.

Yet, Heikhalot literature also encompasses an eclectic range of other motifs, themes, and literary genres. In this respect, Heikhalot texts are characterized by the rhetorical and generic hybridity of Jewish literary production in Late Antiquity, including numerous rabbinic anthologies, in which a wide variety of discourses (e.g., legal, exegetical, narrative and liturgical) are juxtaposed and often inseparably interwoven....Much--perhaps even the majority--of the material transmitted as part of the Heikhalot corpus does not in fact belong within the category of 'Merkavah mysticism', if that term is understood narrowly to denote the visionary’s heavenly ascent through the celestial palaces and/or his culminating vision of God sitting upon his chariot throne. Magical-ritual techniques designed to gain the assistance of angelic intermediaries for concrete and often quite practical aims are equally central to the thematic structure of many Heikhalot compositions---and in some cases---considerably more so. Moreover, we find in this corpus numerous other genres, such as detailed descriptions of the gigantic body of God and the ritual uses to which the names of his limbs can be put; cosmological or cosmogonic speculation; physiognomic and astrological fragments; and, perhaps most importantly, vast numbers of liturgical-poetic compositions, many in the form of Qedushah-hymns built around the Trishagion of Isaiah 6.3. Heterogeneity in both literary form and religious sensibility is a constitutive feature of all Heikhalot compositions

B. Kabbalah

Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem, at 206-7.

It may be useful at this point to consider the difference between the old Merkabah mysticism and the Kabbalistic system. The world of the Merkabah, with its celestial throne, its heavenly household, and its palaces through which the wanderer passes, is for the Kabbalistic no longer of supreme importance, though its core, frequently clothed in new disguise, never ceases to attract his interest. All knowledge concerning it is, for him, merely provisional. Indeed, some Kabbalists go so far as to refer to Ezekiel's Merkabah as the second Merkabah. In other words, the new Kabbalistic Gnosis or cognition of God, which in the Hekhaloth tracts is not even mentioned, is related to a deeper layer of mystical reality, an "inner Merkabah", as it were, which can be visualized only in a symbolic way, if at all. Briefly, this gnosis concerns God Himself. Where previously the vision could go no farther than to the perception of the glory of his appearance on the throne, it is now a question, if the expression be permitted, of the inside of this glory. In the early period of Kabbalistic thought, represented by the book Bahir and various smaller writings down to the middle of the thirteenth century, these two domains, the world of the throne and that of the divinity--the original pleroma of the Gnostics--are not yet completely differentiated. Nevertheless, the tendency to separate them, and to penetrate into a new field of contemplation beyond the sphere of the throne, is at the roots of the original impulse of the Kabbalah. Historically, Jewish mysticism has tended to carry this process even further, striving to detect successively new layers in the mystery of the Godhead.

Introduction, Arthur Green, at xxxix, in The Zohar, (Vol. I), translation and commentary by Daniel Matt.

To say it briefly, the Bahir and all kabbalists that follow it claim that the true subject of Scripture is God Himself, that revelation is essentially an act of divine self-disclosure. Because most people would not be able to bear the great light that comes with knowing God, the Torah reveals divinity in secret form. Scripture is strewn with hints as to the true nature of "that which is above" and the mysterious process within divinity that led to the creation of this world. Only in the exoteric, public sense is revelation primarily a matter of divine will, teaching the commandments Israel is to follow in order to live the good life. The inner, esoteric revelation is rather one of divine truth, a web of secrets pointing to the innermost nature of God's own self. That self is disclosed in the grab of a newly emergent symbolic language, one describing the inner life of the Deity around a series of image-clusters that will come to be called (in a term derived from Sefer Yetsirah) the ten sefirot.