Who are the great Kabbalists?

Come and see how grateful we should be to our teachers, who impart us their sacred lights and dedicate their souls to do good to our souls. They stand in the middle between the path of harsh torments and the path of repentance. They save us from the netherworld, which is harder than death, and accustom us to reach the heavenly pleasures, the sublime gentleness and the pleasantness that is our share, ready and waiting for us from the very beginning, as we have said above. Each of them operates in his generation, according to the power of the light of his teaching and sanctity. Our sages have already said, “You have not a generation without such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Baal HaSulam, "Introduction to the Book Panim Meirot uMasbirot"

In Kabbalah, a book is never separate from the attainment of the Kabbalist who wrote it, nor from the chain of teacher and student through which the method is passed on.

That is, the writings are not self-standing objects of knowledge, as though the wisdom could be received from them mechanically. A Kabbalistic source comes from attainment, and therefore it also requires a correct approach: the student needs to know how to read the words, how to avoid corporeal imagination, how to relate to the teacher, and how to connect the study to get something out of it. Meaning that the teacher gives a form by which the student can approach the wisdom correctly. A book can be printed, translated, and distributed, and still the reader may have no entrance into it or any idea of what is its purpose. The teacher explains how the book should be approached, what inner work belongs to it, and how the study should remain directed toward the revelation of one’s root rather than toward knowledge alone.

One should be so careful with words of Torah, and one should be so careful not to err in them and utter a word of Torah that he does not know, and which he did not receive from his teacher. Anyone who says words of Torah that he does not know or did not receive from his teacher, it is written about him, “You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness.”

Zohar for All, Yitro [Jethro],"You Shall Not Make for Yourself", Item 428

The chain of teacher and student also means that the student is not a passive receiver of the method. If the teacher gives the form of approach, it is so that the student can enter the method, attain what the Kabbalists speak about, and then become a living continuation of that same transmission. It follows that the method does not pass through books alone, nor even through the teacher alone, but through the desire that receives the direction, works with it, and later becomes capable of transmitting it further. Thus, the student’s role is already included in the chain: first as one who learns how to approach the sources correctly, then as one who realizes the method in the correction of desire, and from that, according to one’s degree and role, as one who helps disseminate and teach the wisdom to others

For this reason, the great Kabbalists should be understood according to the role they serve in the transmission of the method through the chain of Kabbalists. A Kabbalist is one who attained the spiritual reality and, according to the need of his generation, gave students a way to approach that same attainment. Thus, the history of Kabbalah is, on top of the chronology of its main figures, and most importantly, the gradual revelation of a method: from attainment to explanation, from explanation to practice, and from practice to the attainment of its purpose.

Everyone who receives abundance from the Creator finds himself adorned with the Creator’s crowns. And one who has merited to feel, at the time of the act, how the Creator also takes pride in him for having found him prepared to receive His abundance, is called a Kabbalist.

Baal HaSulam, Letter 46

Evidently, the wisdom itself does not change: the spiritual laws, the upper roots, and the purpose of creation remain the same. However, each generation has different vessels, different confusions, and a different form of desire. Thus, when a great Kabbalist appears, he receives the method from the previous degree and expresses it in a form through which the souls of his generation can approach it.

In our generation, the wisdom of Kabbalah reaches the public through Rav Dr. Michael Laitman, who received the method from Rabash. Before entering the path of Kabbalah, he came from a scientific background, with studies in bio-cybernetics, which also explains something of the form of his teaching: systematic, direct, and aimed at explaining the laws of spiritual development as laws of nature rather than as mysticism. After the passing of Rabash, his work became the wide dissemination of the line of Baal HaSulam and Rabash, through lessons, books, translations, media, and an international environment of students. That is, his role in the chain is to bring the method into a form that can reach a generation spread across many cultures, languages, backgrounds, and questions, while still directing the student to the same central work: correction of desire, connection in the environment, and attainment of the Creator through equivalence of form.

Rabash, the son and successor of Baal HaSulam, gave this method its practical form for the student, in a group. Baal HaSulam opened the writings of the Ari and the Zohar with a clear explanatory language, whilst Rabash explained how a person enters the work itself. His articles show why the society, the love of friends, the annulment before the goal, and the building of an intention to bestow belong to the inner structure of the wisdom. The group, in his writings, becomes the place within which the desire can be examined, corrected, and directed toward the Creator.

Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag was the closest to us link in the chain of the great Kabbalists, through which the upper force reveals itself to the world and passes the Torah to us. He is our upper degree and the only spiritual Partzuf on which we depend, and therefore our study is mainly based on his articles. Rabash did everything to prepare the foundation for the future generation that will come. [...] We are yet to see from his works how high he had climbed. His works are written in a very warm style, with the great care about the reader, a student.

Rav Dr. Michael Laitman, 10/6/2016

Without this practical clarification, the student could easily imagine Kabbalah as a study of upper worlds, lights, vessels, Sefirot, and Partzufim alone. Rabash brings the student to the inner condition required for such study. Meaning, the person must build a relation to the friends, to the teacher, to the group, and to the goal, because the correction of desire cannot remain in the mind. It has to become work in connection.

Baal HaSulam stands as the great Kabbalist who made the wisdom accessible to the modern student. Through the Sulam commentary on the Zohar and The Study of the Ten Sefirot, he gave a language by which a person could approach the wisdom without materializing it. This was necessary because the words of Kabbalah are easily misunderstood. A person reads about worlds, lights, vessels, ascents, descents, angels, and souls, and naturally imagines forms from this world. Therefore, Baal HaSulam explained these words according to their spiritual meaning: as relations of desire, light, intention, concealment, revelation, and correction. And by doing so, he also showed that the wisdom does not speak about distant structures detached from a person, but about the inner order of one’s own development. The worlds, the vessels, the lights, and the degrees describe the way the desire is arranged, concealed, corrected, and brought to its purpose. Thus, the study becomes connected to the person’s own path: how the created being, from within its own desire, comes to adhesion with its root, the Creator.

Baal HaSulam made it so that if an ordinary person follows his way, he can achieve Dvekut [adhesion] with the Creator just like a dedicated wise disciple. Before him, one had to be a great wise disciple in order to be rewarded with Dvekut with the Creator. Before the Baal Shem Tov, one even had to be among the greatest in the world, or he would not be able to attain Godliness.

RABASH, Article No. 75 “The Work of the Greatest in the Nation”

From the Baal HaSulam, the chain of Kabbalists rises up to the Baal Shem Tov, who opened another stage in the nearness of the path to the people. Until then, the wisdom of Kabbalah was mostly preserved in small circles of great students, and even the teachings of the Ari, although revealed, were not yet arranged as a path for the broader public. The Baal Shem Tov began to bring the inner wisdom into a living community, teaching according to the line of the Ari and placing the work of adhesion with the Creator within prayer and the daily life of the person.

I will tell you as I heard from the ADMOR of Kalshin. In earlier times, prior to the attainment of the Creator, one had to first obtain all seven external teachings, called “the seven maidens that serve the king’s daughter,” as well as terrible mortification. And yet, not many gained favor in the eyes of the Creator. But since we have been rewarded with the teachings of the ARI and the work-ways of the Baal Shem Tov, it is truly possible for anyone, and the above preparations are no longer necessary.

Baal HaSulam, Letter 38

And from the Baal Shem Tov, the chain of Kabbalists rises up to the Ari. The Ari is one of the most important Kabbalists: he arranged the whole wisdom that came from the Book of Zohar and Rashbi, according to the order of the upper roots and their branches: restriction, screen, light, vessels, worlds, Partzufim, and the process of correction. And although many of the previous Kabbalists have opened the wisdom by a minuscule amount, as they wrote mainly for themselves, from the Ari’s time onward, Kabbalah could be studied as an ordered method of cause and consequence, although this order still required great clarification for later generations. This gives the Ari his place in the chain. After him, the inner structure of the wisdom became the central path for those who engaged in Kabbalah.

There are not enough words to measure his holy work in our favor. The doors of attainment were locked and bolted, and he came and opened them for us. […] You find a thirty-eight-year-old who subdued with his wisdom all his predecessors through the Ge'onim [pl. for genius] and through all times. All the elders of the land, the gallant shepherds, friends and disciples of the Godly sage, the RAMAK, stood before him as disciples before the Rav.

Baal HaSulam, "Introduction to the Book Panim Meirot uMasbirot"

However, this opening also created a new difficulty. The writings of the Ari are extremely condensed and technical, and without a later explanation the student can remain with terms whose inner relation is not understood. Because of that, Baal HaSulam later writes that from the time of the Ari until his own time, the Ari’s method had not been fully understood at its root, hence a commentary and order was needed, so that it could bring the Ari’s writings to the student in a clear and systematic way.

And from the Ari, the chain of Kabbalists rises further back to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, Rashbi, through whom the inner meaning of the Torah received its revealed form in The Book of Zohar. The Zohar should therefore be connected first of all to Rashbi’s attainment and to the circle of students gathered around him, meaning, that it is the the expression of a spiritual degree that was revealed between a Kabbalist and his students. Rashbi gave the inner meaning a language through which the meaning of Torah could be clothed in stories, names, movements, places, and images from this world.

Those righteous ones, the authors of The Zohar, and especially Rabbi Shimon, their thoughts and words were in actual deeds, for according to the quality of the innovations in the Torah that they discovered, the upper degrees were promptly set up and arranged after them in actual fact. That is, the righteous build worlds with their innovations in the Torah.

Zohar for All, Beresheet [Genesis], “The Sling-Stone”, Item 200

Because of that, the Zohar can easily appear to speak about events, people, or mystical images. However, Rashbi and his students used these garments in order to point to spiritual roots: degrees of the soul, relations between desire and the upper light, states of concealment and revelation, and the inner order by which the Torah leads the created being toward correction. Thus, later Kabbalists were needed in order to open the approach to Rashbi’s revelation. If the student reads the Zohar as a story, the inner matter remains concealed. If the student learns how to read it through the language of roots and branches, then Rashbi’s words begin to indicate degrees of perception and correction, of which the external images are only the garment.

However, one should be aware that Rashbi did not bring a separate wisdom beside the Torah. The Zohar is an opening of the Torah’s inner meaning, and therefore the chain rises from Rashbi to Moses, the Kabbalist through whom the Torah itself was revealed to Israel, because Moses is not approached here only as the leader of the people, but as the spiritual degree through which the general method of correction was given in the language of Torah. For this reason, the Torah stands at the root of Kabbalistic sources: it contains the order of upper roots, clothed in the words, stories, laws, and events of this world. Its stories remain written in corporeal language, because there is no other language by which spiritual roots can be indicated to those who still perceive through corporeal senses. However, the Kabbalist reads these stories according to the inner forces that operate behind them: the correction of desire, the relation between the created being and the Creator, and the path toward adhesion.

The last generation, which came out of Egypt, knew everything, since Moses revealed to them all those forty years when they were in the desert. But even Moses revealed it only on the day when he departed from the world, as it is written, “I am one hundred and twenty years old today,” on the very day when he departed from the world.

Zohar for All, Haazinu, Moses Revealed on the Day When He Departed from the World, Item 19

Before the revealed form of the Torah, the chain reaches Abraham, to whom Sefer Yetzira is traditionally attributed (cf. Baal HaSulam’s History of the Wisdom of Kabbalah: “The first book that we have in this wisdom is The Book of Creation, which some attribute to Abraham the Patriarch”). What we call “Abraham” is the Kabbalist that discovered the upper governing force and began to teach a method of connection against the growing separation among people.

However, Abraham’s entire correction consisted of making a complete receptacle for the light of Hassadim, without any possibility of a flaw. In other words, he elevated the holy Divinity into bestowal and contentment upon our Maker, and to not receive anything for our own delight, for this is the quality and the receptacle of the light of Hesed.

Zohar for All, Introduction of The Book of Zohar, “Torah and Prayer”, Item 184

Further back, the sources speak of Adam HaRishon as the first man to attain the spiritual system. This name indicates the first spiritual root of humanity, the root of the common soul. The book associated with him, Raziel HaMalach, points to the earliest expression of the relation between the created being and the upper force.

It follows that each of the great Kabbalists belong to one line of transmission, and each reveals the method according to the needs of his generation. Thus, the whole chain is a preservation of the method from teacher to student until a person today can approach the same goal: the revelation of the Creator. Once this chain is understood from within the logic of transmission, the next question becomes more precise: how should a student relate to the writings that these Kabbalists left for us?