The main speculative problem for medieval Hasidic thinkers was that of the relationship between God and his manifestations in creation, including his revelation and communication with inspired men and women. Reflection on this problem led to the elaboration of various supernatural hierarchies between the inaccessible God and the created universe or the recipient of divine communication. Data on angels taken from the Bible and rabbinical and mystical traditions, as well as speculation on the Shekhina, were used as material for these hierarchies and also gave a peculiar coloration to liturgical practice. The latter was marked, moreover, by a concern for spiritual concentration by means of fixing attention on the words and even the letters of the synagogue prayers. These speculations, however, had no great repercussions on the subsequent course of Jewish esoterism; the only exception is the mysticism of prayer and demonology, which was sometimes influenced by the beliefs of the Christian environment and was fully developed in Hasidic circles. On the other hand, the ascetic morality of the movement, which was expressed in the literary works of Eleazar ben Judah of Worms (c. 1160–1238) and in the two recensions of the “Book of the Pious” (Sefer ḥasidim), was to mark Jewish spirituality, esoteric or not, from then on. The making of the Zohar (c. 1260–1492)
Once the marginal episode of German Hasidism was finished, almost all creative activity in Jewish mysticism occurred in Spain, up to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.
After the flowering of the schools described above came to an end about the year 1260, two other currents appeared. The first assumed a gnostic bent through its emphasis on the problem of evil. The texts that illustrate this tendency do not place evil in a state of dependence on the “attribute of judgment” within the structure of the sefirot set up by the previous Kabbalists but locate it outside the Divinity, constructing a parallel system of “left-hand sefirot” and a corresponding exuberant demonology. The second movement, whose main representative was the visionary and adventurer Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (born 1240), justified itself by appeal to inner “prophetic” experiences encouraged by training methods akin to those of Yoga, Byzantine Hesychasm (mystical, quietist monasticism), and Sufism. Moreover, an important place was given to speculations on the letters and vocalic signs of the Hebrew script. Unlike the protagonists of other mystical schools of Spain, Abulafia actively promoted his ideas, worrying Jewish leaders and prompting even non-Jewish authorities to pursue him. His numerous writings later stimulated a few minds among the Kabbalists.
The work of Moses de León (1250–1305) marked one of the most important turning points in the development of Jewish mysticism. He was the author of several esoteric works, which he signed with his own name. In order to better spread his ideas and to more effectively combat philosophy, which he considered a mortal danger to the Jewish faith, he composed pseudepigrapha (writings ascribed to other authors, usually in past ages) in the form of Midrashim on the Pentateuch, the Song of Solomon, the Book of Ruth, and Lamentations; only the names of the Talmudic authorities were even partially authentic, a procedure already used by the Sefer ha-bahir. In its most finished version (for there were several of them), the plot of the tales centred around Rabbi Simeon ben Yoḥai, a sage of the 2nd century, about whom the Talmud already related some curious anecdotes, most of them semilegendary. Moses de León thus produced over a period of about 30 years the Midrash ha-neʿelam (“The Mystical Midrash”), an allegorical work written mainly in Hebrew, and then the Sefer ha-zohar (“Book of Splendour”)—or, more briefly, the Zohar—a larger work written in artificial Aramaic, whose content is theosophic. The Zohar culminates in a long speech in which Simeon ben Yoḥai, on the day of his death, supposedly exposes the quintessence of his mystical doctrine. The book inspired nearly contemporary imitations that were incorporated into it or appended to it but were sometimes of a markedly different theological orientation: the Raʿya mehemana (“Faithful Shepherd”—i.e., Moses the prophet), the particular subject of which is the interpretation and theosophic justification of the precepts of the Torah; and the Tiqqune zohar, consisting of elaborations in the same vein bearing upon the first word of the book of Genesis (bereshit, “in the beginning”).
The works of Moses de León were not immediately accepted as authentic by all the esoterists and still less by scholars outside the theosophic movement. It took half a century or more for the Zohar and imitations of it to be recognized as authoritative ancient works, and even then it was not without some reluctance. Although critics were never fully silenced and the authenticity of the Zohar was already questioned in the 15th century, the myth created by Moses de León and his imitators became a spiritual reality for the majority of believing Jews, and it still retains this character among many “traditional” Jews. The Zohar, believed to be based on supernatural revelations and reinterpreted in diverse ways, served as a support and reference for all Jewish theosophies in later centuries.
In matters of doctrine, the Zohar and its appendices develop, amplify, and exaggerate speculation and tendencies that already existed rather than offer any radical innovation. The main lines of the Zohar—the springing forth of being from the depth of the divine “nothing,” the solidarity between the visible world and the world of the sefirot (complicated by the introduction of four ontological levels, at each of which the schema of the 10 sefirot is reproduced), the indispensable contribution to universal harmony by the people (i.e., the Jews) who observe the biblical and rabbinical precepts in their slightest details—were ideas that had been accepted for a long time in Jewish theosophy. But all of these themes were largely organized and enhanced by the use—or rather the unscrupulous appropriation—of materials taken from rabbinical tradition and ancient esoterism as well as from more recent currents of theological and philosophical thought (the speculations of the Sefer ha-temuna on the cosmic cycles and the “Prophetic Kabbala” of Abulafia were tacitly set aside).
Despite the lack of esteem that the writers of the Zoharic corpus felt—and sought to make others feel—toward works created by Gentiles, the method of symbolic representation used in the Zoharic writings was supported by a system of interpretation based on the originally Christian concept of the fourfold meaning of Scripture: literal, moral, allegorical (philosophical), and mystical. The symbolism that was thus established boldly made use of an exuberant anthropomorphic and even erotic imagery whose function was to convey the manifestation of the levels of the sefirot to each other and to the extra-divine world. The myth of the primordial man (Adam Qadmon), a virtually divine being, reappeared here under a new form, and it remained in the subsequent development of Kabbala.