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This reprint is being made available at cost by PublishYourSefer.com in partnership with HebrewBooks.org. This book was originally printed in the city of Sighetu in the year 1875. The original scan is available as a free download from HebrewBooks.org. The HebrewBooks.org ID number for this title is 9576, the ID for this reprint itself is HB_zoharharakiakolbracha. PLEASE NOTE: due to the age, degradation in quality, and imperfections in the scanning process, some portions of this book may be obscured, damaged or incomplete. Please check the book preview (if available) OR the original download from HebrewBooks.org before placing your order.
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(Before our universe came into existence there existed an ...)
Before our universe came into existence there existed an infinite endless realm of total fulfillment and perfection. Suddenly it all seemed to vanish and the Big Bang was born leaving behind a finite realm of existence where chaos suffering and pain would apparently be the rule. The most profound mystic of the 20th century Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag reveals the process of creation leading up to the Big Bang origins of our universe.
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Isaac ben Solomon Ashkenazi Luria was born in Jerusalem. His parents were German, hence the title Ashkenazi (German) in his name. He was called Ari Ha-qodesh (The Holy Lion) or simply Ari (Lion) by his followers. After his father's death, he lived with an aunt in Cairo.
While still a child, Luria lost his father, and was brought up by his rich maternal uncle Mordechai Frances, a tax-farmer from Cairo, Egypt.
His uncle placed him under the best Jewish teachers, including the leading rabbinic scholar David ibn Zimra. Luria showed himself a diligent student of rabbinical literature and under the guidance of another uncle, Rabbi Bezalel Ashkenazi (best known as the author of Shittah Mekubetzet), he became proficient in that branch of Jewish learning.
After several years of rabbinic studies, at the age of 17 he found a Cabalistic manuscript and was fascinated by its contents. He retired from all his friends for 6 years to study Cabala and to concentrate especially on the Book of Zohar. After this period he retired to a hut on the Nile where he underwent further study and practiced extreme asceticism.
In 1570 he returned to Palestine and settled at the Palestinian center of Cabala at Safed. He drew a large and enthusiastic group of followers and students. But he spent only a year and a half there; a plague broke out, and he died on August 5, 1572, at the early age of 38.
His genius, however, lay in the synthesis he made of traditional Jewish teaching with a mystical outlook. Luria provided consolation for those who had lost loved ones or had misspent their lives. He did this by his doctrine of gilgul (transmigration of souls). For Luria this was not a mode of punishment but a chance to cleanse and perfect oneself. Lurianic teaching heightened the ethical value of each individual action because he taught that each action helped to redeem the world. His doctrines greatly influenced Jewish piety and ritual and provided the Hasidic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries with its main tenets.
He founded a Cabala which profoundly influenced central European Judaism of the 18th and 19th centuries. Luria is best known as the founder of the Lurianic Cabala. He wrote only a commentary on certain parts of the Book of Zohar, but his doctrine became known through the works of his disciples, particularly Joseph in Tabal and Hayyim Vital, and through the letters of a certain Shlomel Dresnitz of Moravia, which were published under the title Shivhe Ha-Ari (The Praises of the Lion).
(Before our universe came into existence there existed an ...)
(Kabbalah: The eigth gate according to the teachings of Ra...)
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(Lang:- heb, Pages 108. Reprinted in 2015 with the help of...)
Around the age of twenty-two he became engrossed in the study of the Zohar (a major work of the Kabbalah that had recently been printed for the first time) and adopted the life of a recluse.
Luria had mystic experiences of visions and communications, and he expressed his thought in complex imagery. He taught three basic tenets. First, creation came about through tzimtum. Tzimtum was a withdrawal or retraction of God from Himself, thereby making existence outside Himself possible. Second, evil was created through shevirat ha-kelim (breaking of the vessels); once the divine spilled over into creation, some sparks of being fell into demonic spheres, and thereby evil was produced. Third, he preached the tikkun (restoration of God's unity). This restoration was to be effected by the life of holy men and their observance of the commandments. This doctrine of redemption of the world by men had never before been prominent in Jewish thought.
At the age of fifteen, he married a cousin the daughter of Mordechai Frances and, being amply provided for financially, he was able to continue his studies.
