The Arizal and Lurianic Kabbalah

Rabbi Isaac Luria Ashkenazi was born in Jerusalem in 1534, orphaned young and raised in Egypt by a wealthy uncle. He studied with the Radbaz and with R. Betzalel Ashkenazi, author of the Shitah Mekubetzet, and was a formidable Talmudist; by tradition he also spent seven years in seclusion on an island in the Nile studying the Zohar. Early in 1570 he came to Safed. Within months Cordovero died and a circle of disciples formed around Luria. He died in an epidemic on the 5th of Av 1572, aged thirty-eight. His entire teaching fits into two years.

He wrote almost nothing himself; his words survive through his chief disciple, R. Chaim Vital, in Etz Chaim and the Eight Gates. The picture is startling. For a world to exist, the Infinite Light contracted — tzimtzum — leaving a space. Light entered it, but the vessels meant to hold it shattered — shevirat ha-kelim — and every shard trapped a spark of holiness. The world therefore consists of husks with sparks locked inside, and the human task is tikkun: with each commandment, each word of prayer, each honest act, to free a spark and restore it.

This spoke directly to a generation of exiles. Within a century Lurianic teaching had reshaped Jewish prayer, custom and, later, Hasidism.