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Kabbalah (Hebr.  kabbala, literally “reception,” understood as the adoption or transmission of an esoteric tradition) is the most important form of Jewish mysticism. From its origins in the Middle Ages, it has undergone manifold transformations and interpretations within Judaism – and since the early modern era increasingly from the outside. Although it was exemplary as a Jewish-philosophical paradigm within humanism, the representatives of the Haskalah and even more of the Wissenschaft des Judent…

The German language plays an important and ambivalent role in Jewish history. On the one hand, it became a medium of secularization, integration, and emancipation. In this capacity, it advanced in the 19th century to become the lingua franca of the Ashkenazi Jews and of large parts of Eastern Europe, where it was seen as a expression of progress, education, and science. On the other hand, it became a locus of social and cultural inequality between Jews and Germans. Cultural antisemitism deprived…

Die Kabbala (hebr. kabbala, wörtl. Empfang, verstanden als Annahme oder Überlieferung einer esoterischen Tradition) ist die bedeutendste Ausformung der jüdischen Mystik. Seit ihrem Entstehen im Mittelalter erfuhr sie innerhalb des Judentums – und seit der frühen Neuzeit zunehmend auch von außerhalb – vielfältige Umformungen und Ausdeutungen. Während sie im Humanismus als jüdisch-philosophisches Paradigma modellhaft wurde, wiesen sie die Vertreter der Hask…

[German Version] (Jun 8, 1779, Oberursel, Taunus – Mar 23, 1860, Frankfurt am Main), late Romantic philosopher of religion and the author of the last major outline of a “Christian Kabbalah” (III) in the tradition of G. Pico della Mirandola and J. Reuchlin. Molitor studied law and philosophy with those close to of Isaak Sinclair, G.W.F. Hegel, F.W.J. Schelling, and J. v. Görres, and worked as a teacher from 1807 to 1828, notably at the Jewish Philanthropin in Frankfurt. In 1808, he was one of the f…

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion – II. Jewish Kabbalah – III. Christian Kabbalah I. Philosophy of Religion Since c. 1200, Kabbalah has been the designation for Jewish mysticism (III, 2). According to the name, the term Kabbalah means “reception” or “tradition”: the reception of an orally transmitted, esoteric knowledge concerning the “secrets of Scripture” ( rasin de oraita; sitre tora). The material that can be considered Kabbalah can be described in terms of (a) the philosophy of religion or phenomenology, or (b) history. A phenomenologica…

The Hebrew alphabet ( Alef-Bet) has been used in Jewish theosophical and kabbalistic representations of ideas from Antiquity to the Modern Era, not just as a system of graphic representation of the Hebrew language but also to convey symbolic and metaphorical meaning. The status of scribes of sacred texts in Antiquity and the Middle Ages corresponded to the sacredness (Kadosh) of the Hebrew letters, and so did the development of printing. In the context of modernization, the Hebrew alphabet was the f…