There are many interesting religions. The one that happens to be popular now that people are beginning to convert to is Kabbalah. Kabbalah is Hebrew for “that which is received” and refers to a secret oral tradition of teaching which extends from teacher to pupil. The word Kabbalah was first applied to secret mystical teachings in the eleventh century by Iba Gabriol, a Spanish philosopher, and has since become applied to all Jewish mystical practice. The Kabbalist seeks two things: the first is a union with God while maintaining a social, family, and communal life within the framework of traditional Judaism. In legend God taught the Kabbalah to some angels, who later after the fall taught it to Adam. The Kabbalah was to help humankind to return to God. It was then passed to Noah, Abraham and Moses.The origin of the Kabbalah centers around a book titled Sefer Yetzirah “Book of Creation.” The origin dating of the book is unknown but it is known to have been used in the tenth century and may have been written as early as the third century. The book tells that God created the world by the means of thirty two secret paths of knowledge and the twenty two letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
Many ideas and principles discovered in Kabbalah are also found in Gnosticism. They both were in the Eastern Mediterranean near the time of Christ. Kabbalah and Gnosticism are both important to knowledge called the gnosis or the knowledge of God. In Gnosticism sin is not considered to be wrong but ignorance which separates humankind from God. The knowledge of the gnosis unites humankind to God–to know God is to be God. Those sharing this gnosis are the chosen ones. They are the enlightened ones who share the knowledge of God, although they may not lead perfect lives.
The Kabbalists share similar goals as did the Gnostics: each group set out to answer the religious paradoxical questions of life, such as why does the world possess both good and evil characteristics when it was created by a God who is all good? Why is the world finite when it was created by an infinite God? Similar questions which are concerning the world can also be asked of humankind. Of all the questions concerning God’s relationship with the world and humankind, there seems to be one main question: God, by his very nature of being infinite, all good and knowing, seems unknowable then, how is it possible for humankind to know him?
The Kabbalah seems to serve to answer this question in two ways: the first is in the explanation that every idea contains its own contradiction, and God who is the sum of all ideas contains all contradictions. Therefore God is good and evil, just and unjust, merciful and cruel, limitless and limited, unknowable and knowable. All things, which contain their contradictions or opposites, unite to form a greater whole which is God.