Appendix A: From the Authentic Sources

The history of Kabbalah corresponds to the history of mankind. It begins at the same time man appeared on the face of the earth, who (as tradition has it) was the first man. Kabbalists take an interest in him because the history of Kabbalah starts with him, not only that of the human species. He was also the author of the first Kabbalah book: “The Angel Raziel” (HaMalaach Raziel)...

Living in our world, we absorb various pictures and impressions. Because of that we can all describe what we feel. But Kabbalistic books describe what a person who feels this world and the upper-spiritual world at the same time feels, he describes his feelings of a world that others do not feel...

The primary book that came into our possession, after the book of the first man, was the book of Abraham the Patriarch, The Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira). It is a special book and a difficult one to understand, because it is a very synoptic book, containing only several dozen pages. We’ve known about its existence for thousands of years now, but it is impossible to study Kabbalah with it because Abraham did not mean to write a study book for those in our world and explain how to develop the sensation of the upper-spiritual world. His purpose was not to teach the attainment of the upper world, but only to mark out a few principal laws that he discovered about the spiritual world...

Moses was known for being different than other Kabbalists in that alongside the revelation that he obtained, he was ordered to publicize it to the whole of mankind, write about it and establish learning centers. That did not happen with previous Kabbalists. Since then and until today, all the Kabbalists form study groups around them...

A person who begins to study Kabbalah can clearly see that the reason for all the pains and catastrophes we experience both on the personal level and the global one is that we do not interpret what happens around us correctly. Because of our benighted behaviour and wrong reaction, our situation and the consequences that return to us increasingly worsen...

Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochay (Rashbi) as the author of the book of Zohar in the second century A.C. It is the most important book in Kabbalah and considered the primary and most fundamental textbook. Rashby lived between the Talmudic period and that of the Zohar, and is regarded as a great researcher of our own nature and that of the upper world. He is also among the most important sages of the Talmud (his name is mentioned there some 4000 times). He was proficient in both the language of the Talmud and the language of Kabbalah. He used them to describe the upper system of management, how the events of the present and the future are made to happen there, all the innovations and transformations, and how they come down from there to our world, how they manifest themselves in clothing of this world...

In the 16th century, the time of Middle Ages and barbarianism, a child was born in Jerusalem. Later in his life he received the name the Holy Ari. He absorbed the entire Kabbalistic knowledge since the First Man, processed it and phrased in such a way that all the generations following him, could receive their spiritual nourishment from his books...

In the end, neither the Zohar, nor the writings of the Ari were intended for a systematic study of the Kabbalah. Although the Kabbalah is indeed a science, before the 20th century there never was a real textbook. In order to fill in the gaps, Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, the great Kabbalist who lived in Jerusalem since 1922 until his death in 1954, wrote a commentary on the Zohar and the texts of the Ari. He evolved while writing the commentaries, and published his principal work, The Study of the Ten Sefirot (Talmud Eser Sefirot), considered the predominant study book of our time...

Rabbi Baruch Ahslag was the next phase in the evolution of Kabbalah after his father, Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag. Baruch Ashlag was the eldest son of Yehuda Ashlag. Born in Poland in 1907, he came with his father to Israel at the age of 15. He always worked simple jobs: construction worker, road works, a shoemaker, or a clerk. He was never ashamed to do any work. He treated it as necessity for survival in this world, and nothing more. He was offered quite a few high offices, but never accepted any of them...

Alas, these people, who make the spirit of Messiah vanish from the world, so as never to return, make the Torah dry, without the moist of mind and knowledge, for they confine themselves to the practical part of the Torah, and do not wish to try and understand the wisdom of the Kabbalah, to know and educate themselves in the secrets and the reason behind the Torah and the precepts. Alas, they cause by their deeds the poverty, the ruin and the robbery, the looting, the killings and destruction in the world...