by David Werdiger

Created on: March 09, 2009   Last Updated: March 22, 2009

Like all questions, this relies on definitions, and makes assumptions. I define "Kabbalah" as the so-called "secrets" or "sod" or Torah - the branch of study and theology that deals with the spiritual "worlds", the process of creating the physical world that we live in, and the purpose of creation. While ostensibly this is a part of the oral Torah that was given to Moshe, the Torah itself pre-dates our physical world, and it is acknowledged that the forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, kept the Torah and Mitzvot.

Does this mean they had two sets of dishes for meat and dairy? or that they put on Tefillin using black boxes with parchments inside and leather straps in the same way we did? Could they even have done this? After all, the four sections that are placed in the Tefillin were not handed down to us until many years later. The Kabbalistic understanding of the way they kept some mitzvos in the Torah was that they performed certain rituals that had an equivalent spiritual effect to what we do now. To do this, Abraham would certainly have had to studied Kabbalah, in some form. But as Mr Spock would say on Star Trek, "it's life Jim, but not as we know it". His perception and study of Kabbalah may not have from texts, but rather arising from his own personal insights into spirituality, and his intimate connection and communication with G-d. So on this basis, I conclude that Abraham did indeed study Kabbalah.

Now, the question is: was he the first? The assumption embedded in the question is that if he was not the first, it must have been someone after him. After all, he was the first Jew. However, we should also consider someone such as Adam. While he was not technically Jewish, he did, like Abraham, have an intimate spiritual connection with G-d, and a perception of the world that went far beyond ours. He was able to see, "misof ha'olam ad sofo" - "from one end of the world to another". So while he did not share a connection with the Torah that Abraham did - no-one suggests that Adam kept the Mitzvot - he did have spiritual insights that would be of a Kabbalistic nature. He named all the animals by "seeing" their spiritual core, and thus knowing what their Hebrew name, and therefore their spiritual source, was. So I nominate Adam as the first person to have studied Kabbalah, rather than Abraham.

It is interesting to note that the authorship of the classical Kabbalistic text "Sefer Yetzira" - "the book of creation" is subject to debate. Some opinions attribute it to Abraham, and some to Adam.

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