Shavuot is the holiday that celebrates the giving of Torah at Mt. Sinai. The Jewish Kabbalists teach that the five books of the Torah are the name of the Holy One blessed be He. To say that the Torah was in essence nothing but the great name of God was assuredly a daring statement that calls for explanation. As Gershom Scholem writes

“The Torah is interpreted as a mystical unity whose primary purpose is not to convey a specific meaning, but rather to express the immensity of God’s power, which is concentrated in His name.”

An early Midrash says that God looked into the Torah and created the world. The author of that Midrash must have understood that the law which governs Creation as such, hence the Cosmos and all nature was already prefigured in the Torah, so that God looking into the Torah could see it. The basic idea of the Torah as the name of God was the source of certain other Kabbalistic developments. It goes without saying that such an assertion about the Torah does not refer to the document written in ink or on a scroll of parchment but to the Torah as a pre-existent being, which preceded everything else in the world.

The Torah as the Kabbalists conceived it is consequently not separate from the divine essence, not created in the strict sense of the word rather it is something that represents the inner life of God which is what Kabbalah is all about.

I will pursue further these Kabbalistic ideas in a series of classes I am preparing to give at Am Echad this fall. The following are some helpful books on Jewish Mysticism:

• Ehyeh A Kaballah For Tomorrow – Arthur Creen - Jewish Lights Publishing
• The Thirteen Petalled Rose – Adin Steinsaltz – Basic Books
• The Way Into Jewish Mystical Tradition – Lawrence Kushner- Jewish Lights Publishing
• Back To The Sources – Edited by Barry Holtz – (See Chapter on Kabalistic Texts)