Judaism

Judaism is one of the world's oldest monotheistic traditions and the root from which both Christianity and Islam grew. At its surface it is a religion of covenant, a particular people's relationship with a particular God, expressed through law, practice, and communal life. But within Judaism runs a mystical current, Kabbalah, that transforms this particular covenant into a universal metaphysics of extraordinary depth.

The Shema, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, is Judaism's central declaration. The Hebrew word echad (one) carries more weight than its translation suggests. The Zohar's mystical reading makes clear that this is not merely the assertion that there is one God rather than many, but that Oneness is the only reality, that what appears as multiplicity is the self-expression of a single infinite ground. This is Advaita in Hebrew.

Lurianic Kabbalah, developed by Isaac Luria in 16th century Safed, gives us one of the most profound cosmological myths in world spirituality. Before creation, Ein Sof filled all existence. To make room for the world, the Infinite performed Tzimtzum, a self-contraction, a divine self-emptying. The vessels created to hold the divine light shattered, Shevirat HaKelim. The divine sparks fell into the material world, embedded in all things. The human task is Tikkun Olam, repair of the world, through conscious living that gathers the sparks back to their source.

This myth is Gnostic, is Buddhist in its account of how the One becomes many, is the same story as Rumi's Reed cut from the reed bed. The specific Jewish form makes it about ethical action in the world, which is perhaps its greatest gift to the perennial tradition.