Jewish meditation includes practices of settling the mind, introspection, visualization, emotional insight, contemplation of divine names, or concentration on philosophical, ethical or mystical ideas. Meditation may accompany unstructured, personal Jewish prayer, may be part of structured Jewish services, or may be separate from prayer practices. Jewish mystics have viewed meditation as leading to devekut (cleaving to God). Hebrew terms for meditation include hitbodedut (or hisbodedus, literally "self-seclusion") or hitbonenut/hisbonenus ("contemplation").
Through the centuries, meditation practices have been developed in many movements, including among Maimonideans (Moses Maimonides and Abraham Maimonides), Kabbalists (Abraham Abulafia, Isaac the Blind, Azriel of Gerona, Moses Cordovero, Yosef Karo and Isaac Luria), Hasidic rabbis (Baal Shem Tov, Schneur Zalman of Liadi and Nachman of Breslov), Musar movement rabbis (Israel Salanter and Simcha Zissel Ziv), Conservative movement rabbis (Alan Lew), Reform movement rabbis (Lawrence Kushner and Rami Shapiro), and Reconstructionist movement rabbi (Shefa Gold).
Definitions In his book Meditation and Kabbalah, Rav Aryeh Kaplan suggests that meditation is a practice that is meant to bring spiritual liberation through various methods that can loosen the bond of the physical, allowing the practitioner to reach the transcendental, spiritual realm and attain Ruach HaKodesh (Holy spirit), which he associates with enlightenment.
More recently Tomer Persico presented the lack of a proper definition of the word meditation. He suggests that the word has many different meanings and uses, and that only a few attempts have been made to provide a comprehensive definition. He therefore suggests meditation should be defined as "A voluntary act aiming to generate an alteration in the individuals consciousness, which they perceive as therapeutic or redemptive". Based on that definition, he further presents a five elements typology with which the various Jewish meditative traditions could be distinguishable from one another:
Fundamental Structure- Whether the meditation in general cultivates awareness, concentration or automation. Orientation, or Intentional Stance- Whether the meditation is inward or outward bent, introverted or extroverted. The Emotive Effect- Whether the meditation brings about an enraptured surge of feelings and sense impressions or an equilibrious quieting of the mind, whether it is ecstatic or ecstatic. The Corporal Locus- Whether it is focused on the mind-consciousness domain, or on the body-emotional arena, whether it is mind and "awareness"-centered or body and "energy"-centered, Relationship with the Acknowledged Tradition- Whether the methods are superimposed on the traditional religious practices or whether they are complete innovations being added to them, whether (in the Jewish case specifically) they are nomian or anomian.
History
In the Hebrew Bible Aryeh Kaplan sees indications throughout the Hebrew Bible that Judaism always contained a central meditative tradition, going back to the time of the patriarchs. For instance, in the book of Genesis, the patriarch Isaac is described as going "lasuach" () in the field (Genesis 24:63), understood by many commentators to refer to some type of meditative practice.
Most of the Hebrew Bible references to meditation appear in the book of psalms. It is also mentioned in the first chapter of Joshua.
Antiquity
Some scholars see Merkavah-Heichalot mysticism as using meditative methods, built around the biblical vision of Ezekiel and the creation in Genesis. According to Michael D. Swartz: "the texts do not, however, provide any instructions for meditation techniques. Nor do they betray any evidence of consciousness of an interior self, such as the soul or mind, which accomplishes the journey to heaven."
Medieval era Moses Maimonides, often considered the greatest Jewish philosopher of his time, suggests in The Guide for the Perplexed (3.32), that intellectual meditation is a higher form of worship than either sacrifice or prayer.
He later (3:51) teaches that those who are "perfect" in their intellectual perception of God can "enjoy the presence of Divine Providence", but only while they "meditate on God".Fleming, James Hamilton, "The Idea of God in the Philosophy of Moses Maimonides" (1949). Master's Theses. p. 123. 758 He offers a parable that suggests that purely intellectual, private meditation is the highest form of worship.
That chapter of the Guide (3:51) is dedicated to what Maimonides refers to as: "the worship peculiar to those who have apprehended the true realities". According to Maimonides, after acquiring the knowledge of the Divine, we should turn our awareness to Him, something that is usually accomplished in self-seclusion:It has thus been shown that it must be man's aim, after having acquired the knowledge of God, to deliver himself up to Him, and to have his heart constantly filled with longing after Him. He accomplishes this generally by seclusion and retirement. Every pious man should therefore seek retirement and seclusion, and should only in case of necessity associate with others.This practice includes love and longing for God, a subject Maimonides discusses in length at the beginning of his other great book, The Mishne Torah: What is the path [to attain] love and fear of Him? When a person contemplates His wondrous and great deeds and creations and appreciates His infinite wisdom that surpasses all comparison, he will immediately love, praise, and glorify [Him], yearning with tremendous desire to know [God's] great name.Abraham Maimonides, son of Moses Maimonides, also recommended private meditative practices that were designed to rid the mind of desires and allow for communion with God. Although scholars tend to perceive it as a Sufi inspired Jewish meditation, Maimoni himself testify that this practice was historically used by pious Jews and the Biblical prophets before them, while implying the Sufis were the ones to be inspired by the Jewish tradition. In his book, The Guide to Serving God, the chapter on Hitbodedut provides an elaborative meditative practice based on his father's teachings:"Inward retreat (Hitbodedut) is the complete focus of the heart.. to empty the heart and mind of all besides God and to fill and occupy them with Him. This is accomplished by totally or partially quieting the sensitive soul, detaching the appetitive (i.e. desiring) soul from the rest of one's worldly occupations and reorienting it toward God; filling the rational soul with God; and using the imaginative soul to assist the intelligence in its contemplation of Gods magnificent creations, which testify to their Creator: the majesty and awe of the sea, with its wondrous creatures, the rotation of the great celestial sphere, the nature of the stars, and such."
Kabbalah
Kabbalists of different schools have been concerned with a range of esoteric encounters with divinity mediated by different meditative practices, ranging from ecstatic mystical cleaving to God, or prophetic visual and auditory disclosing of the divine, to theurgic manipulation of theosophical divine emanations. Practices included meditation on the names of God in Judaism, combinations of Hebrew letters, and kavanot (esoteric "intentions").
The main concern of the Theosophical Kabbalah such as the Zohar and Isaac Luria was on theurgic harmonisation of the sephirot (Divine attributes), though recent phenomenological scholarship has uncovered the prophetic visualisation of the sephirot as a Divine Anthropos in the imagination of the medieval theosophical practitioners. In contrast, the main concern of the medieval Ecstatic Kabbalah, exemplified most fully in Abraham Abulafia's "Prophetic Kabbalah", was on unio mystica and drawing down the influx of prophecy upon the practitioner. Abulafia opposed interpreting the sephirot as theosophical-theurgical hypostases, seeing them in Maimonidean negative theology psychological terms, while viewing his meditation mysticism as a superior Kabbalah. The ethic of meditation mysticism in Abulafia and other Ecstatic Kabbalists was a minority tradition to the Theosophical Kabbalah mainstream, but later aspects of it became incorporated in the 16th century Theosophical compendiums of Cordovero and Vital, such as drawing down divine influx, and subsequently influenced the psychologisation of Kabbalah in Hasidic self-absorption in God. Ecstatic traditions were at a disadvantage for normative Judaism, as they made classic meditation their central preoccupation; as with Moses Maimonides the mitzvot (Jewish observances) were a means to the end purpose of mystical or philosophical cleaving to God (or the Active intellect). In contrast, Theosophical traditions centred around the theurgic power and cosmic centrality importance of normative Jewish worship and Halakha observance, especially when carried out with elite Kavanot (mystical intentions).
Pinchas Giller questions the usage of the term "meditation" for Theosophical (mainstream) Kabbalah's theurgic kavanot (intentions), where deveikut (cleaving to God) was secondary, preferring the term more accurately for Ecstatic Kabbalah's unio mystica methods and goal. He sees generalising the term in reference to all Kabbalistic intentions as a reflection of the contemporary zeitgeist, promoted by Aryeh Kaplan and others. He recommends Ecstatic Kabbalah, the Jewish Sufism of Abraham Maimonides, or Chabad Hasidic prayer contemplation as paths more suited to develop a future ethic of Jewish meditation (unio mystica). However, as mitzvot are the primary centre of traditional Judaism, Giller sees Jewish prayer, rather than classic meditation akin to Eastern Religions, as the true central expression of Judaism. Theosophical Kabbalists and later Hasidism were deeply concerned to develop mystical approaches to prayer, whether theurgic in the case of Kabbalah, or devotional and self-nullifying in the case of Hasidism.