Anyone who longs to attain the attributes of the Creator and unite with him is called Yehudi (Jewish); from the Hebrew word Yechudi (unique), to signify the act of unification. It depends solely on one’s desire, and the Creator gives that from above. If a person has that desire, then Kabbalah deals with its realization. If there is no desire, that person will never approach Kabbalah in the first place. That is why there is no coercion in spirituality and there is no commitment to practice it, but only those who have a desire, which testifies to the fact that one’s time has come to draw near the Creator.
All the souls are parts of a single collective soul, but each of them develops at its own pace. That is why there are souls that demand spiritual development right now, and then there are souls, which do not. Most souls are still developing within the framework of our world.
One cannot impose upon oneself the desire for spirituality. He wishes for different things in this life, and at a very unexpected moment in his life a desire for spirituality awakens in him. It is called “a point in the heart,” a seed, the fetus of the soul. When that happens he begins to look, until he finds the wisdom of Kabbalah.
If a person is still at the stage when he hasn’t come to realize where he should proceed and why, but only feels a vague desire for spirituality, it might take years and perhaps lifetimes, before he comes to Kabbalah, and only to Kabbalah. That will be the case with the whole of mankind, as the prophet says: “for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them” (Jeremiah 31, 33). That is why imposing the wisdom of Kabbalah on anyone is simply impossible.
In order to find the few suitable ones to advance in spirituality, the Baal Shem Tov established the entire movement of the Hasidut. It is said about that: “A thousand go into a room… and one comes out to teach,” meaning discovers the light, the Creator.
The movement of the Hasidut did not replace the Kabbalah. Alongside the Hasidut came about the movement of the Mitnagdim (opposition to Hasidut), but they were both religious movements. The Kabbalah, however, is not a religious movement, but a science. A wisdom that goes above religion, hence the name “The Wisdom of Kabbalah.”
The Kabbalah is a science that studies the system of creation, the way it was formed, the root of its essence and its structure. It examines how the Creator conducts this system, and how creation should correct itself in order to rise to the degree of the Creator, which is in fact the purpose of creation. Kabbalah is a science that deals with nearing the Creator, whereas religion simply indicates to people what they should do with the protein bodies of our world.
The wisdom of Kabbalah has no connection with any popular religious movements. The Hasidut was created in order to help the Jewish orthodox person integrate a certain amount of spiritual intention in the performance of the physical Mitzvot (precepts). However, the founder of the Hasidut, the Baal Shem Tov, was first and foremost a Kabbalist of the highest degree. He therefore established the Hasidut as a popular movement in order to select out of the mass the few who had the desire and the ability to become Kabbalists.
This way he managed to find disciples who later became the first Admorim (Jewish masters and teachers), who went on to establish their own trends in Hasidut. The task of the movement was to select the ones who wanted to attain the Creator from the collective and render certain support to the general public.
A Kabbalist is a person who studies the system of creation through inner efforts, called “work.” He observes deeply into himself and performs actions called “corrections.” This way he climbs the ladder of the spiritual worlds to the end of correction, to complete equivalence of form with the Creator and total adhesion with him.
That can only be attained through the wisdom of Kabbalah, and only a person who has already been awakened to spirituality can come to that. The Baal Shem Tov assumed that if he imparted the public with a basic knowledge in the wisdom of Kabbalah through the movement of Hasidut, the ones who really did want to attain the Creator would finally come to him. All people will eventually come to feel that they need spiritual elevation, but it is a gradual process.
All ailments and pains in the world stem from misusing the will to receive. Hence, all one needs is the knowledge of how to use one’s spiritual and corporeal desires correctly.
The wisdom of Kabbalah explains to man how to use his desires in the most effective way to benefit himself, his family, and the whole of mankind now and for all times.