Zohar

The ''Zohar'' ( he, , ''Zōhar'', lit. "Splendor" or "Radiance") is a foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah (the five books of Moses) and scriptural interpretations as well as material on mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology. The ''Zohar'' contains discussions of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, redemption, the relationship of Ego to Darkness and "true self" to "The Light of God".

The ''Zohar'' was first publicized by Moses de León (c. 1240 – 1305 CE), who claimed it was a Tannaitic work recording the teachings of Simeon ben Yochai (). This claim is universally rejected by modern scholars, most of whom believe de León, also an infamous forger of Geonic material, wrote the book himself between 1280 and 1286. Some scholars argue that the ''Zohar'' is the work of multiple medieval authors and/or contains a small amount of genuinely antique novel material. Later additions to the ''Zohar'', including the Tiqqune hazZohar and the Ra'ya Mehimna, were composed by a 14th century imitator.

Language

According to Gershom Scholem and other modern scholars, Zoharic Aramaic is an artificial dialect largely based on a linguistic fusion of the Babylonian Talmud and Targum Onkelos, but confused by de Leon's simple and imperfect grammar, his limited vocabulary, and his reliance on loanwords, including from contemporary medieval languages.

Authorship

Initial view

Authorship of the ''Zohar'' was questioned from the outset, due to the claim that it was discovered by one person and referred to historical events of the post- Talmudic period while purporting to be from an earlier date. Abraham Zacuto's 1504 work ''Sefer Yuhasin'' (first printed 1566) quotes from the Kabbalist Isaac ben Samuel of Acre's 13th century memoir ''Divre hayYamim'' (lost), which claims that the widow and daughter of de León revealed that he had written it himself and only ascribed the authorship to Simeon ben Yochai for personal profit:

Isaac goes on to say that he obtained mixed evidence of Zohar's authenticity from other Spanish Kabbalists, and, though he treats it as genuine in his ''Otzar haChayyim'', he rarely quotes it. Isaac's testimony was censored from the second edition (1580) and remained absent from all editions thereafter until its restoration nearly 300 years later in the 1857 edition.

Within fifty years of its appearance in Spain it was quoted by Kabbalists, including the Italian mystical writer Menahem Recanati and Todros ben Joseph Abulafia. However Joseph ibn Wakar harshly attacked the Zohar, which he considered inauthentic, and some Jewish communities, such as the Dor Daim, Andalusian (Western Sefardic or Spanish and Portuguese Jews), and some Italian communities, never accepted it as authentic. The manuscripts of the ''Zohar'' are from the 14th-16th centuries.

Late Middle Ages

By the 15th century, its authority in the Iberian Jewish community was such that Joseph ibn Shem-Tov drew from it arguments in his attacks against Maimonides, and even representatives of non-mystical Jewish thought began to assert its sacredness and invoke its authority in the decision of some ritual questions. In Jacobs' and Broyde's view, they were attracted by its glorification of man, its doctrine of immortality, and its ethical principles, which they saw as more in keeping with the spirit of Talmudic Judaism than are those taught by the philosophers, and which was held in contrast to the view of Maimonides and his followers, who regarded man as a fragment of the universe whose immortality is dependent upon the degree of development of his active intellect. The ''Zohar'' instead declared Man to be the lord of creation, whose immortality is solely dependent upon his morality.

Conversely, Elia del Medigo (c.1458 – c.1493), in his ''Beḥinat ha-Dat'' endeavored to show that the ''Zohar'' could not be attributed to Simeon ben Yochai, by a number of arguments. He claims that if it were his work, the ''Zohar'' would have been mentioned by the Talmud, as has been the case with other works of the Talmudic period; he claims that had ben Yochai known by divine revelation the hidden meaning of the precepts, his decisions on Jewish law from the Talmudic period would have been adopted by the Talmud, that it would not contain the names of rabbis who lived at a later period than that of ben Yochai; he claims that if the Kabbalah were a revealed doctrine, there would have been no divergence of opinion among the Kabbalists concerning the mystic interpretation of the precepts.

Believers in the authenticity of the ''Zohar'' countered that the lack of references to the work in Jewish literature was because ben Yochai did not commit his teachings to writing but transmitted them orally to his disciples over generations until finally the doctrines were embodied in the ''Zohar''. They found it unsurprising that ben Yochai should have foretold future happenings or made references to historical events of the post-Talmudic period.

By the late 16th century, the ''Zohar'' was present in one-tenth of all private Jewish libraries in Mantua. The authenticity of the ''Zohar'' was accepted by such 16th century Jewish luminaries as Joseph Karo (d. 1575), and Solomon Luria (d. 1574), who wrote nonetheless that Jewish law does not follow the Zohar when it is contradicted by the Babylonian Talmud. Luria writes that the ''Zohar'' cannot even override a minhag. Moses Isserles (d. 1572) writes that he "heard" that the author of the Zohar is ben Yochai. Elijah Levita (d. 1559) did not believe in its antiquity, nor did Joseph Scaliger (d. 1609) or Johannes Drusius (d. 1616).

Enlightenment Period

Debate continued over the generations; Delmedigo's arguments were echoed by Leon of Modena (d. 1648) in his ''Ari Nohem'' and Jean Morin (d. 1659), and Jacob Emden (d. 1776), who may have been familiar with Morin's arguments, devoted a book to the criticism of the ''Zohar'', called ''Mitpachas Sefarim'' (מטפחת ספרים) to fight the remaining adherents of the Sabbatai Zevi movement (in which Zevi, a false messiah and Jewish apostate, cited Messianic prophecies from the ''Zohar'' as proof of his legitimacy), and endeavored to show that the book on which Zevi based his doctrines was a forgery. Emden argued that the ''Zohar'' misquotes passages of Scripture; misunderstands the Talmud; contains some ritual observances that were ordained by later rabbinical authorities; mentions The Crusades against Muslims (who did not exist in the 2nd century); uses the expression "''esnoga''", a Portuguese term for " synagogue"; and gives a mystical explanation of the Hebrew vowel points, which were not introduced until long after the Talmudic period. Saul Berlin (d. 1794) argued that the presence of an introduction in the Zohar, unknown to the Talmudic literary genre, itself indicates a medieval date.

In the Ashkenazi community of Eastern Europe, religious authorities including Elijah of Vilna (d. 1797) and Shneur Zalman of Liadi (d. 1812) believed in the authenticity of the ''Zohar'', while Ezekiel Landau (d. 1793), in his sefer ''Derushei HaTzlach'' (דרושי הצל"ח), argued that the ''Zohar'' is to be considered unreliable as it came into our hands many hundreds of years after Ben Yochai's death and lacks an unbroken tradition of authenticity, among other reasons. Isaac Haver (d. 1852) admits the vast majority of content comes from the 13th century but argues that there was a genuine core. Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport spoke against the Zohar's antiquity.

The influence of the ''Zohar'' in Yemen contributed to the formation of the Dor Deah movement, led by Yiḥyah Qafiḥ in the later part of the 19th century. Among its objects was the opposition of the influence of the ''Zohar'', as presented in Qafiḥ's ''Milhamoth Hashem'' (Wars of the Lord) and ''Da'at Elohim''.

Modern religious views

Yechiel Michel Epstein (d. 1908), and Yisrael Meir Kagan (d. 1933) both believed in the authenticity of the ''Zohar'', as did Menachem Mendel Kasher (d. 1983), Aryeh Kaplan (d. 1983), David Luria (d. 1855), and Chaim Kanievsky (d. 2022). Aryeh Carmell (d. 2006) did not, and Eliyahu Dessler (d. 1953) accepted the possibility that it was composed in the 13th century. Gedaliah Nadel (d. 2004) was unsure if the Zohar were genuine but was sure that it is acceptable to believe that it is not. Ovadia Yosef (d. 2013) held that Orthodox Jews should accept the Zohar's antiquity in practice based on medieval precedent, but agreed that rejecting it is rational and religiously valid.Shapiro, Marc (2010). "האם יש חיוב להאמין שהזוהר נכתב על ידי שמעון בן יוחאי?"
''מילין חביבין'' (5)
1–20. Joseph Hertz (d. 1946) called the claim of ben Yochai's authorship "untenable", citing Scholem's evidence. Samuel Belkin (d. 1976) argued that the Mystical Midrash section, specifically, predated de León. Joseph B. Soloveitchik (d. 1993) apparently dismissed the Zohar's antiquity. Moses Gaster (d. 1939) wrote that the claim of ben Yochai's authorship was "untenable" but that de León had compiled earlier material. Meir Mazuz (alive) accepts Emden's arguments.

Modern critical views

The first systematic and critical academic proof for the authorship of Moses de León was given by Adolf Jellinek in his 1851 monograph "Moses ben Shem-tob de León und sein Verhältnis zum Sohar" and later adopted by the historian Heinrich Graetz in his "History of the Jews", vol. 7. The kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem began his career at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a lecture in which he promised to refute Graetz and Jellinek, but after years of research contended in 1941 that de León himself was the most likely author. Scholem noted the ''Zohar's'' frequent errors in Aramaic grammar, its suspicious traces of Arabic and Spanish words and sentence patterns, and its lack of knowledge of the land of Israel.

Scholem views the author as having based the ''Zohar'' on a wide variety of pre-existing Jewish sources, while at the same time inventing a number of fictitious works that the ''Zohar'' supposedly quotes, ''e.g.'', the Sifra de-Adam, the Sifra de-Hanokh, the Sifra di-Shelomo Malka, the Sifra de-Rav Hamnuna Sava, the Sifra de-Rav Yeiva Sava, the Sifra de-Aggadeta, the Raza de-Razin and many others.

Scholem's views are widely held as accurate among historians of the Kabbalah, but they are not uncritically accepted. Scholars who continue to research the background of the ''Zohar'' include Yehuda Liebes (who wrote his doctorate thesis for Scholem on the subject, ''Dictionary of the Vocabulary of the Zohar'' in 1976), and Daniel C. Matt, also a student of Scholem's who has reconstructed a critical edition of the ''Zohar'' based on original, unpublished manuscripts.

Academic studies of the ''Zohar'' show that many of its ideas are based in the Talmud, various works of midrash, and earlier Jewish mystical works. Scholem writes:

:The writer had expert knowledge of the early material and he often used it as a foundation for his expositions, putting into it variations of his own. His main sources were the Babylonian Talmud, the complete Midrash Rabbah, the Midrash Tanhuma, and the two Pesiktot (Pesikta De-Rav Kahana or Pesikta Rabbati), the Midrash on Psalms, the Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, and the Targum Onkelos. Generally speaking, they are not quoted exactly, but translated into the peculiar style of the ''Zohar'' and summarized. ..
:Less use is made of the halakhic Midrashim, the Jerusalem Talmud, and the other Targums, nor of the Midrashim like the Aggadat Shir ha-Shirim, the Midrash on Proverbs, and the Alfabet de-R. Akiva. It is not clear whether the author used the Yalkut Simeoni, or whether he knew the sources of its aggadah separately. Of the smaller Midrashim he used the Heikhalot Rabbati, the Alfabet de-Ben Sira, the Sefer Zerubabel, the Baraita de-Ma'aseh Bereshit, nd many others ..
The ''Zohar'' also draws from the Bible commentaries written by medieval rabbis, including Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra, David Kimhi and even authorities as late as Nahmanides and Maimonides, and earlier mystical texts such as the Sefer Yetzirah and the Bahir and the medieval writings of the Hasidei Ashkenaz.

Another influence that Scholem, and scholars like Yehudah Liebes and Ronit Meroz have identified was a circle of Spanish Kabbalists in Castile who dealt with the appearance of an evil side emanating from within the world of the sephirot. Scholem saw this dualism of good and evil within the Godhead as a kind of "gnostic" inclination within Kabbalah, and as a predecessor of the ''Sitra Ahra'' (the other, evil side) in the ''Zohar''. The main text of the Castile circle, the Treatise on the Left Emanation, was written by Jacob ha-Cohen in around 1265.

Contents

Printings, editions, and indexing

The '' Tikunei haZohar'' was first printed in Mantua in 1557. The main body of the ''Zohar'' was printed in Cremona in 1558 (a one-volume edition), in Mantua in 1558-1560 (a three-volume edition), and in Salonika in 1597 (a two-volume edition). Each of these editions included somewhat different texts. When they were printed there were many partial manuscripts in circulation that were not available to the first printers. These were later printed as "''Zohar Chadash''" (lit. "New Zohar"), but ''Zohar Chadash'' actually contains parts that pertain to the Zohar, as well as ''Tikunim'' (plural of ''Tikun'', "Repair") that are akin to '' Tikunei haZohar'', as described below. The term "Zohar", in usage, may refer to just the first ''Zohar'' collection, with or without the applicable sections of ''Zohar'' Chadash, or to the entire ''Zohar'' and Tikunim.
Citations referring to the ''Zohar'' conventionally follow the volume and page numbers of the Mantua edition; while citations referring to ''Tikkunei haZohar'' follow the edition of Ortakoy (Constantinople) 1719 whose text and pagination became the basis for most subsequent editions. Volumes II and III begin their numbering anew, so citation can be made by ''parashah'' and page number (e.g. ''Zohar: Nasso'' 127a), or by volume and page number (e.g. ''Zohar'' III:127a).

The New Zohar (זוהר חדש)

After the book of the ''Zohar'' had been printed (in Mantua and in Cremona, in the Jewish years 5318-5320 or 1558-1560? CE), many more manuscripts were found that included paragraphs pertaining to the ''Zohar'' which had not been included in printed editions. The manuscripts pertained also to all parts of the ''Zohar''; some were similar to ''Zohar'' on the Torah, some were similar to the inner parts of the ''Zohar'' (''Midrash haNe'elam, Sitrei Otiyot'' and more), and some pertained to '' Tikunei haZohar''. Some thirty years after the first edition of the ''Zohar'' was printed, the manuscripts were gathered and arranged according to the ''parasha''s of the Torah and the megillot (apparently the arrangement was done by the Kabbalist, Avraham haLevi of Tsfat), and were printed first in Salonika in Jewish year 5357 (1587? CE), and then in Kraków (5363), and afterwards in various editions.Much of the information on contents and sections of the ''Zohar'' is found in the book ''Ohr haZohar''(אור הזוהר) by Rabbi Yehuda Shalom Gross, in Hebrew, published by Mifal Zohar Hoilumi, Ramat Beth Shemesh, Israel, Heb. year 5761 (2001 CE); also available at http://israel613.com/HA-ZOHAR/OR_HAZOHAR_2.htm, accessed March 1, 2012; explicit permission is given in both the printed and electronic book "to whoever desires to print paragraphs from this book, or the entire book, in any language, in any country, in order to increase Torah and fear of Heaven in the world and to awaken hearts our brothers the children of Yisrael in complete ''teshuvah''".

Structure

According to Scholem, the ''Zohar'' can be divided into 21 types of content, of which the first 18 (a.-s.) are the work of the original author (probably de Leon) and the final 3 (t.-v.) are the work of a later imitator.

a. Untitled Torah commentary

A "bulky part" which is "wholly composed of discursive commentaries on various passages from the Torah".

b. Book of Concealment (ספרא דצניעותא)
A short part of only six pages, containing a commentary to the first six chapters of Genesis. It is "highly oracular and obscure," citing no authorities and explaining nothing.

c. Greater Assembly (אדרא רבא)
This part contains an explanation of the oracular hints in the previous section. Ben Yochai's friends gather together to discuss secrets of Kabbalah. After the opening of the discussion by ben Yochai, the sages rise, one after the other, and lecture on the secret of Divinity, while ben Yochai adds to and responds to their words. The sages become steadily more ecstatic until three of them die. Scholem calls this part "architecturally perfect."

d. Lesser Assembly (אדרא זוטא)
Ben Yochai dies and a speech is quoted in which he explains the previous section.

e. Assembly of the Tabernacle (אדרא דמשכנא)

This part has the same structure as c. but discusses instead the mysticism of prayer.

f. Palaces (היכלות)

Seven palaces of light are described, which are perceived by the devout in death. This description appears again in another passage, heavily embellished.

g. Secretum Secretorum (רזא דרזין)

An anonymous discourse on physiognomy and a discourse on chiromancy by ben Yochai.

h. Old Man (סבא)

An elaborate narrative about a speech by an old Kabbalist.

i. Child (ינוקא)

A story of a prodigy and his Kabbalistic speech.

k. Head of the Academy (רב מתיבתא)

A Pardes narrative in which a head of the celestial academy reveals secrets about the destinies of the soul.

l. Secrets of Torah (סתרי תורה)

Allegorical and mystical interpretations of Torah passages.

m. Mishnas (מתניתין)

Imitations of the Mishnaic style, designed to introduce longer commentaries in the style of the Talmud.

n. Zohar to the Song of Songs

Kabbalistic commentary to the Song of Songs.

o. Standard of Measure (קו המידה)

Profound interpretation of Deut. 6:4.

p. Secrets of Letters (סתרי אותיות)

A monologue by ben Yochai on the letters in the names of God and their use in creation.

q. Commentary to the Merkabah

r. Mystical Midrash (מדרש הנעלם)

A Kabbalistic commentary on the Torah, citing a wide variety of Talmudic sages. According to Ramaz, it is fit to be called ''Midrash haNe'elam'' because "its topic is mostly the ''neshamah'' (an upper level of soul), the source of which is in ''Beri'ah'', which is the place of the upper Gan Eden; and it is written in the ''Pardes'' that drash is in ''Beri'ah''... and the revealed midrash is the secret of externality, and ''Midrash haNe'elam'' is the secret of internality, which is the neshamah. And this derush is founded on the neshamah; its name befits it – ''Midrash haNe'elam''.

The language of ''Midrash haNe'elam'' is sometimes Hebrew, sometimes Aramaic, and sometimes both mixed. Unlike the body of the ''Zohar'', its drashas are short and not long. Also, the topics it discusses — the work of Creation, the nature the soul, the days of Mashiach, and '' Olam Haba'' — are not of the type found in the ''Zohar'', which are the nature of God, the emanation of worlds, the "forces" of evil, and more.

s. Mystic Midrash on Ruth

A commentary on The Book of Ruth in the same style.

t. Faithful Shepherd (רעיא מהימנא)
By far the largest "book" included in the ''Zohar'', this is a Kabbalistic commentary on Moses' teachings revealed to ben Yochai and his friends. Moshe Cordovero said, "Know that this book, which is called ''Ra'aya Meheimna'', which ben Yochai made with the tzadikim who are in Gan Eden, was a repair of the Shekhinah, and an aid and support for it in the exile, for there is no aid or support for the Shekhinah besides the secrets of the Torah... And everything that he says here of the secrets and the concepts—it is all with the intention of unifying the Shekhinah and aiding it during the exile.''Ohr haChamah laZohar'', part 2, p. 115b, in the name of the Ramak

u. Rectifications of the Zohar (תקוני זוהר)

''Tikunei haZohar'', which was printed as a separate book, includes seventy commentaries called "''Tikunim''" (lit. Repairs) and an additional eleven Tikkunim. In some editions, Tikunim are printed that were already printed in the ''Zohar Chadash'', which in their content and style also pertain to ''Tikunei haZohar''.

Each of the seventy Tikunim of ''Tikunei haZohar'' begins by explaining the word "''Bereishit''" (בראשית), and continues by explaining other verses, mainly in ''parashat Bereishit'', and also from the rest of Tanakh