Zohar

Language

Zoharic Aramaic

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 León's simple and imperfect grammar, his limited vocabulary, and his reliance on loanwords, including from contemporaneous medieval languages. The author further confused his text with occasional strings of Aramaic-seeming gibberish, in order to give the impression of obscure knowledge. While acknowledging that Zoharic Aramaic did not develop organically from any preexisting dialect, some recent scholarship argues that Aramaic was chosen for literary or mystical purposes, not merely to disguise the forgery.

Zoharic Hebrew

The original text of the Zohar, as cited by various early Kabbalists beginning around the 14th century (e.g. Isaac b. Samuel of Acre, David b. Judah the Pious, Israel Alnaqua, Alfonso de Zamora) was partly in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic. By the time of the first edition (1558) the text was entirely in Aramaic, with the exception of the Midrash haNe'elam, where Hebrew words and phrases are often employed as in the Babylonian Talmud. "The Hebrew of the Midrash haNe'elam is similar in its overall form to the language of the early midrashim, but its specific vocabulary, idioms, and stylistic characteristics bear the imprint of medieval Hebrew, and its midrashic manner is clearly that of a later imitation."

Authorship

Initial view

Abraham Zacuto's 1504 work Sefer Yuhasin (first printed 1566) quotes from the Kabbalist Isaac ben Samuel of Acre's 13th-century chronicle 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 Shimon ben Yochai for personal profit:

And [Isaac] went to Spain, to investigate how it happened in his time that the Zohar was found, which Shimon ben Yochai and Eleazar ben Shimon his son had made in the cave . . . and some say that [de Leon] forged it among his forgeries, but [Isaac later] said [in his Otzar haChayyim] that the Palestinian Aramaic sections were genuinely written by Shimon ben Yochai . . . And [Isaac] wrote:

Because I had seen that these words were wonderous, that they ran from a well high above which is beyond those uninitiated into the secrets of the divine, I chased after it and I asked the scholars . . . and some said it had fallen into the hand of the sage Moses de Leon, whom they call Moses of Guadalajara, and some said Shimon ben Yochai had never written this book, but that Moses had written these wonderous words and falsely ascribed them to Shimon ben Yochai and his son Elazar in order to sell them for huge sums of money. And I went to Spain, to the capital city of Valladolid, and presented myself to Moses, and was received favorably, and he swore to me by the Lord that the ancient book of Shimon ben Yochai was that day in his house in Ávila, and that he would show it to me when I visited him, and Moses parted from me to return home, but he sickened in Arévalo on the way, and he died there, and when I heard of this I was mortally pained, and I took to the road, and I came to Ávila, and I found a great old sage there named David de Pancorbo, and he received me favorably, and I demanded he explain to me the secrets of the Zohar, about which men were disputing, and about which Moses himself had sworn beyond doubt until his death, but about which I did not know upon whom to rely or whom to trust, and he told me, "Know in truth that it is clear to me beyond doubt that it never came to the hand of this Moses, and that there is no Zohar except that of which Moses himself wrote every word. Know that this Moses was a great spendthrift; one day his house was filled with treasures that the wealthy mystics had given him in exchange for excerpts, and the next his wife and children were starving naked in the street. So when we heard that he had died in Arévalo, I went to the house of the richest man in the city, Joseph de Ávila, and said to him, 'Now the time has come for you to earn the priceless Zohar if you will do what I advise', and he followed my advice, and he sent his wife to the house of Moses' widow, and she said to her, 'Know that my wish is to marry your daughter to my son, and I ask nothing from you except the Zohar from which your husband excerpted for many people,' and Moses' widow swore to Joseph's wife, 'By the Lord, my husband never had such a book except in his mind, and everything he wrote came from his own intellect. When I saw him writing, I asked him why he claimed to be excerpting from a book I knew he did not have, and he told me that it was because, while for his own words they would not give a penny, for the divinely inspired work of Shimon ben Yochai they will pay in blood.' And Moses' daughter said exactly the same." Can you ask for better proof than this?

Late Middle Ages

By the 15th century, the Zohar's authority in the Iberian Jewish community was such that Joseph ibn Shem-Tov drew arguments from it 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 Shimon 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.

Enlightenment Period

Debate continued over the generations; del Medigo's arguments were echoed by Leon of Modena (d. 1648) in his Ari Nohem, by Jean Morin (d. 1659), and by Jacob Emden (d. 1776).

Emden—who may have been familiar with Modena through Morin's arguments—devoted a book to the criticism of the Zohar, called Mitpachas Sefarim (מטפחת ספרים), in an effort against the remaining adherents of the Sabbatean movement (in which Sabbatai Zevi, a Jewish apostate, cited Messianic prophecies from the Zohar as proof of his legitimacy). Emden argued that the book on which Zevi based his doctrines was a forgery, arguing 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 the synagogue

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 was made public many hundreds of years after Ben Yochai's death and lacks an unbroken tradition of authenticity, among other reasons.

Modern religious views

In 1892, Adolf Neubauer called on the Orthodox rabbinate to reject the Zohar as a forgery and to remove Zoharic prayers from the liturgy. However, 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. Moshe Feinstein wrote in 1953 that "the Zohar and Tikkunim are the words of the Tannaim". 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. Joseph Hertz (d. 1946) called the claim of ben Yochai's authorship "untenable", citing Gershom 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 Moses de León had compiled earlier material. Meir Mazuz (d. 2025) accepts Emden's arguments. Yeshayahu Leibowitz wrote (1990) that "Moses de León composed the Zohar in the 1270s as certainly as Theodor Herzl composed Der Judenstaat in the 1890s ... the Zohar was influential because in every generation the idolatrous influence outpowers the true faith".

Modern critical views

Early attempts included M. H. Landauer's Vorläufiger Bericht über meine Entdeckung in Ansehung des Sohar (1845), which fingered Abraham Abulafia as the author, and Samuel David Luzzatto's ויכוח על חכמת הקבלה (1852), but 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". Jellinek's proofs, which combined previous analyses with Isaac of Acre's testimony and comparison of the Zohar to de Leon's Hebrew works, were accepted by every other major scholar in the field, including Heinrich Graetz (History of the Jews, vol. 7), Moritz Steinschneider, Bernhard Beer, Leopold Zunz, and Christian David Ginsburg. Ginsburg summarized Jellinek's, Graetz's, and other scholars' proofs for the English-reading world in 1865, also introducing several novel proofs, including that the Zohar includes a translation of a poem by Solomon ibn Gabirol (d. 1058) and that it includes a mystical explanation of a mezuzah style only introduced in the 13th century. Adolf Neubauer and Samuel Rolles Driver were convinced by these arguments, but Edward Bouverie Pusey held to a Tannaitic date.

By 1913, the critical view had apparently lost some support: Israel Abrahams recalls that "Zunz, like Graetz, had little patience with the Zohar . . . at this date we are much more inclined to treat the Kabbalah with respect."

Gershom Scholem, who was to found modern academic study of Kabbalah, began his career at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925 with a lecture in which he promised to refute Graetz and Jellinek. However, after years of research, he came to conclusions similar to theirs by 1938, when he argued again that de León 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, among other proofs.

Scholem's views are widely held as accurate among historians of 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, a student of Scholem's who has published a critical edition of the Zohar.

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:

Contents

Printings, editions, and indexing

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. A copy of the second volume of Mantua first-edition that traveled through Thereisenstadt during the second World War recently resurfaced at the National Library of Israel. 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 Radiance'), but Zohar Chadash actually contains parts that pertain to the Zohar, as well as Tikunim (plural of Tikun, "Repair", see also Tikkun olam) 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 parashiyot 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.

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.

Influence

Judaism

On the one hand, the Zohar was lauded by many rabbis because it opposed religious formalism, stimulated one's imagination and emotions, and for many people helped reinvigorate the experience of prayer. In many places prayer had become a mere external religious exercise, while prayer was supposed to be a means of transcending earthly affairs and placing oneself in union with God.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, "On the other hand, the Zohar was censured by many rabbis because it propagated many superstitious beliefs, and produced a host of mystical dreamers, whose overexcited imaginations peopled the world with spirits, demons, and all kinds of good and bad influences." Many classical rabbis, especially Maimonides, viewed all such beliefs as a violation of Jewish principles of faith. Its mystic mode of explaining some commandments was applied by its commentators to all religious observances, and produced a strong tendency to substitute mystic Judaism in the place of traditional Rabbinic Judaism. For example, Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, began to be looked upon as the embodiment of God in temporal life, and every ceremony performed on that day was considered to have an influence upon the superior world.

Elements of the Zohar crept into the liturgy of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the religious poets not only used the allegorism and symbolism of the Zohar in their compositions, but even adopted its style, e.g. the use of erotic terminology to illustrate the relations between man and God. Thus, in the language of some Jewish poets, the beloved one's curls indicate the mysteries of the Deity; sensuous pleasures, and especially intoxication, typify the highest degree of divine love as ecstatic contemplation; while the wine-room represents merely the state through which the human qualities merge or are exalted into those of God.

The Zohar is also credited with popularizing de Leon's PaRDeS codification of biblical exegesis.

Christian mysticism

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, "The enthusiasm felt for the Zohar was shared by many Christian scholars, such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Johann Reuchlin, Aegidius of Viterbo, etc., all of whom believed that the book contained proofs of the truth of Christianity. They were led to this belief by the analogies existing between some of the teachings of the Zohar and certain Christian dogmas, such as the fall and redemption of man, and the dogma of the Trinity, which seems to be expressed in the Zohar in the following terms:

The Ancient of Days has three heads. He reveals himself in three archetypes, all three forming but one. He is thus symbolized by the number Three. They are revealed in one another. [These are:] first, secret, hidden 'Wisdom'; above that the Holy Ancient One; and above Him the Unknowable One. None knows what He contains; He is above all conception. He is therefore called for man 'Non-Existing' [Ayin] (Zohar, iii. 288b).

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, "...the Christian scholars who were deluded by the similarity of these teachings to certain Christian dogmas deemed it their duty to propagate the Zohar."

Commentaries

The first known commentary on the book of Zohar, Ketem Paz, was written by Simeon Lavi of Libya.

Another important and influential commentary on Zohar, 22-volume Or Yakar, was written by Moshe Cordovero of the Tzfat (i.e. Safed) kabbalistic school in the 16th century.

The Vilna Gaon authored a commentary on the Zohar.

Tzvi Hirsch of Zidichov wrote a commentary on the Zohar entitled Ateres Tzvi.

A major commentary on the Zohar is the Sulam written by Yehuda Ashlag.

A full translation of the Zohar into Hebrew was made by the late Daniel Frish of Jerusalem under the title Masok MiDvash.

English translations

Berg, Michael, The Zohar (23-vol. set). The Kabbalah Centre International Inc., 2003. Complete 23-volume English translation from the original Aramaic, with commentary and annotations.

Matt, Daniel C., Nathan Wolski, & Joel Hecker, trans., The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (12 vols.) Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004–2017.

Matt, Daniel C., Zohar: Annotated and Explained. Woodstock, Vt.: SkyLights Paths Publishing Co., 2002. (Selections)

Matt, Daniel C., Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment. New York: Paulist Press, 1983. (Selections)

Scholem, Gershom, ed., Zohar: The Book of Splendor. New York: Schocken Books, 1963. (Selections)

Sperling, Harry and Maurice Simon, eds., The Zohar (5 vols.). London: Soncino Press, 1930.

Tishby, Isaiah, ed., The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts (3 vols.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Translated from the Hebrew by David Goldstein.