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LOBBY
Courses
Eating from the Tree of Life: A Course on the Zohar
INTRODUCTION
THE ZOHAR AS A RESOURCE AND MODEL Part of what makes Torah -- the whole sum of Jewish teachings
and traditions -- great and glorious is that it becomes more varied
and rich with the contributions of each one of us. All of us are
involved in making the Torah greater, enlarging and shaping the
Judaism of today and the future. Not that any of us can decide
what we want Judaism to look like, and then make it so; time and
the whole Jewish people will decide. But in many ways -- how we
practice Judaism, how we think, how we teach children, how we
do creative work with Jewish content, how we live as Jews -- we
are creating the possibilities that the Judaism of our time and
the future will emerge from. We may choose to be involved in this
process with more or less awareness or deliberateness, but we
are all involved in it. TOPICS Introduction What the Zohar Is They were fearless in their quest for reality. We have mentioned
their use of Christian ideas, something that is still frightening
to many Jews today; their confrontation with the reality of evil;
their willingness to see God as many as well as one. Whether or
not we agree with their view, their fearlessness in facing reality
and expressing what they saw is a model for us. For each text there is an introduction, a commentary afterwards,
or both, to help with part -- but only part -- of the work of
understanding. Clicking on some key words will tell you instantly which Sefirah
they most likely refer to, by linking you to that Sefirah in the
chart above. After each text there are examples of possible questions for
further study and discussion.
"God desired... to make Torah great and glorious." (Isaiah 42:21)
The authors of the Zohar took a deliberate and conscious role
in shaping Torah for their time and the future. In a number of
ways, their work can be a resource and model to us in making our
contribution to Torah -- first of all, as a model of the holy
chutzpah, the holy boldness, to realize that we also have Torah
to contribute. They presented their work as a holy book -- as
Torah -- and the generations after them accepted it.
A Liberal Perspective
Zohar & Kabbalah
A Crash Course
Images
Plurality & Unity
Evil
Christian Ideas
The Self & Other
Female & Male
Zohar as Resource & Model
How to Study Zohar
Module 1
The flip side of this boldness is that the authors of the Zohar
were not starting from scratch. They were truly immersed in Torah
study. They lived in the verses of the Bible, in the stories of
the Midrash. Their dreams, their free associations, were woven
out of the Torah they learned. Our contributions to Torah, too,
will usually be richer and truer if we are immersed in the Torah
of those who have gone before.
At the same time, what the authors of the Zohar created was far
from being a copy or repetition of what had gone before. Something
new was created by their encounter with Torah, because they brought
to Torah all of themselves. They met Torah with everything they
had learned, from within and outside of Judaism, and with the
wholeness of their own selves, including their physicality and
sexuality, and their own experience of life. They show a way to
know God through knowing your self, your friends, your life however
it looks and however it feels. They did not submit themselves
to Torah, and they did not make Torah submit to them; there was
a meeting between Torah and their whole selves, and from that
meeting came something new, challenging, and nourishing.
HOW TO STUDY ZOHAR
It can be frustrating to read a selection from the Zohar; it is
likely to seem obscure in so many ways that understanding it intellectually
or emotionally or any way at all seems remote and not worth bothering.
If you persevere, however, the riches of the Zohar will begin
to open up to you.
Every passage of the Zohar incorporates and interprets verses
from the Bible. The interpretations usually have little to do
with the literal meaning of the verse -- although looking up a
verse will often show that its context is relevant to what the
Zohar does with it.
The Biblical verses are interpreted in an imaginative way, based
on verbal and imagistic associations. In doing this kind of interpretation
the Zohar is building on earlier Jewish texts, found in the Talmud
and in books of Midrash. Very often much of the Zohar's interpretation
of a verse is taken directly, or with slight changes, from these
earlier sources; I have sometimes, though not always, indicated
this in the commentary.
The Zohar sometimes refers to other interpretations, using expressions
which I have translated as "this has been established" or "the
friends" -- that is, the fellowship of scholars -- "have established..."
or "we have provided a foundation for the words". Sometimes these
expressions are a way of acknowledging that there is a well-known
non-mystical interpretation, before presenting a mystical one.
At other times they are to alert us that the Zohar itself touches
on the same theme elsewhere. Often, they are a way of saying that
something bold and controversial is really nothing new; in such
cases there sometimes really is an earlier source, and sometimes
the Zohar just wants us to think there is.
To the tradition of Midrash the Zohar brings its own flowing,
dreamlike approach to imagery, its taste for mythological drama
and radical ideas, and the theology of the Sefirot. Arthur Green
points out that the varied images of earlier Midrash become, in
Kabbalah, "symbol clusters" associated with each of the Sefirot.
Thus part of understanding a Zohar passage is the task of connecting
each of the symbols to the appropriate cluster, to the Sefirah
that it represents -- and letting your understanding of that Sefirah
grow with each new symbol.
As you look at the selections from the Zohar in this course or
in other books, or, ultimately, when you begin studying the Zohar
in the original, I suggest the following approach, whether you
are studying alone or with others:
Before consulting any commentary, read the passage from the Zohar
as you might read a poem, rereading it several times and trying
to understand it in an intuitive kind of way.
You might want to follow these steps:
First read the passage all the way through, not trying at all
to understand it, but being alert to any feelings or associations
that any words or images in the passage evoke for you.
Read it again more slowly, trying to understand it on the simplest
literal level -- the simple meanings of the words, how the sentences
hang together. This is a good time to look up the verses from
the Bible which it quotes, and read a little of their context.
Pause for a while to reflect on the images, ideas and feelings
the passage evokes for you.
Read it again, this time connecting the literal meanings with
the feelings and images they evoke. Remember that just about anything
in the Zohar is an image of God. (If you're uncomfortable thinking
about "God", substitute "reality" or "your self".) On this reading,
try to understand the text in as much detail and depth as you
can. If you know some Kabbalah, decoding which Sefirot and intersefirotic
processes the text is referring to is part of this process of
understanding -- but only part.
Remember that you may not agree with the text, and that it may
give you ideas that go beyond what it originally meant.
Finally, look at a commentary (such as the comments in this course,
or in books on the reading list) to see what the commentator thinks
about how the text relates to Kabbalistic concepts, to earlier
sources, or to other passages in the Zohar. Don't be intimidated
by the commentary; if you had a different idea, you may well be
right! But do be open to any new insights.
Last of all, before you go on to another passage, reflect on what
this passage of the Zohar means to you, and what (if anything)
you can do with it in your own spiritual practice, thinking, creating,
work. You might even want to offer a prayer of thanks.
AND SO...
Here is a selection of my favourite texts from the Zohar. Most
of them are not found in the anthologies of selections from the
Zohar which I have recommended for further reading.
I have followed the text of the Zohar in the Ashlag edition (HaSulam),
which often mentions small variations in the text found in different
manuscripts and editions, and also consulted the text in the edition
with Rabbi Moshe Cordovero's commentary. Since there is no standardized
text of the Zohar I have sometimes chosen a variant reading that
struck me as making the most sense in context.
In the translations, "YHVH" stands for the name of God, written
with the Hebrew letters Yud Hei Vav Hei but pronounced "Adonai"
or "HaShem" (The Name). "The Blessed Holiness" is the translation
of Aramaic Kudsha Brikh Hu or Hebrew HaKadosh Barukh Hu, the most
common Rabbinic way of referring to God. It is often translated,
"the Holy One, blessed be He", but I am following a scholarly
view that Kudsha here means "the Holiness". Still, the Zohar imagines
"the Blessed Holiness" as masculine, most of the time.
Welcome, enjoy, and keep your seatbelts fastened!
