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Eating from the Tree of Life: A Course on the Zohar: The Rose

Translated Texts

THE ROSE

INTRODUCTION

This is the beginning of the Zohar as we know it, as a printed book. Before it was printed, the Zohar was read in bits and pieces, in different hand-written sections, and there is no way of knowing what was meant as the beginning. But this beginning is appropriate in many ways. It is even appropriate that we're not sure which character is speaking, because there are different versions of the text which name different rabbis, Rabbi Chizkiyah or Rabbi El'azar. In this way the Zohar opens with an unsolvable riddle.

When the Zohar says that Rabbi Chizkiya (or Rabbi El'azar) "opened", it means that he began a petichta. At the same time, we can understand it to mean that he "opened" the hidden meanings of the verses he quotes from the Bible, or "opened" our imaginations to understand the verses in new ways.

Petichta: The Zohar is a work of Midrash, imaginative interpretation of the Bible. This text, like many others in the Zohar, is in a particular form of Midrash, a kind of sermon, called a "petichta", an "opening". [This is called a proem in scholarly circles.] There are many examples of petichta in older books of Midrash. A typical petichta is "about" one verse in the Bible, often the beginning of a weekly Torah reading, but it begins by quoting a different verse from somewhere else in the Bible altogether (usually the Writings, or Ketuvim, in Hebrew). It takes a lot of time interpreting the verse from "somewhere else" but finally links it up to the verse that it is really "about". A petichta entertains the reader or listener by how ingeniously it links up the two verses and brings out new meanings from them.

[Here, the opening verse from the Song of Songs will be linked to the first verse of the Torah. You may find it helpful to re-read the first few verses in Genesis before beginning this unit.]

TEXT: THE ROSE

Here are the first words of the printed Zohar (Zohar 1a, Hakdamat HaZohar):

Rabbi Chizkiyah [in some manuscripts, Rabbi El'azar] opened:

It is written:

"Like a rose among the thorns".

Song of Songs 2:2

Who is the rose?

K'shoshana bein ha-chochim, kein ra'yati bein habanot.
"Like a rose among the thorns, so is my darling among women."

She is the Community of Israel,

Community of Israel: Knesset Yisrael

because there is a rose and there is a rose.

Just as the rose, who is among the thorns,

has in her red and white,

so the Community of Israel has in her

justice and compassion.

Just as the rose has in her thirteen leaves (petals),

so the Community of Israel has in her

thirteen measures of compassion,

which surround her from all sides.

So Elohim here, from the moment it is mentioned,

puts forth thirteen words, to surround the Community of Israel

and to guard her.

And afterwards it is mentioned another time.

Why is it mentioned another time?

In order to put forth five strong leaves

which surround the rose.

And these five are called

y'shu'ot (deliverances, salvations)

and they are five gates.

Concerning this mystery it is written:

"Justice": Din

"Compassion": Rachamim

[Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz's book, The Thirteen Petalled Rose, is a poetic summary of the theology of later Kabbalists, taking this image in the Zohar as its starting point.]

"Elohim" -- God.
"Here" -- in the first verse of the Torah.

The Torah begins:
Bereshith bara Elohim et hashamayim v'et ha-aretz, v'ha-aretz hayta tohu vavohu v'choshech al p'nei t'hom, v'ruach Elohim m'rachefet al p'nei hamayim. Vayomer Elohim y'hi or, vay'hi or.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and empty, with darkness on the face of the deep, and a breath of God hovering on the face of the water. And God said 'let there be light' and there was light."

Kos y'shu'ot esa

which is the cup of blessing. Psalm 116:13:
Kos y'shu-ot esa, uv'sheim Adonai ekra
"I will lift the cup of deliverances, and call on the name of YHVH."

The cup of blessing needs to be on five fingers and no more,

in the likeness of the rose

which rests upon five strong leaves,

the pattern of the five fingers,

and the rose is indeed the cup of blessing.

From the second Elohim to the third Elohim, five words.

From here on: the light which was created and hidden

This verse is included in Havdalah. The Zohar also connects it with Kiddush on Friday night.

and contained in that brit (covenant)

which enters into the rose and puts forth seed into her.

And this is called:

Brit is the general Hebrew word for a covenant (an agreement of mutual loyalty and obligation) and specifically refers to circumcision as a sign of the covenant between God and Israel, and to the circumcised penis.

"Tree making fruit, whose seed is in it."

And this seed exists

through the actual mark of the covenant.

And just as the image of the covenant

sows that seed in forty-two couplings

Genesis 1:12:
Vatotsei ha-arets deshe, eisev mazria zera l'mineihu, v'eits oseh pri asher zar-o vo l'mineihu, vayar Elohim ki tov.
"And the earth brought forth vegetation, seed-sowing plants of every kind, and tree making fruit, whose seed is in it, of every kind, and God saw that it was good."

so the engraved, explicit Name sows

in forty-two letters of the Work of Creation.

COMMENTARY: THE ROSE

This petichta is "about" the first couple of verses of the Bible, the beginning of the creation story in Genesis, but it begins with a verse about the rose from the Song of Songs. The creation story and the Song of Songs are favourite Biblical passages for the Zohar. They are filled with a sense of creative power, with nature imagery, and with sexuality.

The rose (shoshanah) is a wonderful image for the Zohar to begin with, because it appeals to the senses in so many ways. A rose is beautiful to look at, intensely fragrant, and its petals are pleasant to touch. It is a flower of romance, and in the Song of Songs it is an image for the beloved woman. The Zohar, written in Spain in a time when troubadors were singing of love, often appeals to sensual and romantic imagery.

"Who is the rose?" The Zohar tells us: "She is the Community of Israel."
In the Zohar, the "Community of Israel" is Malkhut, the presence of God in this world, because Malkhut is the divine aspect of the Jewish people. One way of understanding this is to remember that in Judaism the connection to God is a collective one. The Torah is addressed to the whole Jewish community, Jewish prayers are in the plural, asking for what everyone together needs, the holidays recreate moments of the Jewish people's history, and so on. So for each person there is a connection to God through the whole community. In the Zohar's understanding this means that the whole people together manifests the presence of God.

Malkhut brings together the polarities of existence -- justice and compassion, red and white; see the introductory essay on Sefirot.

"So Elohim here, from the moment it is mentioned..."
From the rose in the Song of Songs, the Zohar moves to the first words in the Torah. [see sidebar]
It begins by focusing on the word Elohim, "God", and counting the rest of the words. The meanings of the words don't matter here, only how many there are. Between the first occurrence of "Elohim" and the second, there are thirteen words, between the second mention and the third there are five words. After the third time, the Torah begins to speak about light.

The Zohar turns these words about the creation into a picture, in which the words are also the petals and leaves of the rose. It is a picture of God and the spiritual worlds. The first word Elohim is the divine womb, Binah, the depths of God which everything comes from. From Binah unfold the thirteen measures of God's compassion to surround Malkhut and protect Her.

The Zohar introduces an image, the rose, and then offers an interpretation for it: "She is the Community of Israel". A reader who had studied a lot of Zohar would realize that "Community of Israel" does not only mean the Jewish people; it is one of the Zohar's favourite names for Malkhut. So the Zohar is "decoding" itself here, telling us that an image, the rose, stands for a Kabbalistic concept, Malkhut. By doing so, it seems to be inviting the reader to decode the rest of its images.

This kind of decoding is an important part of trying to understand the Zohar, and all the classic commentaries on the Zohar are very concerned with it. The commentaries in this course will also "decode" some of the Zohar's images. My explanations of what they mean are based on how they are used elsewhere in the Zohar, or on a consensus among the early commentaries consulted.
However, much of the imagery of this text is so lush and opaque that it is impossible to decode it. The great commentators try, but they come to completely different conclusions about its meanings, for example about what the second and third mentions of Elohim mean, or what the five words/ gates/ leaves are. This should make us feel better if we find the text difficult. It is also the Zohar's way of telling us that it is not meant to be read exclusively by decoding, after all. Not every image in the Zohar refers to a Kabbalistic concept, and there is more to the images than what they "mean".

"Just as the rose has in her thirteen leaves (petals), so the Community of Israel has in her thirteen measures of compassion... So Elohim here... puts forth thirteen words."
I am struck by how these three concepts are merged here: the petals of the rose, the Thirteen Attributes, and the words of the story of Creation. Different kinds of perception shift and fuse into each other.

"Concerning this mystery it is written: Kos y'shu'ot esa (I will lift the cup of deliverances) which is the cup of blessing..."

The Kiddush cup, in which wine is blessed on Shabbat and holidays, is an image of Malkhut. There is a tradition of holding the cup on the palm of the hand with the fingers around it, like the five leaves of the rose. It is important for the Zohar that the rituals we carry out are images of what is going on in the deeper, invisible reality
.

"From here on: the light which was created and hidden and contained in that brit..."

After the third mention of Elohim, the Torah speaks about light. In the creation story, light is created on the first day but the sun and stars not until the fourth day. A well-known midrashic resolution to this contradiction is that the light of the first day was supernatural light, which was hidden away to become a heavenly reward for the righteous (tzaddikim).

In Kabbalah, the word "tzaddik" (righteous) also means the Sefirah Yesod, "foundation"; a Biblical verse says "the righteous is an eternal foundation".

"Which enters into the rose and puts forth seed into her..."

In the body-based imagery of Kabbalah, Yesod is the circumcised penis, bearing the mark of the brit -- the covenant. Yesod unites the masculine Sefirah, Tif'eret, with the feminine Malkhut, bringing the flow of divine blessing into Her. The pink folds of the rose here become a vulvic image, taking in Yesod and receiving its semen-seed. The seed is the light of divine blessing. The connection of the Tzaddik, light, and seed is based on a Biblical verse (traditionally sung at the beginning of Yom Kippur services):

Proverbs 10:25:
Ka'avur sufa v'ein rasha, v'tsadik yesod olam
"When the storm passes, the wicked are gone, but the righteous is an eternal foundation."

" 'Light is sown for (or 'by') the righteous'.
So the engraved, explicit Name sows (seed) in forty-two letters of the Work of Creation."

Psalm 97:11:
Or zarua latsadik, ul'yishrei leiv simcha
"Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright of heart".

The early commentators say that the forty-two letters are simply the first forty-two letters of the Torah. You may find other possibilities if you count letters of the beginning of the creation story in different ways. The Name is either a particular combination of forty-two letters, known to the Kabbalists from traditional writings, or the name "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh", "I Am that I Am", which comes out to 42 in gematria (see sidebar). In any case, the letters of the creation story have become moments of sexual union within the divine life.

The Torah's creation story has often been understood by modern interpreters as an austere alternative to earlier non-Jewish myths of creation. In those myths the gods are included in the process of creation, and creation is often, naturally enough, a sexual process. The Torah instead, it is suggested, has God completely outside the creation, creating the world in a completely non-sexual way, through words.

If the Torah's creation story was indeed intended to "demythologize" creation in this way, the Zohar has completely undone its work. This entire passage describes a process of creation inside God -- among the Sefirot -- in which the verbal is sexual, in a context of sensual imagery. Thus the Zohar begins by doing something characteristic and radical: turning the Torah back into something like myth again.

(Ehyeh + Ehyeh = 21+21=42)
[ed. Parenthetically, the Rabbis also note that Ehyeh squared = 441, the value of Truth, emet. The initials of the Patriarchs: Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov also add up to 21].

Gematria: Each Hebrew letter is also a number; adding up the number value of the letters of a word gives its 'gematria.'

THE ROSE: QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

As sometimes happens in dreams, images in the Zohar tend to flow into each other; one thing becomes another unexpectedly or is several disparate things at the same time. What examples can you find in this passage? What are some messages of the shifting, flowing nature of the imagery?

In a way this Zohar passage is a re-telling of the beginning of the Creation story. For you as the reader, how is the experience of reading this passage different from reading the beginning of the Torah? Reading the two together, how do they enrich each other?

To participate in our moderated forum, click here.
Otherwise, you can go back to the course outline.


KOLEL LOBBY	Online Courses	Bracha	Course Outline	Class Discussion	Help	Glossary

	INTRODUCTION This is the beginning of the Zohar as we know it, as a printed book. Before it was printed, the Zohar was read in bits and pieces, in different hand-written sections, and there is no way of knowing what was meant as the beginning. But this beginning is appropriate in many ways. It is even appropriate that we're not sure which character is speaking, because there are different versions of the text which name different rabbis, Rabbi Chizkiyah or Rabbi El'azar. In this way the Zohar opens with an unsolvable riddle. When the Zohar says that Rabbi Chizkiya (or Rabbi El'azar) "opened", it means that he began a petichta. At the same time, we can understand it to mean that he "opened" the hidden meanings of the verses he quotes from the Bible, or "opened" our imaginations to understand the verses in new ways.		Petichta: The Zohar is a work of Midrash, imaginative interpretation of the Bible. This text, like many others in the Zohar, is in a particular form of Midrash, a kind of sermon, called a "petichta", an "opening". [This is called a proem in scholarly circles.] There are many examples of petichta in older books of Midrash. A typical petichta is "about" one verse in the Bible, often the beginning of a weekly Torah reading, but it begins by quoting a different verse from somewhere else in the Bible altogether (usually the Writings, or Ketuvim, in Hebrew). It takes a lot of time interpreting the verse from "somewhere else" but finally links it up to the verse that it is really "about". A petichta entertains the reader or listener by how ingeniously it links up the two verses and brings out new meanings from them. [Here, the opening verse from the Song of Songs will be linked to the first verse of the Torah. You may find it helpful to re-read the first few verses in Genesis before beginning this unit.]
	TEXT: THE ROSE Here are the first words of the printed Zohar (Zohar 1a, Hakdamat HaZohar): Rabbi Chizkiyah [in some manuscripts, Rabbi El'azar] opened: It is written:
	"Like a rose among the thorns". Song of Songs 2:2 Who is the rose?		K'shoshana bein ha-chochim, kein ra'yati bein habanot. "Like a rose among the thorns, so is my darling among women."
	She is the Community of Israel,		Community of Israel: Knesset Yisrael
	because there is a rose and there is a rose. Just as the rose, who is among the thorns, has in her red and white, so the Community of Israel has in her justice and compassion. Just as the rose has in her thirteen leaves (petals), so the Community of Israel has in her thirteen measures of compassion, which surround her from all sides. So Elohim here, from the moment it is mentioned, puts forth thirteen words, to surround the Community of Israel and to guard her. And afterwards it is mentioned another time. Why is it mentioned another time? In order to put forth five strong leaves which surround the rose. And these five are called y'shu'ot (deliverances, salvations) and they are five gates. Concerning this mystery it is written:		"Justice": Din "Compassion": Rachamim [Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz's book, The Thirteen Petalled Rose, is a poetic summary of the theology of later Kabbalists, taking this image in the Zohar as its starting point.] "Elohim" -- God. "Here" -- in the first verse of the Torah. The Torah begins: Bereshith bara Elohim et hashamayim v'et ha-aretz, v'ha-aretz hayta tohu vavohu v'choshech al p'nei t'hom, v'ruach Elohim m'rachefet al p'nei hamayim. Vayomer Elohim y'hi or, vay'hi or. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and empty, with darkness on the face of the deep, and a breath of God hovering on the face of the water. And God said 'let there be light' and there was light."
	Kos y'shu'ot esa which is the cup of blessing.		Psalm 116:13: Kos y'shu-ot esa, uv'sheim Adonai ekra "I will lift the cup of deliverances, and call on the name of YHVH."
	The cup of blessing needs to be on five fingers and no more, in the likeness of the rose which rests upon five strong leaves, the pattern of the five fingers, and the rose is indeed the cup of blessing. From the second Elohim to the third Elohim, five words. From here on: the light which was created and hidden		This verse is included in Havdalah. The Zohar also connects it with Kiddush on Friday night.
	and contained in that brit (covenant) which enters into the rose and puts forth seed into her. And this is called:		Brit is the general Hebrew word for a covenant (an agreement of mutual loyalty and obligation) and specifically refers to circumcision as a sign of the covenant between God and Israel, and to the circumcised penis.
	"Tree making fruit, whose seed is in it." And this seed exists through the actual mark of the covenant. And just as the image of the covenant sows that seed in forty-two couplings		Genesis 1:12: Vatotsei ha-arets deshe, eisev mazria zera l'mineihu, v'eits oseh pri asher zar-o vo l'mineihu, vayar Elohim ki tov. "And the earth brought forth vegetation, seed-sowing plants of every kind, and tree making fruit, whose seed is in it, of every kind, and God saw that it was good."
	so the engraved, explicit Name sows in forty-two letters of the Work of Creation. COMMENTARY: THE ROSE This petichta is "about" the first couple of verses of the Bible, the beginning of the creation story in Genesis, but it begins with a verse about the rose from the Song of Songs. The creation story and the Song of Songs are favourite Biblical passages for the Zohar. They are filled with a sense of creative power, with nature imagery, and with sexuality. The rose (shoshanah) is a wonderful image for the Zohar to begin with, because it appeals to the senses in so many ways. A rose is beautiful to look at, intensely fragrant, and its petals are pleasant to touch. It is a flower of romance, and in the Song of Songs it is an image for the beloved woman. The Zohar, written in Spain in a time when troubadors were singing of love, often appeals to sensual and romantic imagery.
	"Who is the rose?" The Zohar tells us: "She is the Community of Israel." In the Zohar, the "Community of Israel" is Malkhut, the presence of God in this world, because Malkhut is the divine aspect of the Jewish people. One way of understanding this is to remember that in Judaism the connection to God is a collective one. The Torah is addressed to the whole Jewish community, Jewish prayers are in the plural, asking for what everyone together needs, the holidays recreate moments of the Jewish people's history, and so on. So for each person there is a connection to God through the whole community. In the Zohar's understanding this means that the whole people together manifests the presence of God. Malkhut brings together the polarities of existence -- justice and compassion, red and white; see the introductory essay on Sefirot. "So Elohim here, from the moment it is mentioned..." From the rose in the Song of Songs, the Zohar moves to the first words in the Torah. [see sidebar] It begins by focusing on the word Elohim, "God", and counting the rest of the words. The meanings of the words don't matter here, only how many there are. Between the first occurrence of "Elohim" and the second, there are thirteen words, between the second mention and the third there are five words. After the third time, the Torah begins to speak about light. The Zohar turns these words about the creation into a picture, in which the words are also the petals and leaves of the rose. It is a picture of God and the spiritual worlds. The first word Elohim is the divine womb, Binah, the depths of God which everything comes from. From Binah unfold the thirteen measures of God's compassion to surround Malkhut and protect Her.		The Zohar introduces an image, the rose, and then offers an interpretation for it: "She is the Community of Israel". A reader who had studied a lot of Zohar would realize that "Community of Israel" does not only mean the Jewish people; it is one of the Zohar's favourite names for Malkhut. So the Zohar is "decoding" itself here, telling us that an image, the rose, stands for a Kabbalistic concept, Malkhut. By doing so, it seems to be inviting the reader to decode the rest of its images. This kind of decoding is an important part of trying to understand the Zohar, and all the classic commentaries on the Zohar are very concerned with it. The commentaries in this course will also "decode" some of the Zohar's images. My explanations of what they mean are based on how they are used elsewhere in the Zohar, or on a consensus among the early commentaries consulted. However, much of the imagery of this text is so lush and opaque that it is impossible to decode it. The great commentators try, but they come to completely different conclusions about its meanings, for example about what the second and third mentions of Elohim mean, or what the five words/ gates/ leaves are. This should make us feel better if we find the text difficult. It is also the Zohar's way of telling us that it is not meant to be read exclusively by decoding, after all. Not every image in the Zohar refers to a Kabbalistic concept, and there is more to the images than what they "mean".
	"Just as the rose has in her thirteen leaves (petals), so the Community of Israel has in her thirteen measures of compassion... So Elohim here... puts forth thirteen words." I am struck by how these three concepts are merged here: the petals of the rose, the Thirteen Attributes, and the words of the story of Creation. Different kinds of perception shift and fuse into each other. *"Concerning this mystery it is written: Kos y'shu'ot esa* (I will lift the cup of deliverances) which is the cup of blessing..." The Kiddush cup, in which wine is blessed on Shabbat and holidays, is an image of Malkhut. There is a tradition of holding the cup on the palm of the hand with the fingers around it, like the five leaves of the rose. It is important for the Zohar that the rituals we carry out are images of what is going on in the deeper, invisible reality . "From here on: the light which was created and hidden and contained in that brit..."** After the third mention of Elohim, the Torah speaks about light. In the creation story, light is created on the first day but the sun and stars not until the fourth day. A well-known midrashic resolution to this contradiction is that the light of the first day was supernatural light, which was hidden away to become a heavenly reward for the righteous (tzaddikim).
	In Kabbalah, the word "tzaddik" (righteous) also means the Sefirah Yesod, "foundation"; a Biblical verse says "the righteous is an eternal foundation". "Which enters into the rose and puts forth seed into her..." In the body-based imagery of Kabbalah, Yesod is the circumcised penis, bearing the mark of the brit -- the covenant. Yesod unites the masculine Sefirah, Tif'eret, with the feminine Malkhut, bringing the flow of divine blessing into Her. The pink folds of the rose here become a vulvic image, taking in Yesod and receiving its semen-seed. The seed is the light of divine blessing. The connection of the Tzaddik, light, and seed is based on a Biblical verse (traditionally sung at the beginning of Yom Kippur services):		Proverbs 10:25: Ka'avur sufa v'ein rasha, v'tsadik yesod* olam* "When the storm passes, the wicked are gone, but the righteous is an eternal foundation."
	" 'Light is sown for (or 'by') the righteous'. So the engraved, explicit Name sows (seed) in forty-two letters of the Work of Creation."		Psalm 97:11: Or zarua latsadik, ul'yishrei leiv simcha "Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright of heart".
	The early commentators say that the forty-two letters are simply the first forty-two letters of the Torah. You may find other possibilities if you count letters of the beginning of the creation story in different ways. The Name is either a particular combination of forty-two letters, known to the Kabbalists from traditional writings, or the name "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh", "I Am that I Am", which comes out to 42 in gematria (see sidebar). In any case, the letters of the creation story have become moments of sexual union within the divine life. The Torah's creation story has often been understood by modern interpreters as an austere alternative to earlier non-Jewish myths of creation. In those myths the gods are included in the process of creation, and creation is often, naturally enough, a sexual process. The Torah instead, it is suggested, has God completely outside the creation, creating the world in a completely non-sexual way, through words. If the Torah's creation story was indeed intended to "demythologize" creation in this way, the Zohar has completely undone its work. This entire passage describes a process of creation inside God -- among the Sefirot -- in which the verbal is sexual, in a context of sensual imagery. Thus the Zohar begins by doing something characteristic and radical: turning the Torah back into something like myth again.		(Ehyeh + Ehyeh = 21+21=42) [ed. Parenthetically, the Rabbis also note that Ehyeh squared = 441, the value of Truth, emet. The initials of the Patriarchs: Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov also add up to 21]. Gematria: Each Hebrew letter is also a number; adding up the number value of the letters of a word gives its 'gematria.'
	THE ROSE: QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION As sometimes happens in dreams, images in the Zohar tend to flow into each other; one thing becomes another unexpectedly or is several disparate things at the same time. What examples can you find in this passage? What are some messages of the shifting, flowing nature of the imagery? In a way this Zohar passage is a re-telling of the beginning of the Creation story. For you as the reader, how is the experience of reading this passage different from reading the beginning of the Torah? Reading the two together, how do they enrich each other? To participate in our moderated forum, click here. Otherwise, you can go back to the course outline.