Kabbalah by Joseph Dan Read Free Book Online Page A

in the Middle Ages.
    The author of the Zohar put on, when writing this work, several layers of disguise, hiding his own personality, time, and language. He created an artificial language, an Aramaic that is not found in the same way anywhere else, innovating a vocabulary and grammatical forms. He attributed the work to ancient sages, and created a narrative that occurs in a distant place at another time. These disguises allowed him a freedom from contemporary restrictions. This is evident when the Zohar is compared to the Hebrew kabbalistic works of Rabbi Moses de Leon.
    Often there are similar, or almost identical, paragraphs in the Zohar and the Hebrew works, yet the Zohar differs in the rich-ness, dynamism, and boldness of its metaphors, which are not found in the Hebrew texts. The radical mythological descriptions of the divine powers, the unhesitating use of detailed erotic language, and the visionary character of many sections—these are unequaled in Jewish literature, and place the Zohar among the most daring and radical works of religious literature and 32
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    mysticism in any language. The paradox is that despite these radical elements Jewish readers could treat the Zohar as a conventional midrash. The use of traditional sages and old homiletical methodologies allowed the Zohar to be accepted as a traditional, authoritative work of Jewish religiosity.
    This huge library includes every imaginable subject, yet at its center are two interwoven themes. The first theme includes “the secret of genesis” and “the secret of the merkavah ,” that is, the detailed description of the emergence of the sefirot from the eternal, perfect, hidden divine realm and the emanation of the divine system that created and governs the world. This is a dynamic myth, unifying theogony, cosmogony, and cosmology into one whole myth. The second is the unification of this speculation concerning the divine world with traditional Jewish rituals, commandments, and ethical norms. Jewish religious practice was elaborately and meticulously connected with the characteristics and dynamic processes in the realm of the sefirot and the struggle against the sitra ahra , the powers of evil. In this way, the Zoharic worldview is based on the concept of reflection: everything is the reflection of everything else. The verses of scriptures reflect the emanation and structure of the divine world; as does the human body, in the anthropomorphic conception of the sefirot , and the human soul, which originates from the divine realm and in its various parts reflects the functions and dynamism of the sefirot . The universe reflects in its structure the divine realms, and events in it, in the past and in the present, parallel the mythological processes of the divine powers. The various sermons of the Zohar present these and other parallels in great detail. The structure of the temple in Jerusalem and the ancient rituals practiced in it are a reflection of all other processes, in the universe, in man, and within the heavenly realms. Historical events, the phases of human life, the rituals of the Jewish Sabbath, and the festivals are all integrated into this vast picture. Everything is a metaphor for everything else. In many sections the ultimate redemption, the messianic era, is included within these descriptions. All this is presented 33
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    as a secret message, a heavenly revelation to ancient sages, using conventional, authoritative methodologies.
    The Kabbalah in the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Centuries
    The influence of the Zohar spread slowly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but gradually its worldview came to dominate the scattered circles of kabbalists in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. However, the peak of creativity that was reached during the period in which the Zohar was composed was not maintained. The last generations of the Middle Ages saw the kabbalah spread in several