Zohar the Book of Enlightenment

THE CLASSICS OF WESTERN SPIRITUALITY A Library of the Great Spiritual Masters President and Publisher Kevin A. Lynch, C.S.P. EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief Richard J. Payne Associate Editor John Farina Editorial Consultant Ewert H. Cousins-Professor, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y. John E. Booty-Professor of Church History, Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass.

Joseph Dan-Professor of Kaballah in the Department of Jewish Thought, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.

Albert Deblaere-Professor of the History of Spirituality,

·Gregorian University, Rome, haly.

Louis Dupre-T.L. Riggs Professor in Philosophy of Religion, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

Rozanne Elder

-

Executive Vice President, Cistercian

Publications, Kalamazoo, Mich.

Mircea Eliade-Professor in the Department of the History of

Religions, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.

Anne Fremantle-Teacher, Editor and Writer, New York, N.Y. Karlfried Froelich-Professor of the History of the Early and

Medieval Church, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.

Arthur Green-Associate Professor in the Department of Reli­

gious Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Phi ladelphia, Pa.

Stanley S. H ara kas-Professor of Orthodox Christian Ethics, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary, Brookline, Mass.

Jean

Leclercq-Professor, Institute of Spirituality and

Institute of Religious Psychology,'Gregorian University, Rome, haly.

Miguel Leo n Po rtilla-Professor Mesoamerican Cultures -

and Languages, National University of Mexico, University City, Mexico.

George A. Maloney, S.} .-Director, John XXIII

Ecumenical Center, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y.

Bernard McGinn-Professor of Historical Theology and History of Christianity, University of Chicago Divin ity School, Chicago, Ill. John Meyendorff-Professor of Church History, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y., and Professor of Patristics and Church H istory, St. \'ladimir's Seminary, Tuckahoe, N . Y. Seyyed Hossein Nasr-Professor of Islamics, Department of Religion, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa., and Visiting Professor, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Heiko A. Oberman-Di rector, Institute fuer Spaetmittelalter und Reformation, L'niversitaet Tuebingen, West Germany. Alfonso Ortiz-Professor of Anthropology, L'niversity of New Mexico, Albuquerque, -:'\. �1ex.; Fellow, The Center for Advanced Study, Stanford, Calif. , Raimundo Panikkar-Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Ca lifornia at Santa Barbara, Calif. Jaroslav Pelikan-Sterling Professor of History and Religious Studies, Yale L'ni versity, �ew Haven, Conn. Fazlar Rahman-Professor of Islamic Thought, Depa rtment of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, Un iversity of Chicago, Chicago, Ill. Annemarie B. Schimmel-Professor of Hindu �1usl im Culture, Harvard L'niversity, Cambridge, �1ass. Sandra M. Schneiders-Assistant Professor of :'\ew Testament Studies and Spirituality, Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, Calif. Huston Smith-Thomas J . Watson Professor of Religion, Adjunct Professor of Phi losophy, Syracuse Cniversity, Syracuse, ;\I.Y. John R. Sommerfeldt-Professor of History. L'niversity of Dallas, Irving, Texas. David Steindl-Rast-�1onk of Mount Savior �1onastery, Pine City, N.Y. William C. Sturtevant-General Editor, Handbook of N orth American Indians, Smithson ian Institution, Washington, D.C. David Tracy-Professor of Theology, Vniversity of Chicago Divin ity School, Ch icago, Ill. Victor Turner-William B. Kenan Professor in Anth ropology, The Center for Advanced Study, L'niversity of \'irgi nia, Charlottesville, \'a. Kallistos Ware-Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford; S palding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies, Oxford University, England.

�her The Book of Enlightenment

TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION BY DANIEL CHANAN MATT PREFACE BY ARTHUR GREEN

PAULIST PRESS NEW YORK • RAMSEY • TORONTO

Cover Art: M IC H A EL BOGDA NOW is a native of Houston, Texas. He now li ves near Boston and is completing a Juris Doctor degree at Harvard Law School while continuing with his art. "My art is motivated by a desire to communicate with people, to express feeli ngs and ideas that cannot necessarily be captured by word," he says.

Copyright� 1 9 8 3 by Daniel Chanan Matt All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the pub­ lisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 8 3 -82 1 4 5 ISBN: 0-809 1 -2 3 87-8 (paper) 0-809 1 -0 3 2 0-6 (cloth) Published by Paulist Press

545 Island Road, Ramsey, N.J. 07446 Printed and bound in the United States of America

CONTENTS

xiii

Preface Foreword I ntroduction The Ten Sefirot

XV

35

Zohar How To Look at Torah

43

Zohar on Genesis The Creation of Elohim The H idden Light Adam's Sin Male and Female After the Flood Abram, the Soul-Breath Abram's Descent into Egypt Openings An Offering to God The Binding of Abraham and Isaac Jacob's Journey Joseph's Dream Seduction Above and Below Jacob's Garment of Days

47 49 51 54 55 57 60 63 65 69 72 75 80 84 91

Zohar on Exodus The Birth of Moses Moses and the Blazing Bush Moses and H is Father-in-Law Colors and Enlightenment Pharaoh, Israel, and God Manna and Wisdom Is There A nyone Like Moses? All of Israel Saw the Letters

97 99 1 02 1 05 107 111 113 1 17 1 19

VII

CONTENTS

The The The The

Old Man and the Beautiful Maiden Gift of Dwelling Secret of Sabbath Golden Calf

121 127 132 133

Zohar on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy !JErban and 0/ah, Drawing Near and Ascending Guests in the Sukkah God, Israel, and Shekhinah Threshing Out the Secrets The Rabbis Encounter a Child Miracles The Wedding Celebration

143 145 1 48 153 163 1 70 177 182

Notes

191

Appendix Glossary Bibliography I ndex to Zohar Passages I ndexes

301 303 307 311 313

Vlll

TO MY PARENTS, TO\'AH GITEL AND HA-RAV � E\'1 YONAH HA-LE\'1, WHO HAVE N U RTURED ME WITH LOVE AND TORAH

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have been blessed with wise teachers and understanding �avrayya. Here I thank a few who read portions of the manuscript: Pamela Adelman, Alexander Altmann, Michael Fishbane, Arthur Green, Burt Jacobson, Steve Joseph, Ana Massie, Jo Milgrom, Stephen Mitchell, Sara Shendelman, and David Winston. I am grateful to John Farina and Richard Payne, editors at Paulist Press, for their help and encouragement.

Editor of This Volume DANIEL CHANAN M ATT teaches at the Center for Judaic Studies in the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. He received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and has taught at Boston Universi­ ty and the University of Texas at Austin. His edition of David ben Yehudah he-I:Iasid's Book of Mirrors was published by Scholars Press i n 1982.

A uthor of the Preface ARTHUR GREEN is a student of Jewish mysticism and theology. He is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Penn­ sylvania. His anthology Your Word Is Fire, co-edited with Barry W. Holtz, was published by Paulist Press in 1977. Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav appeared in 1979. Dr. Green serves on the editorial board of the Classics of Western Spi rituality Series.

PREFACE

One who delves into the religious literature of some figures and periods can never forget the profound link that exists between spiritu­ al creativity and the poetic imagination. The reader of Solomon Ga­ birol or Judah Halevi among the medieval Hebrew poets, like the reader of Joh n of the Cross, to limit the consideration to fellow Spaniards, will perforce see how the poetic vehicle and the religious message converge to influence and mediate one another. This is not so obviously the case with the Zohar, the magnum opus of Spanish-Jewish Kabbalah in the late thi rteenth century. Here the thicket of symbolism is so dense, and the Aramaic prose in which the work is presented often so obscure, that the sense of the poetic is not immediately apparent. The author of the Zohar was, however, pos­ sessed of a truly magnificent literary imagination, and he created out of the emerging kabbalistic tradition a work of masterful poetic scope, though doing so without recourse to those specific literary canons that distinguished "poetry" in his age. Working with an already established system of symbolic correspondences (the sefirot, as will be explained below), Moses de Leon was able to keep the conventionalized religious language in the background, and to sing loftily of lights and sparks, sun and moon, flowing streams and rivers, and, most passionately, of the unending love between the celestial Bridegroom and His Bride. Such was the fate of this work, however, that it came to be increasingly venerated by generations of devotees who sought to make its poetry transparent, to see beyond the imagery i nto the "true" religious meaning of the text, exegeting it much as the early rabbis had the Bible, to find in each word or phrase previously unseen layers of sacred meaning. As kabbalistic thought itself developed, particularly after the sixteenth century, a new and infinitely more complicated system of symbols, based on further development of zoharic themes, supplanted the old. Now the purpose of exegesis became a rereading of the Zohar i n this later spirit, seeking to find the Lurianic teach ing, as it was called, in the more venerable source. Commentaries of the Zohar became increasingly illegible to the noninitiate, and even once deci-

Xl l l

PREFACE

phered had increasingly little to do with the original meaning of the Zohar text. As moderns have turned their attention once again to the study of Zohar, largely under the inspiration of Gershom Scholem and his Jerusalem school of kabbalistic history, the task of exegesis has turned again to peshat, the attempt to reconstruct the symbolic meaning of the Zohar's fantasy-laden means of expression. Here too, however, the goal is to some extent one of penetrating beyond the surface content of the work, translating its unique poetic back into the conventional symbol­ clusters of kabbalistic tradition. It is the strength of the work before us that its editor has refused to follow such a generally accepted method. The work you are about to read, both in selection and translation, is an act of daring, the creation of a young scholar undaunted by the conventions of the academy. He seeks to do nothing less than to recover de Leon the poet, to allow the Zohar to be read, perhaps for the first time since it emerged from the author's mind into the written word, first as a work of poetic i magina­ tion, and only second, through a highly competent series of notes, as a textbook of kabbalistic symbolism. It is characteristic of the editor and his intent that he chose to place the notes at a distance from the text itself, so that the reader be left the choice of when-and indeed whether-to consult them. In both readings, that of translation alone and that of text as explicated in the notes, Matt's Book of Enligbtenment is one that the Zohar's author would enjoy, and one that the thoughtfu l reader will find enriching, on more than one level. Arthur Green

XIV

FOREWORD

Sefer ha-Zohar, the Book of Splendor, Radiance, Enlightenment,1 has amazed and overwhelmed readers for seven centuries. The Zohar is the major text of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. It is arranged in the form of a commentary on the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. It is a mosaic of Bible, midrash (see Glossary), medieval homily, fiction, and fantasy. Its central theme is the interplay of human and divine reali­ ties. Its language is a peculiar brand of Aramaic that breaks the rules of grammar and invents words. Who wrote the Zohar? The question has been debated ever since the first hand-written booklets were distributed in Spain late in the thirteenth century. The Introduction below tells the story of the answer. The Zohar is immense. This volume contains approximately 2 percent of the entire work. It is presumptuous to pick and choose from a mystical corpus, but I have tried to select passages that are spiritually evocative and that demonstrate the uniqueness of the Zohar's encoun­ ter with Torah. I have supplied the passages with titles, and occasional­ ly omitted material within a passage, in which case the omission is indicated by ellipsis points. An index at the end of the volume identi­ fies the location of the passages in the Zohar. The translation attempts to convey the lyrical flavor of the original without smoothing away its rough vibrancy. The Zohar is an esoteric and cryptic work, a commentary that requires a commentary. The notes in the second half of the volume are designed to guide the reader through the maze of kabbalistic symbol­ ism and to identify rabbinic sources and zoharic parallels. Here I have relied especially on Ketem Paz by Shim'on Labi; Or ha-f!ammah, edited by Avraham Azulai; Ni?;O?;ei Zohar by Re'uven Margaliot (printed in his edition of the Zohar); .Mishnat ha-Zohar by Isaiah Tishby; and the works of Gershom Scholem (nishmato eden). I suggest that the reader first encounter each passage on his own, and then go back to study it with the notes, which are unnumbered (except in the Foreword and Introduction) and keyed to a particular Zohar selection.

XV

FOREWORD

The teachings of Kabbalah are profound and powerful. One who hopes to enter and emerge in peace must be careful, persevering, and receptive. Follow the words to what lies beyond and within. Open the gates of imagination. Let Zohar alefthe Ineffable.

XVI

INTRODUCTION

With the l ight created by God during the six days of Creation Adam could see from one end of the world to the other. God hid the light away for the righteous in the hereafter. Where did He hide it? In the Torah. So when I open The Book of lobar, I see the whole world. -Israel son of Eli'ezer the Ba 'a/ Shem Tov The Zohar has kept me Jewish. -Pinhas of Koretz Hasidic rabb i 1

1

Seven hundred years ago, a Spanish Jewish mystic named Moses de Leon began circulating booklets to his friends and fellow kabbalists. These booklets contained teachings and tales that had never been seen or heard. Moses claimed that he was merely the scribe, copying from an ancient book of wisdom. The original had been composed in the circle of Rabbi Shi m'on son of Yo�ai, a famous teacher of the second century who lived in the land of Israel and, according to tradition, spent twelve years secluded in a cave. After Rabbi Shim'on's death, so the story goes, the book was hidden away or secretly handed down from master to disciple. Only recently had it been sent from Israel to Catalonia in northeastern Spain. Then it fell into the hands of Moses de Leon of Guadalajara. He took it upon himself to spread the ancient secrets, copying portions from the original manuscript and offering them for sale. But history impinged. In 1 2 9 1 the Mamluks conquered the city of Acre in Israel and massacred most of the Jewish and Christian inhabi­ tants. One of the few who managed to escape was a young man named Isaac son of Samuel. He journeyed to Italy and eventually to Spai n, arriving in Toledo in 1 305. Isaac, who later became one of the leading kabbalists of the fourteenth century, was amazed at the reports he heard about the newly discovered Midrash of Rabbi Shi m'on. The book had supposedly been written in Israel, but Isaac was from Israel and had never heard of it. According to his diary, Isaac sought out those who possessed the booklets and was informed that the distributor was Moses de Leon, whom he located in Valladolid. Moses assured him that he owned the original manuscript composed by the ancient sage, and that he would let Isaac see it if he came to Avi la, where Moses now lived. They parted company. Moses set out for his home, but on the way, in the town of Arevalo, he became ill and died. When Isaac heard the news, he went straight to Avila to see if anyone there knew the truth about the book. He was told that immediately following Moses' death, the wife of Joseph de Avila, the tax collector of the province, had offered her son 3

INTRODUCTION

in marriage to the daughter of Moses de Leon's widow in exchange for the ancient manuscript. Moses' widow had responded: Thus and more may God do to me if my husband ever possessed such a book! He wrote it entirely from his own head. When I saw him writing with nothing in front of him, I said to him, "Why do you say that you are copying from a book when there is no book? You are writing from your head. Wouldn't it be better to say so? You would have more honor!" He answered me, "If I told them my secret, that I am writing from my own mind, they would pay no .attention to my words, and they would pay nothing for them. They would say: 'He is inventing them out of his imagination.' But now that they hear that I am copying from The Book of Zohar composed by Rabbi Shim'on son of Yo�ai through the Holy Spirit, they buy these words at a high price, as you see with your very eyes!" Isaac was aghast when he heard this story. He traveled on to make further inquiries and found support for Moses' claim that the book was ancient. He heard a report that Rabbi Jacob, a former student of Moses de Leon, had sworn that "the Zohar composed by Rabbi Shim'on son of Yo�ai . . . " And here the citation from Isaac's diary breaks of£.2 Moses de Leon's name faded. The Zohar was gradually accepted as the ancient wisdom of Rabbi Shim'on and his circle. By the middle of the sixteenth century, it ranked with the Bible and the Talmud as a sacred text. While kabbalists delved into its mysteries, Oriental Jews chanted the strange Aramaic, often unaware of the literal sense. But both groups, and countless others, were inspired and uplifted by the Holy Zohar.3

4

2

Who was Moses de Leon? Devoted scribe or devious author? As with many mystics, the facts of Moses' life are scarce. In one of his books, he calls hi mself "Moses son of Shem Tov from the city of Leon. "4 The year of his birth is unknown, but by 1 264 he was engaged in the study of philosophy, for in that year a Hebrew translation of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed was copied "for the erudite [ha­ maskil] Rabbi Moses de Leon."5 (The Guide, completed about 1 200 in Egypt, was a grandiose attempt at a synthesis of Jewish faith and Aristotelian philosophy.) Philosophy, however, was not Moses de Leon's only undertaking. He immersed himself in rabbinic literature and was also drawn to the teachings of Kabbalah. Kabbalah means "receiving" and refers to that which is handed down by tradition. For many centuries the word was used quite generally, but by the time of Moses de Leon, the term Kabbalah denoted esoteric teachings, techniques of meditation, and a growing body of mystical literature. A kabbalistic movement had emerged in Provence and Catalonia toward the end of the twelfth and the begin­ ning of the thi rteenth centuries. The famous rabbi Na�manides of Gerona explored the teachings and helped Kabbalah gain wider accep­ tance. The movement spread westward to Castile (central Spain). Wandering south from Leon, Moses came to know some of the kabba­ lists and was introduced to the Bahir ("Brightness"), the main text of Proven