The secret of the Zohar’s allure seems to be in its novel ideas and the challenging concept of freedom that it proffers – the freedom to interpret anew, to imagine, to initiate and develop. The challenge posed to orthodox thought by its sexual elements and humor reverberate in both the earthly and heavenly spheres

 

The Riddle of Knowledge

What is it about this book that has had such a dramatic effect on the Jewish imagination, impressing its signature not only on Kabbala, but also on Jewish philosophy and literature over the centuries? What touched the hearts of the masses over the generations – Torah scholars and kabbalists, as well as laymen and simple Jews? An exhaustive treatment of the richness and variety of the Zohar is not possible in this article, but I will attempt to summarize a few of the fundamental components of the book.

The Zohar is first and foremost a book of mysticism whose basic premise is the belief that the concrete and the defined are only a small part of our reality. Mysticism radiates through amazement, wonder and questioning, not through rigid constants and absolutes. Thus, the Zohar does not recoil from diversity, from contradictions and complex statements. Its spiritual ideas are often expressed through imagery and symbols, in myths that leave space for the imagination and the reader’s personal world. Over every page an awareness of the limitations of human achievement hovers, as the Zohar states: “Though man seeks to ascend the steps of knowledge, striving to reach the very highest level, when he finally arrives there –  what has he gained? What did you learn, what did you see, what did you find? In the end, everything is as incomprehensible as it was in the beginning.”

 

Repairing the Visages

Creativity and innovation are the founding pillars of the Zohar’s world. Unlike Ramban and the kabbalists of Provence and Gerona, who saw themselves as the guardians and transmitters of an ancient tradition handed down to them by their rabbis, the Zohar is constantly creative and innovative. Just as God created His world with speech, by means of the spoken word, the kabbalists of the Zohar create new heavens and a new earth with their words. Years later the Arizal expressed this awareness in a poem whose terminology is totally zoharistic, the metaphor of the field playing on the image of the kabbalists reaping their creations from the soil of the spiritual world:

“The reapers of the field speak in riddles of words and voice

Uttering words sweet as honey

Before the Master of the Universe, they reveal secrets in veiled words

And give birth to new ideas

These are made manifest in the heavens, and remain hanging there

The very sun itself.”

The result of their labor is the revelation of hidden things, new ideas, as essential to the existence of the world as the sun, the source of light, inspiration and innovation.

Above all else the Zohar expresses the spiritual equivalent of the marital bond – in which man encounters God, their mutual influence echoing  the earthly relationship of man and wife. The basic idea of the Idra Rabba (The Greater Holy Assembly, see Zohar Unzipped), one of the most important texts in the Zohar, is that although God created man, man – or specifically, Rashbi (Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, traditionally the author of the Zohar – see Mystery of the Zohar) and his disciples – “repairs” or rectifies the divine countenances, which are the manifestations of God in the world, through discourse. Outstanding among these manifestations is the quality of Erech Apa’im or Árikh Anpim – long-suffering, or the combination of patience and mercy, which rises above the conflicts and foibles of human reality to enact God’s will and nudge the world one step closer to redemption (geula) – despite the fact that Man, and specifically Israel, are undeserving.

The tzaddik (pious man) uses this tikkun (the kabbalistic concept of rectifying the world) to formulate the concept of the divine in human consciousness. In other words: Creativity is mutual, inasmuch as just as God creates man, man similarly “creates” an image of God in his consciousness.

According to the Zohar the meaning of the verse from Proverbs (31:23), “her husband is well-known at the city gates,” is that the recognition of God is subjective, based on each and every person’s imaginative capacity. This subjectivity does not diminish the validity of the recognition, as according to the Zohar, the infinite God truly exists in each and every way that man can conceive of Him.

This creative power is called Zohar (splendor) and one of the verses the Zohar cites repeatedly is “The wise will shine like the brightness (ke-zohar) of the firmament” (Daniel 12:3). This brightness that shines in the upper spheres, and with which God creates the worlds, is the very same essence that bursts through into the world of the wise – namely, the kabbalists – and is the source of their prophetic, visionary inspiration. According to Tikkunei Zohar (see Zohar Unzipped), it is the spark of this brightness in the souls of Rashbi’s disciples that ensures they have the approbation of heaven for the new ideas they propound.

As they seek to define this divine quality of “unity” the sages of Rashbi’s circle are spiritually “refined”. At the end of the Idra Rabba three members of the circle die, destroyed by their attempt to grasp at the divine.

 

Creator, Creation, Procreation

The creativity of the Zohar is closely connected to procreation and the appropriate way to channel sexual energy, and thus the biblical Song of Songs is grist for its mill. According to the Zohar, this epic poem was created in a coalescence of emanations (Zoharim) – an expression of the upper spheres and the divine powers of creativity, as well as of the human emotional energies, which yearn to connect with one another and become one.

This intrinsic urge to connect which runs through the entire narrative of the Song of Songs is in fact a description of creative emanation.  The lovers’ kiss which is one of the climaxes of the poem – “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” (Song of Songs, 1:2) – symbolizes the meeting of the divine and the human spirit, a meeting which is given oral expression in speech. In this interpretation, the Zohar identifies the common source of love, intimacy, creativity, and the sexual urge.

The empowerment of eros as the source of creative vitality opens up potentially dangerous vistas that make boundaries and precautions essential. Thus in spite of its sometimes explicit openness, the Zohar is very far from permissive, and places tremendous emphasis on the preservation of sexual purity. According to the Zohar, the primal sin of human sexuality – masturbation – is one of the gravest of all sins, and one for which there may well be neither penitence nor atonement. This is essentially the sin of bachelorhood: a sin that expresses narcissism, seclusion and man’s inability to extend beyond his own self-interest and reach out to his fellow.

According to the Zohar, the intoxication of self-love was the foundation of the archaic world of chaos that was destroyed. For the world to be built anew (tikkun olam), the sexual urge must be refined and channeled appropriately in the male-female relationship. Thus the creative tzaddik, whose very breath can create worlds, who decrees and God brings his words to fulfillment, is also the guardian of the covenant, symbolized by the circumcised male sexual organ. His self-control must be impeccable, his sensuality consistently channeled and refined, to function only in the appropriate direction.

Rashbi symbolizes the perfect man, created in God’s image, who has the power to repair our shattered reality and restore its harmony. He can connect between extremes, creating a conjunction of the divine attributes to bring God’s abundance into the world.

The death of Rashbi at the end of the Idra Zuta (see Zohar Unzipped) is a moment of spiritual zenith in which the upper and lower spheres are momentarily united. As his spirit reunites with his creator, a window of intense spiritual inspiration forms, from which his disciples draw the strength to continue. This description inspired Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who spoke of the tremendous importance of being in the presence of a tzaddik at the hour of his death.