Tag Archives: Zohar

Reflections …

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Concerning the rule to not roam in the PARDESS, unless one has filled one’s stomach with meat and wine, it should be said to one who comes to do only what the Torah commands by law. But one who craves and yearns to learn the inner things, to know His truthfulness, is under the rule, “one should always learn Torah in the place one’s heart wishes.” And one should be very strong in one’s way and know that he will learn and succeed… and make one’s soul’s craving to adhere to knowing His Name permanently. And if one should see that the majority of the students are not so, he should know that this is right for them, so they will not destroy the sanctity until they walk by gradations. This has nothing to do with ostentation and boasting, only divisions in the soul’s nobility.

–The Rav Raiah Kook,
Orot HaTorah (Lights of the Torah), Chapter 9, Item 12

‘Son of an Israelite Woman and an Egyptian Man’; Jesus as the Blasphemer (Lev. 24:10-23): An Anti-Gospel Polemic in the Zohar, Harvard Theological Review (forthcoming) | Jonatan Benarroch – Academia.edu

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95ddb411752a0897c01a0e2075ddd553_500The short biblical story of the blasphemer (Lev. 24: 10-23) received a unique mystical and mythical interpretation in the Zohar. When carefully examined, the Zoharic homilies of the story (Zohar III, Emor, 105b-106a) reveal hidden influences of Jewish polemic anti-gospel traditions.  This article exposes the strong link between the biblical blasphemer and Jesus as well as between the blasphemer’s mother and Virgin Mary.

Several elements of the early counter-narrative history of Jesus, as it is found in the Talmud, for instance, were developed in Jewish anti-Christian polemic works and folklore formulated from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages (mainly in western Europe). These elements eventually became part of the famous polemical tract known (in its different variants and forms) as Toledot Yeshu (“the life story of Jesus”).
The article focuses on three central themes of the counter-narrative history of Jesus: a) The magical and lethal use of the Holy name; b) The Egyptian father; c) The mother as a prostitute / an adulterous woman.

The anti-Christian Zoharic homilies should be understood as part of a rise in Jewish anti-Christian polemic works in Western Europe in the early middle ages, many of them from the 13th and 14th centuries. Moreover, as shown in this article, the Zoharic anti-Christian polemics were likely also influenced by Kabbalistic traditions containing polemic material against Christianity, such as the material which can be  found in the mystical medieval Misdrash Otiyot de-Rabbi Akiva (8-9th cen.), in the writings of Rabbi Abraham Abulafia (13th cen.), and in Sefer ha-Peli’a (14th cen.).

This Zoharic commentary of the blasphemer’s biblical story provides a significant understanding of the ambivalent Zoharic attitude towards Jesus as the Son of God – and of the Virgin Mary as linked to the Shekhina.

Research Interests:

Source: ‘Son of an Israelite Woman and an Egyptian Man’; Jesus as the Blasphemer (Lev. 24:10-23): An Anti-Gospel Polemic in the Zohar, Harvard Theological Review (forthcoming) | Jonatan Benarroch – Academia.edu

Daily Chabad

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What Can I Fix?

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai hid from the Romans in a cave for thirteen years. There he was visited by heavenly beings, by Elijah the prophet and even by Moses. It was there that he composed the holy Zohar.

When he left the cave and came to a town, he did not say, “Let me enlighten you with the inner light of Torah, the light that has been hidden since the six days of creation.”

He said, “What is there in your town that I can fix?”

Whatever knowledge a human being is given in this world, whatever wisdom, enlightenment or inspiration, it is all only and exclusively for one purpose: To assist him to fix up this world.

Likkutei Sichot, volume 32, page 152, based on Talmud, Shabbat 33b.

As Above, So Below

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The internality of the Torah is life to the internality of the body, which is the soul and the externality to the externality of the body. And those who engage in intimations and secrets, the evil inclination cannot provoke them.

–The Vilna Gaon (GRA),
Even Shlemah (A Perfect and Just Weight), Chapter 8, Item 27