Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press

same is even more true of the reader in medieval Christian Spain, who is
The
admonished to join the battle against those who would strengthen
being®rmly
evil forcesÐwoundingor capturingthe Shekhinah and thus keepingthe
the
light from shining into this world. It does not require a great deal of
divine
to understand who these worshipers of darkness must be. We must
imagination
of course, that this was also the era when the Christian image of
remember,
Jew as magician and devil-worshiper was becoming rampant. The Zohar's
the
but clearly present view of Christianity as sorcery is a mirror re¯ec-
unstated
of the image of Judaism that was gaining acceptance, with much more
tion
consequences, throughout the Christian world.
dangerous
this is only one side of the picture. As people of deep faith and of great
But
and aesthetic sensibility, the kabbalists also found themselves impressed
literary
and perhaps even attracted to, certain aspects of the Christian story and
by,
religious lives of the large and powerful monastic communities that were
the
prominent in Christian Spain. The tale of Jesus and his faithful apostles, the
so
narrative, and the struggles of the early Church were all powerful and
passion
stories. Aspects of Christian theologyÐincluding both the complicated
attractive
oneness of the trinitarian God and the passionate and ever present
to a quasi-divine female ®gureÐmade their mark on the kabbalistic
devotion
The monastic orders, and especially their commitment to celibacy
imagination.
poverty, must have been impressive to mystics whose own tradition did
and
make such demands on them, but who shared the medieval otherworldli-
not
that would have highly esteemed such devotion.
ness
kabbalists were much disconcerted by the power of Christianity to
The
Jewish converts, an enterprise that was given high priority particularly
attract
the powerful Dominican order. Much that is to be found in the Zohar was
by
to serve as a counterweight to the potential attractiveness of Christianity
intended
to Jews, and perhaps even to the kabbalists themselves. Of course this
not be seen as an exclusive way of readingthe Zohar, a mystical work
should
was not composed chie¯y as a polemical text. Nevertheless, the need to
which
assert Judaism's spirit in the face of triumphalist Christianity stands in
proudly
background of the Zohar and should not be ignored as we read it.
the
Zohar, as the contemporary reader of the original encounters it, is a threevolume
The
work, constitutingsome sixteen hundred folio pages, ordered in the
of a commentary on the Torah. The ®rst volume covers the Zohar on
form
the second volume is Zohar on Exodus, and the third volume com-
Genesis,
the remainingthree books of the Torah. The text is divided into
pletes
on the weekly Torah portions, takingthe form of an ancient midrash.
homilies
this form, however, are included longdigressions and subsections of
Within
Zohar, some of which have no relation to this midrashic structure and
the
Introduction
lvi
VI