Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press
Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press
Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press
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eads it. This leads us closer to the real purpose of Zoharic exegesis. The<br />
who<br />
wants to take the reader inside the divine life. It wants ever to retell the<br />
Zohar<br />
of the ¯ow of the se®rot, their longings and union, the arousal of love<br />
story<br />
and the way in which that arousal causes blessingto ¯ow throughout the<br />
above<br />
This is the essential story of Kabbalah, and the Zohar ®nds it in verse<br />
worlds.<br />
verse, portion after portion, of the Torah text. But each retellingoffers a<br />
after<br />
and often startlingly different perspective. The Zohar is ever enrichingthe<br />
new<br />
narrative by means of retellingit from the vantage point of yet<br />
kabbalistic<br />
hermeneutic insight. On each page yet another verse, word, or tale of<br />
another<br />
Torah is opened or ``uncovered'' to reveal new insight into the great story<br />
the<br />
the Zohar, that which it proffers as the truth of the Torah, of the cosmos,<br />
of<br />
of the reader's soul.<br />
and<br />
the series of homilies by various speakers around a particular verse or<br />
In<br />
in the scriptural text, the Zohar takes its readers through multiple<br />
moment<br />
of understanding, reaching from the surface layer of ``plain'' meaning<br />
layers<br />
ever more profound revelations. A great love of language is revealed in<br />
into<br />
process; plays on words and subtle shadings of meaning often serve as<br />
this<br />
to a total recon®guration of the Scripture at hand. For this reason, the<br />
ways<br />
best readers, both traditional and modern, are those who share its<br />
Zohar's<br />
fascination with the mystery of words, includingboth their aural and<br />
endless<br />
(or ``spoken'' and ``written'') manifestations.<br />
graphic<br />
kabbalists contemporaneous with the Zohar were offeringmultile-<br />
Other<br />
readings of Scripture as well. Rabbi Baḥya ben Asher of Barcelona immediatelveled<br />
comes to mind. His Torah commentary, written in the 1290s, offers<br />
best example of the fourfold interpretation of Scripture in its Jewish form:<br />
the<br />
after verse is read ®rst for its plain meaning, then according to ``the way<br />
verse<br />
Midrash,'' followed by ``the way of intellect'' or philosophical allegory, and<br />
of<br />
``the way of Kabbalah.'' Rabbi Baḥya's work is in fact important as one<br />
®nally<br />
the earliest sources for quotations from the Zohar.<br />
of<br />
Zohar offers no such neat classi®cations. Insights offered by a group of<br />
The<br />
discussinga text may bounce back and forth from readings that<br />
``companions''<br />
be (and sometimes indeed are) found in earlier midrashic works to ways<br />
could<br />
readingthat belongwholly to the world of Kabbalah. Kabbalistic interpretations<br />
of<br />
are sometimes so well ``sewn'' into the midrashic fabric that the reader is<br />
wonderingwhether the kabbalistic referent might not indeed be the ``real''<br />
left<br />
a given biblical verse or rabbinic passage. In one well-known text,<br />
meaningof<br />
Zohar refers to mystical interpretations as the ``soul'' of Torah, distinguished<br />
the<br />
from the narrative that forms the outward ``garments'' and the legal<br />
that serve as Torah's ``body'' (playingon the phrase gufei Torah<br />
derivations<br />
of Torah''], that in rabbinic parlance means ``essential teachings'').<br />
[``bodies<br />
Introduction<br />
lviii<br />
text also suggests a further level of readings, the ``innermost soul'' of<br />
That<br />
that will not be fully revealed until messianic times. But when encoun-<br />
Torah<br />
teringactual passages from the Zohar, it is not easy to determine just where