Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press

place that might call to mind a verse from a psalm or the Song of
similar
with which a homily might then open.
Songs,
very frequent references in the text to the importance of secret Torah
The
at night raises the likelihood that this group of Spanish kabbalists shared
study
some time, as a regular, ritualized activity, a late-night session for the study
for
Kabbalah. If they were anythinglike their ®ctional counterparts, these
of
began after midnight and went until dawn, concluding with morning
sessions
These nightly gatherings (of course there is no way to be certain
prayers.
or for how longthey did take place on an actual level) were omitted
whether
the Sabbath, when it was the companion's duty to be at home with his
on
They reached their annual climax on the eve of Shavu'ot, whenthevigil
wife.
in preparation for a new receivingof the Torah. The intense climax of the
was
narrative is the tale of two great and highly ritualized meetings of
Zohar
and disciples in the Idra, a special chamber of assembly. In the ®rst of
master
two assemblies, three of the companions die in the ecstasy of their
these
devotions. The second, the Idra Zuta or Lesser Assembly, records the
mystical
of Rabbi Shim'on himself and forms the grand conclusion of the Zohar.
death
Scholem once suggested that the Zohar takes the form of a
Gershom
novel.'' This suggestion is particularly intriguing because the Zohar
``mystical
in Spain some three hundred years before Cervantes, who is often
appeared
as the father of the modern novel. One may see the tales of Rabbi
seen
and the companions as a sort of novel in formation, but it is clear
Shim'on
the form is quite rudimentary. When the Zohar wants to express an idea,
that
needs to slip back into the more familiar literary form of textual hermeneu-
it
The novelist in the classic post-Cervantes sense is one who can develop
tics.
or suggest complex thought patterns by means of character development
ideas
plot themselves, rather than by havingthe characters assemble and make a
and
of speeches to one another (though such moments are not entire un-
series
in later ®ction). It might be interesting to place the Zohar into the
known
such works as medieval troubadour romances, Chaucer's fourteenth-
settingof
Canterbury Tales, ortheThousand and One Nights. All of these are
century
cycles, frameworks of story into which smaller units (in these cases
narrative
in the Zohar's case homiletical) can be ®tted. All of them, too, may
narrative,
seen as precursors of the novel.
be
the peregrinations of Rabbi Shim'on and his disciples are more than
But
``story'' of the Zohar, whether ®ctional or maskinga historical reality. In
the
Zohar, everythingis indeed more than it appears to be. Master and disciples
the
represent wanderingIsrael, both the ancient tribes in the wilderness on
way to the promised land, and the people of Israel in their present exile.
their
the ancient rabbis suggest to the would-be scholar to ``exile yourself to a
While
of Torah,'' here exile or wanderingis itself that place. The ``place of
place
is indeed wherever the companions happen to be, the home of the
Torah''
Introduction
lxiii
master or the grove of trees. Said in words that they might prefer, the ``garden''