Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press

a constant search for ``hints'' within the text that will allow for an
words,
deeper levels of interpretation. This careful attention to the text is
openingto
to the Zohar's readiness to apply to it the symbolic language of the
joined
that we have discussed above. It is the interplay between these two
se®rot
heightened midrashic sensitivity and the old/new grid of se®rotic
factors,
that creates the unique and powerful poesis of the Zohar.
symbols,
element that plays a key role in the powerful impression the Zohar
Another
made on its readers throughout the generations is the sonorous and seem-
has
mysterious Aramaic in which it is written. All the sections of the Zohar,
ingly
for about half of Midrash ha-Ne'lam, are written in Aramaic rather than
except
While scholars have devoted much attention to the unique grammatical
Hebrew.
and syntactical features of the Zohar's Aramaic, few have tried to under-
why it is that the Zohar is written in Aramaic and what meaningthis
stand
choice of language might have had for the work's authors.
surprising
was the spoken language of Jews, both in the land of Israel and in
Aramaic
from late biblical times (fourth±third century b.c.e.) until after the
Babylonia,
conquest and its replacement by Arabic (seventh century c.e.) .The
Islamic
in both its Babylonian and Palestinian versions, is composed mostly in
Talmud,
as are portions of Midrash and other rabbinic writings. The Targum,
Aramaic,
several versions, is the old Jewish translation of the Bible into
existingis
Aramaic.
the time the Zohar was written, Aramaic was a purely literary language
By
all but a tiny group of Jews in the mountains of Kurdistan. Knowledge of it
for
was purely passive, even amongrabbinic scholars; only very rarely
elsewhere
a short treatise or poem still written in Aramaic. The choice to compose
was
Zohar in Aramaic gave to the work an archaic cast, and this immediately
the
the stage for its mysterious quality.
set
Spain of the thirteenth century, unlike Palestine of the second, Aramaic
In
a mysterious and only vaguely understood language. Presenting secrets in
was
rather than Hebrew (a method that had been tried, in brief texts,
Aramaic
the Zohar) shrouded them in an obscuringveil, forcinga slower pace of
before
upon those who delved into its pages. It also permitted a certain gran-
reading
that might have seemed pretentious in the more familiar vehicle of
diloquence
Hebrew. Images that might have been seen as trivial in Hebrew,
medieval
if frequently repeated, maintained a certain mysterious grandeur
especially
veiled by the obscurity of Aramaic dress.
when
Zohar's Aramaic made the text slightly, but not impossibly, more
The
for the educated Jewish reader in its day. This was probably the
dif®cult
intent: to offer the reader a sense that he had come to a more profound,
precise
and therefore less penetrable, sort of teaching. With some extra effort, it
reveal to him the secret universe that the Zohar sought to share and pass
would
to its elite community of readers. Students of the Zohar come quickly to
on
Introduction
lxx
understand that the Aramaic of the Zohar is indeed a penetrable veil. The real