conception through gestation and ®nally to birth, this project would From have been realized without the wisdom, knowledge, and nurturing of Rabbi not Poupko. He is my teacher and my friend, and it is to him that this Yehiel of the Zohar is dedicated. edition is with a sense of ful®llment and awe for Daniel Matt's remarkable It that my family and I now present the Zohar to the English- accomplishment with the hope that the radiance that ¯ows from this great work readingpublic, from the Jewish mystical tradition will bringlight to those who seek it. and Foreword Margot Pritzker viii
the thirteenth century. Written mostly in a unique Aramaic, this masterpiece of Kabbalah exceeds the dimensions of a normal book; it is virtually a body of of comprisingover twenty discrete sections. The bulk of the Zohar consists literature, of a runningcommentary on the Torah, from Genesis through Deuteron- This translation begins and focuses thereÐin what are projected to be omy. volumes; two subsequent volumes will cover other, shorter sections. 2 ten Green's introduction to this volume traces the development of Arthur and discusses the historical and literary context of the Zohar, its Kabbalah the complex question of authorship, and the symbolism of the ten se®rot style, aspects of the divine Self). Here I wish to treat several topics directly (various edition re¯ects a newly constructed, precise text of the Zohar, based on This manuscripts. Why was the creation of such a text necessary? All original translations of the Zohar are based on the standard printed editions, previous nearly all derive from the Mantua edition (1558±60), supplemented by which the zohar, radiance [or: splendor], of the sky. like On the various sections of the Zohar, see Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, 214±19; 2. Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, 1:1±7. All of these sections are written in Aramaic, Isaiah for Midrash ha-Ne'lam, which is written in Hebrew and Aramaic. except followingsections are scheduled to be translated as part of the runningcommentary The the Torah, as in the standard editions of the Zohar: Raza de-Razin, Sava de-Mishpatim, on di-Tsni'uta, Idra Rabba, Idra Zuta, Rav Metivta, and Yanuqa. The two subsequent Sifra will include Midrash ha-Ne'lam, Matnitin, Tosefta, Sitrei Torah, Heikhalot, Sitrei volumes ``Vision of Ezekiel,'' Qav ha-Middah, and Zohar to Songof Songs. Two sections Otiyyot, as imitations written by a later kabbalist, Tiqqunei ha-Zohar and Ra'aya Meheimna, identi®ed Translator's Introduction daniel c. matt ha-Zohar (The Book of Radiance) 1 has amazed and overwhelmed readers Sefer since it emerged mysteriously in medieval Spain (Castile) toward the end ever ix related to this translation and commentary. Establishing the Text of the Zohar variant readings from the Cremona edition (1559±60). At ®rst I intended to The title derives from the word H F Z 1. (zohar) in Daniel 12:3: The enlightened will shine are not planned to be included.
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author stood in the process of undr
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of a desire to reveal secrets that
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place that might call to mind a ver
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is this exile that the kabbalists a
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passages where Moses becomes the ka
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``Eden'' (or ``Lebanon'') whence th
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in readingthe text is that of maste
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who probably immigrated to Safed fr
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of rebellingagainst Talmudic author
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of Near Eastern JudaismÐas a sourc