If I expel you from the land alone, I fear that packs of wolves and bears will attack you and you will be no more. I have brought fearsome warriors and flaming forces to strike at you and you have not obeyed. the Blessed Holy One said as follows: 'Israel, what should I do with you? I have already punished you and you have not heeded Me. What can I do? The only solution is that I and you together leave the land.' So. Now look, what should I do with you? If I banish you from the land and expel you from the kingdom, perhaps wild beasts or wolves or robbers will attack you and you will be no more. The king said, 'I have punished you so many times and you have not. A parable: There was a king who had a single son who kept misbehaving. On this series of admonitions, the Zohar comments: "Come and see the pure love of the Blessed Holy One for Israel. At the chapter's conclusion, God says: "Yet, even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or spurn them so as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them, for I am the Lord, their God" (26:44). But if they spurn them, God will "set His face" against the people: "I will discipline you sevenfold for your sins." and "I will scatter you among the nations" (26:28, 33). If they follow his decrees, He will reward them. To cite one example, Leviticus 26 records "a carrot and a stick" that God offers the Jewish people. Whereas most commentaries interpret the Torah as a narrative and legal work, mystics are as likely to interpret it "as a system of symbols which reveal the secret laws of the universe and even the secrets of God" (Deborah Kerdeman and Lawrence Kushner, The Invisible Chariot, p. The Zohar is written in Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) in the form of a commentary on the five books of the Torah. Is that not the same as if it was in the Torah itself?" He referred to a certain matter as being in the Torah, and when I asked him where, he said: "It's in the Zohar. The intensity with which Orthodox kabbalists hold this conviction was revealed to me once when I was arguing a point of Jewish law with an elderly religious scholar. Indeed, Orthodox mystics are apt to see Bar Yochai not so much as the Zohar's author as the recorder of mystical traditions dating back to the time of Moses. Almost all modern Jewish academic scholars believe that De Leon himself authored the Zohar, although many Orthodox kabbalists continue to accept De Leon's attribution of it to Simeon bar Yochai. The most famous work of kabbalah, the Zohar, was revealed to the Jewish world in the thirteenth century by Moses De Leon, who claimed that the book contained the mystical writings of the second-century rabbi Simeon bar Yochai. The medieval rabbis wanted the study of kabbalah limited to people of mature years and character. Rabbi Akiva alone "entered in peace and left in peace." It was this episode, the later experiences of individuals who became mentally unbalanced while engaging in mystical activities, and the disaster of the false Messiah Shabbetai Zevi that caused seventeenth-century rabbis to legislate that kabbalah should be studied only by married men over forty who were also scholars of Torah and Talmud. Azzai, the Talmud records, "looked and went mad Ben Zoma died." Elisha ben Abuyah became a heretic and left Judaism. A famous talmudic story tells of four rabbis, Azzai, Ben Zoma, Elisha ben Abuyah, and Akiva who would meet together and engage in mystical studies. The rabbis of the Talmud regarded the mystical study of God as important yet dangerous. The prophet then describes a divine chariot and the throne of God. I looked and lo, a stormy wind came sweeping out of the north-a huge cloud and flashing fire, surrounded by a radiance and in the center of the fire, a gleam as of amber" (1:1,4). the heavens opened and I saw visions of God. There are elements of kabbalah in the Bible, for example, in the opening chapter of Ezekiel, where the prophet describes his experience of the divine: ". While codes of Jewish law focus on what it is God wants from man, kabbalah tries to penetrate deeper, to God's essence itself. ![]() Kabbalah is the name applied to the whole range of Jewish mystical activity. Kabbalah: Table of Contents| The Zohar| The Ten Sefirot
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