Twenty Years Later, an English Translation of the Zohar Nears Completion

Having begun the project of rendering the Zohar—the major work of Jewish mysticism—into English in 1997, Daniel Matt, with the help of two other scholars, is completing the eleventh volume of the most comprehensive translation of the book to date. (The twelfth and final volume will appear next year.) Ezra Glinter reviews Matt’s translation and discusses the Zohar itself, dated by tradition to the 2nd century CE but believed by most scholars to have been composed in late-13th-century Spain:

Written in the style of midrash, or rabbinic commentary on the Bible, the Zohar relates the teachings of [the talmudic sage] Rabbi Shimon and his companions as they wander through Galilee. But the Zohar also strikes out in bold new directions, describing not only the conversations of Shimon’s mystical fellowship but their adventures and exploits [as well]. On their travels, they encounter strange characters who turn out to be more than what they seem—a beggar or a donkey driver who is actually a hidden sage, a child who displays surprising wisdom. At times, some argue, it comes to resemble a kind of medieval novel. . . .

The fundamental concept underlying the Zohar—along with most of medieval Kabbalah—is that of the ten s’firot, the divine aspects or attributes through which God interacts with the world. . . .

The idea of the s’firot served an important theological purpose. Following philosophers like Maimonides, God had become an abstract, practically inconceivable entity, which made the idea of prayer and religious observance seem almost absurd. With the s’firot kabbalists preserved this notion of God as the ultimate source of being, but introduced a mechanism by which God could relate to the world. Of course, the idea of a tenfold divinity didn’t always sit well with the followers of a religion that prided itself on strict monotheism. . . .

Read more at Boston Globe

More about: Judaism, Kabbalah, Religion & Holidays, Theology, Translation, Zohar

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society