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Various End-reckonings, based on both the Talmud and the Zohar, led to the conclusion that the Messiah would appear in 5600 A.M. (the six-hundredth year of the sixth millennium), corresponding to 1840 C.E. The firmly entrenched belief appears in documents from throughout the Jewish world: Persia and Kurdistan, Morocco, the Land of Israel, Eastern Europe (Hasidic and non-Hasidic alike), and Western Europe. The documents are relatively few, given the Jews’ reluctance to discuss such matters in writing, but it appears as well in accounts by Christian missionaries of their conversations with Jews in most of those areas.

The Beit El kabbalists root their practice in Sharʾabi's theoretical writings, which are uneven and call for much interpretation. Sharʾabi produced a number of mystical prayers and also formalized penitential rituals of self‐mortification. Much of the literary activity of the Beit El kabbalists is devoted to resolving the desiderata and discrepancies remaining in Sharʾabi's writings, The most widely known evidence of Sharʾabi's activity is “his” prayer book, the Siddur ha‐RaShaSh, which was compiled posthumously by many hands. As a result of these factors, there are many versions and editions of the prayer book. In order to reinforce Sharʾabi's authority and spiritual hegemony, the Beit El kabbalists continued the Lurianic limitations of the kabbalistic canon.

This chapter argues that Modena's criticism of the Zohar's origins had little to do with its theological contents. It emerged as a reaction to the elevated status of the work among his Jewish contemporaries and immediate predecessors; Jews had begun to treat the Zohar as a source of legal authority rather than a collection of stories and biblical glosses. Modena's critique constituted a denunciation of these larger trends in contemporary Jewish life rather than a rejection of the Zohar as a work of exegesis. As such, Ari Nohem offers a case study of how an early modern intellectual worked to prove that a text was pseudepigraphic. It also presents a wealth of information on attitudes toward the Zohar among Jews in Italy, Poland, and elsewhere. Ultimately, Modena rejected the status ascribed to the Zohar in contemporary Jewish life, denied the work's ostensible antiquity, and reflected on the deleterious impact of its packaging as a printed book.

This chapter begins with Fishbane's understanding of ‘inspired exegesis’, that is, the thread found in rabbinic literature itself that considers rabbinic exegesis not only reliant on Torah study but also deeply revelatory. It then turns to the mystical text of the Zohar and demonstrates that its authors take this idea a step further, viewing their interpretive work and experience not only as participating in revelation but also as exceeding the normal range of prophetic experience. The chapter demonstrates that these medieval mystics are really practising an intellectual mysticism, strongly reminiscent of Fishbane's concept of exegetical illumination.

This chapter begins with an exploration of the diverse sources that carried rabbinic myths to the Middle Ages. Three patterns are noted: a defence of the straightforward sense of Scripture and the Midrash, where they speak in bold imagery about God, a denunciation or denial of the apparent, straightforward sense of these and other passages, and an affirmation of the religious language and depictions in these corpora as sacred code of higher mysteries. The manifestation and mystery of the book of Zohar is discussed.

This chapter presents a synthesis of the studies in the preceding Chapters (10-12), focusing on a number of mystical tracts, particularly the book of Zohar — an heir of these prior layers of tradition and their transformation. The book of Zohar attempts to read and disclose the hidden myth in the words of the Torah and other passages of the sacred canon. Myth is considered an inward and spiritual reality of the divine being, is unsayable and unknowable on its own terms, and only becomes knowable and sayable in the terminology of Scripture.

This chapter presents a synthesis of all chapters discussed in this book. Three specific concepts are emphasized. The first is that this book is an exploration of the morphologies of myth and mythmaking found in three distinct bodies of literature: the Hebrew Bible; clusters or anthologies of Midrash; and the book of Zohar. Second is that the myths studied are cultural forms and the concrete expressions of a vital mythic imagination found in classical texts of the Jewish monotheistic tradition. Finally, that the three literary corpora investigated provide different accounts of perceptions of what is called the theosphere and its relation to the biosphere.

The Zohar is the canonic work of Jewish mysticism. The work represents one of the most elaborate and influential attempts in any tradition, to interpret the Bible, and certainly the most important effort among Jewish mystics. Like many other kabbalistic commentaries on the Bible, the Zohar surmises that what happens during the exegetical enterprise is the retrieval of the ancient truths that comprise the esoteric core of the Jewish tradition, as these are embodied in a paramount way in the Bible. That is, these “secrets” are not innovations contrived by a medieval group of Kabbalists. In fact, what seems to be unique about the status of the Zohar is that it is seen as having transformed a literature that is interpretive in a deep sense—in fact, a conglomerate of esoteric interpretations on various parts of the Bible—into a canonic literature. However, despite the very substantial resort of the various parts of the verses, its special status was not derived from its being printed together with the biblical text, or from the fact that, due to the more usual form that biblical commentaries take, the Zohar was studied as part of the weekly regimen of studying the Bible. Rather, biblical verses have been absorbed into the mystical text and recycled as part of a mythical parable and theosophical interpretations that only very rarely assume the form of a linear commentary. It is significant, for the understanding of the interpretive nature of Jewish traditional culture, that a commentary indeed became a canonic writing. This chapter attempts to discern the most important exegetical devices that were characteristics of the bulk of the Zohar and that informed the highly imaginative hermeneutics of this book.

The book of Zohar is the masterpiece of Jewish mysticism. Ostensibly a commentary on the Torah, it pulses with the desire for God on virtually every page. One may even say that the commentary is carried by this desire and that its protean creativity is primarily motivated by a longing to experience the divine realities uncovered by mystical interpretation. Toward this end the full range of tradition is activated, which runs from late antiquity to the 13th century, when the book of Zohar appeared in Castile. Recovering theosophical truths in the teachings of the Torah, the mystics ascend exegetically to God. This process invites attention. This chapter argues the exegetical spirituality made manifest in the Zohar is a complex fusion of myth and ritual. First, and most important, the seekers' quest for divine truth is bound up with the myths of God imagined through the work of exegesis—an achievement that puts him in mind of the hidden mysteries, and in connection with them. In turn, these esoteric myths are enacted in liturgical recitation and mystical contemplation for the sake of God and man. The circularity of this spirituality is as paradoxical as it is profound: a search for certainty through the theological myths of the exegetical imagination.

The first chapter provides an overview of some general methodological questions regarding the Zohar's structure and archaeology. The author argues that schools of Zohar interpretation divide, ideologically, between scholastic approaches and approaches based on mystical revelation and transmission. These two points of origin reflect two views of the kabbalistic experience.

The Idrot is one of the boldest presentations in the Zohar literature, expressing a mystical premise that God is a force that continually fills the world with divine energy which is universal in theosophical Kabbalah, just as it permeates most Western mysticism. This chapter presents the Idra texts known as the Idrot, or “convocations.” The texts include the Idra Rabbah and the Idra Zuta. A third Idra, the Idra de—Bei Mashkena, “the Idra of the Tabernacle,” is also referred to at the beginning of the Idra Rabbah.

The author describes the most influential texts of the Zohar, the dramatic Idrot, in this chapter. These texts describe convocations in which various members of the Zohar's pietistic circle perish in mystical ecstasy while beholding the wonders of the Godhead. The chapter examines some central themes in the Idrot and their related literature.

This chapter addresses how the value of the Zohar as a form of cultural capital was further reflected in the intensive engagement in its interpretation, which became a central practice of kabbalists in the second half of the sixteenth century. Following the rise of Zohar commentary, a struggle ensued in later generations to obtain primacy in this field. Before the formulation of the Zohar in its printed form, the possession of zoharic manuscripts, control over the collection and editing process, and the ability to quote zoharic texts were all a part of the cultural capital of the elite circles of the Iberian exiles. However, following its finalization, printing, and wide dissemination, the Zohar ceased to be a rare commodity; the value of manuscript collections diminished and one could no longer benefit from possessing or quoting the texts. The new way to derive cultural power from the work was to control its meaning. This was achieved through the commentator's ability to establish his interpretation as the authoritative one. Thus, when commentary became the principal genre of kabbalistic literature, the struggle for dominance shifted to the field of hermeneutics.

This chapter is an attempt to rewrite the history of Jewish mysticism by examining its geographical origins and focusing on its medieval and premodern manifestations. It is also an effort to wrest the account of Jewish mysticism from its Eurocentric focus and place it instead in the context of Islamic culture. The chapter elaborates at length on the ways in which Islamic culture helped shape mysticism among the Jews beginning in ninth-century Baghdad and continuing with such currents as the Sufi-tinged Jewish pietist movement of thirteenth-century medieval Egypt, the ecstatic Kabbalah movement founded by Abraham Abulafia, and the origins of the so-called Spanish Kabbalah. The main thesis here is that based on recent research the centrality of Islamic culture cannot be ignored in developing a historical account of the evolution of Jewish mysticism.

This chapter examines the strategy of the Zohar to present itself to readers through a juxtaposition of the figures of R. Shimon bar Yohai and Moses. By means of this contrast, the compilers of the work sought to create a canonical literature which was not only comparable to the Torah of Moses but was, they claimed, superior to it. The context for the comparison between R. Shimon and Moses, and for the portrayal of the rabbinic sage as greater than the biblical prophet, is the struggle between competing schools of kabbalah on the Iberian peninsula in the thirteenth century. The dominant school of kabbalah at the time was that of the followers of Nahmanides and R. Solomon ben Adret (Rashba). This competition was the framework in which the zoharic texts were created and in which their distribution and reception began.

The Zohar is the great medieval Jewish compendium of mysticism, myth, and esoteric teaching. It may be considered the greatest work of Jewish literary imagination in the Middle Ages. Without doubt, it constitutes one of the most important bodies of religious texts of all times and places. It is also a lush garden of sacred eros, filled to overflowing with luxurious plantings of love between master and disciples, among the mystical companions themselves, between the souls of Israel and the shekhinah, God's lovely bride, but most of all between the male and female elements that together make up the Godhead. Revered and canonized by generations of faithful devotees, the secret universe described by the Zohar's authors serves as the basis of Kabbalistic faith.