TAGS: Religion, Judaism, Mysticism, Kabbalah, Spirituality, Zohar, Occult, Midrash,

Jewish literature

Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, 3 vols. (Isaiah Tishby, ed.)

* The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts (Littman Library of Jewish

Civilization, 1989).
Three volumes in one. Isaiah Tishby, ed.; David Goldstein, trans. — PDF

The Zohar has been described as "the richest, most imaginative work in the annals
of Jewish mysticism."
Coming to light in late 13th-century Castile, the Zohar's influence grew slowly at
first,
but by the 17th century it was accorded quasi-canonical status in most Jewish
communities,
alongside the Bible and Talmud. The Zohar is not one book, but a group of books,
and contains mystical discussions on the nature of God, the origin and structure of
the universe,
the nature of souls, sin, redemption, good and evil, and related topics.

For over fifty years, ever since its first appearance in Hebrew as Mishnat ha-Zohar
(1949, 1961),
Isaiah Tishby's study was hailed as a classic, a landmark in modern Hebrew letters.
Beautifully written and deeply learned, it opened the recondite world of the Zohar
to more than a generation of Hebrew readers.
The publication of the long-awaited English translation in 1989 was therefore a
cause for celebration
and made the complexity and poetry of the Zohar's thought-world accessible to
English readers for the first time.

The work begins with an extended General Introduction (225 pages) which sets forth
the literary analysis of the Zohar,
the strange history of its composition and diffusion, the history of scholarship on
the Zohar, the afterlife of the Zohar,
and the basic events and personalities that form the framework of the Zohar.
The remainder of the book is divided into thematically defined chapters, each
prefaced by introductory explanations followed
by a rich sampling of succinctly glossed primary sources and copious notes which
decipher the theological meaning of the text.
The scholarly value of the anthology is enhanced by a bibliography, glossary, and
three indexes.

Despite the importance of Mishnat ha-Zohar for generations of scholars and

students, however,
the anthologized texts were ultimately only excerpts from a dramatically larger
textual stream.
The principal virtue of Tishby's rich study is the organization it lends to the
Zohar by bringing together passages
on similar or related subjects — which, in the printed editions, are scattered all
over the place
— and by offering such complete and lucid introductions.
In giving the reader so much help, Tishby makes the concepts of the Zohar, many of
which are quite difficult and obscure,
far more accessible than they would be from a translation standing alone.
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The recent 12-volume translation of the Zohar by Daniel C. Matt et al. is available
here: https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/36709734
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