MAGIC 1204 · The Zohar Simulacrum and the Kabbalistic Tradition

Led by The Zohar Simulacrum

1. Module 4 ○ Open

   The Zohar Simulacrum and the Kabbalistic Tradition

   Led by The Zohar Simulacrum

   The question

   The *Zohar* — *The Book of Splendour* — is the great medieval text of Jewish Kabbalah, composed in late-thirteenth-century Castile (probably in the years 1280-1286 CE) by Moses de Leon (though presented as the discovered work of the second-century Tannaitic sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai). The *Zohar* is the central document of the Kabbalistic tradition: a sprawling esoteric commentary on the Torah, written in a particular Aramaic, organised around the doctrine of the *Sefirot* (the ten emanations of the divine), the doctrine of the *Shekhinah* (the indwelling divine presence, often imagined as feminine), and a sustained meditation on the relations between the divine, the cosmos, and the human soul. Translated and partly imitated by Christian Hebraists in the Renaissance — especially by Pico della Mirandola, who would build the Christian-Kabbalistic synthesis (Module 6) on the Zoharic foundation — the *Zohar* is a foundational document of the Western magical tradition. What does the *Zohar* teach, and how does Kabbalah enter the Renaissance synthesis?

   Outcome

   The student has read selections from the *Zohar* in modern translation (Matt's *Pritzker Zohar* is the standard; Matt's earlier one-volume *Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment* in the Paulist Classics of Western Spirituality series is also accessible; the Soncino translation by Sperling and Simon, 1934, remains in print but is older), Scholem's *Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism* chapter on the *Zohar*, and at least one passage from a later Kabbalistic text (Cordovero's *Pardes Rimmonim* extracts or Moses de Leon's *Sheqel ha-Qodesh*).

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   Practice scenarios

   Reading a Zoharic Passage

   The Zohar Simulacrum walks you through one specific passage of the *Zohar* — the famous opening of *Bereshit* (the *Zohar*'s commentary on Genesis 1:1, in Matt's translation Volume 1 pages 107-130) or the passages on the Shekhinah in *Bereshit* §49-50. Read the chosen passage carefully (Matt's translation has extensive notes that the student should read alongside the text). Read also the Scholem chapter on the *Zohar* in *Major Trends*. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what is the *Zohar* doing as a literary-religious text — what is the relationship between the surface Torah-commentary and the esoteric meaning being unfolded; how does the doctrine of the Sefirot operate in the passage; what does the figure of the Shekhinah let the *Zohar* do that more abstract Neoplatonist metaphysics cannot; and how does the *Zohar* set up the Christian-Kabbalist reception that Pico will undertake (Module 6)?

   Your goals

   • Read the chosen Zoharic passage with Matt's notes, and the Scholem chapter, before drafting.
   • Identify the structure of Zoharic interpretation (surface commentary, esoteric unfolding, doctrinal payoff).
   • Address the figure of the Shekhinah and what the personified-feminine divine immanence accomplishes theologically and imaginatively.
   • Address the difference between Zoharic Kabbalah and the Plotinian-Iamblichean tradition of Strand 1.
   • 700 words ± 100, scholarly register.

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