Shining of the Zohar

What is the Zohar and how is it connected to messianism?

More or less parallel to the public defamed career of Abulafiya, the book of Zohar, or the Zoharic literature, hits the stage as well. This will become the MOST important and influential book in the history of Jewish mysticism. 

Apparently, from a critical historical point of view, it was the traditions of ideas and texts from a group in Castilia in Spain, also not the previously mentioned group associated with the Rashba, Nachmanides, the Azrieli brothers, Yitchak Sagi-Nahor and the Ra’abad… of Girona and Barcelona in Spain.

A man named Rabbi Moshe de Leon, presumably a leading figure in this school of Kabbalists in Castila in Spain at the time, at the end of the 13th century, published the book. He released various parts, not the whole book or corpus. Eventually, the pieces were collected and became what we know as the Zohar. 

It is not clear how much of the literature was written originally or simply edited and prepared and published and marketed and sold by Moshe de Leon. 

Radiant Features

The bulk of the Zohar is presented as an interpretive commentary to the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. The style is homiletic. It is not systematic or uniform in any way. It is definitely not dealing with halacha, religious law. 

The narrative of the Zohar is of a group of Sages in the generation following the destruction of the second Temple. The group is led by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the Rashbi, who teaches them as they go about the Galilee. 

The book itself does not use the term ‘Zohar’, which means splendor or radiance, nor does it use the term Spheres, but the concept of spheres is there, the names and symbolism and meaning of the spheres are there, for example:

In Genesis, the words ‘in the beginning’, in Hebrew be’reshit, is interpreted as in or through reshit, the sphere named reshit. It is a whole new hermeneutic world.

The sages in the narrative of the Zohar are deeply desireful of knowing G-d, becoming close, with their knowledge of G-d, which is to be close to Him.

Their interpretive world is vast. To understand these interpretations and interpret the interpretations is a kind of spiritual practice for its own sake.

Knowing the spheres and their meaning, finding their meaning through scriptures, is the secret knowledge of the divine. The spheres are... attributes of G-d?

Or, perhaps they are dynamic parts of His being as a complex of dynamic spheres? Perhaps it is all metaphorical?

Explaining the Spheres

Roughly speaking, through endless metaphors, the complex of spheres make's the form of a man. Or a tree. On the very top, or above the top beyond the man / tree, is: that which is not described at all, it is the ein-sof, no end, the eternal.

The highest spheres are keter (crown) or desire), and wisdom or reshit (beginning), and bina (understanding). Then are two limbs, judgment (din) or might (gevura) is the left hand and on the right is grace (hesed). In the middle is the main line of the body -  tiferet (glory) or mercy (rachamim). The lower right, the leg, is majesty (hod) and on the right is eternity (netzach).

In the middle the lower is yesod, which means foundation, and this connects and carries the unseen divine through it into the tenth sphere which is malkhut meaning kingdom which is the divine revealed in this world.

Yesod is the masculine organ and malkhut is the feminine vessel. The left and right lines, affected by the prayers and deeds of the Israel,  balance each other - judgment and mercy, and are like intimate relations when balanced, in unity, and then the divine streams forth through yesod is abundance into this world, a matter of  malkhut is the presence of G-d shekhina. 

Where or What is He

Messiah is mentioned hundreds of times in the Zoharic literature. We would expect a clear connection between the messiah or the messianic kingdom and the Son of David to malkhut the sphere, but it is more complicated…

Malkhut is rather seen usually as the Shekhina, the Presense of, and is seldom associated with the messianic redeemer in the various homilies in the Zohar.

For example, the famous messianic verse of Zechariah 9:9 is used - behold your king comes to you poor and riding a donkey - and the midrash, the homily, associates it with the moon, which is the Shekhina. 

The moon, the levana, has no splendor or radiance of its own, rather it reflects that of the sun. This is typical of the association of malkhut, not to the dynamic messianic redeemer figure we have known in the traditions.

At the same time, we do find many texts that present or carry the messianic figure, in the style more or less of the surreal and apocalyptic, like in the book of Zerubavel and the homilies in the Talmud and midrashic literature.

Also similarly, in the Zohar there are many interpretive calculations of when the messiah or redemption will be, like we saw in previous literature. 

For now, we need to know, that the Zoharic literature brings us new usage of the messiah, but as malkhut, kingdom, no messianic figure.

But somehow, which makes sense since we are dealing with traditions over centuries with ideas and texts that grow on top of each other, we also have elements of the traditional typical messianic figure here and there - apocalyptic homilies and eschatalogical calculations.