Some of the attacks on kabbalah seem to center around concepts that (when heard from random people) can seem to contradict monotheism, especially as formulated by the Rambam etc. I was initially a little bothered by such things myself (although I mentally set it aside).
My mind was set at ease after learning works like Nefesh Hachaim (particularly shaar beis), the Leshem, and Asarah Klalim by the Gr"a, which made clear how such things are descriptions of how G-d interacts with creation, and not descriptions of G-d Himself. Which seems to mirror the Rambam's approach to Divine attributes.
I guess that was (theologically) important to me, since I'm a ger and my catalyst for leaving Christianity was its contradiction to the monotheism of Tanach.
There is a sefer called קדמות ספר הזוהר, by R. Dovid Luria, showing that the zohar predates R. Moshe deLeon by a long time. The author shows that the Kabalah found in the other works of R. de Leon does not fit with the zohar. He also shows that some rishonim and geonim quote from a midrash that we don't have, and this midrash seems to be the zohar. He also answers some of the questions that people raise on the zohar.
Besides for the zohar, there are other works of Kabalah, and there were known mekubalim who lived before the zohar was publicized. Those who attack the whole system of Kabalah don't really address this point. Known mekubalim who lived before the zohar was revealed include: Ravaad (the one who wrote the hasagos on the rambam), possibly his father in law, also known as the Ravaad (author of early Halachic work sefer Ha'eshkol), Ravaad's son Rav Yitzchak Sagi Nahor, his students R. Ezra and R. Ezriel, their student, the Ramban, his student R. Yitzchak d'min Aco (he did see the zohar, but he studied kabalah from the Ramban before that). R. Yehudah HaChasid and the Rokeach were also mekubalim. The Rokeach wrote a kabalistic commentary on the davenings, and he quotes a long list of people going back a few hundred years (!) from whom he received this tradition!
Other works of Kabalah include the Sefer Habahir and the Sefer Yetzirah. Rashi (Chagigah 13a) says that the sefer yetzirah contains the סתרי התורה. The former is quoted by the Ramban. The sefer yetzirah is mentioned in the gemara.
Some of the anti kabalah people speak about how the kabalists invented the concept of the 10 sefiros. They actually did not. The 10 sefiros are mentioned in the sefer yetzirah. R. Saadiah Gaon wrote a commentary on the sefer yetzirah, that means he was femiliar with the concept of the 10 sefiros! Rashi who clearly was familiar with the sefer yetzirah was also then familiar with the concept of the 10 sefiros. I have seen cited (but don't recall the exact place offhand) a teshuvah from R. Hai Gaon that also discusses the 10 sefiros. It was not spoken about publicly, but these concepts were known by at least some of the early authorities.
Matters of Kabalah were not spoken about publicly nor were they taught publicly for many many years. The gemara itself says (Kidushin 71a) that certain names of Hashem were taught from master to disciple once in 7 years! Other names were taught only to a select few, and others almost not at all. Matters of kabalah any mysticism were not meant to be for the masses! That is why these matters were not well known, and those who knew about them, did not really write about them, or wrote about them cryptically (e.g. Ramban on שעיר המשתלח)
Another point, when one peruses those Rabonim on the 'list' of anti zohar people, some names are there that are really a mistake. Slifkin (and probably others as well) tout the Chasam Sofer as one who questions the zohar. This is a serious mistake. He actually quotes the zohar many times! All he says, is that we can not be certain that Rashbi wrote every single line of it, and SOME of it may have come from later authorities. I don't thin he says R. de Leon forged it. What the Chasam Sofer says is well known and acknowledged, those who count the Chasam Sofer as anti zohar are mistaken.
There were some Rabonim who did question the authenticity of the zohar. Nevertheless, it has been accepted by the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people. To claim the zohar was forged, is to deny the great authorities who did accept it, and they were definitely the majority of Torah authorities!
Everything that I see questioning the Zohar's provenance (especially by the arrogant, but foolish, academics) misses the point, in my opinion. Kabbalah is not a book, nor a text, and not even information, but rather, pnimius hatorah are the ideas and perspectives that enter a person's heart. Proving that someone else other than R Shimon bar Yochai wrote the text that we have in our hands today changes nothing of its fundamental truths. The man who is on the level to learn this properly knows that it is true to the same extent that we all know that we are real and alive.
You are such a useless idiot that I don't feel like responding to you, but for the sake of others, I will clarify.
The Oral Torah is not a text. It is not the words that form the basis of our knowledge, but the concepts and consciousness that we assimilate and understand. This is true for Talmud (which is one explanation of why there are different girsaos), and certainly true with Kabbala. The texts that we do have are useful and help us in recording, remembering and gaining access to those ideas, but they are not the sum total of Torah teachings, nor are they the basis of authority and authenticity, and hence, a questionable provenance does not make us waver from ideas that we know through careful comparison and analysis to be true.
Now, as far as you are concerned, maybe swallow your pride and go back to Yeshiva and learn a Mesechta cover to cover B'Iyun Rav, and perhaps that will help you recover from your illness. רפואה שלימה.
Nothing can help your sickness except perhaps learning, sorry.
But, if you would resume learning, you might realize why your comment about girsaos only indicates how ignorant you are. It is so foolish that I don't need to clarify that point here for others, most of whom apparently know how to learn. Now, go back to the בית הכסא, or talking about politics, or why you hate Haredim, or deal with your ex-wife instead.
Lashing out in bitterness at the Haredi world, while throwing in the kitchen sink and all kinds of irrelevant foibles that one ever experienced in his life, is usually indication that one had bad family relationships and this is how he gets back at them.
1) Interesting article. Is there a link to the paper you're critiquing? I recall reading something along the lines of what you're citing from. IIRC, rumor had it that the author was an iconoclastic member of the Breur kehilla. I won't mention any names because I can't be at all certain I'm correct, but the gist of the piece I read was that the author felt it was a tremendous nisayon imposed on klal yisrael precisely because some of our greatest leaders were led 'astray' by kaballah.
1a) In general, there seem to be 2 types of people who reject kaballah. There are the academics who believe it's all nonsense. They may think it's warm and fuzzy (like Scholem apparently did) and worth studying as part of authentic Jewish culture. The other type is the sort which I believe authored the piece being critiqued here. They're people who believe deeply in the mesorah and are horrified by what they feel is a perversion of the authentic mesorah. The most famous of that type was R Yihyeh Kafich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi%E1%B8%A5yah_Qafi%E1%B8%A5#Controversy
2) Now for some wild memories. Back in the day, there was a Hebrew anti-kaballa piece floating around. I don't recall details, except that a rebuttal was written by one Michael Tzaddok. This fellow: https://judaism.stackexchange.com/users/184/rabbi-michael-tzadok Anyhow, about 2 years ago I got the shock of my life when I read that Michael Tzadok was actually a missionary who had posed as a charedi mekubal as part of a scheme to missionize. I had interacted with him a bit online myself, and never would have dreamt that he was (of all things!) a missionary. https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/undercover-christian-missionary-unmasked-1.516346
3) I don't know much about kaballah, but I found the discussion in Torah She'baal peh by R Yehoshua Enbal very enlightening. There's probably a PDF available somewhere online, but I can't find it. It's pages 722-755 of his wonderful sefer. There's a picture of the cover and a discussion of the sefer here: https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21720 (Note that the mechaber himself joins the discussion as well https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21720&start=40#p215356 .)
4) As should hopefully be obvious, I haven't expressed any opinions about the validity of anything. Ain li inyan be'nistaros. I don't have much of a kalbin chatzifin in this fight. I just enjoy watching the debate as a spectator, albeit with a deep rooting interest in the Arizal not being chalila found to be a fraud.
I once heard that Rabbi S is Rav Yitzchok Shlomo [Z](S)ilberman. The give away is obviously the point about the Gr"a.
In the past I actually came across a 2+ hour recording of him arguing with someone about the authenticity of kabbalah. It was fascinating. However, his approach was not as open-minded as the quote RC had in his name.
RYS Zilberman said that the topic of the author doesn't perturb him too much.
IIRC from a recording I heard a bunch of years ago:
He asked the fellow arguing with him (who obviously was not too knowledgeable in Kabbala) if he thinks the Ariza"ls yesodos fit into Kabbala. The guy had no clue (as expected). So he explained that there were many musagim in the zohar that were not clear (he specifically said that the meforshim b4 the ari, such as the rama"k) did not have an explanation (he gave examples), and the ar"i explains certain yesodos that with them it is possible to understand the zohar's intention to a point that it is clear that the peirush is emmes pshat in the text.
Therefore he gave a mashal. Once outside of a simple town they discovered a stack of papers that had weird lines in all sorts of directions, and nobody knew what it was. One fellow was a big chacham and came up with a whole theory that it was what the printing press did to clean out the ink, and there is no meaning to the papers. One day a big musician came from a big city and came across the papers and explained they were musical notes. Nobody in the town believed him, and they had all sorts of rayos how it really was from the printing press, plus nobody knows how it got here etc. The musician in the end brought an orchestra of musicians and put the notes in front of them, until he had an orchestra playing music.
R Zilberman said - that after hearing the music, even if one doesn't know how it ended up there, it doesn't bother him too much, and if someone is still busy with the printing press theory he is an idiot.
"So he explained that there were many musagim in the zohar that were not clear (he specifically said that the meforshim b4 the ari, such as the rama"k) did not have an explanation (he gave examples), and the ar"i explains"
That's basically what R Aryeh Kaplan said too. IIRC, he compared the zohar to a blob of matter until the Arizal revealed the underlying chemical makeup. (R Aryeh Kaplan trained as a physicist.)
Good points. I wonder if R Aryeh Kaplan is the K. And Rav P could be R Shimshon Pincus. (Assuming that the initials are to the last name, which is admittedly inconsistent with identifying R Gedalia Nadel, R Aryeh Carmell and R Eliyahu Dessler by their first.)
Also not getting involved, but those who teach or reference Kabalistic ideas (the Ramban, the Ramchal, and it's most likely מבואר already in the גמרא) warn that whoever isn't ready should not be studying these ideas. R' Kapach's main concern seemed to be this, that to those untrained, geshem and superstition can be attributed R'l. But to anyone who is knowledgeable in these matters, which means they have the proper training in the נמשל, there is absolutely nothing more connective to HKBH than learning about His מדות (lehavdil, like connecting deeply to another person though appreciating their values).
Been busy so i havent had a chance to look into this, but reading between the lines, its quite obvious that this rabbi Chareidi does not believe the Zohar to be of Rashbi's hand either.
He is responding to a moot point, that kabbalah exists. Well duh! The ramban, Sharei Komah of Chazal, and Sefer Yetzira all predate the Zohar. They are all authentically kabbalistic (despite the Rambam mistakenly believing Sharei Komah was a forgery). Whether kabbala exists isn't a point of dispute. Its whether the Zohar is an authentic work of it is. (Authentic meaning "of Rashbi", not "containing true Torah".)
Sometime over a decade ago I became aware of the history of the Zohar and some opinions of it. I asked my rabbi about it and he was somewhat taken aback by the question. He said if you strip the Zohar out of our mesorah you would impact around "85% of halachos" (I think that was the number he threw out). I still wondered for many years about it. Since, unlearned though I am, I have concluded to my satisfaction that Rabbi Charedi is wrong. It's all 100% genuine. That being said, I prefer the Yekke nusach, which didn't adopt any of the innovations introduced by the Zohar or more recent rabbonim. The sole exception being Kabbalat Shabbat, which we adopted with everyone else. But even then we do our own spin. The tehllim are read from the amud. Only Lcha Dodi is led from the bima.
I think 85% is a big exaggeration, to put it mildly. However, Zohar and Kabbalah more broadly does affect many halachos/minhagim. For example, the Ushpizin, the whole idea of Hoshana Rabba, many details of Tefillin.
If you would have read the post, you would see that kabbala didn't appear out of nowhere. But even if you were right, why is it different than any other minhag? You think every other minhag is halacha l'Moshe m'Sinai?
I wasn't referring to kabbalah in the amorphous sense, but the Zohar specifically. Minhagim can develop organically, either from an authoritative individual or a community. Minhagim/halachos that stem from the Zohar are neither. It's a book that authorities apparently believed was authentic and therefore followed some of its dictates. If we are skeptical of its authority (I'm bewildered how we can be anything but), then it follows that the minhagim/halachos are based on a fundamentally mistaken assumption.
Let's take the example of netilas yadayim. Let's say it's in the Zohar, per the tolaas yaakov, and that's the source of requiring it within four amos. If it's from Rashbi, great. If not, then the halachah/minhag is on entirely different grounds and was accepted based on an entirely different understanding of where it came from.
The whole point of this post is to show you shouldn't be skeptical of its authority. Even if not everything in it is from Rashbi, it is firmly grounded in Kabbalah and was accepted by everybody in our Mesorah, so you you ought not be skeptical of its authority in the realm of Sod. However, most poskim say it has less authority than actual halachic sources, like the Gemara.
I don't understand why you will only accept the halacha/warning about Netilas Yadayim if it is from Rashbi, but not if it is from Amoraim or Kabbalists in the time of the Geonim. That seems like an arbitrary place to draw the line. Chassidim accept practices from their Rebbes, even if you are not chassidish (I am not), surely this is no worse than that.
I wasn't referring to kabbalah in the amorphous sense, but the Zohar specifically. Minhagim can develop organically, either from an authoritative individual or a community. Minhagim/halachos that stem from the Zohar are neither. It's a book that authorities apparently believed was authentic and therefore followed some of its dictates. If we are skeptical of its authority (I'm bewildered how we can be anything but), then it follows that the minhagim/halachos are based on a fundamentally mistaken assumption.
That doesn't give them grounds for their position.
There are some definite halachos as well, such as if to wear Tefillin on Chol Hamoed. But the dividing line between halacha and custom is not clear in many of these cases, is the warning against walking 4 amos before netilas yadayim a halacha or a custom?
Of course it gives them grounds. I put on Tefillin on Chol Hamoed. Should I be executed? The Zohar says so. Do you really think the Rashbi would say such a thing? The Zohar gets into the Rashi/Rabbanu Tam dispute on Tefillin. That's the Rashbi? Really? Ushpizim? Never appeared anywhere in Jewish practice until the Zohar? Why not? Because it was a pagan custom of thanksgiving at harvest time to invite dead relatives, all part of ancestor worship, which we used to reject out of hand, now there's a service in your siddur welcoming them.. The Zohar can't even seem to keep the guest list right.
שטות והבל. I also wear Tefillin on Chol Hamoed, but the Zohar doesn't say you get executed. Would the Gemara say somebody who eats before Shema is חייב מיתה? Maybe don't guess what Rashbi would or would not say.
"The Zohar gets into the Rashi/Rabbanu Tam dispute on Tefillin. That's the Rashbi? Really? "- I don't know if its the Rashbi or later, but it's not a problem.
"Ushpizim? Never appeared anywhere in Jewish practice until the Zohar? Why not? Because..." So the whole Zohar is out the window because mb doesn't understand something?
There's a reason the Zohar isn't meant for everyone. Maybe learn דעת תבונות really, really well first.
I read the low quality attack on kabbala from RC years ago. I remember noticing when discussing the "problems" with the ariza"l, one of the 2 examples he gave was that the ar"i said techeiles is only in the times of the beis hamikdash. I remember thinking then, that he chose that, because he most definitely never opened anything of the ar"i, so all he knows from the ari, is what is quoted about techeiles and some kvarim... which is ok for an am haaretz, but crazy ridiculous for a critic.
I love how confident Zohar deniers are. They smugly walk around thinking that they have some 'academic secret' unknown in the beis midrash (maybe that's just me and my overwhelming experience with these people, but I'm pretty sure it's true), and the irony - that they are the ones missing 'The Secret' - is just unbelievable! My new motto, which describes all of 'Rationalism': "It's easy to deny something you don't understand."
I once asked, "If a letter was discovered from someone claiming to have spoken to the Rashbi's wife, who heard from her how he wrote the Zohar, would they trust that?"
For some reason, a letter about the wife of Rabbi Moshe de Leon is believed as gospel truth.
Huh. None less than the Nodah B'yehuda in the Tzalach (in the uncensored version) doubts whether PARTS of the zohar are from Rav Shimon Bar Yochai. Ditto the Chasam Sofer who states similar and wholly endorses Rav Emden's conclusions. So maybe they have a right to be smug, and you, as usual, refuse to believe that anything cannon in Yeshivahland can possibly be innacurate.
The issue is not over "the zohar" by the way. It's about parts of it that clearly date much later.
We're not talking to each other. I was talking about those who deny the Zohar completely, *who know nothing at all about what it preaches,* and the issue very much *is* over the Zohar, and you respond with some authorities who accepted the Zohar with open arms because they knew what the Zohar was about, albeit some minor issues. You then responded to your own version of the conversation and, quite adequately, ripped your own argument into pieces. Well done!
Reb דוד, I want to ask you a serious question, as you seem to be a very knowledgeable and have good answers.
I was raised on the premise that our nation is the only nation with unshakable evidence to receiving the Torah from Hashem, as we are not basing our belief on one person who said God spoke to him but an entire nation. Neviim were trusted only under certain conditions, and the reason we accept Torah Shbaal Peh is we trace our tradition very clearly in a very accurate way.
Now I am aware that the study of Kabala preceded the Zohars publication, but for all intents and purposes, one man woke up with a sefer claiming it was 1,000 years old, and till today we have no accurate knowledge as how a Spanish Rav got ahold of a manuscript from Eretz Yisrael.
I heard a few answers to this question and they are satisfying only enough to say that the Zohar definitely embodies things that were all authentic, but don't really understand how we can say באמונה שלימה its from chazal, other than saying they are legitimate teachings of Rishonim, and maybe dating back a few centuries, but how can one know?
I'm sure Dovid has a more complete answer, but I would say אה"נ, the Mesorah on Kabbalah is not as strong as the Mesorah on the rest of Torah sheBaal Peh. Even within the rest of Torah she Baal Peh, there is a spectrum, we have things that are considered more reliable than others. For example, at the top of the list is the Mishnah and Talmud Bavli. Then we consider Yerushalmi less reliable. We consider Toesefa even less reliable than that. Then we have Medrashim, some of which have a better Mesorah of than others, and some of which have later interpolations, and generally we don't consider as authoritative as the Gemara.
What on earth are you talking about? Which Chazal? Do you mean Sanhedrin 24, במחשכים הושיבני כמתי עולם אמר ר' ירמיה זה תלמודה של בבל? That has nothing to do with the Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi. The Talmud Yerushalmi is considered by the Rishonim and poskim less reliable for obvious reasons. See the Rambam in the hakdamah to Yad.
Thanks. I pretty much see things the same way, I just didn't get the feeling it's the mainstream belief, as people make the Zohar sound more holy and worthy of following than the Gemara or Shulchan Aruch.
"people make the Zohar sound more holy and worthy of following than the Gemara or Shulchan Aruch."
I think that's largely a symptom of the same thing which causes people to be more hung up over tzavaas r yehuda ha'chassid than the aseres ha'dibros. Something about the exotic/esoteric is seductive and attractive. R Yakov Hillel rails against somewhat similar sorts of distortions. https://cross-currents.com/2006/11/01/rav-yaakov-hillel-outs-the-charlatans/
Well, following is a different story, we go by our Shas for everything (more or less)! But its 'holiness' comes from the fact that it deals with the פנימיות, as opposed to the הלכות which are the חיצוניות. A משל would be when going on a date, finding out that your future husband/wife likes chocolate cake is a layer of understanding them; you now know more about them, namely, that they like chocolate cake. But when you find out the things that are really important to them, such as that Torah is the most important thing to him, or that she loves hosting etc., these things are more central and give a much deeper appreciation of that other person which the other can now connect with on a far deeper level. להבדיל כביכול when we understand the depths of הקב"ה's will, we can get a far better picture of Him and connect with Him much better, והאהבה כפי ההשגה (Rambam Moreh ch. 51) (which incidentally is true by people too)
"Reb דוד, I want to ask you a serious question, as you seem to be a very knowledgeable and have good answers."
Despite your accolades (the word knowledgeable was a bit much, let alone the "very" on top.) I am really not at all the one to be explaining these things, but it is a serious question so I will summarize some of the little I have learned:
Firstly, "know" is a strong word, I don't think we can say we 'know' its authenticity as strongly as say, Matan Torah (and neither are things like the Sifrei Nach for that matter), but given all that, we can still be quite confident. I would explain as follows (it is an oversimplification, as any summary would be, but it should get the point across):
1. We have the Sefer HaBahir from R' Nechunia Ben HaKaneh which talks openly about the Sefiros, and we have Sefer Yetzira which mentions them as well. The Zohar does almost nothing other then describe the details of the Torah using the ideas that the Mekubalim knew already applying the concepts to specific פסוקים and ideas. (All of the Sheimos in the Zohar also refer to the different combinations of Hashem's ten מדות.) Also, importantly, the Zohar, using the ספירות, explains פסוקים like no one else could, to the point that it's clear that the פסוקים meant these very things. (And I mean besides explaining מראי נבואה, they even explain 'simple' פסוקים like טוב ה' לכל in a much deeper, and clearly true way.) I guess all I'm saying is that what you said "...that the Zohar definitely embodies things that were all authentic," it does much more than just embody; it reveals things that, within the system, we can know for sure are clearly something that dates back to har sinai.
In different words, everything the Zohar says works within the system and explains things that once you hear them, you *know* that Hashem, or the Navi mean exactly that, because when you understand how the ספירות and the letters work, this would be the obvious result. Like when you know that you gotten to the bottom of a ראשון (you can sometimes be wrong, but even then you usually tapped in to a part of the truth in the sugya just you may be misplaced), you can know that you've been explained the truth of this פסוק as Hashem told it to משה on har Sinai. A simple example would be that knowing that something is good can be understood by a four year old, and is understood deeper by a 34 year old, but the original term, "good" doesn't change; this is what happens when learning these ideas. They take the basics of Judaism (יחוד ה', טוב ומטיב, בורא נברא) and expound on them in a much deeper way, where ניכרים דברי אמת.
Most of us are certain that the Rambam would've accepted the Zohar wholeheartedly, since all the ideas about Hashem which he worked so hard to lay out are explained by the Sefiros in sharper terms, kind of like an equation explaining a physics theory in sharper terms, like theory inverse squared equation explaining sharply the motion of gravity in perfect terms - the math means nothing until you get the idea, but once you get the idea, it is defined 10x more clearly by the math.
2. Now, once we have 99%, or more importantly, the *core* of the Zohar as such, the fact that it then quotes תנאים ואמוראים who obviously also knew these things, is it a stretch to say that that part is true as well? Meaning the Zohar itself gives names, like Rashbi, and the ideas are ראוי למי שנאמרו בשמו - if a ראשון would have come up with these ideas, it may be even more astounding; it's just not possible for a human to just know these depths without a מסורה, or a Rebbi like Eliyahu Hanavi. In short, the truth of the Zohar, within our system, sort of confirms itself, and anyone who learns these things can see that.
(An example is the סתירה between אין עוד מלבדו (the root of the whole חכמת האמת), but we exist. The Rambam famously discusses this in תשובה פ"ה, the ידיעה בחירה conundrum, and that the answer to these questions lies in understanding the balance between the One and us, the two. The ספירות are nothing more than a sharper explanation of these ideas, where at each step you can appreciate how its true)
3. Based on the above, it's different than making a religion from scratch. It's taking the religion and explaining it really well. So while it started with one person, its truth was then verified by our יודעים and they haven't rejected any of it to be inconsistent with what they know about the 'pre-Zohar' Torah, on the contrary, every line has deepened their understanding.
(4. I would add one last point, that these things are understood completely based on the person's יראת שמים, as in ראשית חכמה יראת ה', and to explain this slightly (I'm actually going to touch on this point in my next post or two on my new blog https://rationalistjudaism2.substack.com/ ) the truths of HKBH are understood as you enter His world, and the less one is involved in this, and the more he involves himself in that, the more that world is a reality to him. [Eventually one can even 'see' מלאכים]. This works on every level, meaning in this field, the חכמה on every single level is rooted in the יראת שמים of that level. so if our biggest and best, both in terms of חכמה and in terms of יראת שמים are the perpetuators of this work, we can confidently assume its authenticity on every part of it.)
This is a delicate subject - let me know if any of that was clear or if certain things need clarification
Thank you very much. I hear what you are saying and need to think it over. I guess the only question is if things were rewritten or things like that, but as you say, it's irrelevant.
To summarize really briefly: within our system, the ideas in the Zohar are self-confirming (they do nothing other than explain our Doctrine really clearly), and are too deep for almost anyone to figure out without a Divine Teacher (at least post Matan Torah), so when the best of אנשי שלומינו say that it's real, we know it came from הקב"ה Himself at har sinai. And it makes tons of sense for many reasons that it came from Rashbi, as the Zohar itself claims.
I think I explained that, that I mean within the system. Such as the fact that we are separate beings from הקב"ה, we are נבראים, but our job is to get closer to His Oneness by being מבטל ourselves, understanding that and learning how the ספירות all fit in to that, it really is self evident as the picture gets built up how we what we knew the whole time is now understood on a far deeper level - which is what I mean that it explains everything perfectly. It explains what we already know as Yidden, just deeper and deeper
I have more than happy with אמונת חכמים though if you don't know what I mean...
See the one footnote that says "In a follow-up email, Professor Chiloni made it clear that he does not mean that the entire Zohar was the work of רשב”י, but that whatever additions were made were authentic, as opposed to forgeries."
Nobody is insulting you dude. Saying you need to get more education is not an insult.
And thanks for the tip on education, and therefore couldn't possibly be an insult.
Of course this footnote is very different from what you claimed just a few hours ago. Regardless, what the heck is an authentic addition and not a forgery?
That is exactly what I claimed. Authentic means it was compiled from authentic sources, whether from Tanaim, Amoraim or Geonim, and not forgeries that were made up by de Leon.
Just for clarity, in a previous insult you said, regarding the authorship of the zohar,
"As the footnote of this post already made clear, almost everybody agrees greater or lesser portions of it were not from Rashbi."
Which is quite different from
"In a follow-up email, Professor Chiloni made it clear that he does not mean that the entire Zohar was the work of רשב”י, but that whatever additions were made were authentic, as opposed to forgeries."
Rejected the Rashbi's authorship. Some of the errors are hilarious if relying on its antiquity. Apparantly according to the Zohar, the Rashbi claimed his teachers were those that lived a generation or so later! I suppose mystics can make such claims. reincarnation et al.Also the Chatam Sofer didn't give it much credibility regardless of whom the author was.
As the footnote of this post already made clear, almost everybody agrees greater or lesser portions of it were not from Rashbi. It's only ignoramuses like yourself who think that you discovered America 5 minutes ago.
Now an apology from me, but I did not see the footnotes that said"almost everybody agrees greater or lesser portions of it were not from Rashbi."
Can you point me to it please?
Having said that, but all the responses to any of my suggestions that the aurthorship is in dispute were met with vitriol, instead of somebody saying, yes that's stated in the footnotes.. Strange.
Well, you have now come over to the dark side, and according to R.Chaim Kanievsky you are also heretics that can't be counted in a minyan. Don't worry, we'll count you in ours.
The responses to your suggestions that it is not straight from Rashbi were not met with vitriol, everybody here is aware of that. If you would have bothered to read the post, you would have seen that Professor Chiloni discusses that as well. Rather, it was your profoundly stupid statements about the ushpizin being from the pagans, which you then said about the Torah as well, that was met by gentle criticism. It was also your extremely ignorant statements about history, both about the history of Kabbalah and the rest of the Torah, that some people called you out on. No vitriol here, and all the criticism was well deserved.
I never said they rejected it. I'm a little bit fed up being misquoted on these threads. I said they rejected the Tannaitic authorship of it. A big difference. Now please read R.Yaacov Emden's Mitpachat Sofrim, where he lists hundreds of problems with the claim the Rashbi authored it. The Chatam Sofer quotes the from it often i n support of the Yaavitz. Also, as an aside claiming that such luminaries as the Gra' accepted the Rashbi authorship is a terrible error in scholarship. People, even geniuses such as he make mistakes. He did.
It's not that you're ignorant, it's that you're arguing against something you are ignorant about. I wouldn't argue with a physicist about the Standard Model because I know very little about it (though from the little reading I've done about it, it is one of the most astounding human achievements I've ever seen, so probably a bad example). You are arguing with the Gra. That itself may not mean a lot right now, but have you done your homework?
It's not a name calling game חלילה, I'm not bashing you חלילה, I'm just pointing out that you should learn ספרים like דעת תבונות and other introductory ספרים on kabbalah before claiming the Zohar a fraud. (I encourage these ספרים only if you are ready to accept what you can and what you can't ask, because the subject matter is really complex and if you feel like you need all the answers right away you'll never get there...)
I promise, if you do your homework well, your opinion will change.
The Standard Model required 20x or more mass/energy than is present for it to work. It's not that we can't detect it. It doesn't exist. Without it, the model falls apart, rendering it less than astounding.
Sorry - but please don't malign Rav Weinberg zt'l. Rav Yechezkel Sarna, the Rosh Yeshiva of Chevron and a close friend of Rav Weinberg already paskened this shailah at Rav Weinberg's levaya, where he overcame the wishes of RZ elements who hoped to claim him as his own, and insisted instead that Rav Weinberg be buried among all the great Roshei Yeshiva in Chelkas HaRabbanim.
Interesting. I sidestep the entire kabbalah / mysticism issue by researching the sources the kabbalah is based on. For example, Proverbs has a rather clear structure on what constitutes Chochma Bina daas. You don't need to go to spiritual emanations and sefirot.
In general, it's always possible to simplify and go to the root of the issue. So you don't come across as knowledgeable about kabbalah, but at least you also didn't say anything stupid by accident.
The real secret of Kabbalah: Those who knows don't say. Those who say don't know.
"Proverbs has a rather clear structure on what constitutes Chochma Bina daas. You don't need to go to spiritual emanations and sefirot."
I think you would need a whole lot of mystical insight to derive such a complex system from the pesukim. (Though, again, I don't enough to say one way or the other.)
There's only two instances and if you know it by heart it isn't that complicated. People tend to throw a lot of things at kabbalah that are really just not knowing pshat very well.
Anyone care to read R’Yichye Kapachs polemic against kaballa. At some level it cannot be denied that parts of what we consider Jewish mysticism today (at least for the hamon am, segulos, kever worship and the like) clearly stem and can be traced to other religious traditions
Off-topic, but that article picture (specifically the Rashi commentary contained in a dragon) is probably one of my favorite medieval Jewish art pieces. I first saw it in an article on a different site that was all about that type of calligraphic art, micrography.
Segulos, kemeaos, going to kevarim (at least maaras hmachpela and kever rachel) are found all over shas and midrashim. That's not a good attack on Zohar at all. Unless you're just picking bad examples. Maybe Tanach really comes from Christians and adapted by Jews too:)
Interesting article.
Some of the attacks on kabbalah seem to center around concepts that (when heard from random people) can seem to contradict monotheism, especially as formulated by the Rambam etc. I was initially a little bothered by such things myself (although I mentally set it aside).
My mind was set at ease after learning works like Nefesh Hachaim (particularly shaar beis), the Leshem, and Asarah Klalim by the Gr"a, which made clear how such things are descriptions of how G-d interacts with creation, and not descriptions of G-d Himself. Which seems to mirror the Rambam's approach to Divine attributes.
I guess that was (theologically) important to me, since I'm a ger and my catalyst for leaving Christianity was its contradiction to the monotheism of Tanach.
Fascinating story! You're like Avraham Avinu :)
There is a sefer called קדמות ספר הזוהר, by R. Dovid Luria, showing that the zohar predates R. Moshe deLeon by a long time. The author shows that the Kabalah found in the other works of R. de Leon does not fit with the zohar. He also shows that some rishonim and geonim quote from a midrash that we don't have, and this midrash seems to be the zohar. He also answers some of the questions that people raise on the zohar.
Besides for the zohar, there are other works of Kabalah, and there were known mekubalim who lived before the zohar was publicized. Those who attack the whole system of Kabalah don't really address this point. Known mekubalim who lived before the zohar was revealed include: Ravaad (the one who wrote the hasagos on the rambam), possibly his father in law, also known as the Ravaad (author of early Halachic work sefer Ha'eshkol), Ravaad's son Rav Yitzchak Sagi Nahor, his students R. Ezra and R. Ezriel, their student, the Ramban, his student R. Yitzchak d'min Aco (he did see the zohar, but he studied kabalah from the Ramban before that). R. Yehudah HaChasid and the Rokeach were also mekubalim. The Rokeach wrote a kabalistic commentary on the davenings, and he quotes a long list of people going back a few hundred years (!) from whom he received this tradition!
Other works of Kabalah include the Sefer Habahir and the Sefer Yetzirah. Rashi (Chagigah 13a) says that the sefer yetzirah contains the סתרי התורה. The former is quoted by the Ramban. The sefer yetzirah is mentioned in the gemara.
Some of the anti kabalah people speak about how the kabalists invented the concept of the 10 sefiros. They actually did not. The 10 sefiros are mentioned in the sefer yetzirah. R. Saadiah Gaon wrote a commentary on the sefer yetzirah, that means he was femiliar with the concept of the 10 sefiros! Rashi who clearly was familiar with the sefer yetzirah was also then familiar with the concept of the 10 sefiros. I have seen cited (but don't recall the exact place offhand) a teshuvah from R. Hai Gaon that also discusses the 10 sefiros. It was not spoken about publicly, but these concepts were known by at least some of the early authorities.
Matters of Kabalah were not spoken about publicly nor were they taught publicly for many many years. The gemara itself says (Kidushin 71a) that certain names of Hashem were taught from master to disciple once in 7 years! Other names were taught only to a select few, and others almost not at all. Matters of kabalah any mysticism were not meant to be for the masses! That is why these matters were not well known, and those who knew about them, did not really write about them, or wrote about them cryptically (e.g. Ramban on שעיר המשתלח)
Another point, when one peruses those Rabonim on the 'list' of anti zohar people, some names are there that are really a mistake. Slifkin (and probably others as well) tout the Chasam Sofer as one who questions the zohar. This is a serious mistake. He actually quotes the zohar many times! All he says, is that we can not be certain that Rashbi wrote every single line of it, and SOME of it may have come from later authorities. I don't thin he says R. de Leon forged it. What the Chasam Sofer says is well known and acknowledged, those who count the Chasam Sofer as anti zohar are mistaken.
There were some Rabonim who did question the authenticity of the zohar. Nevertheless, it has been accepted by the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people. To claim the zohar was forged, is to deny the great authorities who did accept it, and they were definitely the majority of Torah authorities!
Everything that I see questioning the Zohar's provenance (especially by the arrogant, but foolish, academics) misses the point, in my opinion. Kabbalah is not a book, nor a text, and not even information, but rather, pnimius hatorah are the ideas and perspectives that enter a person's heart. Proving that someone else other than R Shimon bar Yochai wrote the text that we have in our hands today changes nothing of its fundamental truths. The man who is on the level to learn this properly knows that it is true to the same extent that we all know that we are real and alive.
"Proving that someone else other than R Shimon bar Yochai wrote the text that we have in our hands today changes nothing of its fundamental truths."
How can you possibly say that if you don't know who the someone is?
Do you know how much rubbish was in the Cairoh Genizah?
You are such a useless idiot that I don't feel like responding to you, but for the sake of others, I will clarify.
The Oral Torah is not a text. It is not the words that form the basis of our knowledge, but the concepts and consciousness that we assimilate and understand. This is true for Talmud (which is one explanation of why there are different girsaos), and certainly true with Kabbala. The texts that we do have are useful and help us in recording, remembering and gaining access to those ideas, but they are not the sum total of Torah teachings, nor are they the basis of authority and authenticity, and hence, a questionable provenance does not make us waver from ideas that we know through careful comparison and analysis to be true.
Now, as far as you are concerned, maybe swallow your pride and go back to Yeshiva and learn a Mesechta cover to cover B'Iyun Rav, and perhaps that will help you recover from your illness. רפואה שלימה.
How does that rant deal with my point?
And different girsaos are copyist errors, nothing more and nothing less.
Nothing can help your sickness except perhaps learning, sorry.
But, if you would resume learning, you might realize why your comment about girsaos only indicates how ignorant you are. It is so foolish that I don't need to clarify that point here for others, most of whom apparently know how to learn. Now, go back to the בית הכסא, or talking about politics, or why you hate Haredim, or deal with your ex-wife instead.
If he's divorced it explains many things.
Lashing out in bitterness at the Haredi world, while throwing in the kitchen sink and all kinds of irrelevant foibles that one ever experienced in his life, is usually indication that one had bad family relationships and this is how he gets back at them.
Just saw this, well said!
1) Interesting article. Is there a link to the paper you're critiquing? I recall reading something along the lines of what you're citing from. IIRC, rumor had it that the author was an iconoclastic member of the Breur kehilla. I won't mention any names because I can't be at all certain I'm correct, but the gist of the piece I read was that the author felt it was a tremendous nisayon imposed on klal yisrael precisely because some of our greatest leaders were led 'astray' by kaballah.
1a) In general, there seem to be 2 types of people who reject kaballah. There are the academics who believe it's all nonsense. They may think it's warm and fuzzy (like Scholem apparently did) and worth studying as part of authentic Jewish culture. The other type is the sort which I believe authored the piece being critiqued here. They're people who believe deeply in the mesorah and are horrified by what they feel is a perversion of the authentic mesorah. The most famous of that type was R Yihyeh Kafich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi%E1%B8%A5yah_Qafi%E1%B8%A5#Controversy
2) Now for some wild memories. Back in the day, there was a Hebrew anti-kaballa piece floating around. I don't recall details, except that a rebuttal was written by one Michael Tzaddok. This fellow: https://judaism.stackexchange.com/users/184/rabbi-michael-tzadok Anyhow, about 2 years ago I got the shock of my life when I read that Michael Tzadok was actually a missionary who had posed as a charedi mekubal as part of a scheme to missionize. I had interacted with him a bit online myself, and never would have dreamt that he was (of all things!) a missionary. https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/undercover-christian-missionary-unmasked-1.516346
3) I don't know much about kaballah, but I found the discussion in Torah She'baal peh by R Yehoshua Enbal very enlightening. There's probably a PDF available somewhere online, but I can't find it. It's pages 722-755 of his wonderful sefer. There's a picture of the cover and a discussion of the sefer here: https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21720 (Note that the mechaber himself joins the discussion as well https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21720&start=40#p215356 .)
4) As should hopefully be obvious, I haven't expressed any opinions about the validity of anything. Ain li inyan be'nistaros. I don't have much of a kalbin chatzifin in this fight. I just enjoy watching the debate as a spectator, albeit with a deep rooting interest in the Arizal not being chalila found to be a fraud.
I believe this is basically the same thing that appears in Rabbi Inbal's sefer: https://rationalbelief.org.il/%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%91%D7%9C%D7%94-%D7%95%D7%96%D7%9E%D7%9F-%D7%97%D7%99%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A8-%D7%94%D7%96%D7%94%D7%A8/
Yes, R Inbal writes that he originally prepared the material on behalf of Arachim.
Here is the piece:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15qNzlL7W1P0kTHvFlYqJRnFEsRs2cWbh/view?usp=drivesdk
Any idea who the Rabbanim mentioned in his conclusion are? (Marc Shapiro identifies 2 of them here.
https://library.yctorah.org/files/2016/09/Milin11-Heb-V5-Shapiro-Marc-Obligation-to-Believe-Zohar-Authored-by-Rashbi.pdf Who are the other 3?)
ידידי החפץ בעלום שמו האמיתי, ושמו הספרותי הוא "Chareidi Rabbi", חבר
שאלותיו עם בא הוא .An Analysis of the Authenticity of the Zohar הקונטרס את
על יחוסו של הזוהר לכמה רבנים גדולים. אחד מהם היה הרב אריה כרמל זצ"ל. (בגוף
המאמר אינו מזכיר את הרבנים בשמותיהם המלאים, אבל בטובו מסר לי בפרטיות על
מי הוא מדבר.) וזה מה שכתב:
I approached Rav A [Aryeh Carmell] with some of the questions on the Zohar,
and he responsed to me — “and what about nikud? Nikud is also mentioned in
the Zohar despite the fact that it [is] from Geonic times!” he said. I later found
this comment in the Mitpachas Seforim. I would just add that not only is nikud
mentioned, but only the Tiberian Nikud — the norm in Europe of the middle ages
— is mentioned and not the Yerushalmi nikud or the Babylonian one — which
was used then in the Middle East, and is still used by Yemenites today. Also the
Taamay Hamikra — the trop — are referred to the Zohar — only by their Sefardi
names. Rav A told me a remarkable piece of testimony: My rebbe (this is how
he generally refers to Rav E [Elijah Dessler]) accepted the possibility that the
Zohar was written sometime in the th century.
הוא גם נועץ בענין זה עם הגאון ר' גדליה נדל :
Rav G [Gedaliah Nadel] told me that he was still unsure as to the origin and
status of the Zohar, but told me it was my absolute right to draw any conclusions
I saw fit regarding both the Zohar and the Ari.
I once heard that Rabbi S is Rav Yitzchok Shlomo [Z](S)ilberman. The give away is obviously the point about the Gr"a.
In the past I actually came across a 2+ hour recording of him arguing with someone about the authenticity of kabbalah. It was fascinating. However, his approach was not as open-minded as the quote RC had in his name.
RYS Zilberman said that the topic of the author doesn't perturb him too much.
IIRC from a recording I heard a bunch of years ago:
He asked the fellow arguing with him (who obviously was not too knowledgeable in Kabbala) if he thinks the Ariza"ls yesodos fit into Kabbala. The guy had no clue (as expected). So he explained that there were many musagim in the zohar that were not clear (he specifically said that the meforshim b4 the ari, such as the rama"k) did not have an explanation (he gave examples), and the ar"i explains certain yesodos that with them it is possible to understand the zohar's intention to a point that it is clear that the peirush is emmes pshat in the text.
Therefore he gave a mashal. Once outside of a simple town they discovered a stack of papers that had weird lines in all sorts of directions, and nobody knew what it was. One fellow was a big chacham and came up with a whole theory that it was what the printing press did to clean out the ink, and there is no meaning to the papers. One day a big musician came from a big city and came across the papers and explained they were musical notes. Nobody in the town believed him, and they had all sorts of rayos how it really was from the printing press, plus nobody knows how it got here etc. The musician in the end brought an orchestra of musicians and put the notes in front of them, until he had an orchestra playing music.
R Zilberman said - that after hearing the music, even if one doesn't know how it ended up there, it doesn't bother him too much, and if someone is still busy with the printing press theory he is an idiot.
"So he explained that there were many musagim in the zohar that were not clear (he specifically said that the meforshim b4 the ari, such as the rama"k) did not have an explanation (he gave examples), and the ar"i explains"
That's basically what R Aryeh Kaplan said too. IIRC, he compared the zohar to a blob of matter until the Arizal revealed the underlying chemical makeup. (R Aryeh Kaplan trained as a physicist.)
Good points. I wonder if R Aryeh Kaplan is the K. And Rav P could be R Shimshon Pincus. (Assuming that the initials are to the last name, which is admittedly inconsistent with identifying R Gedalia Nadel, R Aryeh Carmell and R Eliyahu Dessler by their first.)
Thanks!
Also not getting involved, but those who teach or reference Kabalistic ideas (the Ramban, the Ramchal, and it's most likely מבואר already in the גמרא) warn that whoever isn't ready should not be studying these ideas. R' Kapach's main concern seemed to be this, that to those untrained, geshem and superstition can be attributed R'l. But to anyone who is knowledgeable in these matters, which means they have the proper training in the נמשל, there is absolutely nothing more connective to HKBH than learning about His מדות (lehavdil, like connecting deeply to another person though appreciating their values).
Been busy so i havent had a chance to look into this, but reading between the lines, its quite obvious that this rabbi Chareidi does not believe the Zohar to be of Rashbi's hand either.
He is responding to a moot point, that kabbalah exists. Well duh! The ramban, Sharei Komah of Chazal, and Sefer Yetzira all predate the Zohar. They are all authentically kabbalistic (despite the Rambam mistakenly believing Sharei Komah was a forgery). Whether kabbala exists isn't a point of dispute. Its whether the Zohar is an authentic work of it is. (Authentic meaning "of Rashbi", not "containing true Torah".)
Also the Bahir, since Ramban quotes it.
Fascinating.
Sometime over a decade ago I became aware of the history of the Zohar and some opinions of it. I asked my rabbi about it and he was somewhat taken aback by the question. He said if you strip the Zohar out of our mesorah you would impact around "85% of halachos" (I think that was the number he threw out). I still wondered for many years about it. Since, unlearned though I am, I have concluded to my satisfaction that Rabbi Charedi is wrong. It's all 100% genuine. That being said, I prefer the Yekke nusach, which didn't adopt any of the innovations introduced by the Zohar or more recent rabbonim. The sole exception being Kabbalat Shabbat, which we adopted with everyone else. But even then we do our own spin. The tehllim are read from the amud. Only Lcha Dodi is led from the bima.
"He said if you strip the Zohar out of our mesorah you would impact around "85% of halachos"
Why would impact even 1 halacha, let 85% of them?
I think 85% is a big exaggeration, to put it mildly. However, Zohar and Kabbalah more broadly does affect many halachos/minhagim. For example, the Ushpizin, the whole idea of Hoshana Rabba, many details of Tefillin.
That's a kasha not a teretz. How can halachos/minhagim come from a sefer that appeared out of nowhere in the middle ages?
If you would have read the post, you would see that kabbala didn't appear out of nowhere. But even if you were right, why is it different than any other minhag? You think every other minhag is halacha l'Moshe m'Sinai?
I wasn't referring to kabbalah in the amorphous sense, but the Zohar specifically. Minhagim can develop organically, either from an authoritative individual or a community. Minhagim/halachos that stem from the Zohar are neither. It's a book that authorities apparently believed was authentic and therefore followed some of its dictates. If we are skeptical of its authority (I'm bewildered how we can be anything but), then it follows that the minhagim/halachos are based on a fundamentally mistaken assumption.
Let's take the example of netilas yadayim. Let's say it's in the Zohar, per the tolaas yaakov, and that's the source of requiring it within four amos. If it's from Rashbi, great. If not, then the halachah/minhag is on entirely different grounds and was accepted based on an entirely different understanding of where it came from.
The whole point of this post is to show you shouldn't be skeptical of its authority. Even if not everything in it is from Rashbi, it is firmly grounded in Kabbalah and was accepted by everybody in our Mesorah, so you you ought not be skeptical of its authority in the realm of Sod. However, most poskim say it has less authority than actual halachic sources, like the Gemara.
I don't understand why you will only accept the halacha/warning about Netilas Yadayim if it is from Rashbi, but not if it is from Amoraim or Kabbalists in the time of the Geonim. That seems like an arbitrary place to draw the line. Chassidim accept practices from their Rebbes, even if you are not chassidish (I am not), surely this is no worse than that.
I wasn't referring to kabbalah in the amorphous sense, but the Zohar specifically. Minhagim can develop organically, either from an authoritative individual or a community. Minhagim/halachos that stem from the Zohar are neither. It's a book that authorities apparently believed was authentic and therefore followed some of its dictates. If we are skeptical of its authority (I'm bewildered how we can be anything but), then it follows that the minhagim/halachos are based on a fundamentally mistaken assumption.
They are not halacha. Customs, yes,. And that is why the "anti-kabbalaniks" have grounds for their position.
That doesn't give them grounds for their position.
There are some definite halachos as well, such as if to wear Tefillin on Chol Hamoed. But the dividing line between halacha and custom is not clear in many of these cases, is the warning against walking 4 amos before netilas yadayim a halacha or a custom?
Of course it gives them grounds. I put on Tefillin on Chol Hamoed. Should I be executed? The Zohar says so. Do you really think the Rashbi would say such a thing? The Zohar gets into the Rashi/Rabbanu Tam dispute on Tefillin. That's the Rashbi? Really? Ushpizim? Never appeared anywhere in Jewish practice until the Zohar? Why not? Because it was a pagan custom of thanksgiving at harvest time to invite dead relatives, all part of ancestor worship, which we used to reject out of hand, now there's a service in your siddur welcoming them.. The Zohar can't even seem to keep the guest list right.
שטות והבל. I also wear Tefillin on Chol Hamoed, but the Zohar doesn't say you get executed. Would the Gemara say somebody who eats before Shema is חייב מיתה? Maybe don't guess what Rashbi would or would not say.
"The Zohar gets into the Rashi/Rabbanu Tam dispute on Tefillin. That's the Rashbi? Really? "- I don't know if its the Rashbi or later, but it's not a problem.
" Ushpizim? Never appeared anywhere in Jewish practice until the Zohar? Why not? Because it was a pagan custom of thanksgiving..." - yeah, the secularists say the same thing about many halachos and mitzvos in the Mishna, Gemara, and Torah itself. https://www.thetorah.com/article/tzaraat-purification-a-vestige-of-demonic-exorcism
It's stupid there and it's stupid here.
Are korbanos a silly pagan adaptation as well?
"Ushpizim? Never appeared anywhere in Jewish practice until the Zohar? Why not? Because..." So the whole Zohar is out the window because mb doesn't understand something?
There's a reason the Zohar isn't meant for everyone. Maybe learn דעת תבונות really, really well first.
חייב מיתה Does not mean you get executed, just like when it says העובר על דברי חכמים חייב מיתה, Rabeinu Yona Explains that in Shaarei Teshuva.
Kisei Eliyahu by a Bris comes from a standard Midrash and not a Zohar. (Curious where kos shel eliyahu comes from?)
And Just so you know, the publication of the Zohar is older than thanksgiving.
I meant new customs.
I read the low quality attack on kabbala from RC years ago. I remember noticing when discussing the "problems" with the ariza"l, one of the 2 examples he gave was that the ar"i said techeiles is only in the times of the beis hamikdash. I remember thinking then, that he chose that, because he most definitely never opened anything of the ar"i, so all he knows from the ari, is what is quoted about techeiles and some kvarim... which is ok for an am haaretz, but crazy ridiculous for a critic.
I love how confident Zohar deniers are. They smugly walk around thinking that they have some 'academic secret' unknown in the beis midrash (maybe that's just me and my overwhelming experience with these people, but I'm pretty sure it's true), and the irony - that they are the ones missing 'The Secret' - is just unbelievable! My new motto, which describes all of 'Rationalism': "It's easy to deny something you don't understand."
Thank you IM for starting this conversation.
I once asked, "If a letter was discovered from someone claiming to have spoken to the Rashbi's wife, who heard from her how he wrote the Zohar, would they trust that?"
For some reason, a letter about the wife of Rabbi Moshe de Leon is believed as gospel truth.
Some academics!
Those that reject the Zohar's tanaitic authorship, do not base it on a comment by the author's wife!
Good evidence is only required when supporting hypotheses, not conclusions...
Huh. None less than the Nodah B'yehuda in the Tzalach (in the uncensored version) doubts whether PARTS of the zohar are from Rav Shimon Bar Yochai. Ditto the Chasam Sofer who states similar and wholly endorses Rav Emden's conclusions. So maybe they have a right to be smug, and you, as usual, refuse to believe that anything cannon in Yeshivahland can possibly be innacurate.
The issue is not over "the zohar" by the way. It's about parts of it that clearly date much later.
We're not talking to each other. I was talking about those who deny the Zohar completely, *who know nothing at all about what it preaches,* and the issue very much *is* over the Zohar, and you respond with some authorities who accepted the Zohar with open arms because they knew what the Zohar was about, albeit some minor issues. You then responded to your own version of the conversation and, quite adequately, ripped your own argument into pieces. Well done!
Reb דוד, I want to ask you a serious question, as you seem to be a very knowledgeable and have good answers.
I was raised on the premise that our nation is the only nation with unshakable evidence to receiving the Torah from Hashem, as we are not basing our belief on one person who said God spoke to him but an entire nation. Neviim were trusted only under certain conditions, and the reason we accept Torah Shbaal Peh is we trace our tradition very clearly in a very accurate way.
Now I am aware that the study of Kabala preceded the Zohars publication, but for all intents and purposes, one man woke up with a sefer claiming it was 1,000 years old, and till today we have no accurate knowledge as how a Spanish Rav got ahold of a manuscript from Eretz Yisrael.
I heard a few answers to this question and they are satisfying only enough to say that the Zohar definitely embodies things that were all authentic, but don't really understand how we can say באמונה שלימה its from chazal, other than saying they are legitimate teachings of Rishonim, and maybe dating back a few centuries, but how can one know?
I'm sure Dovid has a more complete answer, but I would say אה"נ, the Mesorah on Kabbalah is not as strong as the Mesorah on the rest of Torah sheBaal Peh. Even within the rest of Torah she Baal Peh, there is a spectrum, we have things that are considered more reliable than others. For example, at the top of the list is the Mishnah and Talmud Bavli. Then we consider Yerushalmi less reliable. We consider Toesefa even less reliable than that. Then we have Medrashim, some of which have a better Mesorah of than others, and some of which have later interpolations, and generally we don't consider as authoritative as the Gemara.
Thats weird, because Chazal themselves deemed the Yerushalmi far more relaible than the bavli. But what do they know.
What on earth are you talking about? Which Chazal? Do you mean Sanhedrin 24, במחשכים הושיבני כמתי עולם אמר ר' ירמיה זה תלמודה של בבל? That has nothing to do with the Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi. The Talmud Yerushalmi is considered by the Rishonim and poskim less reliable for obvious reasons. See the Rambam in the hakdamah to Yad.
Thanks. I pretty much see things the same way, I just didn't get the feeling it's the mainstream belief, as people make the Zohar sound more holy and worthy of following than the Gemara or Shulchan Aruch.
"people make the Zohar sound more holy and worthy of following than the Gemara or Shulchan Aruch."
I think that's largely a symptom of the same thing which causes people to be more hung up over tzavaas r yehuda ha'chassid than the aseres ha'dibros. Something about the exotic/esoteric is seductive and attractive. R Yakov Hillel rails against somewhat similar sorts of distortions. https://cross-currents.com/2006/11/01/rav-yaakov-hillel-outs-the-charlatans/
I recently heard on a podcast https://seforimchatter.com/2023/06/22/live-from-lakewood-kevarimchatter-with-dovi-safier-and-yossel-housman-a-k-a-r-yosef-shaul-hoizman/ about someone who was trying to collect money to refurbish kever rachel. His pitch was, 'she's the bubbeh fuhn r yeshayaleh kerestir!'
Well, following is a different story, we go by our Shas for everything (more or less)! But its 'holiness' comes from the fact that it deals with the פנימיות, as opposed to the הלכות which are the חיצוניות. A משל would be when going on a date, finding out that your future husband/wife likes chocolate cake is a layer of understanding them; you now know more about them, namely, that they like chocolate cake. But when you find out the things that are really important to them, such as that Torah is the most important thing to him, or that she loves hosting etc., these things are more central and give a much deeper appreciation of that other person which the other can now connect with on a far deeper level. להבדיל כביכול when we understand the depths of הקב"ה's will, we can get a far better picture of Him and connect with Him much better, והאהבה כפי ההשגה (Rambam Moreh ch. 51) (which incidentally is true by people too)
"Reb דוד, I want to ask you a serious question, as you seem to be a very knowledgeable and have good answers."
Despite your accolades (the word knowledgeable was a bit much, let alone the "very" on top.) I am really not at all the one to be explaining these things, but it is a serious question so I will summarize some of the little I have learned:
Firstly, "know" is a strong word, I don't think we can say we 'know' its authenticity as strongly as say, Matan Torah (and neither are things like the Sifrei Nach for that matter), but given all that, we can still be quite confident. I would explain as follows (it is an oversimplification, as any summary would be, but it should get the point across):
1. We have the Sefer HaBahir from R' Nechunia Ben HaKaneh which talks openly about the Sefiros, and we have Sefer Yetzira which mentions them as well. The Zohar does almost nothing other then describe the details of the Torah using the ideas that the Mekubalim knew already applying the concepts to specific פסוקים and ideas. (All of the Sheimos in the Zohar also refer to the different combinations of Hashem's ten מדות.) Also, importantly, the Zohar, using the ספירות, explains פסוקים like no one else could, to the point that it's clear that the פסוקים meant these very things. (And I mean besides explaining מראי נבואה, they even explain 'simple' פסוקים like טוב ה' לכל in a much deeper, and clearly true way.) I guess all I'm saying is that what you said "...that the Zohar definitely embodies things that were all authentic," it does much more than just embody; it reveals things that, within the system, we can know for sure are clearly something that dates back to har sinai.
In different words, everything the Zohar says works within the system and explains things that once you hear them, you *know* that Hashem, or the Navi mean exactly that, because when you understand how the ספירות and the letters work, this would be the obvious result. Like when you know that you gotten to the bottom of a ראשון (you can sometimes be wrong, but even then you usually tapped in to a part of the truth in the sugya just you may be misplaced), you can know that you've been explained the truth of this פסוק as Hashem told it to משה on har Sinai. A simple example would be that knowing that something is good can be understood by a four year old, and is understood deeper by a 34 year old, but the original term, "good" doesn't change; this is what happens when learning these ideas. They take the basics of Judaism (יחוד ה', טוב ומטיב, בורא נברא) and expound on them in a much deeper way, where ניכרים דברי אמת.
Most of us are certain that the Rambam would've accepted the Zohar wholeheartedly, since all the ideas about Hashem which he worked so hard to lay out are explained by the Sefiros in sharper terms, kind of like an equation explaining a physics theory in sharper terms, like theory inverse squared equation explaining sharply the motion of gravity in perfect terms - the math means nothing until you get the idea, but once you get the idea, it is defined 10x more clearly by the math.
2. Now, once we have 99%, or more importantly, the *core* of the Zohar as such, the fact that it then quotes תנאים ואמוראים who obviously also knew these things, is it a stretch to say that that part is true as well? Meaning the Zohar itself gives names, like Rashbi, and the ideas are ראוי למי שנאמרו בשמו - if a ראשון would have come up with these ideas, it may be even more astounding; it's just not possible for a human to just know these depths without a מסורה, or a Rebbi like Eliyahu Hanavi. In short, the truth of the Zohar, within our system, sort of confirms itself, and anyone who learns these things can see that.
(An example is the סתירה between אין עוד מלבדו (the root of the whole חכמת האמת), but we exist. The Rambam famously discusses this in תשובה פ"ה, the ידיעה בחירה conundrum, and that the answer to these questions lies in understanding the balance between the One and us, the two. The ספירות are nothing more than a sharper explanation of these ideas, where at each step you can appreciate how its true)
3. Based on the above, it's different than making a religion from scratch. It's taking the religion and explaining it really well. So while it started with one person, its truth was then verified by our יודעים and they haven't rejected any of it to be inconsistent with what they know about the 'pre-Zohar' Torah, on the contrary, every line has deepened their understanding.
(4. I would add one last point, that these things are understood completely based on the person's יראת שמים, as in ראשית חכמה יראת ה', and to explain this slightly (I'm actually going to touch on this point in my next post or two on my new blog https://rationalistjudaism2.substack.com/ ) the truths of HKBH are understood as you enter His world, and the less one is involved in this, and the more he involves himself in that, the more that world is a reality to him. [Eventually one can even 'see' מלאכים]. This works on every level, meaning in this field, the חכמה on every single level is rooted in the יראת שמים of that level. so if our biggest and best, both in terms of חכמה and in terms of יראת שמים are the perpetuators of this work, we can confidently assume its authenticity on every part of it.)
This is a delicate subject - let me know if any of that was clear or if certain things need clarification
Thank you very much. I hear what you are saying and need to think it over. I guess the only question is if things were rewritten or things like that, but as you say, it's irrelevant.
Sorry for the lengthiness, I was typing as I was thinking and decided not to edit in the end...
To summarize really briefly: within our system, the ideas in the Zohar are self-confirming (they do nothing other than explain our Doctrine really clearly), and are too deep for almost anyone to figure out without a Divine Teacher (at least post Matan Torah), so when the best of אנשי שלומינו say that it's real, we know it came from הקב"ה Himself at har sinai. And it makes tons of sense for many reasons that it came from Rashbi, as the Zohar itself claims.
Let me preface that I fully believe in the authenticity of the zohar.
It gets a bit sketchy when " it explains everything perfectly" is a reason to include something in mesorah.
That leaves the canon open to additions of logical sounding content.
I think any explanation of the zohars acceptance has to boil down to emunas chachamim...they apparently knew something that we didn't.
I think I explained that, that I mean within the system. Such as the fact that we are separate beings from הקב"ה, we are נבראים, but our job is to get closer to His Oneness by being מבטל ourselves, understanding that and learning how the ספירות all fit in to that, it really is self evident as the picture gets built up how we what we knew the whole time is now understood on a far deeper level - which is what I mean that it explains everything perfectly. It explains what we already know as Yidden, just deeper and deeper
I have more than happy with אמונת חכמים though if you don't know what I mean...
Corporeality of God. In the first book. such a concept , according to the Rambam is avodah zara. I know you know that.
That's one.
Cheers,
Please link me to the footnotes. I don't have your original post.
Thank you for the further insults
What original post? You can't access this? https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/response-to-rabbi-chareidis-attack
See the one footnote that says "In a follow-up email, Professor Chiloni made it clear that he does not mean that the entire Zohar was the work of רשב”י, but that whatever additions were made were authentic, as opposed to forgeries."
Nobody is insulting you dude. Saying you need to get more education is not an insult.
Got it.
And thanks for the tip on education, and therefore couldn't possibly be an insult.
Of course this footnote is very different from what you claimed just a few hours ago. Regardless, what the heck is an authentic addition and not a forgery?
That is exactly what I claimed. Authentic means it was compiled from authentic sources, whether from Tanaim, Amoraim or Geonim, and not forgeries that were made up by de Leon.
Just for clarity, in a previous insult you said, regarding the authorship of the zohar,
"As the footnote of this post already made clear, almost everybody agrees greater or lesser portions of it were not from Rashbi."
Which is quite different from
"In a follow-up email, Professor Chiloni made it clear that he does not mean that the entire Zohar was the work of רשב”י, but that whatever additions were made were authentic, as opposed to forgeries."
It's not quite different. The footnote is talking about the standard Torah-follower view.
The footnote mentions only Professor Chiloni. Nothing about standard torah follower view.
Regardless, do you subscribe to that view, that the Rashbi did not author ALL of the Zohar?
Rejected the Rashbi's authorship. Some of the errors are hilarious if relying on its antiquity. Apparantly according to the Zohar, the Rashbi claimed his teachers were those that lived a generation or so later! I suppose mystics can make such claims. reincarnation et al.Also the Chatam Sofer didn't give it much credibility regardless of whom the author was.
Cheers
As the footnote of this post already made clear, almost everybody agrees greater or lesser portions of it were not from Rashbi. It's only ignoramuses like yourself who think that you discovered America 5 minutes ago.
Ah, I'm now an ignoramus. very rude of you.
Now an apology from me, but I did not see the footnotes that said"almost everybody agrees greater or lesser portions of it were not from Rashbi."
Can you point me to it please?
Having said that, but all the responses to any of my suggestions that the aurthorship is in dispute were met with vitriol, instead of somebody saying, yes that's stated in the footnotes.. Strange.
Well, you have now come over to the dark side, and according to R.Chaim Kanievsky you are also heretics that can't be counted in a minyan. Don't worry, we'll count you in ours.
Cheers
Read the one footnote. It's not hard.
The responses to your suggestions that it is not straight from Rashbi were not met with vitriol, everybody here is aware of that. If you would have bothered to read the post, you would have seen that Professor Chiloni discusses that as well. Rather, it was your profoundly stupid statements about the ushpizin being from the pagans, which you then said about the Torah as well, that was met by gentle criticism. It was also your extremely ignorant statements about history, both about the history of Kabbalah and the rest of the Torah, that some people called you out on. No vitriol here, and all the criticism was well deserved.
I never said they rejected it. I'm a little bit fed up being misquoted on these threads. I said they rejected the Tannaitic authorship of it. A big difference. Now please read R.Yaacov Emden's Mitpachat Sofrim, where he lists hundreds of problems with the claim the Rashbi authored it. The Chatam Sofer quotes the from it often i n support of the Yaavitz. Also, as an aside claiming that such luminaries as the Gra' accepted the Rashbi authorship is a terrible error in scholarship. People, even geniuses such as he make mistakes. He did.
"The Chatam Sofer too rejected it."
https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/response-to-rabbi-chareidis-attack/comment/18519497
Lol. You're like Natan. You start kvetching that you're being misquoted when you get debunked.
Now I'm ignorant. Fair enough. I've been called worse.
Is this addressed to me?
It's not that you're ignorant, it's that you're arguing against something you are ignorant about. I wouldn't argue with a physicist about the Standard Model because I know very little about it (though from the little reading I've done about it, it is one of the most astounding human achievements I've ever seen, so probably a bad example). You are arguing with the Gra. That itself may not mean a lot right now, but have you done your homework?
It's not a name calling game חלילה, I'm not bashing you חלילה, I'm just pointing out that you should learn ספרים like דעת תבונות and other introductory ספרים on kabbalah before claiming the Zohar a fraud. (I encourage these ספרים only if you are ready to accept what you can and what you can't ask, because the subject matter is really complex and if you feel like you need all the answers right away you'll never get there...)
I promise, if you do your homework well, your opinion will change.
The Standard Model required 20x or more mass/energy than is present for it to work. It's not that we can't detect it. It doesn't exist. Without it, the model falls apart, rendering it less than astounding.
unrelated: no need to publish.
As part of the project to critique figures of the modox camp, why not Rabbi YY Weinberg, who is BTW subject of a bio by Marc Shapira
there is a book of quoted by rabbi Weinberg here --
https://www.hyehudi.org/%d7%94%d7%9b%d7%a8%d7%aa-%d7%9b%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99-%d7%94%d7%a8%d7%91-%d7%99%d7%97%d7%99%d7%90%d7%9c-%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%a7%d7%91-%d7%95%d7%99%d7%a0%d7%91%d7%a8%d7%92/
Sorry - but please don't malign Rav Weinberg zt'l. Rav Yechezkel Sarna, the Rosh Yeshiva of Chevron and a close friend of Rav Weinberg already paskened this shailah at Rav Weinberg's levaya, where he overcame the wishes of RZ elements who hoped to claim him as his own, and insisted instead that Rav Weinberg be buried among all the great Roshei Yeshiva in Chelkas HaRabbanim.
Interesting. I sidestep the entire kabbalah / mysticism issue by researching the sources the kabbalah is based on. For example, Proverbs has a rather clear structure on what constitutes Chochma Bina daas. You don't need to go to spiritual emanations and sefirot.
In general, it's always possible to simplify and go to the root of the issue. So you don't come across as knowledgeable about kabbalah, but at least you also didn't say anything stupid by accident.
The real secret of Kabbalah: Those who knows don't say. Those who say don't know.
"Proverbs has a rather clear structure on what constitutes Chochma Bina daas. You don't need to go to spiritual emanations and sefirot."
I think you would need a whole lot of mystical insight to derive such a complex system from the pesukim. (Though, again, I don't enough to say one way or the other.)
There's only two instances and if you know it by heart it isn't that complicated. People tend to throw a lot of things at kabbalah that are really just not knowing pshat very well.
For my notes on the topic, see here: https://ishayirashashem.substack.com/p/understanding-intelligence-from-a?sd=pf
Anyone care to read R’Yichye Kapachs polemic against kaballa. At some level it cannot be denied that parts of what we consider Jewish mysticism today (at least for the hamon am, segulos, kever worship and the like) clearly stem and can be traced to other religious traditions
I don't know much about Kabbalah, but secular academia has similar arguments about much of the Mishna, Talmud, and even the Chumash. For example https://www.thetorah.com/article/tzaraat-purification-a-vestige-of-demonic-exorcism
If the arguments about Kabbalah are of similar quality, I wouldn't put much stock in them.
Off-topic, but that article picture (specifically the Rashi commentary contained in a dragon) is probably one of my favorite medieval Jewish art pieces. I first saw it in an article on a different site that was all about that type of calligraphic art, micrography.
Segulos, kemeaos, going to kevarim (at least maaras hmachpela and kever rachel) are found all over shas and midrashim. That's not a good attack on Zohar at all. Unless you're just picking bad examples. Maybe Tanach really comes from Christians and adapted by Jews too:)
I read it, and it is highly unimpressive. It shows a lack of knowledge or understanding of a basic layman's working knowledge of Kabbala.