In the spring of 1914, around 125 Jerusalem Ashkenazi and Sefardi Jews (most of them presumably rabbis) signed a document containing violent curses aimed at unnamed individuals living in Yemen.
'Reasonable people can disagree on these matters.'
They really can't. Maybe a reasonable person can say they like the Zohar and think it has cool teachings that liven up (what is to them) boring old rabbinic Judaism, but no reasonable person can deny the Zohar is a collection of medieval writings. This discussion is simply over for people who have the ability to interpret and weight evidence and do not have extremely restricted access to information.
Ronit Meroz claims parts of the Zoharic corpus may be as old at the 11th century. Big whoop.
Gershom Scholem led scholarship up the garden path by his hypothesis that kabbalah represented an expression of gnostic (anti-rabbinic) currents from ancient times transmitted through Sefer Bahir. Ironically, he got this idea from Graetz, and just put a positive spin on it. However, Avishai Bar Asher has spent 20 years proving this is fanciful. The allegedly gnostic remains are actually just typos caused by the original manuscripts being copied in the wrong order. Kabbalah starts in Provence in the 1100s.
Moreover, as Boaz Huss has shown, De Leon never actually published a Zohar, even in serial form. Rather, he just claimed to have the book at home, and said certain pamphlets he had published were excerpts. What then happened is a search by kabbalists to 'find' the Zohar, which consisted of collecting manuscripts from over 20 different collections, some written by De Leon, some by contemporaries, some by people after him and, yeah, maybe, some by people before him. The book 'the Zohar' starts to emerge in the late 1400s, and wasn't fixed until the 1550s. You can see this, for example, in how the Beit Yosef will quote Zohar excerpts in completely the 'wrong' place, or will be oblivious to things that are 'in' the Zohar, or say he discovered something new 'in' the Zohar.
Kabbalah starts in Provence in the 1100s? Really? What about the Sefer Yetzirah, Shiur Komah, and many other books mentioned by Geonim? What about Kabbalistic sounding things mentioned in standard Chazal, like ויסע ויבא ויט in Gemars Succah?
None of these things are kabbalah. There is a school of thought that says all forms of mysticism are the same really, so Sufism can be kabbalah too if you think that way, but the distinctive doctrines of kabbalah go back as far as Sefer Bahir.
Wouldn't the question be if these distinctive doctrines of kabbalah represent a natural development/interpretation of the earlier mysticism, analogous to the way the Gemars is a natural development of the ideas in the Mishnah? Sufism of course doesn't count because it's not Jewish.
So this is similar to the Gershom Sholem hypothesis. There is a latent potential for mysticism in the Jewish collective psyche, and different historical movements are all really expressions of this and thus the same thing under the hood. There are two main objections to this:
1) This is totally contrary to the self-image of kabbalists themselves who claim to be in possessions of ancient doctrines, not developments of ancient doctrines.
2) Kabbalah is really, really different from all the earlier mysticism. Heichalot texts are all about ascending through different levels of heaven, encountering various angels, till you get to G-d, who is portrayed anthropomorphically or as light or whatever, with no interrogation of the internal processes. Kabbalah has almost none of that and is all about the *internal* structure of G-d. They are really not similar to each other at all, except in the sense that they have the same vibe, but then Shinto mysticism has the same vibe too.
The only exception is Sefer Yetzira, which has the Sefirot, but they are not the same Sefirot, don't have the same function, and have little in common other than (most of) the names, and there being ten of them. With that said, it is certainly true that Sefer Yetzira was an important resource that kabbalists drew on to create their new doctrines. Similarly, Tanach is an important resource Christians used to create their new doctrine of the 3 sefirot.
Thanks for calling out the absence of my (great-great-great) grandfather's signature.
I don't understand why people see this as primarily an essay about the Zohar. I see it as primarily an essay against the concept of cryptic sharply worded pashkevilin by those who are not the greatest Talmidei Chachamim in Klal Yisroel. This is an issue that unfortunately plagues us until today. What makes matters worse is the fact that a century later unknowledgeable people may assume that this was the accepted position of charedi Jewry, not pausing to think about the signatures of the gedolei HaTorah which are absent. Similarly, in the דברים העומדים על הפרק, people may soon think that the idea of התחברות לרשעים being a principled objection and even an איסור חמור was accepted by charedi Jewry, despite the fact that the 2 greatest manhigim of charedi Jewry (the Chazon Ish and Reb Chaim Ozer) wrote extensively that this isn't true, but rather it is a practical matter which needs to be constantly reassessed and reevaluated as to what is best for Yiddishkeit.
If you actually read the Milchamos Hashem it's anything but scholarly and "asking honest questions". It's not respectful at all, but a sarcastic mocking attack on Kabbalah (not just the Zohar) and is every bit as nasty as those curses. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
But I'm not here to justify the curses or defend Kabbalah, that you rightly point out has very little relevance for the typical mainstream Jew (well, unless you label any mainstream practices that are propounded by believers in kabbalah as automatically guilty by association as stemming from kabbalah, like you did with hataras nedarim, and like you did with *saying tehillim*, and probably many other things...) Just to correct what I perceived to be an inaccuracy.
I've read around half of Mechamos Hashem and I'm very comfortable with the level of scholarship and reasonable tone. He is often harsh in his criticism, but I don't feel it crosses a line away from scholarship. Having said that, I do have the impression that R' Kafah often quoted sources from memory so it's a good idea to look them all up.
Ok, you may be comfortable with his invective type "scholarship", and other people may disagree and say he crossed the line, and yet other people may be comfortable with the curses against him. I guess כך היא דרכה של תורה!
And just by the way... It seems that Rabbi Yosef Kafeh whom you mentioned has a very interesting תלמיד מובהק, Rabbi David bar-Hayim, living and teaching in Israel. Definitely not your run of the mill דתי rabbi/ posek. If you are not familiar with him and his work, it might behoove you to check him out. There is a detailed Wikipedia page.
Then why do you call yourself a settler? If you are a follower of הרב בר-חיים, then you haven't settled. On the contrary, you've gotten one of the best there is.
You didn't mention his son, R Yosef Kafih's father, R Dovid, who was killed after being assaulted by a local in Yemen. Not that it would disprove your conclusion, but doesn't fit you last paragraph
Once one ascribes divinity to something without evidence, the argument is already lost. There's absolutely no evidence that the zohar is anything other than a forgery by Moshe DeLeon. The zohar is based on the ramblings of gnostic theosophists and pagan christian charlatans. It is alien to Torah. It doesn't contain any useful info on how to live a purposeful life as a Jew in this world: sephiroth, magic incantations, necromancy, Tanach misquotes, errant statements about all kinds of things. If the zohar is true then the Torah is false.
Tell me you never read the Zohar without telling me you never read the Zohar.
Tell me you have no problem offering a definitive opinion with zero knowledge about the subject matter without telling me you have no problem offering a definitive opinion with zero knowledge about the subject matter.
"Tell me you’ve never read Milchamot Hashem, Ari Nohem, or the authentic writings of Chazal without telling me you've never read them.
But please, continue preaching about the Zohar’s ‘depth’ — it's adorable watching someone mistake esoteric gibberish and medieval forgeries for divine wisdom. I assure you, familiarity with Gnostic tropes and post-biblical mythology doesn’t qualify as knowing Torah.
Some of us actually did the homework before forming an opinion."
know it’s easier to chant slogans like "You just don't understand!" than to actually confront substantive criticism. It saves you the trouble of grappling with the fact that the Zohar’s language, historical anachronisms, and content are about as authentic to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai as a Renaissance fair is to ancient Rome.
But hey — if your ego can't handle people questioning your sacred cows, maybe *you're* the one who needs to do some reading. And no, I don’t mean another sweet little 'Zohar 101' drasha at your local kabalacafé. If you’re going to dish out snark, at least bring a spoon bigger than a toddler’s teacup.
So instead of answering the point, you changed the subject.
Deft move.
But the issue was your statement that 'It doesn't contain any useful info on how to live a purposeful life as a Jew in this world'.
That showed that you never learned the Zohar in your life.
It also seems that you never learned the rebuttals to the Ari Nohem. (Milchamos Hashem does not need a rebuttal, it is on a cheder yingel's level of scholarship.)
Sorry for slaughtering your holy cow, but he was a gosses anyway.
For me the biggest sticking point if we look at it is:
What's the goal? To influence God?
It's a battle between "Does God care what we do" and "Does God not care what we do?". Usually people divide this into religious vs secular, with secular folks pointing out the absurdity of doing things asked if not rewarded or otherwise cared for or impacting the Asker.
On the one hand we have quotes like "I am not man that I can change my mind"...and on the other hand you have things like the Gemara about R. Eliezer and "my children have defeated me" (which troubles me tbh since we all recognize Talmud as purely man-made even if ascribed societal authority for halachic policy, thus strengthening the Karaite and Shomroni claims about rabbis making up their own thing ).
If we say kabbalah, with all it's ideas about influencing God, matters, where's that coming from? What's it's basis? How do we relate to a God that says He's X but our rabbis tell us in certain rabbi-made texts Y and Z?
And then there is the magical thinking that has been clearly proven over 500(800?) years to not accomplish squat. The Golem of Prague never stopped the Nazis. The BST couldn't overthrow the Czar and return 'Am Yisrael to the Land. The chassidic rebbes died like everyone else in the Shoah and suffered the same Pale misery as the lowest Jew they claimed to raise the hopes of. The kabbalah never stopped 1492 Alhambra decree or the Inquisition that lasted in the New World until the 1850s. Kabbalah and Chassidut of the Crusades period didn't stop rampaging Crusaders either. So.....................what's this stuff conferring that regular halacha isn't?
An intellectual framework to understand how all those things you listed can happen and still be an integral part of G-d's benevolent plan. Halacha doesn't do any of that.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, study the Ramchal's Daas Tevunos.
.........which fails to answer for the מעשה side of kabbalah, the most common and pushed part.
It's one thing to think about levels and movements of spiritual stuff and all that. It's another to do random behaviors or anti-halachic things because of it and teach others to do the same. Example: tefillin on hol hamoed from the kabbalistic reason for why.
The מעשה side is decidedly NOT the most common and pushed part in my experience. Maybe it's promoted by people to more general audiences outside the Beis midrash. Do you have names?
(I haven't heard of anyone teleporting to escape danger since Rav Chaim Vital, and even then, he was criticized for avoiding his destiny by doing so.)
I never knew tefillin on chol hamoed is "anti-halachic". I was told it is a machlokes rishonim and it's a good thing to be machmir in private.
What does it mean to mahmir in private? To wear or not?
Technically, it's a mahlokes rishonim, just as whether to wait between meat and milk is, but what actually happened is that the mahlokes was settled in favour of wearing, and then various authorities overturned this consensus purely, based purely on the Zohar.
On the part of מעשה btw, there is more than just if you wear tefillin during keter yitenu/bring din on yourself during chol hamoed. People push off kiddush between certain hours because it's not auspicious between halachic 6 and 7. People have added things like "לעולם '' דבריך ניצב בשמיים" in RH/Kippur liturgy and they say it 8x and other things as if it's going to hold off God's wrath or some such.
People very much believe in ideas directly derived from, or said in the name of, Zohar and apply them to life. Shulchan Aruch even has moments where he chooses in favor of kabbalah for halachic outcome rather than his "2 of 3". How can you be honest and call this "not pushed as part of the common man's practice" ???
I'm sorry, I thought what you meant by "מעשה" was in the context of your original comment--that kabbalah should have been used in the physical world as a kind of "white magic" to save Jews from calamities. My misunderstanding. Of course I agree that kabbalah has been employed to inform halachic and liturgical practice. Nothing new there, and its all over the Mogen Avraham so its totally mainstream. I don't see what's objectionable about it as long as people don't start fights about it.
Whether it's white magic by big names or the common man's cure-all, it has zero efficacy entirely because of calamities. The excuse that it "violates רצון שמיים" to use it that way fails to hold water when people do it in less important cases like kapparot, where individuals do it to save themselves from harsh punishment. Why does the individual get to but the 'Am cannot be saved from the Nazi war machine, the cossack, the Almoravid, and so on?
All the more so I ask what good such knowledge is if you cannot even use it by the will of that Who supposedly lets it exist but doesn't want it used.
>MA did it so it's OK now
:/ I don't buy that....and the problem is that people *do* start fights about it. Like I said in the other comment, I've nearly had fist fights from heated individuals who told me I was bringing din on the minyan because I wore tefillin during moed. I've also heard of other people making a big deal about other things like not saying Birech Shmei.... Might be some segments and not all, but, people who care about kabbalah certainly do have this unpleasantness.
Out there in "real world land", beyond your own BM, people very much do push it. They push it to women as something to interest and occupy them and keep them from Talmud trends. They push it to gerim and baalei teshuva to keep them interested since everyone feels "too much rules" is a scary way to get people to keep mitzvot and learn Torah.
Specifically Aish, Chabad, maybe Ohr Samaych and all the Carlebachian breakaway things go this direction.
>Tefillin
There are those who claim in the name of the Zohar that it brings din to wear them. Now, I do wear them myself because of Rambamist leanings and because I think the usual halachic example for why not is bullshit. For whatever reason not being able to write them means you shouldn't wear them either, which flies in the face of logic and the obvious "Rambam specifies the other times you cannot wear them so why didn't he include it?".
I don't go to shul on moed because I've nearly been in fights over my tefillin.
They certainly do NOT push kabbalah in Ohr Someach. That I can tell you from experience. Maybe do a little more research and a little less speculation before making these broad generalizations.
Tefillin on Chol Hamoed is just another machlokes rishonim. Walking into a Shul that adopted one opinion and loudly pushing the other opinion in their faces is against halacha. Even if you are sure the halacha of tefillin is on your side, you are still doing the wrong thing by doing so.
Besides, from a derech eretz perspective it is also an obnoxious thing to do.
Davka not the difference between chareidim and non-chareidm. Rav Kook was very busy with kabbalah as are many of his talmidim, and most litvish chareidim have nothing to do with it. You are talking about a particular rationalist/academic strain of Modern Orthodoxy that in many cases doesn't believe in the Chumash or Chazal or Halacha either, the Zohar/kabbalh is just the cherry on the top.
I once asked the smartest kollel guy I know who wrote the Zohar, he said 'whatever the frum view is ... Avraham Avinu' and shrugged his shoulders. This is probably the best attitude to have if you have no special interest in the topic and are happy socially in a Charedi community,
I think that is basically the mainstream attitude. Everybody "knows" it is from Rashbi but this is not an important point since nobody learns it. And among the tiny percentage that take an interest in learning kabbalah (among intelligent people, not certain types who daven the Zohar), they generally know that this attribution is... controversial
My impression is that everyone who is into Chareidi machshavah, which is a substantial group of the yeshivah world, certainly takes it for granted that the Zohar is authentic (meaning originates from Chazal and not made up by Moshe De Leon) and authoritative and not controversial.
Without the authenticity of the Zohar, you lose the Ramchal, the Vilna Gaon, Nefesh Hachayim, and all chassidish machshava seforim!
I don't understand. Why is this unique to chareidi machshava? Non-chareidim don't learn the Gra and the Ramchal? And conversely, are chareidim who are not into machshava are any less chareidi? While machshava has gotten more popular in recent years, I'm pretty sure it's still a minority who study it seriously (Mesilas Yesharim doesn't count).
I also disagree with your point about machshava students. If they care so much about the Zohar, why don't they learn it? Clearly it's really the thoughts of the Ramchal, the Vilna Gaon, and the Nefesh Hachayim they are interested in, not the Zohar itself. I contend that even if you were to show them many parts of the Zohar are of incontrovertibly medieval origin, they wouldn't lose faith in the Gra and the Ramchal, but would assume these figures knew to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I have no idea who else is into the Gra and Ramchal's machshava. Maybe it would apply to them too. I'm just talking from my backyard.
In my experience, Nefesh Hachayim is the backbone of every serious litvish talmid chochom's hashkafa which is packed with Zohars in virtually every chapter. True, many glide over it because they aren't proficient in the style, but try to tell them the Zohar isn't authentic and they'll be at your throat.
Maybe if you show that every Zohar cited by these seforim are authentic but the rest is not, you may get a pass. I doubt it.
This is a strange thing to say. Are the Chassam Sofer, the Nodah BiYehuda not Charedi?
Conversely, the Ramhal isn't even part of any reasonable definition of mesorah. He was rejected by the European rabbinate, had to relocate multiple times, and his books were not read until the Mussar movement.
Sure they are Chareidi, but I'm talking contemporary Chareidi Hashkafa as taught in yeshivos today. Mesorah is an afterthought. Maybe some Chassidim learn Chasam Sofer, but the Zohar is still king in all the Litvish and Chassidish machshava seforim I know of..
From my experience the people most interested in it are the people who wanted hand-wavey woo woo magical thinking and not really the people who would hack out an analysis of a sugya of Gemara.
Those who need solutions to real life problems and perceived problems draw from it to rationalize their worldview in a harsh and unfair world.
Those who don't need it, and don't need to fight it, don't care and don't touch it.
Those who, like Mekori folks and the Baladi movement of Teimanim, *need* to fight it to justify personal and received practices. It's an unfortunate need but when the social fabric bunches and tears over something the kabbalah says you have 2 choices: do what they do or defend what you do.
I have to agree with happy here. My experience is in bar ilan, and the general attitude amongst the DL academics is decidedly not Maimonidean, and even amongst the mainstream DL (who are often very different than the academics they produce) it's either an adoption of the historical critical method at least towards chazal (if not Tanakh), or a focus on Biblical themes and only viewing chazal through the lens of Tanakh (which is the basis for much of the nationalism, Zionism, and collective consciousness, not Rav Kook's fringe kabbalistic views.
True about the "rationalists " I doubt the chareidi IDF position has anything to do with the Zohar and kabbalah. Ponovezh Slobidka and the Mir are not famed for their strong kabbalah study programs. It has to do with secularization as you yourself have pointed out on occasion.
The same goes for the reason why Charedim don't emigrate to EY. The risks (due to דקדוקי עניות, as Reb Yisroel Salanter famously cautioned, and due to culture shock) are too great.
If anything the DL community seems to be relying on a nes, with their fantasies of beating all the Arabs today. The Charedi strategy seems clear, to slowly win the demographic war, both in the Levant and in the American electorate. Yes, it sadly takes time, but without a miracle things naturally take time.
I'm not sure what Boruch Clinton believes, but Rav Hirsch never challenged the Zohar and he used Kabbalistic concepts as the basis for some of his ideas.
Curious if you ever read Rav Hirsch's Nineteen Letters? I think they were very well accepted in Lita (especially in the Bais Yaakov movement).
I'm not sure how "but it was also unfortunately misunderstood; the eternal progressive development which it taught came to be considered a static mechanism, and what was to be understood as inner perception was seen as external dreamworlds...but, as it was misconstrued, the practice of Judaism was interpreted to be a form of magical mechanistic manipulation, a means of influencing or resisting theosophic worlds and anti-worlds." is quite "exactly" what you were saying. In his gentle way, R' Hirsch was quite open with his thoughts about early modern kabbalisitc
I agree with you that this is an important differentiation between charedi and non-charedi mindsets. Although I'm not convinced that directly arguing with charedim about the authenticity question would be productive enough to make any difference: their sunk costs (i.e., their sense that all of their gedolim have always and completely embraced Zohar/kabbala) are too strong to dislodge.
>I think they view the Baal Shem Tov and Arizal as having ruach hakodesh and thus able to overrule Talmud etc
Sorry, but no Litvish gadol would agree to such a statement. Personally, I think such a statement goes against Litvish Charedi theology more than anything Boruch Clinton believes in.
Why used to? It seems alive and well, maybe more than ever before. (In terms of the sheer numbers of people doing it, definitely more than ever before.)
But about those denominations. You mean, like, $5, $20, and $50 bills?
'Reasonable people can disagree on these matters.'
They really can't. Maybe a reasonable person can say they like the Zohar and think it has cool teachings that liven up (what is to them) boring old rabbinic Judaism, but no reasonable person can deny the Zohar is a collection of medieval writings. This discussion is simply over for people who have the ability to interpret and weight evidence and do not have extremely restricted access to information.
There are many academics.who think the traditions in the Zohar and much of the Hebrew Medrash Hanelaam date to far far earlier
Ronit Meroz claims parts of the Zoharic corpus may be as old at the 11th century. Big whoop.
Gershom Scholem led scholarship up the garden path by his hypothesis that kabbalah represented an expression of gnostic (anti-rabbinic) currents from ancient times transmitted through Sefer Bahir. Ironically, he got this idea from Graetz, and just put a positive spin on it. However, Avishai Bar Asher has spent 20 years proving this is fanciful. The allegedly gnostic remains are actually just typos caused by the original manuscripts being copied in the wrong order. Kabbalah starts in Provence in the 1100s.
Moreover, as Boaz Huss has shown, De Leon never actually published a Zohar, even in serial form. Rather, he just claimed to have the book at home, and said certain pamphlets he had published were excerpts. What then happened is a search by kabbalists to 'find' the Zohar, which consisted of collecting manuscripts from over 20 different collections, some written by De Leon, some by contemporaries, some by people after him and, yeah, maybe, some by people before him. The book 'the Zohar' starts to emerge in the late 1400s, and wasn't fixed until the 1550s. You can see this, for example, in how the Beit Yosef will quote Zohar excerpts in completely the 'wrong' place, or will be oblivious to things that are 'in' the Zohar, or say he discovered something new 'in' the Zohar.
Kabbalah starts in Provence in the 1100s? Really? What about the Sefer Yetzirah, Shiur Komah, and many other books mentioned by Geonim? What about Kabbalistic sounding things mentioned in standard Chazal, like ויסע ויבא ויט in Gemars Succah?
None of these things are kabbalah. There is a school of thought that says all forms of mysticism are the same really, so Sufism can be kabbalah too if you think that way, but the distinctive doctrines of kabbalah go back as far as Sefer Bahir.
Wouldn't the question be if these distinctive doctrines of kabbalah represent a natural development/interpretation of the earlier mysticism, analogous to the way the Gemars is a natural development of the ideas in the Mishnah? Sufism of course doesn't count because it's not Jewish.
So this is similar to the Gershom Sholem hypothesis. There is a latent potential for mysticism in the Jewish collective psyche, and different historical movements are all really expressions of this and thus the same thing under the hood. There are two main objections to this:
1) This is totally contrary to the self-image of kabbalists themselves who claim to be in possessions of ancient doctrines, not developments of ancient doctrines.
2) Kabbalah is really, really different from all the earlier mysticism. Heichalot texts are all about ascending through different levels of heaven, encountering various angels, till you get to G-d, who is portrayed anthropomorphically or as light or whatever, with no interrogation of the internal processes. Kabbalah has almost none of that and is all about the *internal* structure of G-d. They are really not similar to each other at all, except in the sense that they have the same vibe, but then Shinto mysticism has the same vibe too.
The only exception is Sefer Yetzira, which has the Sefirot, but they are not the same Sefirot, don't have the same function, and have little in common other than (most of) the names, and there being ten of them. With that said, it is certainly true that Sefer Yetzira was an important resource that kabbalists drew on to create their new doctrines. Similarly, Tanach is an important resource Christians used to create their new doctrine of the 3 sefirot.
Thanks for calling out the absence of my (great-great-great) grandfather's signature.
I don't understand why people see this as primarily an essay about the Zohar. I see it as primarily an essay against the concept of cryptic sharply worded pashkevilin by those who are not the greatest Talmidei Chachamim in Klal Yisroel. This is an issue that unfortunately plagues us until today. What makes matters worse is the fact that a century later unknowledgeable people may assume that this was the accepted position of charedi Jewry, not pausing to think about the signatures of the gedolei HaTorah which are absent. Similarly, in the דברים העומדים על הפרק, people may soon think that the idea of התחברות לרשעים being a principled objection and even an איסור חמור was accepted by charedi Jewry, despite the fact that the 2 greatest manhigim of charedi Jewry (the Chazon Ish and Reb Chaim Ozer) wrote extensively that this isn't true, but rather it is a practical matter which needs to be constantly reassessed and reevaluated as to what is best for Yiddishkeit.
If you actually read the Milchamos Hashem it's anything but scholarly and "asking honest questions". It's not respectful at all, but a sarcastic mocking attack on Kabbalah (not just the Zohar) and is every bit as nasty as those curses. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
But I'm not here to justify the curses or defend Kabbalah, that you rightly point out has very little relevance for the typical mainstream Jew (well, unless you label any mainstream practices that are propounded by believers in kabbalah as automatically guilty by association as stemming from kabbalah, like you did with hataras nedarim, and like you did with *saying tehillim*, and probably many other things...) Just to correct what I perceived to be an inaccuracy.
I've read around half of Mechamos Hashem and I'm very comfortable with the level of scholarship and reasonable tone. He is often harsh in his criticism, but I don't feel it crosses a line away from scholarship. Having said that, I do have the impression that R' Kafah often quoted sources from memory so it's a good idea to look them all up.
Ok, you may be comfortable with his invective type "scholarship", and other people may disagree and say he crossed the line, and yet other people may be comfortable with the curses against him. I guess כך היא דרכה של תורה!
>> Must One Believe That the Zohar Is Authoritative?
It seems indicative that you have chosen to ask that particular question, instead of posing the much more direct question:
Is the Zohar authoritative?
I may get to that one in a future post. :)
And just by the way... It seems that Rabbi Yosef Kafeh whom you mentioned has a very interesting תלמיד מובהק, Rabbi David bar-Hayim, living and teaching in Israel. Definitely not your run of the mill דתי rabbi/ posek. If you are not familiar with him and his work, it might behoove you to check him out. There is a detailed Wikipedia page.
I'm a follower of his. He is an incredible man and has a pretty long shiur proving the zohar was not written by Rav Shimon Bar Yochai
Then why do you call yourself a settler? If you are a follower of הרב בר-חיים, then you haven't settled. On the contrary, you've gotten one of the best there is.
You didn't mention his son, R Yosef Kafih's father, R Dovid, who was killed after being assaulted by a local in Yemen. Not that it would disprove your conclusion, but doesn't fit you last paragraph
Dr. Shn. Leiman has brought proof that significant parts of the Zohar date at least as far back as early 5th century
Once one ascribes divinity to something without evidence, the argument is already lost. There's absolutely no evidence that the zohar is anything other than a forgery by Moshe DeLeon. The zohar is based on the ramblings of gnostic theosophists and pagan christian charlatans. It is alien to Torah. It doesn't contain any useful info on how to live a purposeful life as a Jew in this world: sephiroth, magic incantations, necromancy, Tanach misquotes, errant statements about all kinds of things. If the zohar is true then the Torah is false.
Tell me you never read the Zohar without telling me you never read the Zohar.
Tell me you have no problem offering a definitive opinion with zero knowledge about the subject matter without telling me you have no problem offering a definitive opinion with zero knowledge about the subject matter.
"Tell me you’ve never read Milchamot Hashem, Ari Nohem, or the authentic writings of Chazal without telling me you've never read them.
But please, continue preaching about the Zohar’s ‘depth’ — it's adorable watching someone mistake esoteric gibberish and medieval forgeries for divine wisdom. I assure you, familiarity with Gnostic tropes and post-biblical mythology doesn’t qualify as knowing Torah.
Some of us actually did the homework before forming an opinion."
know it’s easier to chant slogans like "You just don't understand!" than to actually confront substantive criticism. It saves you the trouble of grappling with the fact that the Zohar’s language, historical anachronisms, and content are about as authentic to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai as a Renaissance fair is to ancient Rome.
But hey — if your ego can't handle people questioning your sacred cows, maybe *you're* the one who needs to do some reading. And no, I don’t mean another sweet little 'Zohar 101' drasha at your local kabalacafé. If you’re going to dish out snark, at least bring a spoon bigger than a toddler’s teacup.
So instead of answering the point, you changed the subject.
Deft move.
But the issue was your statement that 'It doesn't contain any useful info on how to live a purposeful life as a Jew in this world'.
That showed that you never learned the Zohar in your life.
It also seems that you never learned the rebuttals to the Ari Nohem. (Milchamos Hashem does not need a rebuttal, it is on a cheder yingel's level of scholarship.)
Sorry for slaughtering your holy cow, but he was a gosses anyway.
For me the biggest sticking point if we look at it is:
What's the goal? To influence God?
It's a battle between "Does God care what we do" and "Does God not care what we do?". Usually people divide this into religious vs secular, with secular folks pointing out the absurdity of doing things asked if not rewarded or otherwise cared for or impacting the Asker.
On the one hand we have quotes like "I am not man that I can change my mind"...and on the other hand you have things like the Gemara about R. Eliezer and "my children have defeated me" (which troubles me tbh since we all recognize Talmud as purely man-made even if ascribed societal authority for halachic policy, thus strengthening the Karaite and Shomroni claims about rabbis making up their own thing ).
If we say kabbalah, with all it's ideas about influencing God, matters, where's that coming from? What's it's basis? How do we relate to a God that says He's X but our rabbis tell us in certain rabbi-made texts Y and Z?
And then there is the magical thinking that has been clearly proven over 500(800?) years to not accomplish squat. The Golem of Prague never stopped the Nazis. The BST couldn't overthrow the Czar and return 'Am Yisrael to the Land. The chassidic rebbes died like everyone else in the Shoah and suffered the same Pale misery as the lowest Jew they claimed to raise the hopes of. The kabbalah never stopped 1492 Alhambra decree or the Inquisition that lasted in the New World until the 1850s. Kabbalah and Chassidut of the Crusades period didn't stop rampaging Crusaders either. So.....................what's this stuff conferring that regular halacha isn't?
An intellectual framework to understand how all those things you listed can happen and still be an integral part of G-d's benevolent plan. Halacha doesn't do any of that.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, study the Ramchal's Daas Tevunos.
.........which fails to answer for the מעשה side of kabbalah, the most common and pushed part.
It's one thing to think about levels and movements of spiritual stuff and all that. It's another to do random behaviors or anti-halachic things because of it and teach others to do the same. Example: tefillin on hol hamoed from the kabbalistic reason for why.
I dispute both your points:
The מעשה side is decidedly NOT the most common and pushed part in my experience. Maybe it's promoted by people to more general audiences outside the Beis midrash. Do you have names?
(I haven't heard of anyone teleporting to escape danger since Rav Chaim Vital, and even then, he was criticized for avoiding his destiny by doing so.)
I never knew tefillin on chol hamoed is "anti-halachic". I was told it is a machlokes rishonim and it's a good thing to be machmir in private.
What does it mean to mahmir in private? To wear or not?
Technically, it's a mahlokes rishonim, just as whether to wait between meat and milk is, but what actually happened is that the mahlokes was settled in favour of wearing, and then various authorities overturned this consensus purely, based purely on the Zohar.
To wear in private to avoid issues of lo sis'godedu that Gersh apparently encountered in his shul.
On the part of מעשה btw, there is more than just if you wear tefillin during keter yitenu/bring din on yourself during chol hamoed. People push off kiddush between certain hours because it's not auspicious between halachic 6 and 7. People have added things like "לעולם '' דבריך ניצב בשמיים" in RH/Kippur liturgy and they say it 8x and other things as if it's going to hold off God's wrath or some such.
People very much believe in ideas directly derived from, or said in the name of, Zohar and apply them to life. Shulchan Aruch even has moments where he chooses in favor of kabbalah for halachic outcome rather than his "2 of 3". How can you be honest and call this "not pushed as part of the common man's practice" ???
I'm sorry, I thought what you meant by "מעשה" was in the context of your original comment--that kabbalah should have been used in the physical world as a kind of "white magic" to save Jews from calamities. My misunderstanding. Of course I agree that kabbalah has been employed to inform halachic and liturgical practice. Nothing new there, and its all over the Mogen Avraham so its totally mainstream. I don't see what's objectionable about it as long as people don't start fights about it.
I think you also understood correctly.
Whether it's white magic by big names or the common man's cure-all, it has zero efficacy entirely because of calamities. The excuse that it "violates רצון שמיים" to use it that way fails to hold water when people do it in less important cases like kapparot, where individuals do it to save themselves from harsh punishment. Why does the individual get to but the 'Am cannot be saved from the Nazi war machine, the cossack, the Almoravid, and so on?
All the more so I ask what good such knowledge is if you cannot even use it by the will of that Who supposedly lets it exist but doesn't want it used.
>MA did it so it's OK now
:/ I don't buy that....and the problem is that people *do* start fights about it. Like I said in the other comment, I've nearly had fist fights from heated individuals who told me I was bringing din on the minyan because I wore tefillin during moed. I've also heard of other people making a big deal about other things like not saying Birech Shmei.... Might be some segments and not all, but, people who care about kabbalah certainly do have this unpleasantness.
Out there in "real world land", beyond your own BM, people very much do push it. They push it to women as something to interest and occupy them and keep them from Talmud trends. They push it to gerim and baalei teshuva to keep them interested since everyone feels "too much rules" is a scary way to get people to keep mitzvot and learn Torah.
Specifically Aish, Chabad, maybe Ohr Samaych and all the Carlebachian breakaway things go this direction.
>Tefillin
There are those who claim in the name of the Zohar that it brings din to wear them. Now, I do wear them myself because of Rambamist leanings and because I think the usual halachic example for why not is bullshit. For whatever reason not being able to write them means you shouldn't wear them either, which flies in the face of logic and the obvious "Rambam specifies the other times you cannot wear them so why didn't he include it?".
I don't go to shul on moed because I've nearly been in fights over my tefillin.
They certainly do NOT push kabbalah in Ohr Someach. That I can tell you from experience. Maybe do a little more research and a little less speculation before making these broad generalizations.
Tefillin on Chol Hamoed is just another machlokes rishonim. Walking into a Shul that adopted one opinion and loudly pushing the other opinion in their faces is against halacha. Even if you are sure the halacha of tefillin is on your side, you are still doing the wrong thing by doing so.
Besides, from a derech eretz perspective it is also an obnoxious thing to do.
Davka not the difference between chareidim and non-chareidm. Rav Kook was very busy with kabbalah as are many of his talmidim, and most litvish chareidim have nothing to do with it. You are talking about a particular rationalist/academic strain of Modern Orthodoxy that in many cases doesn't believe in the Chumash or Chazal or Halacha either, the Zohar/kabbalh is just the cherry on the top.
I once asked the smartest kollel guy I know who wrote the Zohar, he said 'whatever the frum view is ... Avraham Avinu' and shrugged his shoulders. This is probably the best attitude to have if you have no special interest in the topic and are happy socially in a Charedi community,
I think that is basically the mainstream attitude. Everybody "knows" it is from Rashbi but this is not an important point since nobody learns it. And among the tiny percentage that take an interest in learning kabbalah (among intelligent people, not certain types who daven the Zohar), they generally know that this attribution is... controversial
My impression is that everyone who is into Chareidi machshavah, which is a substantial group of the yeshivah world, certainly takes it for granted that the Zohar is authentic (meaning originates from Chazal and not made up by Moshe De Leon) and authoritative and not controversial.
Without the authenticity of the Zohar, you lose the Ramchal, the Vilna Gaon, Nefesh Hachayim, and all chassidish machshava seforim!
What's left of Chareidi Machshavah?
I don't understand. Why is this unique to chareidi machshava? Non-chareidim don't learn the Gra and the Ramchal? And conversely, are chareidim who are not into machshava are any less chareidi? While machshava has gotten more popular in recent years, I'm pretty sure it's still a minority who study it seriously (Mesilas Yesharim doesn't count).
I also disagree with your point about machshava students. If they care so much about the Zohar, why don't they learn it? Clearly it's really the thoughts of the Ramchal, the Vilna Gaon, and the Nefesh Hachayim they are interested in, not the Zohar itself. I contend that even if you were to show them many parts of the Zohar are of incontrovertibly medieval origin, they wouldn't lose faith in the Gra and the Ramchal, but would assume these figures knew to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I have no idea who else is into the Gra and Ramchal's machshava. Maybe it would apply to them too. I'm just talking from my backyard.
In my experience, Nefesh Hachayim is the backbone of every serious litvish talmid chochom's hashkafa which is packed with Zohars in virtually every chapter. True, many glide over it because they aren't proficient in the style, but try to tell them the Zohar isn't authentic and they'll be at your throat.
Maybe if you show that every Zohar cited by these seforim are authentic but the rest is not, you may get a pass. I doubt it.
Mess around and find out--as the saying goes.
Why do you lose it?
This is a strange thing to say. Are the Chassam Sofer, the Nodah BiYehuda not Charedi?
Conversely, the Ramhal isn't even part of any reasonable definition of mesorah. He was rejected by the European rabbinate, had to relocate multiple times, and his books were not read until the Mussar movement.
Sure they are Chareidi, but I'm talking contemporary Chareidi Hashkafa as taught in yeshivos today. Mesorah is an afterthought. Maybe some Chassidim learn Chasam Sofer, but the Zohar is still king in all the Litvish and Chassidish machshava seforim I know of..
From my experience the people most interested in it are the people who wanted hand-wavey woo woo magical thinking and not really the people who would hack out an analysis of a sugya of Gemara.
Those who need solutions to real life problems and perceived problems draw from it to rationalize their worldview in a harsh and unfair world.
Those who don't need it, and don't need to fight it, don't care and don't touch it.
Those who, like Mekori folks and the Baladi movement of Teimanim, *need* to fight it to justify personal and received practices. It's an unfortunate need but when the social fabric bunches and tears over something the kabbalah says you have 2 choices: do what they do or defend what you do.
Right, and those academic types are quite likely to reject the Chumash and Chazal as well, at least the way we accept them.
Rabbi Clinton is one of a kind and doesn't in any way represent non chareidim or anybody other than himself.
I have to agree with happy here. My experience is in bar ilan, and the general attitude amongst the DL academics is decidedly not Maimonidean, and even amongst the mainstream DL (who are often very different than the academics they produce) it's either an adoption of the historical critical method at least towards chazal (if not Tanakh), or a focus on Biblical themes and only viewing chazal through the lens of Tanakh (which is the basis for much of the nationalism, Zionism, and collective consciousness, not Rav Kook's fringe kabbalistic views.
There are some other others out there, of different permutations;mostly dinosaurs though
True about the "rationalists " I doubt the chareidi IDF position has anything to do with the Zohar and kabbalah. Ponovezh Slobidka and the Mir are not famed for their strong kabbalah study programs. It has to do with secularization as you yourself have pointed out on occasion.
What is so hard to comprehend about the charedi stance on army service? This https://scottkahn.substack.com/p/the-thirteen-articles-of-belief-chareidi/comment/105786721 explains it very simply.
The same goes for the reason why Charedim don't emigrate to EY. The risks (due to דקדוקי עניות, as Reb Yisroel Salanter famously cautioned, and due to culture shock) are too great.
If anything the DL community seems to be relying on a nes, with their fantasies of beating all the Arabs today. The Charedi strategy seems clear, to slowly win the demographic war, both in the Levant and in the American electorate. Yes, it sadly takes time, but without a miracle things naturally take time.
I'm not sure what Boruch Clinton believes, but Rav Hirsch never challenged the Zohar and he used Kabbalistic concepts as the basis for some of his ideas.
Curious if you ever read Rav Hirsch's Nineteen Letters? I think they were very well accepted in Lita (especially in the Bais Yaakov movement).
As I've written elsewhere (https://marbitz.com/home/rabbi-s-r-hirsch/finding-tradition-in-the-modern-torah-world/between-frankfurt-and-tzfas/), R' Hirsch was (reasonably) explicit about his thoughts on modern kabbala in both letters 10 and 18 from Nineteen Letters.
Exactly what I'm saying.
I'm not sure how "but it was also unfortunately misunderstood; the eternal progressive development which it taught came to be considered a static mechanism, and what was to be understood as inner perception was seen as external dreamworlds...but, as it was misconstrued, the practice of Judaism was interpreted to be a form of magical mechanistic manipulation, a means of influencing or resisting theosophic worlds and anti-worlds." is quite "exactly" what you were saying. In his gentle way, R' Hirsch was quite open with his thoughts about early modern kabbalisitc
writing.
I agree with you that this is an important differentiation between charedi and non-charedi mindsets. Although I'm not convinced that directly arguing with charedim about the authenticity question would be productive enough to make any difference: their sunk costs (i.e., their sense that all of their gedolim have always and completely embraced Zohar/kabbala) are too strong to dislodge.
>> I'm not convinced that directly arguing ...
>>would be productive enough
Since when is it a precondition for arguing that it be productive? 🤔
>I think they view the Baal Shem Tov and Arizal as having ruach hakodesh and thus able to overrule Talmud etc
Sorry, but no Litvish gadol would agree to such a statement. Personally, I think such a statement goes against Litvish Charedi theology more than anything Boruch Clinton believes in.
I hear.
I'm sorry.
Or perhaps, sometimes, the heat of an argument is inversely proportional to the confidence one has in the product he's defending.
SK -
Why used to? It seems alive and well, maybe more than ever before. (In terms of the sheer numbers of people doing it, definitely more than ever before.)
But about those denominations. You mean, like, $5, $20, and $50 bills?
That's not only goyim. 😉
I'm not quite following you. But thanks for sharing those thoughts!