Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T15:39:18.342Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

8 - The Recanonization of the Zohar in the Modern Era

Boaz Huss
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Get access

Summary

If one turns to the writings of the great kabbalists one seldom fails to be torn between alternate admiration and disgust.

Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 36

AS THE ZOHAR lost its status of sanctity and authority within maskilic circles, its positive symbolic value was preserved in the communities that rejected modern European culture (or were exposed to it to a lesser degree). Yet even within these communities, especially in eastern Europe, engagement in kabbalah in general, and study of the Zohar in particular, were restricted. These restrictions stemmed partially from the opposition of earlier scholars to the free dissemination of the Zohar (see Chapter 6), and possibly from the arguments of the maskilim against the work itself (see Chapter 7).

Meanwhile, calls for a positive re-evaluation of the Zohar and kabbalah were sounded in Jewish circles that adopted Romantic, neo-Romantic, and nationalistic ideologies at the turn of the century. The endeavour of these circles to reappraise the Zohar as a literary, philosophical, and ‘mystical’ text, and to grant it a central place in modern Jewish culture, succeeded to a certain extent. The reason they met with limited success was that their recanonization attempt was rooted in a modern perspective that had an ambivalent view of kabbalah, and of traditional Jewish communities which continued to maintain kabbalistic and hasidic traditions. The ambivalent recanonization of the Zohar was fused, as it were, with ‘admiration and disgust’—expressions used by Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem— determining, at least until recently, the attitude towards kabbalah and the Zohar within modern Jewish and Israeli cultures.

As I pointed out in the previous chapter, notwithstanding the fierce criticism of nineteenth-century maskilim several Jewish philosophers and scholars in western Europe related favourably to the kabbalah and the Zohar. A fine example of this sympathetic approach is Adolphe Franck, a French Jewish scholar of law and philosophy, who, in his book La Kabbale, ou la philosophie religieuse des hébreux, dedicates several chapters to the examination of the Zohar's antiquity, description of its hermeneutical system, and analysis of its religious doctrine. Franck argued that the Zohar was, indeed, based on R. Shimon's teachings, which had initially been transmitted orally, then transcribed, and finally redacted in the thirteenth century.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×