The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200 (review)

The thirteenth-century Spanish Jewish mystical classic Sefer ha-Zohar interprets the biblical matriarch Rachel’s death in a manner distinct from earlier Jewish literature. Borrowing elements from Christianity, it presents a narrative that mirrors Christ’s Passion, encouraging readers to compare and evaluate Jewish and Christian truth claims in relation to each other. Such comparison reveals a subtle but strategic critique of medieval Western Christianity’s anti-Jewish polemic, which developed in innovative ways during the period of the Zohar’s composition. Additionally, the Zohar’s correlation of the feminine Rachel with the masculine Christ offers insight into differences between medieval and modern assumptions regarding gendered symbols. In the thirteenth-century Spanish Jewish mystical classic Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Splendor), the biblical matriarch Rachel’s death in childbirth (Genesis 35:16 –19) receives unusual treatment. The Zohar’s kabbalistic authors interpret Rachel’s departure from the world as a critical moment for Jewish self-definition. Rachel’s bearing of Benjamin completes the twelve tribal ancestors and manifests the Divine Presence in the world, establishing the Kingdom of Heaven among the Israelites. 1 The matriarch’ s suffering and death necessarily precede these events. This interpretation of Rachel’s death is distinct from earlier Jewish literature and borrows many elements from Christianity, including the themes of suffering, death, divine manifestation, and establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. 2 Indeed, the Zoharic authors use Rachel’s death to rebut claims of Jesus’s divine and messianic status, reclaim authority for the twelve tribes of Israel from the

The Death of Rachel and the Kingdom of Heaven: Jewish Engagement with Christian Themes in Sefer ha-Zohar

This paper reveals one of the most unique Zoharic Shema mysteries identified as “Rav Hamnuna Sabba's Mystery of Unity” [רזא דיחודא דרב המנונא סבא]. This mystery is deeply connected to two narrative figures in Zoharic literature: The Yanuka (the Zoharic wunderkind) and the Saba (the wise old man). This paper argues that various poetic aspects of these two figures illuminate the theosophic and mystical contents of their homilies as can be shown in the various homilies of the Yanuka and Saba on their unique Shema mystery.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0364009413000251

“The Mystery of Unity”: Poetic and Mystical Aspects of a Unique Zoharic Shema Mystery

This essay suggests that the unusual literary images of kabbalistic texts have a material goal: the production of kabbalists. By examining the rhetorical strategies that drive kabbalistic image production and the processes by which images transform mindful readers, this work demonstrates that Kabbalah's images function within elaborate symbolic networks whose purpose is to produce a contemplative, and ultimately transformative, spirituality. The essay elaborates this claim with insights from anthropology and psychoanalytic performance theory, and defends it with readings of passages from Sefer hazohar that demonstrate two specific rhetorical strategies: the image series and the kabbalistic \"mixed metaphor.\

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/PFT.2008.28.3.335

Metaphor, Transformation, and Transcendence: Toward an Understanding of Kabbalistic Imagery in Sefer hazohar

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Metaphor, Transformation, and Transcendence: Toward an Understanding of Kabbalistic Imagery in Sefer hazohar