A_mind-blowing_project_zoharic_aramaic

CHAPTER FOURTEEN A “MIND-BLOWING” PROJECT: ZOHARIC ARAMAIC FOR BEGINNERS JUDY BARRETT AND JUSTIN JARON LEWIS Justin Jaron Lewis Standing in the presence of the truly great induces humility. Opening Gershom Scholem?s classic Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism to look up a quotation, I saw the first words of his preface to the first edition, written in 1941: “More than twenty years have passed since I began to devote myself to the study of Jewish mysticism and especially of Kabbalism.” Moments earlier, I had begun writing a first draft of this article, which mentioned that I have been studying and teaching about the Zohar for around 30 years. During that time, I have not even read the entire Zohar. Scholem, in the 20 years that he mentioned, had read every Kabbalistic and pre-Kabbalistic book and manuscript available, shaped a whole new academic field around these studies, and written Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, which introduced the Zohar to generations of readers, including, about 30 years ago, me.1 The quotation I was looking for in his book was the following: The story is told of Rabbi Phineas of Koretz, a famous Hasidic saint (died about 1791) who was wont to praise and thank God because he had not been born while the Zohar was still unknown to the world; h`d xdef xrc orc hiiwyicii iia ohl`dxrc jin ) for the Zohar has helped me to remain a Jew).2 _______________________________________________________________________ 1 Scholem’s influence on the study of Kabbalah continues to be overwhelming to the point that some find it suffocating. See Shaul Magid, “‘The king is dead [and has been for three decades], long live the king:’ Contemporary Kabbalah and Scholem’s Shadow.” Jewish Quarterly Review 102, 1 (2012): 131-53. 2 Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (3rd revised edition) (New York: Schocken, 1961), 156-157. I have substituted Yiddish for the German.

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I have often felt this way, because of the adventure of reading the Zohar, that was sparked by Gershom Scholem’s writings. It was Gershom Scholem who unknowingly planted the seed for the project described here, in his remark on the Aramaic language of the Zohar: “the author’s vocabulary is extremely limited, so that one never escapes a feeling of surprise at his ability to express so much with the aid of so little.” 3

This observation, backed up by other scholars,4 stayed with me. When I began to read the Zohar in the original, I too was struck by its repetitiveness and recurrent turns of phrase. In 2003, while teaching the topic of Kabbalah to students at Queen’s University who had no background in Judaism, it occurred to me that the Aramaic of the Zohar is simple enough to teach to beginners who have no knowledge of Hebrew. I enjoy wild ideas -- the Zohar has many of them -- so this thought stayed with me, even though discussions of reading the Zohar in the original normally make the tacit assumption that the reader already knows Hebrew. Years later, now at the University of Manitoba, I mentioned this idea to a class of students (none Jewish) who were studying Kabbalah with me in the winter semester of 2011. They were intrigued, and encouraged me to actually offer a course on the Zohar’s Aramaic. I did so in Autumn 2011 and the following semester, taking half a dozen students who had no knowledge at all of Semitic languages, exposing them to the Zohar only for my one-semester Kabbalah course, with the aim of being able to puzzle out the meanings of brief passages of Zohar in the original and enjoy the experience. To prepare for this course, during the summer of 2011, I began work on a draft textbook. I applied (fruitlessly) for funding for the project. I also tried to publicise the upcoming course to the Jewish community. This led to an article by Rebecca Kuropatwa which appeared in the Jewish Tribune, a Canadian print and online newspaper, under the title “Aramaic Getting New Life.”5 This report was picked up by the erudite blog PaleoJudaica, whose author James R. Davila commented, “I am mind-blown at the _____________________________________________________________ transliteration in the original. Scholem’s source is M. J. Guttman, qgpt epiax zxez urx`wn ) Bilgoraj, 1931), 26. 3 Scholem, Major. Trends, 164. 4 For example, David Blumenthal, Understanding Jewish Mysticism: A Source Reader: The Merkabah Tradition and the Zoharic Tradition (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 1978), 112 states: “The Aramaic vocabulary [...] evidences a curious poverty and simplicity. As soon as one has read thirty pages of the original, one knows the language of the whole book well enough.” 5 September 13, 2011, http://www.jewishtribune.ca/uncategorized/2011/09/13/aramaic-getting-new-life

A “Mind-Blowing” Project thought of teaching zoharic Aramaic as an introductory Aramaic course to students who don't even have Hebrew. But I hope the course is very successful.”6 This, in turn, came to the attention of independent scholar Judy Barrett, who has taken the project in a whole new direction. Volunteering her services to help me develop a textbook, Judy soon saw the need for a practical dictionary of the Aramaic of the Zohar and she has poured her

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considerable intelligence and energy into creating one. In Summer 2014, we launched a website, The Aramaic Language of the Zohar (aramaiczohar.wordpress.com) to present some of this work to the world. I am the webmaster, designing the site within the options provided and uploading content, and Judy Barrett is the author. A dictionary of the Haqdamah to the Zohar (its opening pages, I.1a-14b) is available to everyone on this site, a foretaste of the complete dictionary of the whole Zohar, which is near completion. We are exploring possibilities for publishing the complete dictionary, which will be a resource of enormous importance. I have asked Judy Barrett to fill in the background of this great endeavour, also, as it turns out, inspired by Gershom Scholem. Judy Barrett In his 1925 letter to Hayyim Bialik, Gershom Scholem listed as a desideratum a dictionary of the Zohar.7 Almost every decade since then, scholars have repeated his call for a dictionary and for more grammatical work.8 Ninety years later, there is still no dictionary of the Zohar in any language, and the only grammar -- the 1953 dissertation of an Israeli _______________________________________________________________ 6 Davila, “A new course on Zoharic Aramaic at U. Manitoba,” posted September 15, 2011, Thursday, September 15, 2011: http://paleojudaica.blogspot.ca/2011_09_11_archive.html#8832164139222977641 7 Gershom Scholem, Devarim be-Go (Hebrew) vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1976), 59-63. 8 Isaiah Tishby, ed. and trans. and Yeruham Lahover, trans., Mishnat haZohar, 2 vols. (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1949), henceforth: Tishby, Mishnat haZohar; Gershom Scholem, Major Trends; Menahem Kaddari, Diqduq haLashon ha-Aramit shel haZohar (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Qiryat Sefer, 1971), xi; Yehuda Liebes, “Chapters in the Lexicon of the Zohar,” (Hebrew) (PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977). 6-7; Boaz Huss, “Bei'ur ha-Millim haZarot she-be-Sefer haZohar,” (Hebrew) Kabbalah 1 (1996): 167-204; Ada Rapoport-Albert and Theodore Kwasman, “Late Aramaic: The Literary and Linguistic Context of the Zohar,” Aramaic Studies, 4(1) ( 2006): 5-19, especially13.

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scholar (published as Kaddari, 1971) -- remains out of print and untranslated.9 So, the two most basic reference tools for learning a language still do not exist for the English reader who wishes to study zoharic Aramaic. Nor has there been published a list of the most frequent words in the Zohar; paradigms of verbs, nouns, or pronouns; concordances; or glossaries. What is a learner to do? Understanding the Words

The 20th century Canadian philosopher, Bernard Lonergan, wrote a massive study of insight and its role in human understanding in any endeavour.10 His follow-up work identified four insights in interpreting any text: 1) understanding the object to which the text refers; 2) understanding the words; 3) understanding the author who employed the words; 4) arriving at such understanding through a process of learning.11 Here our concern is with understanding the words of the Zohar. Before questions about the symbolic meaning of a word, there is the question of grasping what a word refers to. This is a matter of vocabulary acquisition, in which a word is both distinguished as a part of speech and its general meaning is understood. So, there follows a review of the literature that enables learners to acquire some vocabulary for the Aramaic of the Zohar, albeit in a piecemeal fashion, and scattered within multiple sources in English and Hebrew. English Resources 1. Dictionaries of Babylonian Jewish Aramaic Many learners, one suspects, begin with the text of Reuven Margaliot 12 and the dictionaries of Marcus Jastrow13 and/or Michael Sokoloff.14 _____________________________________________________________________ 9 Kaddari, Diqduq ha-Lashon ha-Aramit shel haZohar (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Qiryat Sefer, 1971). 10 Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. (New York: Harper & Row, 1959). 11 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), 155. 12 Reuven Margaliot, Sefer haZohar al hamishah humshei Torah (Hebrew) 3 vols. 3rd edition (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1964). 13 Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903). (http://www.tyndalearchive.com/tabs/jastrow/) http://www.tyndalearchive.com/tabs/jastrow/)

A “Mind-Blowing” Project Jastrow, although superseded by Sokoloff, has the virtue of being accessible online. This ease of access hastens the task of identifying the perhaps 60% of the Zohar's vocabulary which derives from the Babylonian Talmud, the Targumim, and the Midrashim.15 But neither dictionary can answer how that vocabulary is used in a 13th century mystical corpus. Sokoloff, in particular, cannot help with the Hebrew vocabulary which is mingled with the Zohar’s Aramaic. 2. Aramaic Studies 4.1 (2006)

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There has been little material available which treats the language of the Zohar -- with some exceptions. First, Shalom Pushinski examined the noun `¨riih© in rabbinic, midrashic, and geonic sources, along with its use in the Zohar. However, from his studies he maintained the “antiquity of the Zohar”16 and as a result Scholem dismissed his philology.17 Most significant are three articles in the journal, Aramaic Studies, 4.1 (2006): Yehuda Liebes on “Hebrew and Aramaic as Languages of the Zohar,” (35-52); Charles Mopsik on “Late Judeo-Aramaic: The Language of Theosophic Kabbalah,” (21-33); and Ada Rapoport-Albert and Theodore Kwasman on “Late Aramaic: The Literary and Linguistic Context of the Zohar,” (5-19). With access to subscribing university library databases, or through RAMBI,18 the full texts of all three may be downloaded. They provide lexical information on a selected few roots, nouns, and verbs and so are to be prized. Why is their publication significant? In 2003, Aramaic Studies succeeded The Journal for the Aramaic Bible (started in 1999). It was realised that there were “other phases and dialects” of Aramaic beyond “the Peshita, the Targums, and other Aramaic Bible versions.”19 At last, a ________________________________________________________________ 14 Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1990; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). 15 See Kaddari, Diqduq, 146 note 3. Although Kaddari bases his percentages on an analysis of Zohar II.71b-77a, it is here taken as a representative sample for the time being. 16 Shalom Pushinski, “Le-Heqer Sefat haZohar,” (Hebrew) Yavneh 2 (1940): 140147 especially 143 note 20. 17 Gershom Scholem, Major Trends, 388 note 46. 18 The Index to Articles in Jewish Studies: jnul.huji.ac.il/rambi/ 19 Willem Smelik and Bas Ter Haar Romeny, “Publication announcement: Aramaic Studies: A journal for the Aramaic Bible and more.” 2003. Online at: http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye/Vol6No1/HV6N1PRRomeny.html

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receptive mainstream forum in English for exploring zoharic Aramaic exists. Nothing more on zoharic Aramaic has appeared in Aramaic Studies since 2006. However, the Rapoport-Albert article mentions both a sequel article and a larger research project through University College London (UCL).20 A conference of that five-year project was held at UCL in 2009.21 Its proceedings are apparently forthcoming through Brill under the title Late Aramaic: the Literary and Linguistic Context of the Zohar, edited by Ada Rapoport-Albert and Willem Smelik.22 May that publication come speedily and in our time!

3. Daniel Matt?s Partial Zohar Dictionary In 2011, Daniel Matt kindly shared with us his personal working dictionary of the Zohar. In 2014 he posted this resource online (at the time of writing, it is at: http://sefer-ha-zohar.blogspot.com/) in three parts. This is the first ever publication of its kind. With about 775 entries, it follows the English alphabetical order of transliterated words and roots. It includes, for the first time, translations of eight zoharic neologisms. 4. English Translations of the Zohar A detailed survey of English translations is given by Don Karr.23 Approximately two-thirds of the Zohar was translated into English by Sperling, Simon, and Levertoff. Known as the Soncino Zohar,24 it has been criticised for omitting whole sections, paraphrasing, and glossing over passages deemed difficult.25 For these reasons, it may be of dubious value for determining the meaning of Aramaic words. _________________________________________________________________ 20 Ada Rapoport-Albert and Theodore Kwasman, “Late Aramaic,” 5-6 and 11 note 13. 21 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/research/rae-2008/61/ra5a-61.pdf, see pages 1, 3; http://esswe.blogspot.com/2009/10/literary-and-linguistic-context-of.html 22 http://www.academia.edu/4139788/Late_Aramaic_The_Literary_and_Linguistic _Context_of_the_Zohar_edited_together_ _with_Ada_Rapoport-Albert_forthcoming 23 Don Karr, “Notes on the Zohar in English.” Online at: www.digitalbrilliance.com/kab/karr/zie.pdf 24 H. Sperling, M. Simon, and P. Levertoff, translators, The Zohar 5 vols. (London: Soncino Press, 1931-1934). 25 Daniel Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), vol. 1, xix.

A “Mind-Blowing” Project Large portions of the Zohar, arranged topically with extensive scholarly introductions, were published in 3 volumes by Isaiah Tishby and David Goldstein.26 An expansion of Tishby’s Mishnat haZohar,27 it has an index and its footnotes often contain lexical information. In a unique category is Daniel Matt?s translation of and commentary on the Zohar, known as The Pritzker Edition.28 His copious footnotes are now the major resource for understanding the meaning of words in zoharic Aramaic. Foreign words and neologisms are printed in Aramaic and transliterated in the footnotes. Matt and his collaborators have currently translated and annotated the Zohar in twelve volumes, including the rest of volume III, an assortment of discrete zoharic compositions -- Heikhalot,

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Piqqudim, Raza deRazin, Sitrei Otiyot, Qav haMiddah, a commentary on Merkevet Yehezqel, Midrash haNe'elam, Matnitin, Tosefta, Zohar Hadash; and an index.29 5. Scholarship in English Chapter Five of Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism was long the sole source for discussion of some of the Zohar’s Aramaic lexicon. The translation of three Hebrew papers by the esteemed scholar Yehuda Liebes, in the book, Studies in the Zohar, brought his work to a larger audience.30 Unfortunately, the book omits much of the extended philology of his footnotes from the original. Ronit Meroz of Tel Aviv University has generously shared many of her papers online, in both English and Hebrew. This makes her enormous erudition freely available.31 Eliot Wolfson has done the same.32 Pinchas Giller’s Reading the Zohar33 and Nathan Wolski’s A Journey into the Zohar34 have many _________________________________________________________ 6 Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, 3vols. trans. David Goldstein (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1989). 27 I. Tishby ed. and trans. and Yeru?hm Lahover, trans., Mishnat haZohar, (Hebrew) 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1949-1960). 28 Daniel Matt, ed. and trans., The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). 29 [TM, ed. adds: The final volume has appeared: Nathan Wolski and Joel Hecker, trans. The Zohar: Pritzker Edition vol. 12 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017)]. 30 Yehuda Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, translators Arnold Schwartz, Stephanie Nakache and Penina Peli (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993). 31 http://humanities.tau.ac.il/segel/rmeroz/ 32 https://files.nyu.edu/erw1/public/scholarship.html 33 Pinchas Giller, Reading the Zohar: The Sacred Text of the Kabbalah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 2

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nuggets for the alert reader. Melila Hellner-Eshed’s translation and revised edition of her doctoral dissertation similarly has many gems.35 Hebrew Resources 1. Dictionaries The Arukh, by Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome (1035-c.1110),36 gives the meaning and etymology of some words in the Talmuds and Midrashim, including Aramaic. However, he still treated words as constituted by unilateral or bilateral consonantal roots, contrary to the understanding of trilateral roots already being worked out in his time.37

The Arukh haShalem, based on multiple manuscripts of the Arukh, was edited by Alexander Kohut in eight volumes (1878-92).38 An important achievement of 19th century lexicography, it too underwent revision and supplementation.39 2. The Dissertation of Yehuda Liebes The foremost resource in Hebrew is the 1977 dissertation of Yehuda Liebes, Peraqim be-Millon Sefer haZohar, which he most generously made available online.40 In 481 pages it exhaustively treats 20 words, and their roots and use in phrases in the Zohar. As noted by the author, the entry for mc` has 353 sub-entries, and that for seb has 471.41 Each main entry has a general index of related forms and their page numbers. ____________________________________________________ 4 Nathan Wolski, A Journey into the Zohar: An Introduction to the Book of Radiance (New York: State University of New York, 2010). 35 Melila Hellner-Eshed, A River Flows from Eden (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). 36 http://www.hebrewbooks.org/43084 37 Abraham David, “Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome,” Encyclopaedia Judaica edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (2nd ed.) (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007) 15:13-14. 38 http://www.hebrewbooks.org/48229 (to 48236). 39 Shimeon Brisman, A History and Guide to Judaic Dictionaries and Concordances, part 1(Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 2000), 21-24. 40 http://pluto.huji.ac.il/~liebes/zohar/prakim.doc 41 Ibid., 12 note 22. 3

A “Mind-Blowing” Project 3. Lexicons of “Difficult Words”42 We are all indebted to the tireless labour of the people behind www.hebrewbooks.org, which freely provides over 51,000 classical Hebrew works in pdf format. Five relevant lexicons of difficult words or neologisms can be viewed online or downloaded from there. First, Imrei Binah, by Rabbi Issachar Baer of Kremnitz, published in 1611.43 The text is printed in square script and runs from 5a to 42b. Words are arranged by parashah and the Zohar reference is provided. The author translates words into Hebrew, offers an explanation, and gives references to other works by title and folio. The text is mentioned by Tishby44 and there is a one-page overview by Marvin Heller.45 There is more in depth treatment in the dissertation of Andrea Gondos.46 It can sometimes be found printed in the margins of modern editions.47 Second, Yesha Yah, by Isaiah ben Eliezer Hayyim Nizza, published in Venice in 1637.48 The text is printed in rabbinic script and runs from page

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3a to 7a. The lexical items are drawn from “the manuscript of the gaon” and may not all be found in Margaliot’s or Matt’s Aramaic texts of the Zohar.49 The terms are listed under headers arranged alphabetically, though within those headers they are not alphabetical. No Zohar reference (either page or parashah) is provided. Tishby mentions it,50 and Heller has a one-page overview.51 There is more in-depth treatment in the dissertation of Andrea Gondos.52 ____________________________________________________________ 42 Citing Tishby Wisdom of the Zohar, vol. 1, 104 note 23. 45 Marvin Heller, The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 260-261. 46 Andrea Gondos, “Kabbalah in Print: Literary Strategies of Popular Mysticism in Early Modernity” (PhD diss., Concordia University, 2013). See pages 281-290 at: spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977951/1/Gondos_PhD_F2013.pdf. 47 Such as the “travel edition” of v. 1-3 published in Jerusalem by Bitahon in 1973. 48 http://www.hebrewbooks.org/11728 49 For example, Scholem writes in his Card Catalogue that `hn ¨ q¦ is “not in our Zohar” (Card samekh 157), though it is cited in Yesha Yah 5a. 50 I. Tishby, Mishnat haZohar, vol.1, 104 note 23. 51 M. Heller, Hebrew Book, vol. 2, 545. 52 See pages 281-290 at: spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977951/1/Gondos_PhD_F2013.pdf __________________________________________________________

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Third, “Ve-Ye’esof David” in Addendum to Qadmut Sefer haZohar, by David Luria, published in Warsaw in 1837.53 Printed in rabbinic script with main entries in square script, the lexical items run from page 31a-41b (= p.76-85 in pdf format). The Zohar is referenced by parashah and page. Fourth, Sefer haMa'arikh, by Menahem ben Judah de Lonzano, published in Leipzig in 1853.54 Printed in square script, it runs from page 9 to 118. Terms are loosely alphabetical, and the Zohar is referenced by parashah only. Its “foreign words” also derive from the Talmud and Midrashim. Fifth, Miqtzat Millot Zarot she-be-Sefer haZohar has various author attributions, titles, and publications. A reprint by W. Warnheim was published in Qevutzat ha?akhamim (pp.82-87 = 92-97 in pdf) in Vienna in 1861.55 A critical text edited by Boaz Huss appeared in the journal, Kabbalah, under the title “Bei'ur ha-Millim ha-Zarot she-be-sefer haZohar.”56 Printed in square script, words are not alphabetically arranged under their respective headers. There is no reference to the page or parashah in the Zohar. A total of 117 words are listed. 4. The Critical Apparatus of Margaliot

The three volumes of the main corpus of the Zohar and of Zohar Hadash were edited by Reuven Margaliot (1889-1971).57 Prior to Matt’s critical Aramaic text with the Zohar Education Project Inc.,58 Margaliot’s was the standard edition. Its marginal annotations are referenced by superscript letters, and distinguished by brackets (for Derekh Emet), a left parenthesis (for Nitzotzei Zohar), double parentheses (for Nitzotzei Orot), a large letter (for Haggahot Maharhu), or a single bracket (for Haggahot Shelah). ____________________________________________________________ 53 http://www.hebrewbooks.org/34758; “Luria, David ben Judah,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 13:261-262. 54 http://www.hebrewbooks.org/37548; D.S. Loewinger, “Lonzano, Menahem ben Judah de,” Encyclopedia Judaica (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 13:187-88. 55 http://www.hebrewbooks.org/34748 56 Boaz Huss, “Bei'ur ha-Millim ha-Zarot she-be-Sefer haZohar,” (Hebrew) Kabbalah 1 (1996): 167-204. 57 Reuven Margaliot, Zohar Hadash (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1953 reprinted 1978), and Sefer haZohar. 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1964 3rd edition). 58 Matt’s critical edition is online at: http://www.sup.org/zohar/?d=&f=Aramaic_Texts.htm

A “Mind-Blowing” Project a. Derekh Emet has been attributed to Isaac Luria (1534-1572),59 but is anonymous in the bibliography of the Pritzker Edition.60 It comments on selected words, translating them into Hebrew and finding parallels in the Zohar. It is also available in a manuscript from Venice dated 1662.61 b. Nitzotzei Zohar, by Margaliot, provides parallel texts in the Zohar itself and in the Targumim, Midrashim and Talmuds. It also provides translations into Hebrew. Tishby has said that it “contains material of considerable value for a critical study of the Zohar,” but cautions against its attempts to prove an early date of composition.62 It is the only one represented in Zohar Hadash by Margaliot. c. Nitzotzei Orot, by Hayyim David Azulai (1724-1806), comments on difficult portions of the text, much in the style of Rashi’s Talmud commentary. He also translates difficult words into Hebrew. d. Haggahot Maharhu, by Hayyim Vital (1542-1620), is more sparsely represented than those of Luria, Margaliot, or Azulai. It first appears on I.14b, and often discusses textual emendations. e. Haggahot Shelah (or MiShelah), by Isaiah ben Abraham ha-Levi Horowitz (1565?-1630), the author of Shnei Luhot haBrit (Shelah). It also is more sparsely represented, and first appears on I.15a. It consists of glosses on words and phrases.

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5. Contemporary Hebrew Translations A masterful review of translations into various languages is provided by Boaz Huss.63 He discusses each of the following with unparalleled acumen. In 22 volumes, Yehuda Ashlag (1945-1958) translated into Hebrew and provided commentary for the Zohar.64 The text is vocalised in some editions; the commentary is not. Known as the Sullam, or Ladder, for his _________________________________________________________ 59 In the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, “Isaac ben Solomon Ashkenazi Luria (ARI): Influence on Ritual,” online at: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10192-luria#anchor10 60 Daniel Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, vol. 1, 466. 61 http://www.seforimonline.org/seforimdb/pdf/210.pdf 62 I. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, vol. 1, 105. 63 Boaz Huss, “Targumei haZohar,” (Hebrew) in Hidushei Zohar [New Developments in Zohar Studies], ed. Ronit Meroz, Te’udah 21-22 (2007): 33-110. 64 Yehudah Ashlag, trans. and ed. Sefer haZohar -- im peirush haSullam, 22 vols. (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Hevrah Lehotza'at HaZohar, 1945-1958).

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commentary, many readers value it, though Tishby critiqued those explanations which showed Lurianic influence.65 In 23 volumes, Daniel Frisch (1993-1999) vocalises the Aramaic text and his Hebrew translation. Known as Matoq mi-Devash, the Hebrew commentary is culled from traditional sources (usually parallel to the critical apparatus in Margaliot).66 Pagination follows the standard edition, though in the volumes of Zohar Hadash that estimable practice falls apart. In ten volumes titled Sefer haZohar, Yehudah Edri vocalises the Aramaic text and his Hebrew translation.67 Pagination is not standard; this makes finding a simple citation quite laborious. Certain sections deemed especially holy remain untranslated. In a momentous work which contributed to his receipt of the Israel Prize, Tishby (1966/1971) topically arranged selected Zohar passages and translated them into Hebrew in Mishnat haZohar.68 Over the course of two volumes, each topic is preceded by an extensive, scholarly introduction. The textual translations are annotated. There is no index or list of passages cited but these are now supplied in the English version.69 6. Israeli Scholarship Yehuda Liebes published seminal papers in the 1980s: “Zohar and Eros”;70 “Christian Influences on the Zohar”;71 “The Messiah of the

Zohar?”72 and “How was the Zohar Written”73 The papers from two __________________________________________________________ 65 I. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, vol. 1, 105. 66 Daniel Frisch, ed. and trans., Sefer haZohar... Peirush Matoq mi-Devash, 23 vols. (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mekhon Da’at Yosef, 1993-1999). 67 Yehudah Edri, trans. and ed. Sefer haZohar...meturgam bilshon ha-qodesh, 10 vols. (Jerusalem: Yerid HaSefarim, 1998). 68 I. Tishby, Isaiah Tishby, ed. and trans. and Yeruham Lahover, trans., Mishnat haZohar, 2 vols. (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1946-1960). 69 I. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, trans. David Goldstein. 70 Yehuda Liebes, “Zohar and Eros,” (Hebrew) Alpa'im 9 (1984): 67-119. 71 Yehuda Liebes, “Christian Influences on the Zohar,” (Hebrew) Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 7/1 (1988): 43-74 and translated as chap. 3 in Studies in the Zohar. 72 Yehuda Liebes, “The Messiah of the Zohar: On Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai as a Messianic Figure,” chap. 1 in Studies in the Zohar. 73 Yehuda Liebes, “How was the Zohar Written” (Hebrew) Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1989): 1-71, and translated as chap. 2 in Studies in the Zohar.

A “Mind-Blowing” Project conferences of Israeli scholars are found in Joseph Dan74 and Ronit Meroz.75 A more thorough survey of the literature can be found in Fishbane.76 7. The Scholem Card Catalogue In June 2013, the National Library of Israel made the card collection of Gershom Scholem available online: his personal notes on translation, etymology, symbolic meaning, and references to prior and later usage of words in the Zohar.77 Scholem compiled these notes with the intention of writing a dictionary of the Zohar. The card collection currently lacks an index and individual words are not yet searchable. Even in its unfinished state it is a tremendous resource. Summary: Resources for Understanding the Words For the English reader, there are three key dates in the past decade. First, 2004 marked the first volume of Matt's translation and commentary of the Zohar.78 At present, this Pritzker Edition is the single best resource for understanding the meaning of individual words and roots. Second, 2006 saw Aramaic Studies 4(1) and three articles on the language of the Zohar. Third, in April 2014, Matt shared online his partial “Zohar Dictionary,” the first of its kind. Lastly, conference proceedings of the UCL research project on late Aramaic appear to be forthcoming from Brill.

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__________________________________________________________ 74 Joseph Dan, ed. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the History of Jewish Mysticism: The Age of the Zohar. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1989). 75 Ronit Meroz, ed. Hidushei Zohar [New Developments in Zohar Studies]. Te’udah 21-22 (2007). 76 Eitan Fishbane, ?Zohar: The Masterpiece of Jewish Mysticism,? in Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah: New Insights and Scholarship edited by Frederick Greenspahn (New York: NYU Press, 2011). 77 Gershom Scholem, Card Catalogue Online. Online at: http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/collections/jewishcollection/scholem/scholem-card-catalog/Pages/d efault.aspx 78 The twelfth and final volume was published in 2017: Joel Hecker and Nathan Wolski, trans. The Zohar: Pritzker Edition. Vol. 12 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017). Daniel Matt did the commentary and translation for volumes 1-9. Nathan Wolski did the translation and commentary for vol. 10. Joel Hecker did the commentary in translation for vol. 11 TM, ed.].

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For Hebrew readers, the date when Yehuda Liebes posted his outstanding Peraqim online is not clear (though it was published as a book in 1982).79 But in June 2013, the Scholem Card Catalogue was made accessible online through the National Library of Israel. In addition to the wealth of information in the card entries, it can be used to estimate the minimum vocabulary of the Zohar as being around 6,000-6,300 words. This excellent resource, though, is incomplete. Understanding the Grammar Understanding the words also requires understanding their different forms and how words are combined with others -- the elements of grammar. Here there are even fewer resources available for zoharic Aramaic. 1. English Resources Jeff Berry of the University of Arizona shared online his translation of most of the first three chapters (pages 19-24) of Kaddari's Diqduq (see next entry).80 This has long been the sole resource in English on the grammar of zoharic Aramaic. The translated portion covers spelling and phonology, and part of the personal pronouns. 2. Hebrew Resources The 1953 doctoral dissertation of Menahem Kaddari, Diqduq haLashon

ha-Aramit shel haZohar (published as a book in 1971),81 is the only known grammar of zoharic Aramaic. In 181 pages it outlines rules of spelling, phonology, morphology and syntax. Appended tables provide conjugations of the verb, states of the noun, and forms of the pronoun. There is a table of contents in English but no index. It contains a summary chapter which compares linguistic sources (e.g. biblical Aramaic, Mishnaic Hebrew, medieval Hebrew) and sources for a sample selection of nouns found in Zohar II.71b-77a. _________________________________________________________________ 79 Yehuda Liebes, Chapters in the Lexicon of the Zohar (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982). 80 www.u.arizona.edu/~jjberry/Semitic%20Languages%20Resources_files/Zohar%2 0Grammar.pdf 81 Mena?em Kaddari, Diqduq ha-Lashon ha-Aramit shel haZohar (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Qiryat Sefer, 1971).

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This reference work is invaluable but not exhaustive. For example, Kaddari's discussion of forming the plural of nouns does not mention the practice of repetition of the noun, such as: oci ¨ re ¦ oci ¨ r¦ l¨ka - at all times (Zohar II.206a). Individual English readers with Hebrew comprehension have, since its publication in 1971, translated this work for their own understanding. Until now there has been no other resource. Our Own Contributions Building on all these resources, I have been working with the encouragement and support of Justin Jaron Lewis to develop practical and accessible materials for other English readers drawn to zoharic Aramaic. 1. Website: The Aramaic Language of the Zohar In July 2014, Justin Jaron Lewis and I launched a website, The Aramaic Language of the Zohar, with the goal of enabling people with little or no background in Aramaic or Hebrew to begin studying the Zohar in the original -- though it may also serve as a resource for those able to read Hebrew. It provides links to pdf files of vocalised texts of the Zohar; to the five Hebrew lexicons of difficult words (discussed above); to the Peraqim of Liebes; and to the Scholem Card Index. It offers files which I have written on grammar lessons; paradigms of verbs, nouns and pronouns; and lists of most frequent words,82 divided by parts of speech. Finally, there is a dictionary of the Haqdamah (the beginning of the Zohar

I.1a-14b) which I have written, totalling 185 pages. 2. A Practical Dictionary of the Zohar After compiling this glossary of all lemmas and verb forms occurring in the Haqdamah, using the critical Aramaic text of Daniel Matt, I felt positioned to persevere and work towards a practical dictionary of the entire Zohar (except Tiqqunei Zohar and Raya Mehemena, which have a different vocabulary) and Zohar Hadash. This is still a work in progress and I have waited for the completion of Matt’s critical Aramaic text of the __________________________________________________________ 82 A list of the 10,000 most frequent word forms was very kindly run for us in 2011 by Prof. Moshe Koppel of the Computer Science Department at Bar-Ilan University. Due to formatting issues, it was run using the digital text from: http://www.hebrew.grimoar.cz/

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Zohar and his translation in order to finish it. For niqqud (vocalisation) of the unvocalised Aramaic original, I use that of Matoq mi-Devash -- trying to be alert to its periodic lack of consistency -- and check my entries against Sokoloff'’s dictionary. All of the resources listed above -- English and Hebrew -- are used when defining the meaning, or range of meanings, of words or roots. I am of course heavily reliant upon the work of Daniel Matt. In addition, I consult much secondary literature. These resources are then listed as rubrics under each relevant main entry. So a sample noun, in its present incomplete form, looks like this: n.pl. 1- noonday demons 2- bright angels oi xi¦ dh ¦ ,i xidh ¦ A class of demons mentioned in Ps 91:6: oi¦p x£ ¨g`© oi xi¦ dh ¦ oi¦pi¦f i pd¨ - those other species of noonday demons I.83b -oixidh ¦ ilia£ ¦ g - groups of noonday demons I.94a,125a,130b, 198b,200a,203b, 232b, 237b; II.56a,130a,195b,205a,207a; III.62b,213b,266a,286b -Huss, Bei'ur: p.178; Liebes, Peraqim: p. 349-350 n. 104 s.v. `leblib; Studies: p.133; 224 n.297; Matt, Z: v.1: p.xx; v.2: p.215, n.99 : dazzling demons; v.7: p.495 n.451; Wolfson, Undoing: p.13 n.36: alluring demons; Yesha Yah: p.4a: illuminating like noon. On oixi¦ dh ¦ ilia£ ¦ g: Matt, Z: v.2: p.215: bands of dazzling demons; Tishby, Wisdom: v.2: p.667: companies of noonday (destroyers). The glossary of the Haqdamah, which does not have rubrics, is

regularly enlarged by work done on the dictionary. For example, more verb forms are added as they are found elsewhere. The work already done is extensive. Still, Justin Jaron Lewis and I are in the unenviable position of the prophet Amos: we are neither Aramaic philologists nor the offspring of Aramaic philologists. In our modest way, we are trying to fill a lacuna which for too long has left learners bereft of the basic reference tools for studying the Aramaic of the Zohar. It remains for the gedolim to produce definitive works in these areas, and we gratefully anticipate the fruits of their labours. In the meantime, perhaps others too will feel freer to share online their own lexical and grammatical work. Justin Jaron Lewis Judy Barrett’s modest, unflagging work on this practical dictionary of the Zohar, undertaken at her own expense and in her own time as an independent scholar, is producing results which everyone interested in the

A “Mind-Blowing” Project Zohar will have reason to be grateful for when her work is eventually published. Here is a word from the glossary of the Haqdamah as posted on aramaiczohar.wordpress.com. [cmp. xŸe`] n.c. light *`¨xŸed§p pl. *oixŸ¦edp I.4a poss. 3rd m.s. dixŸedp I.2a, 4b 2nd m.s. jxŸ¨edp ¦II.206a / dixŸedp¦l `xŸ¨edp - a light for its light I.2a -`nl¨ ¨ rc oixŸ¦edp icenr© - the pillars of lights of the world I.4a -Each form of this word that appears in the Haqdamah is given, as are examples of phrases with the word in them and where they appear in the Zohar. The asterisks on two of the forms indicate that they appear on the ?most frequent words” list mentioned above. This kind of meticulous attention to detail characterises every entry in the glossary and in the dictionary in progress. The resources Judy Barrett has written for our website are reaching an exhilaratingly international readership. According to the wordpress.com “stats” page for our website, it has been viewed repeatedly both from Tunisia and from South Korea, among many other places. Disappointingly to me, however, comments have been few. For example, I would want to know if our one visitor (so far) from Syria was an Aramaic speaker. Now and then, however, reinforcing words are heard, such as the following comment posted on the Facebook group, The Zohar,83 whose members are

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encouraged to read a daily amud (folio) of the Zohar in the Aramaic and in Matt’s translation: I am reading the daily amud starting with the Aramaic. With the help of Judy’s dictionary of the Haqdamah, by now I have accumulated enough vocabulary to be able to read a big part of the amud without having to look up words. (With Talmudic Aramaic, the learning curve is much slower.) The author of this comment, Eugene Fleischman Sotirescu, has created and posted on his own website -- now linked to ours -- a series of vocabulary flash cards based on the dictionary of the Haqdamah. In a message to Judy Barrett he added: To me your work is a gift from heaven. I have been reading the Pritzker Zohar since it started coming out. I’ve had some frustration given the almost entire absence of resources for learning zoharic Aramaic (I couldn’t find a copy of Kaddari’s text anywhere, all I could use was Jastrow). Daniel Matt last _______________________________________________________ 83 www.facebook.com/groups/theZohar/

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year mentioned to me that you and Justin were working on a dictionary of the Zohar and gave me your emails, but I was too shy to get in contact. I think, despite the lack of feedback, people are using your site. I downloaded all the resources right away and am using the dictionary of the Haqdamah regularly as I move along through the Aramaic. It is the basic resource for anyone starting to read the Zohar in the original. There really isn’t anything else like it out there. As the website continues to serve its worldwide readership, I have taught the Aramaic of the Zohar in person to a few more students in Winnipeg, one at a time, and hope to offer a larger class again. This teaching endeavour too is still a work in progress, with challenges to be worked out. Early on I had wanted to teach students to read the Zohar’s Aramaic without vowel points, as it appears in the Matt and Margaliot editions and others. I have seen a textbook which does this for Modern Hebrew. It seems even more practical for zoharic Aramaic because there are various traditions about how to pronounce it, and because pronunciation does not really matter when the goal is reading knowledge. A bit of initial experimenting, though, convinced me that a more conventional approach

using vocalised texts would be easier for most students to grasp. None of the vocalised editions of the Zohar have any strong claim to be correct or authentic vocalisation, so in my teaching I have used sometimes one, sometimes another, and sometimes my own improvised vocalisation, letting students know that there are in fact variations. Using vowel points, none of my students have found learning to sound out Hebrew/Aramaic words particularly difficult. They have even taken quickly to reading from right to left. Most have continued to make occasional reading mistakes over the months, but that is also the case in the Hebrew reading of Jews who have attended synagogue for years. Another challenge is that the Zohar’s vocabulary does not seem to be quite as small as the impressionistic comments of Scholem and other scholars would suggest. The fact that most of its vocabulary can be figured out fairly easily if you already know Hebrew -- as Scholem and most people who have studied the Zohar over the centuries did -- is no help to my students who come without any Hebrew background. Reading any given page or two of the Zohar usually does give the encouraging impression of a great deal of repetition. But, as I have found when selecting passages to study with students, the repetitive vocabulary of one passage may be quite different from the repetitive vocabulary of the next. Judy Barrett comments: A “Mind-Blowing” Project Matt (1993, 188) has described the Zohar’s “basic vocabulary” as “six hundred words.” Both Tishby (1989, vol. 1, 64) and Joel Hecker (n.d.) have estimated the total vocabulary as “a few thousand words.” However, there are almost 3,000 individual cards in the Gershom Scholem Card Catalogue -- and this resource is considered incomplete. On the other hand, some roots (such as wlq) may have eight or more cards, and he includes vocabulary from Tiqqunei Zohar and Raya Mehemena. Still, for the time being its total number of cards approximates a lower limit, and greater precision probably awaits final publication of the Pritzker edition, and the completion of the dictionary of Zoharic Aramaic. Whatever the vocabulary is, it would be useful to establish the most frequent words of the Zohar’s Aramaic -- say, the most frequent 600 as per Matt’s estimate of the core vocabulary. The “most frequent words list” mentioned above does not provide the answer; it is simply a mechanical sorting of specific word forms so that, for example, ,`xedp ,`xedpe ,`xedpa jxedp ,oixedp ,dixedp (in light, and light, light, his light, lights, your light) are all separate entries. It also includes proper names and Hebrew words from biblical quotations, further diminishing its usefulness. Still, it seems to me that with the resources already available, it would be a straightforward, though time-consuming task to work out a tentative list of the most

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commonly used words in the Zohar. I am frustrated that I have not been able to access funding for student researchers to take this on. Another complication is the fact that the Zohar is not exactly in Aramaic; it is both in Aramaic, its own language, and in the Hebrew of the biblical (and sometimes rabbinic) phrases which it is constantly quoting and interpreting. Shifra Asulin has observed that both Aramaic and Hebrew can occur in a single pericope in the “Midrash haNe'elam,” and it can be difficult to untangle them;84 and this applies to the Zohar as a whole. While closely related, biblical Hebrew and zoharic Aramaic are two different languages, and the verses quoted in the Zohar are not limited to those with a simple vocabulary. So, if I hand students a selection from the Zohar, chances are there will be Hebrew in it -- but I am not asking them to learn Hebrew. For teaching purposes, I have begun identifying Hebrew words and passages to my students and providing them with translations (while still teaching them about some of the Hebrew roots and word forms, especially those most relevant for the Zohar). This will not help them navigate the Zohar on their own, however. ____________________________________________________________________

84 Shifra Asulin, “Midrash haNe'elam le-Bereshit: bein Ivrit le-Aramit,” in And this is for Yehuda: Studies Presented to our Friend, Professor Yehuda Liebes, on the Occasion of his Sixty-fifth Birthday (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 2012), 222-253, especially 222. Online at: http://huji.academia.edu/shifraasulin.

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The hardest challenge of all for my students has turned out to be syntax. Given a glossary and basic grammatical information, all my students could produce word-for-word translations of Aramaic sentences, but understanding how the words related to each other was often difficult, especially when Aramaic word order is different from English. This struck on my own linguistic and pedagogic limitations: I often could not explain how I knew what something meant. This points to the further learning I need to be doing. As an aid to getting past these obstacles, I found it useful to refer students to Matt’s translation of the Zohar. In my own experience as a language learner, bilingual texts have been very helpful. But this led me to notice how often Matt’s translation is non-literal, making it less of a resource than it might have been for anyone reading it side by side with the original. The same is true of my other favourite (though sadly incomplete) translation of the Zohar, the French rendition by the late lamented Charles Mopsik. Thus on the first page of the Zohar we read: xeege wneq da zi` migegd oia idi`c dpyey dn

ingxe oic da zi` l`xyi zqpk se` oilr xqilz da zi` dpyey dn ingxc olikn xqilz da zi` l`xyi zqpk se` Typically for the style of the Zohar, words echo each other, including the fourfold repetition of da zi`. But both Matt and Mopsik prefer the more varied style customary in English and French. Dividing their text into poetic lines as I have done here with the Aramaic (and as Matt does in his 1983 book of selections from the Zohar), Matt has: Just as a rose among thorns is colored red and white, so Assembly of Israel includes judgment and compassion. Just as a rose has thirteen petals, so Assembly of Israel has thirteen qualities of compassion. This introduces the concepts of “coloured” and “includes” which are not explicitly there in the original, and lessens the element of repetition. Meanwhile idi`c in the first line has disappeared. Mopsik has: Telle la Rose parmi les ronces qui loge le rouge et le blanc, la Communauté d’Israël comporte ensemble Rigueur et Tendresse. Telle la Rose couronnée de ses treize pétales, la Communauté d’Israël comporte les treize mesures de Tendresse. A “Mind-Blowing” Project Again idi`c in the first line and the repetition of da zi` have disappeared. And given the significant symbolism of various words for “crown” in the Zohar, inserting “couronnée” here is potentially misleading. Both translations are still useful for readers of the original but only those readers who already have a fair bit of confidence with the text. For my beginning students, consulting a translation is treacherous because of words appearing in one language but not the other, and because of differing syntax. On the other hand, this can have the desirable effect of protecting students from relying on the translation too much. A final question facing me as a teacher is what to recommend to students as a next level of learning, other than further private study with me. While studying other dialects of Aramaic (there are good resources for Biblical Aramaic)85 or moving to the study of Hebrew would make sense, resources for further study of the Zohar’s Aramaic are as lacking as they ever were. But perhaps the work which Judy Barrett has been doing, and our website, will inspire others to go further. It has been a great pleasure for me to read passages from the Zohar at the slow and deliberate pace demanded by trying to teach its language.

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Over time, this kind of reading is enriching my understanding of the Zohar’s content. For example, there are many examples of shifts between masculine and feminine grammatical gender, like this one: eaih dl lneb l"nib, `pkqn edi` z"lc [The letter] dalet -- he is poor; gimel renders kindness to her. (I:3a, text from Matt critical edition) While any individual shift like this could be accidental or evidence of limited grammatical skills, there are many of them. The more I read the Zohar closely with attention to grammar, the more I think that these movements between masculine and feminine fit with the Zohar’s general interest in gender symbolism, and express an underlying imaginaire in which gender is fluid and changing. For both Judy Barrett and myself, teaching the language of the Zohar has given us the chance to spend time with this wonderful text, savouring its language and trying, with some success, to share our enjoyment of it with others. To conclude with words of appreciation for the Zohar’s Aramaic well expressed by Gershom Scholem: From the point of view of style, a highly effective ingredient is supplied by the solemn Aramaic language of the book. [...] [The author’s] capacity for 85 [TM, ed. adds: A further very important resource is the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon available online: http://cal.huc.edu/ ].

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declamatory, pathetical and sonorous prose was without doubt highly developed, and it is undeniable that he was a sovereign master on the instrument which he himself had fashioned.86 Bibliography Abrams, Daniel. Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textural Theory: Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the study of Jewish Mysticism. (2nd revised edition) Jerusalem-Los Angeles: Magnes Press, Cherub Press, 2013. Asulin, Shifra. “Midrash ha-Ne'elam le-Bereishit: bein Ivrit le-Aramit.” (Hebrew) In And this is for Yehuda: Studies Presented to our Friend, Professor Yehuda Liebes, on the Occasion of his Sixty-fifth Birthday. Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 2012): 222-253. Online at: http://huji.academia.edu/shifraasulin Ashlag, Yehudah, trans. and ed. Sefer ha-Zohar -- im peirush ha-Sullam. 22 vols. Jerusalem: Hevrah Lehotza'at HaZohar, 1945-1958.

Blumenthal, David R. Understanding Jewish Mysticism: A Source Reader: The Merkabah Tradition and the Zoharic Tradition. Jersey City, New Jersey: Ktav, 1978. Brisman, Shimeon. A History and Guide to Judaic Dictionaries and Concordances, part 1. New York: Ktav, 2000. Dan, Joseph, ed. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the History of Jewish Mysticism: The Age of the Zohar. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8, (1989). David, Abraham. “Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome.” Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007: 15:13-14. Edri, Yehudah, trans. and ed. Sefer ha-Zohar...meturgam bilshon haqodesh. (Hebrew) 10 vols. Jerusalem: Yerid HaSefarim, 1998. Fishbane, Eitan. “Zohar: The Masterpiece of Jewish Mysticism.” In Frederick Greenspahn, ed. Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah: New Insights and Scholarship. New York: NYU Press, 2011. Frisch, Daniel. Sefer ha-Zohar... Peirush Matoq mi-Devash. 23 vols. Jerusalem: Mekhon Da?at Yosef, 1993-1999. Giller, Pinchas. Reading the Zohar: The Sacred Text of the Kabbalah. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 86 Gershom Scholem, Major Trends, 158 and 167.

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Gondos, Andrea. “Kabbalah in Print: Literary Strategies of Popular Mysticism in Early Modernity.” PhD diss., Concordia University, Montreal, 2013. Online at: spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977951/1/Gondos_PhD_F2013.pdf Guttman, M.J. Torat Rabbenu Pinhas of Koretz. (Hebrew) (Bilgoraj, 1931). Hecker, Joel. “Translating the Zohar: An Exercise in Conservation, Transformation, or Revelation” -- Lecture delivered at The Goldstein Goren International Center for Jewish Thought. Online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rWG6jLXV0o&feature=youtu.be -- Commentary and trans. The Zohar: Pritzker Edition vol. 11. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. Heller, Marvin. The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book, vol. 2. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Hellner-Eshed, Melila. A River Flows from Eden. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Huss, Boaz. “Bei'ur ha-Millim ha-Zarot she-be-sefer ha-Zohar.” (Hebrew) Kabbalah, 1, 1997. -- “Targumei ha-Zohar.” (Hebrew) In Hidushei Zohar edited by Ronit Meroz, Te’udah 21-22 (2007): 33-110.

Jastrow, Marcus. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903. Available on line at TABS: Tyndale Archive of Biblical Studies, http://www.tyndalearchive.com/tabs/jastrow/ Kaddari, Menahem. Diqduq ha-Lashon ha-Aramit shel ha-Zohar. (Hebrew) Jerusalem: Qiryat Sefer, 1971. Karr, Don. Notes on the Zohar in English, 2014. Online at: www.digitalbrilliance.com/kab/karr/zie.pdf. www.digitalbrilliance.com/kab/karr/zie.pdf Liebes, Yehuda, Peraqim be-Millon Sefer ha-Zohar [Chapters in the Lexicon of the Zohar]. PhD diss., The Hebrew University, 1977. -- Peraqim be-Millon Sefer ha-Zohar. (Hebrew) Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1982. -- “Zohar and Eros.” (Hebrew) Alpa'im 9 (1984): 67-119. -- “Christian Influences on the Book of the Zohar.” (Hebrew) Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 7.1(1988): 43-74. -- “How the Zohar was written.” (Hebrew) In Sefer ha-Zohar ve-Doro: Mehqerei Yerushalayim be-Mahashevet be-Yisrael 8 (1989), edited by Joseph Dan, 1989, 1-71. -- Studies in the Zohar. Translated by Arnold Schwartz, Stephanie Nakache and Penina Peli. Albany: State University of New York, 1993.

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-- “Hebrew and Aramaic as Languages of the Zohar.?”Aramaic Studies, 4(1) (2006): 35-52. Loewinger, D. S. “Lonzano, Menahem ben Judah de.” In M. Berenbaum & F. Skolnik (eds.), Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007: 13:187-188. Lonergan, Bernard. Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. New York: Harper & Row, 1959. -- Method in Theology. New York: Herder & Herder, 1972. “Luria, David ben Judah.” In M. Berenbaum & F. Skolnik (eds.), Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007: 13: 262-262. Magid, Shaul. “The king is dead [and has been for three decades], long live the king -- Contemporary Kabbalah and Scholem’s Shadow.” Jewish Quarterly Review 102.1 (2012): 131-53. Margaliot, Reuven, ed. Zohar Hadash. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook (1953, reprinted 1978). -- Sefer ha-Zohar. 3 vols. 3rd ed. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1964. Matt, Daniel. “New Ancient Words: The Aura of Secrecy in the Zohar.” In Peter Schafer and Joseph Dan, eds. Gershom Scholem?s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 50 Years After. Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1993, 181-207.

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