The Zohar: Reception and Impact
Translated from the Hebrew by Yudith Nave
Boaz Huss’s underlying assumption is that the different values attributed to the Zohar are not inherent qualities of the zoharic texts, but rather represent the way that readers have perceived it in different cultural contexts. This dynamic and multi-layered history of the reasons for the fluctuating status of the Zohar in the Jewish world throws important new light on many aspects of Jewish cultural history over the last seven centuries.
More info
The Zohar is one of the most sacred, authoritative, and influential books in Jewish culture. Many scholarly works have been dedicated to its ideas, its literary style, and the question of its authorship. This book focuses on other issues: it examines the various ways in which the Zohar has been received by its readers and the impact it has had on Jewish culture, including the fluctuations in its status and value and the different cultural practices linked to these changes. This dynamic and multi-layered history throws important new light on many aspects of Jewish cultural history over the last seven centuries.
Boaz Huss has broken new ground with this study, which examines the reception and canonization of the Zohar as well as its criticism and rejection from its inception to the present day. His underlying assumption is that the different values attributed to the Zohar are not inherent qualities of the zoharic texts, but rather represent the way it has been perceived by its readers in different cultural contexts. He therefore considers the attribution of different qualities to the Zohar through time, and the people who were engaged in attributing such qualities and making innovations in cultural practices and rituals.
For each historical period from the beginning of Zohar reception to the present, Huss considers the social conditions that stimulated the veneration of the Zohar as well as the factors that contributed to its rejection, alongside the cultural functions and consequences of each approach. Because the multiple modes of the reception of the Zohar have had a decisive influence on the history of Jewish culture, this highly innovative and wide-ranging approach to Zohar scholarship will have important repercussions for many areas of Jewish studies.
About the author
Boaz Huss is Professor of Kabbalah in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His research interests include the Zohar and its reception, modern kabbalah, Western esotericism, and New Age culture. Professor Huss received his Ph.D. in the history of Jewish thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, after which he was a Fulbright post-doctoral fellow at Yale University. He has also been a Starr fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University. He is the author of two books on Jewish mysticism and kabbalah in Hebrew and editor of the English-language Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival. This is his first monograph in English.
Reviews
FROM REVIEWS OF THE HEBREW EDITION
‘Knowing the history of the Zohar and its reception, one can better understand the spiritual and political worlds of Judaism as they have evolved over the past 700 years . . . Huss’s detailed descriptions and his impressive expertise make this a comprehensive account of mysticism as a cultural and economic phenomenon.’
Mor Altshuler, Haaretz
Contents
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
1 The Depiction of R. Simon bar Yohai and Moses in Zoharic Literature
2 The Formulation of the Idea of the Book of the Zohar
3 The Formation of the Zoharic Canon
4 The Authority of the Book of the Zohar
5 On the History of the Interpretation of the Zohar
6 Revelation and Concealment in the History of the Reception of the Zohar
7 The History of the Criticism of The Book of the Zohar
8 The Re-canonization of the Zohar in the Modern Era
Bibliography
Index
392 pages
ISBN: 978-1-904113-96-6
£35.00 / $59.50
Publication 12 May 2016