Cette publication est également disponible en :

Lurianic Corrections to the Zohar Text

Julien Darmon

Julien Darmon

The text of the standard edition of The Zohar, that of Vilna (1895), sometimes differs significantly from that of the original Mantua edition. We will take a specific example of such differences, retrace its origin and highlight the debates to which it has given rise. ¹The main body of this presentation is taken from Yosef Avivi’s monumental work, Qabbalat ha-Ari (Makhon Ben-Tsvi, Jerusalem, 2008), vol. III, p. 1120-1129, courtesy of the author. .

The Mantua Zohar in Safed

Firstly, one should point out that it was the Mantua edition and not the competing Cremona edition that was mainly distributed to the cabalists of Safed, as well as in Italy. As Yosef Avivi1 points out;² Yosef Avivi, Qabbalat Ha – Ari , op . cit ., flight. I, p. 253, n. 104. ; the Cremona edition was mainly distributed in Germany and Poland. There are variants between these two editions, as R. Moshe Zacuto (1625-1697) wrote to his correspondent R. Shimshon Baqi: “It is not appropriate to base oneself on the “Great Zohar ” [the Cremona edition], but only on the “Small Zohar ” [the Mantua edition], firstly because the former is almost impossible to find in our country, secondly because it is full of errors and the emendations of Rav [R. Isaac Luria] which I published under the title Derekh Emet do not allow one to remedy them because the paginations do not correspond; and anyway, there are so many typos in the “Great” that it is impossible to correct them all ³. M. Zacuto, Iggerot ha-Ramaz , Livorno, 1790, 2a (ed. Ha-Ḥayyim we-ha-Shalom, Jerusalem, 1999 p. 5). . “

As far as I know, we have no absolute certainty that the cabalists of Safed had a copy of the printed edition of the Zohar in their hands, although the opposite would be surprising: for the record, the Mantua edition dates from……. , even though R. Moshe Cordovero died in , R. Isaac Luria arrived in Safed that same year and R. Moshe Cordovero, like R. Joseph Caro and many others, was in close contact with Italy, especially for the printing of his own works. It is certain in any case that R. Ḥayyim Vital (1542-1620) used it for his drafting of the Lurianic corpus, since it incorporates in his texts the pagination references of the Zohar of Mantua ⁴ See, for example, the facsimile of a manuscript in *Sha‘ar ha-Ma’amarim*, *Ahavat
* Shalom, 2017, p. 473..

How R. Isaac Luria Studied The Zohar

To summarize here R. Isaac Luria’s contribution to Kabbalah—that is, essentially to the understanding of the Zohar—would be a daunting task. Yosef Avivi, however, has highlighted the value of studying Lurianic Kabbalah not only in its systematic form—which characterizes the most widely studied texts, such as the ‘Ets Ḥayyim’, from several layers of elaboration by the different links of the Lurianic tradition – R. Ḥayyim Vital, R. Shmu’el Vital, R. Ya’aqov Tsemaḥ, R. Me’ir Poppers -, but by retracing the method of study by R. Isaac Luria, which always starts from a text of the Zohar, and by following the chronological order of his rare writings and teachings, in order to observe the genesis of new ideas.

R. Isaac Luria himself writes⁵ in *Sha‘ar Ma’amarei Rashbi*, Jerusalem 1959, 22a. that his essential contribution is the interpretation of the ten sefirot, not —as R. Moshe Cordovero did—according to a three-level schema— Arikh Anpin, Ze‘ir Anpin, and Nuqva— but according to a five-level schema— Arikh Anpin, Abba, Imma, Ze‘ir Anpin, and Nuqva— and that this new paradigm stems from a careful comparative reading of the two most obscure sections of the Zohar, the Idra Rabba and the Idra Zutta. What essentially emerges from this new paradigm is a finer distinction between what Ze’ir Anpin receives from Arikh Anpin and what he gets from Abba and Imma in terms of “supplements of being”, which he calls moḥin , “Brains”.

However the Idra Zutta is essentially devoted to these questions, and we shall see that the Lurianic contribution had the effect of introducing “corrections” into the text of this Idra Zutta .

From Mantua to Vilna

In the Mantua edition (vol. III, 291a), the Zohar refers to “heir” ( yeruta ) of Ze’ir Anpin in the following terms :

The Cremona edition bears exactly the same text, and this is also the lesson learned by Daniel Matt in his critical edition of the text of the Zohar , based on existing manuscripts5. On the other hand, the Vilna edition (1895), which is the basis for all contemporary editions, has a slightly different text, with the addition of four words:

The history of this modification must take into account that, in the Mantua edition already, the Zohar quotes itself, three pages later, in this way III, 292b):

From R. Moshe Cordovero to R. Isaac Luria

It is difficult to explain, in this short contribution, what is at stake in these complex passages. Nevertheless; Let us try. The task of the Zohar is to match three levels of reality: the sefirotic level, where Ze’ir Anpin , the “Son” – which corresponds, to put it briefly, to the sefira Tif ‘ eret – receives a double influx from Abba , the “Father”, the sefira Ḥokhma , and from Imma , the “Mother”, the sefira bina ; the anatomical level, where the receptacles of these impulses must correspond to the ” three cavities of the skull ”(roughly speaking the left and right brains, as well as the cerebellum); and the halachic level, where these impulses “emerge” in the form of the four compartments of the tefillin of the head, which correspond to the four moḥin Ḥokhma , Bina , Ḥessed and Gevura (or rather, the roots of Ḥessed and Gevura, which are in Da‘at). How do we go from two to four? The first text seems to speak only of two dimensions: the diadem of ḥessed and the diadem of gevura, which are identified as the inheritance (yeruta) of Abba and Imma, whereas the second text speaks, on the one hand, of the legacy (aḥsanta) of Abba and Imma and , on the other hand, of two “hidden things.”

R. Moshe Cordovero, in his monumental commentary on the Zohar, *Or Yaqar*, scrupulously follows the Mantua reading and resolves the issue as follows: “the inheritance” or “bequest” of Abba and Imma are indeed the diadems of ḥessed and gevura that are in Da‘at, according to the plain meaning of the text⁶ Mr. Cordovero, Zohar ‘im perush Or Yaqar, Jerusalem, 2003, vol. 22, p. 74-75., while “the two hidden things” are “the ḥokhma and the bina which are hidden and which complete them in their place, as has been explained⁷ Id . p. 115. “.

R. Isaac Luria, in his autograph commentary on another cryptic text from the Zohar dealing with the same themes, the Sifra di-Tsni‘uta, takes the same approach: “And this Son inherits the legacy of his father and mother, who are the two diadems that were hidden within Abba and Imma and which he now inherits, as is found in the Idra Zutta” ⁸In Y. Avivi, Qabbalat ha-Ari, flight. II, p. 996. The entirety of this commentary is given a critical edition which covers pages 947-1009. . “We know that this commentary was composed early on, before R. Isaac Luria came to teach in Safed. His definitive teaching offers a very different interpretation: on the one hand, there are “the two moḥin of ḥokhma and bina…which are called in the Idra Zutta (292b) ‘the legacy (aḥsanta) of his father and mother’… ,” and on the other hand, “the two moḥin that together form Da‘at, which are called ḥessed and gevura, and which are referred to there as ‘the two diadems,’ as the text states: ‘the legacy of his father and mother and their two hidden things.’” Note that the expression: “the two diadems” (trin ‘iṭrin) does not appear in 292b, but only in 291a; it is inserted here in order to unify the two passages into a reading that is the reverse of the one previously accepted. R. Isaac Luria highlights the difference between yeruta, “inheritance,” and aḥsanta, “bequest,” to assert that the “bequest of Abba and Imma”mentioned in 292b corresponds to the moḥin of ḥokhma and bina, whereas “the two hidden things” in 292b are identical to the “two hidden diadems” in 291a and correspond to the moḥin of ḥessed and gevura. Strictly speaking, these do not originate from Abba and Imma; they merely pass through them.

The version that we have in the current editions, אחסנתא דא ירותא מאי בגוויהו גניזין דהוו עטרין ותרין ואימיה דאבוי, is therefore a collage between the Mantua version, בגוויהו גניזין דהוו עטרוו דאיזין דהוו רותא דאיזין דהוו עטרותא דא and what is said in the same edition further, גניזין תורין ואימיה דאבוי אחסנתא דאמינא כמה, based on the Lurianic reading of this text. How did it come to integrate the very text of the Zohar?

From Constantinople to Amsterdam and Livorno

As Daniel Abrams has explained, although the Mantua edition served as a working basis for the Kabbalists of Safed, they did not consider it the definitive edition. Rabbi Abraham Azulay (1570–1643), a disciple of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, already noted that “the textual variants in the Zohar are more numerous than in any other book,” and in his work *Or ha-Levana* he compiled all these variants based on “ancient and precise manuscripts, the works of R. Moshe Cordovero, a book from Egypt based on the glosses of R. Isaac Luria—who is said to have had six ancient manuscripts at his disposal—and finally the Hebrew translation by R. Israel Ankaoua.” ⁹ RA Azulay, Or ha-Ḥama , Jerusalem, 1876, vol. I, p. III. “. Unfortunately, the only printed edition of Or ha-Levana covers only the first volume of The Zohar, so I am not in a position to say which version of our passage this book proposes to retain.

A “corrected” edition of the Zohar appeared in Constantinople in 1743. Its publisher, R. Yona b; R. Ya’aqov, writes in his introduction: “” God heard me and sent me this copy of the Zohar abandoned in a corner, brought from Aleppo, corrected letter after letter, word after word, from the copy of R. Ḥayyim Vital while he was residing in Damascus … Rav Moshe Mizraḥi writes that he devoted the years 1618-1663 to establish these corrections from copies of R. Ḥayyim Vital and R. Yehuda Mish’an, as well as those of R. Israel Benyamin, R. Menaḥem di Lonzano, R. Abraham Galante and the Sages of Jerusalem… ”It is in this edition that the version דא ירותא מאי בגוויה גניזין דהוו עטרין ותרין ואימיה דאבוי אחסנתא appears for the first time, which therefore comes from the annotated copy of R. Ḥayyim Vital himself

It is impossible for us, however, to determine the precise intention of this annotation: was it a correction to be made to the text itself, as the editor of the Constantinople Zohar understood it, or rather an explanatory gloss ? Impossible to know. Moreover, this problem is not specific to the Zohar, but runs through the entire history of publishing and philology. ¹⁰The reference work for the Hebrew book is Y. Sh. Spiegel, ‘ Amudim be-Toldot ha-Sefer ha-‘Ivri, flight. II, Hagahot u-magihim , Ramat-Gan, Bar-Ilan University Press, 2nd edition, 2005. .

The inclusion of these glosses in the Constantinople edition did not meet with unanimous approval among the later editors, who were at the same time leading cabalists. R. Shalom Buzaglo (c. 1700-1780), author of Miqdash Melekh , a reference Lurianic commentary of the Zohar, published in Amsterdam in 1793 an edition of the Zohar in which he criticized the introduction of these glosses in the text itself; for his own text, he practically returned to the Mantua edition. He just adds the word “two” בגוויה גניזין דהוו עטרין תרין דא ירותא מאי – which was already the case, but only as a marginal gloss, in the edition published in Amsterdam in 1715, between that of Mantua and that of Constantinople therefore. But this addition does not change the meaning of the text.

Another great contemporary Kabbalist, R. Ḥayyim Yosef David Azulay (1724–1806), considered the criticisms raised by R. Shalom Buzaglo to be unjustified and, above all, illegitimate, the criticisms raised by R. Shalom Buzaglo and published a vocalized edition of the Zohar in Livorno in 1793 that followed the Constantinople text. This was the position also adopted by the Vilna publishers in 1895, as well as, prior to that, by the editions from Zhitomir in 1863 and Izmir in 1876. Finally, it is worth noting the 1858 Livorno edition, edited by Moshe Yesha‘yah Tubiana, which includes both the marginal commentaries of R. Ḥayyim Yosef David Azulay—including his introduction—as well as the commentaries of R. Moshe Zacuto and the *Miqdash Melekh* by R. Shalom Buzaglo. This edition, which aims to be quite “complete,” presents a variant that we have not found attested elsewhere:

This edition follows the Constantinople variant, but simply omits the waw before “trin,” so that we no longer have “the legacy of his father and mother, as well as the two diadems ,” but simply “the bequest of his father and mother, the two diadems,” which is consistent with the meaning of the Mantua edition…

Conclusion

The stakes involved in using early editions of the Zohar—particularly the Mantua edition—are therefore significant. This is the edition in relation to which the Kabbalists of Safed, especially Rabbi Moshe Cordovero and Rabbi Isaac Luria, were inevitably compelled to take a stance. The fact that, in his commentary on the Sifra di-Tsni‘uta, Rabbi Isaac Luria follows the obvious meaning of the Mantua text clearly demonstrates that the reading he would later adopt did not result from choosing another version based on a manuscript unknown to us, but rather from a hermeneutic analysis within the text of the Zohar as presented to us in the Mantua edition. The work of subsequent editors has consisted, at least in some places, of harmonizing the text of the Zohar—based on the marginal glosses of R. Isaac Luria’s earliest students—in a way that makes the Lurianic interpretation more immediately accessible. This work is necessarily done at the expense of a proper understanding, both of the non-Lurianic commentaries on the Zohar and of Rabbi Isaac Luria’s own exegetical approach. This situation is not, moreover, specific to the Zohar: the Babylonian Talmud, too, has been corrected according to the variants that Rashi proposed to retain, with the result that today, when Rashi tells us that “ variant b should be adopted” and our text already contains variant b, we no longer have access to variant a—which Rashi had before him—and thus to the problem he faced; fortunately, the Tosafot often come to the defense of this variant a, thereby allowing us to grasp the exegetical implications of these differences. The same is true here.