The Scent of The Rose Drama Fiction and

The Scent of the Rose: Drama, Fiction, and Narrative Form in the Zohar
Author(s): Eitan P. Fishbane

Source: Prooftexts, Vol. 29, No. 3, Special Issue: The Jewish Mystical Text as Literature (Fall
2009), pp. 324-361
Published by: Indiana University Press
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y 324฀฀
The Scent of the Rose:

Drama, Fiction, and Narrative Form in the Zohar
E I T A N P. F I S H B A N E
ABSTRACT
Since the emergence of modern scholarly research on the Kabbalah, the Zohar has
been studied primarily through the methodology of the history of ideas—its place in
the development of Jewish religious and philosophical thought, as well as its
situation in the broader history of the Jewish people. But far less attention has been
devoted to the literary dimensions of the zoharic text, to formal appreciation of its
status as one of the great works of religious literature the world over. For, in
addition to the masterful homilies and the sparkling depictions of divinity that fill
its pages, the Zohar is distinguished by its use of narrative, fictionality, and
storytelling—major features of this classic text that are highly unusual in the broader
context of kabbalistic creativity. Scholars of the Zohar have made several important
gestures toward a better understanding of this dimension of zoharic discourse, but
the field is ripe for a full-scale study of this phenomenon—an inquiry that will
consider the Zohar through the lens of narrative poetics and dramatic form. This
article adopts a form-critical approach to zoharic narrative, seeking to elucidate the
interplay between fictional discourse and mystical exegesis. I argue that the zoharic
narrative must first and foremost be understood as a work of the fictional imagina--
tion, a representation of a world and reality invented by the thirteenth-century
authors of the text. My core claim with respect to narrative form suggests that the
text functions as a kind of dramatic literature, one in which the power of revealing
the mystical secrets is demonstrated and dramatized for the reading audience.
INTRODUCTION
As was the case over the centuries for religious thinkers, the luminous texture of
the Zohar—the allure of its imagination, lyricism, and exegetical craft—has
drawn the sustained attention and fascination of modern academic scholars. For
PROOFTEXTS 29 (2009): 324–361. Copyright © 2009 by Prooftexts Ltd.

The Scent of the Rose฀ ฀ y฀ 325
traditionalists, the Zohar quickly achieved a canonical and sacred status; its
wisdom and language became synonymous with the perceived truth of the Oral
Torah.1 For modern historians and phenomenologists of religion, the Zohar has
been taken to constitute the summit of Jewish mystical creativity, the masterpiece
of kabbalistic thought. Like select classics of other traditions and literatures, the
Zohar is one of those stunning works of the human imagination that invites each
generation to consider its meaning anew, to unveil its enduring power once again.
For there is something of the sublime that is revealed in an extraordinary work of
art—a transformation of consciousness that allows, perhaps even requires, each
reader to refathom its depths, to recast methodology and interpretive gaze, to
stand before its commanding presence. The art form that stirs the soul—whether
it be literary, visual, or musical—stimulates a revolution of the inner life, enabling
the individual to relate to the world in ways hitherto unexpected or unknown. It
is to the aesthetics of zoharic creativity that this essay is directed; I seek to better
understand the artistic technique that underlies this towering work of dramatic
narration and theological poetics.
Since the emergence of modern scholarly research on the Kabbalah, the
Zohar has been studied primarily through the methodology of the history of
ideas and philological analysis—evaluating its place in the development of Jewish
religious and philosophical thought, as well as its situation in the broader history
of the Jewish people. Perhaps best embodied in the foundational work of
Gershom Scholem, the Zohar was examined to determine whether or not its own
claims to ancient authorship are true, or if indeed the text was written in late
thirteenth-century Iberia.2 And, on the other hand, classic scholarship on the
Zohar has given in-depth attention to the metaphysical and theological system
that undergirds its thought—a stream of research most prominently and influen--
tially represented in Isaiah Tishby’s Mishnat ha-Zohar.3 Other important avenues
of scholarship in recent times have explored the nature of zoharic hermeneutics,4
the construction of gender,5 religious experience,6 ritual meaning,7 symbolism,8
and the Zohar’s rich mythic imagination.9
But far less attention has been devoted to the literary dimensions of zoharic
textuality, to formal appreciation of its status as one of the great works of religious
literature the world over. This is a particularly notable lacuna given the contours of
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326 y฀ ฀ Eitan P. Fishbane
zoharic discourse, the modes of genre visible in the text. For in addition to the
masterful homilies and the sparkling depictions of divinity that fill its pages (a
literary craft that itself will require investigation), the Zohar is distinguished by its
use of fictionality and storytelling—features that are highly unusual in the broader
context of kabbalistic theology and systematic metaphysics. Indeed, it is precisely in
the adaptation of midrashic modalities (of narrative and exegesis) that the authors
of the Zohar sought to achieve their pseudepigraphical goal; the deliberate avoid--
ance of medieval conventions is central to the aesthetic texture of the work (though
Scholem’s research demonstrated that, despite these efforts, certain markers of the
text’s medieval provenance are detectable). In this respect, the narrated adventures
of R. Shimon bar Yoÿai and his disciples are not merely flourishes designed to
present the “real” content of the Zohar; they are themselves integral to the heart of
the text,10 and through their lens we observe a major stage in the development of
narrative fiction in medieval Jewish literature. Scholars of the Zohar have made
several important gestures toward a better understanding of this dimension of
zoharic discourse—beginning with Scholem’s prescient remark that the Zohar
should be viewed as a kind of “mystical novel” (though Scholem himself never really
developed this observation),11 and continuing through to our own day, in which a
new generation of scholars has begun pioneering new avenues of inquiry.12 But
despite these significant advances, the field is ripe for a full-scale study of this
phenomenon, one that might suggest a shifting of methodological paradigms.
Instead of an approach that anchors Zohar research in the ground of Jewish thought
and intellectual history (though this, too, is indubitably a worthy effort), we must
now continue to cultivate an understanding of the zoharic text as literature, to apply
the concerns and methods that have guided the broader study of narrative and
poetics. In this way, the evolution of Zohar research has much in common with the
trajectories of scholarship in the areas of Bible and Midrash, fields that have already
been transformed through the integration of diverse literary methodologies.13
What is more, the fictional and poetic dimensions of the Zohar should be
situated within the broader context of Iberian Jewish literature from this period.
In the late thirteenth century, prose fiction among Jewish authors was well devel--
oped, and it integrated the paradigms and techniques of frame-tale narration that
were so pervasive in medieval literary culture.14 Contrary to the implicit assump--
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
tions of previous Kabbalah scholarship, there is reason to believe that kabbalistic

authors were quite familiar with this genre. Indeed, I would submit that the
significance of this cross-pollination has been severely underestimated.15
Concerning its style and modalities of genre, the Zohar has been studied from
the perspective of the history of esotericism and the ways in which the text
imitates, and aligns itself with, earlier midrashic forms. And yet one does not
have to look far afield to identify probable lines of connection between the literary
and kabbalistic phenomena. Perhaps most significantly, R. Isaac ibn Sahula
embodies both of these modes of creativity himself, having written both a
kabbalistic commentary on the Song of Songs16 and a major text of the Hebrew
frame-tale tradition, the Meshal ha-Qadmoni.17 As Scholem already observed in
an early publication,18 the Meshal ha-Qadmoni itself contains several references to,
and seeming citations from, the earliest stratum of the Zohar (the Midrash ha-
Ne‘elam),19 and it is highly probable that ibn Sahula knew Moshe de Leon person--
ally.20 Both men lived in the Castilian town of Guadalajara, and both were
influenced significantly by the writings of the previous generation of Castilian
kabbalists—R. Moses of Burgos in particular. 21 Given the move of contemporary
Zohar scholarship toward a theory of collaborative authorship, it is quite conceiv--
able that ibn Sahula himself took part in the early composition of the Zohar.
I would also suggest that another key figure in this connection between the
Zohar and the wider world of Iberian literature was the eminent kabbalist, R.
Todros ben Yosef Abulafia. R. Todros was not only perceived to be the leader of
the Castilian kabbalists, but was also the revered chief rabbi of the region and a
prominent member of the Toledan Jewish aristocracy. Indeed, Yehuda Liebes has
even gone so far as to hypothesize that it was R. Todros who was the historical
model for the constructed figure of R. Shimon bar Yoÿai in the Zohar. 22 Known
as El-Rab among the non-Jewish Castilian elite, 23 R. Todros achieved a prestige
that was partially fashioned and certainly reinforced by the power and access
granted him by King Alfonso X of Castile. A monarch who surrounded himself
with scholars from the different faith communities of his kingdom, Alfonso X
was referred to as El-Sabio—the Learned—and R. Todros was given a place of
stature in the retinue of the king. If he was not already familiar with the broader
forms of Iberian literature—in their Arabic, Latin, and Romance varieties—R.
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Todros would certainly have encountered such forms in the life of the royal court,
in the context of cross-cultural translation efforts and King Alfonso X’s attempts
to harvest the best of multilingual Castilian society. With such exposure to these
literatures, ideas, and personalities, and with a simultaneous position of great
standing among the kabbalists of the Zohar circle, it is hard to imagine that the
broader phenomena of Iberian fiction and poetry did not find their way into the
creative process of the kabbalists through the figure of R. Todros Abulafia. 24
I believe this to be an extremely rich area for further development (particu--
larly the relationship between zoharic fiction and the maqâma literature), and I
plan to explore these questions in significant detail in a book-length study,
currently in preparation. The implications of this theory are far-reaching, and
require Kabbalah scholars to broaden the scope of literature within which the
Zohar is to be located—to study zoharic narrative and poetics within a compara--
tive, inter-generic framework.
FICTION AS HISTORY:
THE COLLAPSE OF TIME IN ZOHARIC NARRATION
Though it may sound simple enough at first glance (and certainly when seen in
the light of my foregoing reflections), we must begin with an observation that
orients the literary approach: the zoharic narrative is a work of the fictional imagi--
nation, a representation of a world and reality invented by the thirteenth-century
authors of the text. The landscape and ontology of the tannaitic figures in the
Zohar are (despite the use of the names of some actual historical personalities)
ultimately figurations of a medieval mind, a resurrection and reinvention of
second-century time, wholly reconstructed and indeed constructed through the
fictional musings of one or more Castilian kabbalists. This point is underscored
not to reinforce the old pejorative characterization of Moshe de Leon as consum--
mate forger, but rather to better appreciate the power and alternate reality of
invented fictional worlds, of a narrative discourse that transports the reader not
back in time to an historical condition long gone, but into the depths of the
fictional imagination where the abyss of time between the tannaitic and high
medieval periods is collapsed and recast into a seemingly living world of disciple--
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
ship and sacred conversation, creating the image of a spiritual master that would
proceed to dominate the kabbalistic imagination for centuries to come—indeed
down to our own day.
This methodological starting point is no small matter in light of the Zohar’s
history of reception within traditional Jewish circles of learning and piety, and it
represents an interpretive dilemma embodied in a range of traditional narratives:
is there a line to be discerned between the construction of sacred history and the
complete inventive freedom of prose fiction? Robert Alter underscored this point
some thirty years ago in his pioneering monograph on biblical narrative, 25 and the
problem can certainly be extended to most traditional works that purport to
transmit a historical portrait—prose in which generations of authors and redac--
tors have no doubt exercised considerable liberty in the merger of historical fact
with creative legend.26 Contemporary philosophers of history have even taken
this matter a step further, arguing for the deeply ambiguous lines between objec--
tive history and the fictional narrative received as collective memory; in the view
of some theorists (roundly critiqued by defenders of documental historiography),
there is no substantive distinction between prose fiction and the writing of histor--
ical narrative.27 But even if we acknowledge that this extreme position leads to an
unnecessary nihilism with respect to the historiographical enterprise, we must
note that traditional communities regularly absorb fiction into purportedly realist
representations of the past. 28 Indeed, such is the case when we turn to the pseude--
pigraphic narrative fragments found in the Heikhalot literature of Late Antiq--
uity, 29 as well as to the phenomena of storytelling and idea-attribution in
midrashic and Talmudic sources.30 The historicity of transmitted anecdotes about
individual sages and interpretations given in their names is uncertain at best; the
place where history ends and fiction begins is so often unfixed for the reader. The
narratives that are retained as canon recreate the past, and thereby become the
touchstones of cultural memory.
Like these great textual predecessors (which the authors of the Zohar
undoubtedly took to embody an objective and realist historical truth), the Zohar
constructs a narrative that is woven out of the whole cloth of a retrospective
imagination, a fiction that ultimately constructs a new ontology in the reader’s
imagination, in the sociology of received knowledge. Here I am thinking particu--
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larly about the implications of the work of theorists such as Thomas Pavel and the
problem of ontology in fictional discourse.31 What, we may ask, is the “reality-
status” of this “made-up world,” both for the pseudepigraphic author of the Zohar
and for the reader of the text? Is it at all possible to discern the beliefs and inten--
tions of the medieval authors in this regard? Indeed, the process of studying the
zoharic narrative as fiction is complicated and textured by the mysterious veils of
pseudepigraphy. For despite the fact that modern scholarship has proven the
medieval provenance of the Zohar, the circle of Moshe de Leon sought to
convince readers that the narratives about Rabbi Shimon bar Yoÿai and his disci--
ples record a historical truth—that they represent the past “as it truly was.” Thus,
the act of pseudepigraphy dissimulates a realist historical representation about
tannaitic times and the life of Rashbi—reimaging the ontic status of the past in
the eye of religious memory. Unlike a modern story, in which there is a shared
presumption of fictionality and invention between author and reader (even as the
reader might strive toward an effective suspension of disbelief), this medieval
pseudepigraphic fiction seeks to represent itself as accurate historical memory. In
this respect, the fictional project of the Zohar remakes the past through the
device of pseudepigraphy, and the lives of Rashbi and his disciples are “remem--
bered” through the lens of the medieval fiction. The fiction that succeeds as
history for the traditionalist irreversibly recasts cultural memory, and the imag--
ined world becomes—for all intents and purposes—the enduring truth of the
culture, a representation of the “real.”
And yet we may wonder whether medieval readers would not have immedi--
ately associated the tale of wandering, the encounters with sages in disguise, with
the fictional discourse of the maqâmât.32 Would this clear association have clouded
their expectations and beliefs as to the realism of the narration? Might they have
expected the narrative to include a dramatized historical fiction, or did they
understand such texts to reflect the past as it truly was? This question is particu--
larly appropriate in light of the fact that the maqâmât themselves so often blurred
the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, between an exact representa--
tion of the past and the freedom of imagination employed by the narrator and
assumed by the reader.33
In a related vein, we have yet to fully appreciate the narrative complexity and
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
irony involved in the traditional claim (asserted already in the time of de Leon)
that Shimon bar Yoÿai was the author and narrator of the Zohar. For it runs
counter to intuition that a story that primarily celebrates the greatness of Shimon
bar Yoÿai—that narrates his life through the distance of the third-person voice—
would also have been composed by that same master!34 Indeed, what does this
reveal about conceptions of narrative focalization, or “point of view,” among the
Castilian kabbalists? Could the kabbalist really imagine that the paragon of spiri--
tual masters could write about himself in such a laudatory way when the virtue of
humility was deemed so fundamental to the life of moral piety? What, indeed, is
the perspective of the zoharic narrator, and to what extent does that narrator
assume the model of omniscience with regard to the inner workings of his char--
acter’s minds? Can we discern shifts in perspective through the different voices in
the text? Is perspective inserted at a remove from the narrated action, or does the
consciousness of the character truly come to the fore as an independent focaliza--
tion?35 The convergence of these issues intrigues the gaze of the student of reli--
gious memory and its narrative forms.
DRAMA AND REPRESENTATION
At the core of my approach to the Zohar is the claim that the text may be read as
a kind of dramatic literature, a narrative world in which the power of esoteric
wisdom and the brilliance of its disclosure are presented and theatricalized for
the reader. Within this performative framework, the intimate and reverential
relationship between the master and the disciples is on display, and the fictional
scenes serve as the context in which the homiletical mysticism is delivered and
received. Such is the shifting stage light of zoharic discourse, the weave by which
the authors take us in and out of exegetical thought patterns. As I mentioned
earlier, this dimension of the text should be seen in the larger context of medieval
frame-narratives—a convention of the intersecting literary worlds into which the
Zohar was born. Stretching from roots in Indic and Arabic letters to its famed
presence in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, 36 the frame-narrative topos further marks
the Zohar as a distinctly medieval work, a text that embodies a key moment in
the early growth of Jewish fiction. And yet we must reaffirm that this “framing”
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texture of zoharic narrative must not lead us to view that fiction as incidental to
the larger work, as a mere decoration and excuse for the more substantive purpose
of mystical midrash and kabbalistic theosophy. For it is precisely in the interface
between these two modes of zoharic rhetoric—in the interplay of two distinct
dimensions of speech—that we find the deeper magic of zoharic creativity, the
key to its hold on the Jewish spiritual imagination.
As I shall argue in this essay, the theatrics of disclosure, relations among the
disciples, as well as the rhetoric of reverence for the master are all realized by the
narrator through a cluster of compositional techniques, each of which is effected
through the use of dramatic monologue and dialogue. As the disciples encounter
one another on their pedestrian journeys through the Galilean roads, and even
more so when they come before the master (R. Shimon) to receive the disclosure
of kabbalistic wisdom, they exclaim about the overwhelming character of these
secrets, the elevating and terrifying power involved in hearing their revelation.
Through the representation of dramatic speech, the zoharic narrators construct
character intent; the modalities of monologue and dialogue serve as indirect
methods for the authors to convey subtext and the interiority of emotion to the
reader. For, as has been demonstrated in contemporary literary studies, 37 dramatic
speech (especially of the monologic variety) functions as a method for the narrator
to unveil the inner workings and motivations of a character’s mind without
resorting to direct omniscient communication of those thoughts and emotions.
Like the theatrical soliloquy form in Shakespearean drama, the zoharic mono--
logue allows the author to narrate the emotional worlds of his characters through
the quotation of performative speech.38 As in the soliloquy form, the monologist
often exclaims to no one in particular—at least to no one on “the stage” of the
scene’s narration. Instead, this exclamatory speech is the vehicle through which
the author speaks directly to his audience.
Let us begin with consideration of a recurrent monologic topos in which the
disciples announce the greatness of R. Shimon and selected other great men
encountered along the way. As a form of fictional rhetoric, we note the way in
which the authors of the Zohar communicate a conception of the paradigmatic
holy man through the genre of exclamatory speech. In the following instance (as
is true for most of the cases we shall consider), the monologue directly follows the
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
speech of the master, the narrative moment when kabbalistic secrets have been
revealed:
Rabbi Ÿiyya and Rabbi Yossi came forward, prostrated themselves

before him, and kissed his hands. They wept and said: “The supernal
and lower forms raise their heads because of you! The Holy One Blessed
be He made Jerusalem below on the model of [the one] above. He made
the walls of the holy city and its gates. One who enters does not enter
until the gates open. One who ascends does not ascend until the rungs
of the walls have been perfected. Who can open the gates of the holy
city? Who can perfect the rungs of the walls? It is R. Shimon bar Yoÿai,
for he opens the gates to the secrets of wisdom, and he perfects the
supernal rungs. It is written (Ex. 34:23): ‘All your males shall appear
before the face of the Master, YHVH the God of Israel.’ Who is the face
of YHVH the Master? It is R. Shimon bar Yoÿai. For one who is a male
of males must appear before him.” (Zohar 2:38a)
The voice of the character who praises the teacher functions as an indirect
means of narrative depiction, for instead of offering a characterization in the
voice of removed third-person omniscience, the zoharic authors present this
portrait and these values through the spontaneous monologue of a receiving
disciple. We may observe the use of three distinct expressions of physical gesture
in the disciples’ receipt of the master’s teaching: they prostrate themselves, kiss
the masters’ hands, and weep. Variations on this topos run through the zoharic
narrative scenes—the dramatic use of the body serves to function as a prelude to
the exclamatory monologue, and both verbal and nonverbal modes are employed
by the authors to theatricalize the power of mystical disclosure, as well as to
dramatize the emotional depth of the relationship between the students and their
teacher.39 The speech of the monologue (or the unified voice of both R. Ÿiyya
and R. Yossi) signals the receipt of esoteric wisdom through the immediate move
to exalted praise of the master, to a portrait of him as a person unlike all others,
one who is capable of a level of revelation inaccessible to other human beings.
Indeed, in his ability to open the gates to the hidden supernal mysteries, R.
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Shimon attains a quasi-divine status: where the biblical text enjoins all males to
come before God during the three pilgrimage festivals, R. Ÿiyya and R. Yossi
enjoin the elite of all males to make the pilgrimage to R. Shimon, to stand in his
presence as before the very face of God! This language reveals the Zohar at its
boldest pitch—Shimon bar Yoÿai is no ordinary human being; indeed, he is more
comparable to divinity than to humanity. This is certainly related to the compan--
ions’ repeated greeting to one another elsewhere in the Zohar (“behold, I see the
face of the Shekhinah!”),40 but this formulation seems to reflect an even more
radical claim about the heavenly constitution of the master. In the Zohar’s playful
use of the lines from Exodus, we find the assertion that a man must come into the
divine presence of R. Shimon in order to fully achieve maleness;41 as the one who
is uniquely able to open the gates to the divine realm, to the holy city of Jerusalem
above, R. Shimon himself becomes the site of sacred pilgrimage—he is the incar--
nation of the divine face in the earthly realm.42
In other instances, this use of dramatic monologue as a marker of mystical
transmission is given an additional twist. Expressing the power of the teaching
just received (and thereby serving as a fictional pathway out of the homiletical
discourse), the disciples frequently engage in an anticipatory lament, a passionate
elegy for the still-living R. Shimon, a foreshadowing of the master’s ineluctable
death in the culminating scenes of the zoharic epic.43 In the text that follows, we
see a two-part sequence in the dramatization of kabbalistic wisdom and the
power of emotional response that it elicits for the receiver. The first step is taken
by the master himself, setting up the drama of the impending revelation:
R. Shimon was walking on the road, and with him were R. Elazar his
son, R. Abba, and R. Yehudah. While they were walking, R. Shimon
said: “I am stunned by how people of the world do not look to under--
stand the words of Torah and upon what they stand!”
R. Shimon then goes on to deliver a majestic homily on the mysteries of the soul
and the divine world. Closure to the piece is subsequently provided through the
disciples’ dramatic response:
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
R. Elazar, R. Abba, and all of the companions came forward and kissed
his hands. R. Abba wept and said: “Woe, woe [for the time] when you
depart from the world! Who will illuminate the light of Torah?! Happy
is the portion of the companions who have heard these words of Torah
from your mouth!” (Zohar 1:83a–83b)
These two pieces neatly enclose an extended kabbalistic exegesis. In this

respect, they most certainly do “frame” the metaphysical discourse, but it is
precisely this framing that reveals the Zohar’s attention to the nuances of a narra--
tive craft, to the give-and-take of dramatic representation. Before R. Shimon can
launch into his teaching, he must first exclaim aloud to his disciples about the
hidden and often underestimated meaning of the Torah—in this way, the master’s
words are a prelude and signal to the receivers that he is about to transmit secrets
to them. These opening remarks reinforce the image of R. Shimon, pervasive
throughout the Zohar, as the consummate revealer of truths, the sage charged
with unveiling the unrecognized secrets of the Torah. For the reader, this is also a
dramatic cue from the narrator to the same effect: prepare to hear the deeper
truth of scripture, awaken yourself to the presence of deeper meaning! R.
Shimon’s dramatic segue into exegesis is the author’s signal that the reader is
about to hear a deeper and more profound interpretation—R. Shimon’s voice
consistently is the narrative marker for an authoritative position.
On the other end of the homily, the anticipatory elegy serves to dramatize
the revered greatness of the master, while simultaneously expressing the disciples’
emotional response to the mystical teaching just delivered. In this respect, the
dramatic monologue functions to theatricalize the audition and receipt of esoteric
wisdom, to mark its place in the flow of the narrative. The inner turmoil that the
disciples experience as they anticipate R. Shimon’s death is tied directly to his
utterance of that wisdom—the foreshadowed loss is to be bereft of the conduit of
divine secrets, embodied as it is in the person of R. Shimon. As with our first
case, the response of the disciples opens with physical gesture—they kiss R.
Shimon’s hands, and R. Abba weeps. Again we may note that this narrative tech--
nique is utilized frequently by the authors of the Zohar to set the dramatic stage
just prior to the utterance of the exclamatory monologue. Through their dramatic
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response, the disciples mark the closure of the master’s homily; their gesture and
exclamatory speech communicates their receipt of the teaching and establishes a
visible border in the flow of the text. In the process of this marking of transmis--
sion, the passionate relationship of the disciples to R. Shimon is brought to the
fore—a moment that lifts the extended exegetical discourse to a performative
crescendo and fashions an elegant ending to the piece. It is also significant to note
that here, as in a host of other cases, it is R. Abba who speaks the anticipatory
lament—a phenomenon that appears to accord a special role to this character in
the zoharic constellation.44 The fact that certain scenarios repeat, and that these
narrations construct relatively distinct characters who behave in particular ways,
is a phenomenon of great significance. Such differentiation reflects the emergence
of fictional character development in the Zohar beyond a flat one-dimensionalism
in which characters are functionally interchangeable. The heterogeneity of char--
acter in the Zohar has not yet been assumed in Kabbalah scholarship, and the
distinctive portrayals of R. Shimon, R. Elazar, and R. Abba will be critical to
formulating such a theory of character representation.
Let us return to the pilgrimage motif observed earlier—to the dramatic
power of standing in the presence of the master, the act of approaching R.
Shimon to receive hidden wisdom. In the passage translated below, the narrative
theatrics of this event are given a different exegetical turn, one that ultimately
also links back to the motif of anticipatory lament.
R. Yehudah was walking from Kapotkaya to Lod to see R. Shimon who

was there. R. Ÿizkiyah was walking with him . . .
R. Yehudah opened and said (Deut. 30:20): “For He is [the source]
of your life and the length of your days” (‫)כי הוא חייך ואורך ימיך‬. One who
merits the Torah, and does not separate from her, he merits two lives
(‫)זכי לתרין חיין‬. One in this world, and one in the world to come. For it is
written, ÿayekha—in the plural. Every individual who separates from
her, he is as one who separates himself from life; and one who separates
from R. Shimon, it is as though he has separated himself from all [life]
(‫)כאילו מתפרש מכלא‬.
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
And what of this verse with which he opened [his discourse]?45

I cannot enter into it, for it is a concealed word of Torah . . .
Woe to the generation from which R. Shimon will depart!
For when we stand before R. Shimon,
the fountains of the heart open to all sides,
and all is revealed.
But when we separate from him, we don’t know a thing,
and all the fountains are sealed! (Zohar 2:86a–86b)
Here, too, we find a monologic dramatization of the extraordinary greatness of

the master, one that associates the presence of R. Shimon with the sustaining flow
of life, and his absence with death and mourning. Despite the fact that the scenes
in the Zohar are interactive, and thereby at least appear to carry a dialogic texture,
the passage cited above is paradigmatic in the sense that zoharic dialogue more
often than not unfolds as a series of monologues. If there are distinct voices to be
discerned, the divide usually falls between teacher and student, and the organic
interactivity of dialogue is often absent.46 That said, however, each monologue
stands in response to some moment in the narrative flow: the audition of a
powerful exegetical teaching, the celebration and awe stimulated by the very pres--
ence of the master or some other sage in disguise. In this passage, we observe a
further nuance in the topos of exclamatory reverence—through the speech of R.
Yehudah, the zoharic narrator constructs the image of R. Shimon as a living
Torah, and, as implied in our previous text, as an embodied extension of God
Himself. We see this first in the interpretive use of Deuteronomy 30:20, for the
uncited first half of that verse is key to understanding the tenor and full implica--
tion of R. Yehudah’s assertion. In the context of the Deuteronomic enumeration
of blessings and curses, the biblical author exhorts the reader to choose the
blessing of life—“to love YHVH your God, to hear His voice, and to cleave to
Him.” Choosing life is thereby bound up in the devotional love of God, and, in
consequence, the force of life from divinity will be bestowed upon the person in
return: ki huʾ ÿayekha ve-ʾorekh yamekha (For He is [the source] of your life and
the length of your days). To be sure, this love of God is expressed through adher--
ence to the Torah and the life of mitzvot; meriting the Torah (as the Zohar char--
Fall 2009
acterizes it) is nothing less than an act of devotional cleaving to divinity, a binding
of the self to the Source of sources.47 It is in this sense that the full boldness of R.
Yehudah’s monologue emerges: the cleaving of the disciple’s self to R. Shimon is
the ultimate channel to the life-bestowing energy of God, indeed the implication
is that standing in the presence of the master is the highest fulfillment of the
biblical verse. For the authors of the Zohar, R. Shimon is the ultimate embodi--
ment of Torah precisely because it is he, and only he, who can open the gates to
Torah’s most secret chambers—his ability to reveal the hidden wisdom is the
reason for his quasi-divine status.48 The ultimate love of God (through knowl--
edge of the secret meaning of the Torah) is made possible through R. Shimon;
the biblical exhortation to cleave to divinity (the highest manifestation of the love
of God, the pinnacle of religious striving) is channeled through the master. For
these reasons, R. Shimon is the conduit for the most exalted force of life, and his
foreseen absence is in turn lamented and mourned by the disciples. The fountains
of divine wisdom, and the correlated rivulets of cosmic life are transmitted to the
world through the embodied spiritual Torah of R. Shimon; to be without that
holy presence is to be bereft in a state of death and barrenness. The focal point of
the journey undertaken by R. Yehudah and R. Ÿizkiyah is, in this context, a
sacred pilgrimage to that life-bestowing countenance of their teacher—narrative
drama and exegetical creativity merge to reflect the anticipation of R. Shimon’s
presence, the image of a holy man that reaches up into the transcendence of
divinity as it is revealed in the words of the Torah.
In addition to the recurrent construction of R. Shimon as the ultimate font
of secret wisdom, the authors of the Zohar also frequently narrate the compan--
ions’ surprising discovery of a revered mystical sage disguised as a simpleton of
one sort or another.49 Indeed, we may argue that the pedestrian wandering, so
integral to the structure of zoharic fiction,50 is shaped by the series of anticipated
and unanticipated encounters that the companions experience along the way:
anticipated insofar as they set out on a deliberate pilgrimage of sorts—most often
to see R. Shimon in the place where he happens to be; unanticipated insofar as
they happen upon one individual or another who turns out to be far more signifi--
cant than the travelers ever thought him to be. These encounters function to
dramatize the process and excitement of discovering hidden wisdom; the authors
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
of the text appear to convey the message that divine mysteries are to be found in
the most unexpected of places, and that the workings of Divine Providence are
discernible in the happenings of the mundane realm. This realization of God’s
guiding hand in the journey of the companions recurs as a celebratory motif in
the encounter narratives.51
For a key instance of this phenomenon, I turn to the story of R. Hamnuna
Sava, who initially appears in the Zohar in the disguise of a donkey driver following
the companions as they walk along the road. The mysterious figure reveals the fact
that he is a mystic sage by engaging in a powerful kabbalistic discourse—a homily
that is received by the disciples through the dramatic responses of kissing, weeping,
prostration, and exclamatory monologue. But he remains secretive about the true
extent of his identity. And when the disciples rise from their dramatic and reveren--
tial prostration (the nonverbal marker in the narrative of their receipt and affirma--
tion of the secret teaching), the mysterious stranger is nowhere to be seen—he has
disappeared, and the disciples remain weeping and speechless. Finally it is R. Abba
who attempts to make sense of the encounter:
Surely this is what we have learned—that on every road where the

righteous walk, and words of Torah are exchanged between them, the
righteous of the Other World come to them. Surely this was R.
Hamnuna Sava, who came to us from the Other World to reveal these
words to us. And so that we would not recognize him, he departed and
concealed himself from us. (Zohar 1:7a)
This moment of meta-reflection on the encounter reveals the sense of meaning

bestowed upon the fictional wandering. The pedestrian journey of the compan--
ions is an unstructured quest for the secrets of the Torah—a pilgrimage marked
at key moments by the entrance of a new source of mystical wisdom and disclo--
sure, a new figure who can open the secrets in unexpected ways. The concealed
nature of the sage’s identity remains significant in the companions’ interpretation
of the encounter; the perceived otherworldly character of the stranger is deemed
integral to the revelation of secrets along the path. The encounter (one in a series
of encounters that structures the zoharic narrative flow) is the pivot upon which
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the purpose of the companions’ journey turns: they proceed from one moment of
transcendent discovery to the next; each such encounter shapes the evolution of
their homiletic exploration of the metaphysical mysteries. What is more, these
encounters are interpreted by the disciples to reflect the intervention of divine
providence. This discernment of active divine providence in their journey itself
emerges as a recurrent rhetorical refrain—in announcing this realization as part
of the exclamatory monologue, the authors once again utilize the dramatic
moment to underscore a conception of aim and meaning in the fictive wandering,
to assert that the quest for secrets (the guiding thread of zoharic storytelling) is
the fulfillment of a divinely ordained purpose.
This understanding follows an intervening exegetical passage in which the
companions assert the belief that the wise stranger is in fact an embodied righ--
teous soul from the world above. It happens, they claim, that such celestial souls
will descend into the earthly realm so as to impart exalted divine wisdom to
worthy seekers of Torah. The ocular encounter with such holy souls therefore
carries the texture of a heavenly revelation—to behold the presence of such a
descended celestial being is tantamount to a visual experience of divinity itself, a
connotation we also observed earlier with regard to R. Shimon. In this respect, I
argue, certain holy men are deemed by the Zohar to be earthly incarnations of
divine spirit—embodiments whose cosmic purpose is the transmission of secret
knowledge. For our present purposes of understanding the structures of zoharic
narrative, we may emphasize this moment of transcendent encounter as a founda--
tional modulator and maker of rhythm in the text; the discovery of the hidden
identity of the donkey driver stimulates the disciples’ awareness of secret wisdom
still to be attained, arousing their thirst for further advancement on the quest and
constructing a new platform from which the emergent character can speak the
discourse of kabbalistic interpretation. In this way, the encounter-and-discovery
topos shapes and marks off the borders of discourse in zoharic creativity—it
becomes one of the rhetorical methods by which the authors of the text bring
their readers in and out of metaphysical thought, while simultaneously theatrical--
izing the spiritual search of the mystic friends, as well as the reverence for para--
digmatic sages of kabbalistic wisdom. Still reflecting on the fearsome power of
the revelation they just received from R. Hamnuna Sava, R. Abba states:
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
As it is written (Ex. 33:20): “No man shall see me and live.” We surely
have seen, and because of this we will die! But we have seen and merited
this light that was walking amongst us, and still we exist in the world—
for the Holy One Blessed be He sent him to us to reveal the secrets of
wisdom. Happy is our portion! (Zohar 1:7a)
Here again we see the oft-stated purpose of the wandering: the companions are
in quest of the hidden divine wisdom.52 In this case, were it not for the fact that
God Himself wanted the disciples to receive these secrets—and for this reason
orchestrated the encounter—their vision of R. Hamnuna Sava, emissary and
embodiment of the divine world, would have resulted in their death.
Following this revelatory encounter, the mood of the text turns to a pastoral
lyricism, an unusual narrative shift that reflects an attempt on the part of the
authors to evoke the feeling and context of the journeying friends. The image of
such depiction is also used here as a narrative technique for the weaving of a
distinct artistic tapestry, the entrance into a poetic cadence that serves no func--
tion more than the heightening of imaginative beauty as it is transferred for the
reader’s aesthetic pleasure. But like most such cases in the Zohar, the engagement
with nature ultimately serves as a springboard to the mystical interpretive imagi--
nation, to the sense that all worldly experience leads to the discovery of meta--
physical truths.53 In this instance, the pastoral depiction quickly gives way to a
cosmic drama and a return to an evocation of the mysterium tremendum:
They walked, and came upon a mountain. The sun was setting, and the
branches of the mountain trees were rustling in song.
As they were walking, they heard a powerful voice that was saying:
“Holy divine sons (benei ’elahin qadishin)! Those who have been scattered
among the living of this world! Luminaries, sons of the [heavenly]
Academy—assemble in your places to delight with your master in Torah!
They were afraid—they stood in their places, and then sat down.
Meanwhile, a voice went forth as before and said: “Powerful rocks,
exalted hammers! The Master of colors is embroidered with designs,
standing on a platform. Enter and assemble!
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At that moment they heard the great and powerful voice of the
tree-branches saying (Ps. 29:5): “The voice of YHVH breaks cedars.”
R. Elazar and R. Abba fell on their faces, and a great fear
descended upon them.
They arose with trepidation, continued walking, and did not hear
anything more.
They left the mountain and walked on.
In this scene, the pastoral depiction is brief and fragmentary, but it neverthe--
less succeeds in setting the mood of mystery, and functions as the context for an
experience of the divine world. The visual and audial images of the natural realm
(the setting sun, the rustling of the trees) are presented as the dramatic prelude to
the eruption of the heavenly voice—the sound of the branches turns out to be an
indication of the presence of God, the anticipatory winds of the celestial procla--
mation. This literary move is made clear at the end of the passage, as the tree
branches suddenly become articulate with the language of the Psalms: kol YHVH
shover ʾarazim, “the voice of YHVH breaks cedars.” The sounds of nature here
emerge as divine revelation in and of themselves—the voice of God has emerged
through the power of the twilight winds, the rustling of the branches is a reflec--
tion of the divine presence and the call to assemble in a posture of learning and
reception before the heavenly master. The voice of God here resounds in the
natural realm—indeed, the journey through the mundane zone is hardly irrele--
vant to the search for kabbalistic knowledge; the encounters with the sounds and
sights of nature are nothing short of openings into metaphysical discovery.
Having heard the mystic secrets from R. Hamnuna Sava, the friends have now
been inducted as eavesdroppers on the celestial academy; they hear the call for
wandering souls like R. Hamnuna Sava to return to their heavenly places. The
Zohar once again reveals its uncontainable lyricism in the depiction of the divine
master of secrets—He is wrapped in the embroidered garment of colors and
mystery, His delivery of the secrets on high appears to parallel the delivery of
secrets that the disciples anticipate hearing from R. Shimon on the earth below.
All of this appears to flow from the fact that the companions were privileged
to receive revelation from R. Hamnuna Sava; by virtue of that encounter, they
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
have been initiated into the company of celestial beings. And it is just this trans--
figuration that R. Shimon observes when his disciples finally come before him:
through the powers of his otherworldly clairvoyance, the master is able to see that
the wanderers have been visited with miraculous experience. At this stage of the
narrative, we see a dramatization of the disciples’ approach and return to their
teacher—the anticipation that was articulated at several key moments of the
journey is now realized. This culmination is laden with a theatrical representation
of the disciples’ love for R. Shimon, as well as the power of the transcendent reve--
lation that they have reported. In characteristic fashion, this is expressed through
physical gesture—as the embodied humbling of the disciple before the master in
the moment of report and transmission:
R. Elazar came forth, placed his head between the knees of his father,
and told the story. R. Shimon became afraid and wept.
At this point, R. Shimon acknowledges the fearsome power of the disciples’ expe--
rience, and following a spontaneous exegetical teaching, the master seals the
discourse with a dramatic recognition of the event:
R. Shimon wept and said:

“From what I have heard, I too fear the Holy One Blessed be He!”
He raised his hands to his head and exclaimed:
“How is it that you have merited to see R. Hamnuna Sava, Light of
the Torah, face to face, and yet I have not merited it!”
He fell on his face and saw [R. Hamnuna] uprooting mountains
and lighting candles in the palace of the King Messiah. [R. Hamnuna
said to him]:
“Rabbi! In that world you will all be sparks, masters of learning
before the Holy One Blessed be He.”
From that day on [R. Shimon] would call R. Elazar and R. Abba
Peniʾel (the face of God), as it is written (Gen. 32:31): “For I have seen
Elohim face to face.” (Zohar 1:7b)
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In his use of Genesis 32:31, R. Shimon implicitly links the revelatory experience of
his disciples to the transformative moment in the life of Jacob the Patriarch. For it
is in Genesis 32 that Jacob wrestles with a figure from the celestial realm and is
renamed Yisraʾel. Jacob then names the place of that wrestling Peniʾel, in recognition
of the ordeal in which he has encountered a divine emissary, and has yet survived
)‫(ויקרא יעקב את שם המקום פניאל כי ראיתי אלהים פנים אל פנים ותנצל נפשי‬. In this exeget--
ical correlation, it is R. Hamnuna Sava who is aligned with the angelic wrestler of
the biblical narrative, and R. Elazar and R. Abba are compared to Jacob insofar as
they have encountered a heavenly presence, and have lived to tell the tale. This
scene is rather unusual in the context of zoharic fiction, in that here the exalted
status of R. Shimon (who himself is charged elsewhere with a proto-divine char--
acter) is clearly subordinated to the otherworldly greatness of R. Hamnuna Sava.
Indeed, the zoharic narrators use the gestures and exclamations of R. Shimon to
tie up the threads of the foregoing journey; his lament is the dramatic capstone to
the entire pericope, incorporating monologic form to bring closure and integra--
tion to the intersecting discourses of exegesis and narrative.
As the anticipated aim of the disciples’ wandering pilgrimage, R. Shimon
affirms the transcendent experience his disciples have reported—his conferral of
the name Peniʾel upon them (along with the exegetical use of the Gen. 32 prooftext)
brings the textual unit to formal completion.54 R. Shimon’s gestural and exclama--
tory expression parallels the original response of the disciples to the revelation of
R. Hamnuna Sava, and R. Shimon’s vision of R. Hamnuna in the heavenly messi--
anic palace also echoes the interplay of visual presence and absence experienced by
the disciples. For R. Elazar and R. Abba, the mysterious stranger is first hidden (in
his disguise as a donkey driver), then revealed (as the transmitter of exalted
wisdom), and then is absent once again (when the disciples arise from their prostra--
tion, R. Hamnuna has disappeared, having presumably returned to the upper
realm). For R. Shimon, at the close of the pericope, R. Hamnuna is first absent and
hidden (the cause of R. Shimon’s dramatic lament at having missed the opportunity
afforded to his disciples), and only afterward does the heavenly master become
revealed to R. Shimon through the vision of prostration (“he fell on his face and
saw [R. Hamnuna] uprooting mountains and lighting candles in the palace of the
King Messiah”). In this way, the dialectic of presence and absence structures the
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
dramatic narrative;55 the culminating response of R. Shimon encloses the exegesis

within a narrative about the spiritual power of the holy man.
It is also significant to note that the disciples themselves have attained an
enviable status—R. Shimon’s exclamation (and bestowal of the name Peniʾel)
indicates a subordination (if only in this moment) of the master to his disciples.
For not only is R. Shimon represented as inferior to R. Hamnuna, but he also
expresses lament over his deprivation, his envy of R. Elazar and R. Abba. This
lament by R. Shimon serves as a fictional technique for the texturing of character
and the literary mimesis of emotion. Like the other zoharic characters who
express emotion through dramatic monologue, R. Shimon is here represented as a
multidimensional character with an interior life (one who can feel and express
jealousy). Even more important for our purposes, the zoharic narrator is able to
use these techniques to round out the development of character, to show the
represented figures to be far from indistinguishable, flat personae.
At the heart of our inquiry in this essay stands the following question: what
is the interplay, if any, between the two relatively distinct modes of genre present
in the text? To what extent can the narrative episodes be extracted from the
exegetical teachings in which they are embedded? Are these two forms of
discourse haphazardly arranged, or do they reflect some measure of organic inter--
action? For even if the two strata were aligned together at a later stage of redac--
tion in the text’s reception-history,56 I believe there is still ample evidence to
support the notion that the merger of strata was created to provide discernible
dramatic effect and aesthetic texture. While I would not yet venture to claim that
the narrative and exegetical strata are interactive in the majority of cases (though
we can affirm the use of narration as a structural device in the opening, sealing,
and dramatization of the homiletical discourse), there are certainly numerous
such instances of interplay, and it is to this evidence that I now turn. In the
interest of space, I shall analyze just one paradigmatic text; I intend to develop
this question at much greater length elsewhere. The following example also bears
correlation to the R. Hamnuna pericope, inasmuch as pastoral imagination and
narration once again emerge as the context for hermeneutical creativity.
Just prior to the section of text cited below, R. Shimon exclaims to his disciples
about the divine secrets that can be detected in the earthly realm, if one only trains
Fall 2009
the eye of spiritual sight. As the Zohar emphasizes in a great many cases, the lower
world is a reflection and microcosmic model of the upper world; the structures and
elements of the human and natural domains are in fact the traces and the keys to
understanding the deeper mysteries of supernal divine truth. It is for this reason, we
may suggest, that the mystic friends are portrayed as they are on a perennial journey
and quest for kabbalistic wisdom. The inner life of divinity may be probed and
penetrated through the restless search for lower refractions in the earthly realm.
With this in mind, we pick up the discourse at a point where a new exegetical
reading has been proffered, though it remains unclear whether this is still the voice
of R. Shimon, or if the narration has been shifted to a removed voice—one that will
momentarily interject a narrative scene about the companions on the road.
Another matter (Song 2:16): “He who wanders among the roses” (‫הרועה‬
‫)בשושנים‬. Just as this rose is red and its waters are white, so too does the
Holy One Blessed be He conduct His world [first] through the Attribute
of Judgment [and then] through the Attribute of Mercy.57 And it is written
(Is. 1:18): “If your sins are like crimson, they can turn white as snow.”
R. Abba was walking along the road, and with him was R. Yitzÿaq.
As they were walking, he happened upon some roses (‫)פגע באינון ורדים‬. R.
Abba took one in his hands and kept on walking. R. Yossi happened
upon him (‫)פגע בהו‬, and said:
“Surely the Shekhinah is here, and I see that [the rose] in the hands
of R. Abba [is there] to teach a great wisdom. For I know that R. Abba
did not take this [rose] but for to show wisdom (‫דהא ידענא דרבי אבא לא‬
‫)נטל האי אלא לאחזאה חכמתא‬.”
R. Abba said: “Sit, my son. Sit.”
They sat.
R. Abba inhaled the smell from that rose (‫)ארח רבי אבא בההוא ורדא‬
and said:
“Surely the world’s existence depends upon scent (‫ודאי אין העולם‬
‫ !)מתקיים אלא על הריח‬For we have seen that the soul’s existence [also]
depends upon scent. And this [is the reason for the inhalation of the
aroma of] the myrtle [leaves] at the departure of Shabbat.”58
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
He opened and said (Song 2:16):

“ ‘My beloved is mine, and I am his—he who wanders among the
roses.’
Who caused it to be that I am my beloved’s, and that my beloved is
mine?
It is because He conducts his world through roses (‫מנהיג עולמו‬
‫)בשושנים‬.
Just as the rose has a scent—it is red, and when it is squeezed it turns
to white, and still its scent never alters—so too does the Holy One
Blessed be He conduct His world in this way. For were this not the case,
the world could not continue to exist with a sinning person [in it]. The
sinner is called ‘red,’ as it is said (Is. 1:18): ‘If your sins are like crimson,
they can turn white as snow.’” (Zohar 2:20a)
In this unit, the turn to fiction is directly related to the content of the master’s
exegetical speech. After having put forth a symbolic correlation between an item
of the natural world and the inner workings of divinity, the zoharic authors move
quickly to embody this correspondence in a narrative exemplum. As noted above,
we may also observe an abrupt shifting of voice in the flow of discourse—R.
Shimon is in the middle of a homily when the narrative suddenly changes to
depict an episode of the companions (albeit one that maintains the homiletical
train of thought). The shift in voice seems to suggest the entrance of a removed
omniscient narrator into the field of discourse, thus giving the entire pericope the
feeling of a larger orchestration and deliberate structure. The narrator who stands
outside the interaction between teacher and disciples weaves these two threads
together: the stage light of the zoharic drama is moved away from the exegetical
voice of R. Shimon, but the fictive narration serves the purpose of conveying the
hermeneutical point through an alternate means.
Leaving aside the fact that R. Yitzÿaq is introduced to the scene only to be
made peripheral to the narrative content (he reemerges in the middle of the next
page to offer an exegetical discourse of his own), the characters presented in this
passage serve to dramatize the process of metaphysical discovery within the struc--
tures and forms of the physical realm: through their interaction and speech they
Fall 2009
theatricalize the hermeneutical claims made in a homiletical voice on either side

of the narrative piece. In this respect, the contents of the fiction and the exegesis
are clearly integrated; R. Abba’s reflection on the cosmic meaning latent in the
color and aroma of the rose fleshes out and clarifies the interpretive argument. As
with other cases we have considered, it is the happenstance of encounter that
stimulates exegetical speech (though here the motif of the hidden stranger is not
present)—the manner in which R. Yossi greets R. Abba sets the reader up to
expect a deeper hermeneutical purpose behind R. Abba’s plucking of the rose. For
lest we think that R. Abba would delight in the natural world purely for its own
sake, R. Yossi signals that a true mystic sage delves into the natural in order to
discover and reveal some transcendent knowledge (“for I know that R. Abba did
not take this [rose] but for to show wisdom”). This is the signification of R. Yossi’s
exclamation in the preceding sentence: “Surely the Shekhinah is here, and I see
that [the rose] in the hands of R. Abba [is there] to teach a great wisdom.” For as
students of the Zohar know well, the rose is a frequent symbolic referent for the
Shekhinah: the tenth and lowest of the divine sefirot. R. Yossi’s observation of
R. Abba portrays the mystic friends as keen interpreters of one another’s behavior,
and the characters embody a clear message from the authors of the text: just as
the melody of the rustling trees is a harbinger of the divine presence in the
R. Hamnuna pericope, so too the aesthetics of the rose (its color and its smell) are
only significant insofar as they may be used to clarify metaphysical reality.
R. Abba’s plucking of the rose and his inhalation of its scent are thereby under--
stood to be deeply purposeful in a way that transcends the face value of pastoral
beauty. Indeed, the elements of nature are engaged for the ultimate transcendence
of worldly consciousness—even if that ascent of the mind must occur in and
through the appreciable wonders of the world.59 The same can be said for the
exegetical reflection on the symbolic meaning of the colors of the rose: just as the
red rose still contains the whiteness of its waters (the color of its hydration), so too
does God (and more specifically, the Shekhinah) contain both the forces of judg--
ment (represented by the red) and compassion (represented by the white). This
deep divine process of transforming Din into Ÿesed, of allowing the inherent
white of forgiveness to emerge from the outer red of severity, is applied to the
human redemption from sin—the hope outlined in the words of Isaiah 1:18: “If
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
your sins are like crimson, they can turn white as snow” (‫יהיו חטאיכם כשנים כשלג‬
‫)ילבינו‬. The colors of the rose may shift as the white of Ÿesed comes forth from the
red petals of Din—and still it is all one organic entity, a single essence of divine
forgiveness and compassion that is represented in nature by the enduring and
unchanging scent of the rose. That which exists below is a reflection of the
mysteries above.
In the narrator’s depiction of R. Abba’s transmission, we observe the use of
both dramatic pause and a theatrical setting of the stage for the delivery of meta--
physical truth. Such is the exhortation to be seated, as is the moment in which
R. Abba dramatically inhales the scent of the rose. This use of gesture and pause
represents an authorial technique that supplements the exclamatory monologue in
an effort to disclose the inner workings of character intent and feeling. Narrated
action is thus used by the authors to further develop the atmosphere of esoteric
transmission—the depicted sequences of behavior function to convey progression
and anticipation on the part of the fictive characters, as well as in the readers who
observe them. For if monologue is used as an alternative to the third-person voice
of a removed narrator, so too does dramatic action (albeit in the voice of removed
narration) set the scene and signal expectations to the reader—it delivers the cue
that new kabbalistic wisdom is imminent.
In this article I have set out to present lines toward a new agenda in Zohar
scholarship: a way of reading the text through the varied lenses of literary criticism
and narrative theory, an attempt to better understand the interplays of discourse in
the text. In part, I take my methodological cue from the approaches of the classic
Russian formalists60 and their later impact upon the emergence of structuralist
readings of narrative.61 On the other hand, my approach is also influenced by the
Anglo-American tradition of descriptive criticism, with its attendant concern for
issues such as perspective, voice, and the construction of character intent.62 But it is
a methodology still in formation—one that also seeks to combine the study of
poetics (oriented by a morphology of the fictional imagination and the structures of
narrative invention), the discernment of religious typologies, and the hermeneutics
of metaphysical discourse. I seek to understand how the discourse of the Zohar
functions through interweaving techniques of narration, lyric, and exegesis—how
the authors create drama and meaning through the use of discernible compositional
Fall 2009
and imaginative methods. As we have seen in this essay, an assessment of zoharic

poetics involves attention to the dramatic dimensions of the work (including the
uses of monologue, dialogue, performative gesture, and other narrated action), the
aesthetics of theological and pastoral lyricism, and the forms and structures of
narrative. Most prominently, we have observed the use of fiction as a stimulus for
exegetical creativity, on the one hand, and as a context for the dramatization of
esotericism and its disclosure, on the other. These emerge frequently through the
motif of encounters along the road, in general, and encounters with a mysterious
stranger, in particular. Such is the imaginative rubric for the invented world of the
Zohar —the fiction that has been received as realist history in a way parallel to the
other great historical and anecdotal narratives of the culture, whether they be the
biblical books of Genesis and Exodus, or the sage-stories and exempla of classical
rabbinic literature. As we move forward in charting this new frontier of Zohar
research, there is much that remains to be done, and it is an approach that requires
nothing short of a paradigm shift on the part of scholars trained in the history and
hermeneutics of religious ideas. The reward, however, is the recovery of the Zohar
as one of the great masterpieces of the human lyric imagination, a reconceptualiza--
tion of the way rhetoric and discourse work in this canonical and exceedingly influ--
ential text of the Jewish tradition.
Department of Jewish Thought
The Jewish Theological Seminary
NOTES
¬ Portions of this work were presented in several contexts, and the responses of
colleagues in those settings improved the final version. I extend my thanks to
Prof. David Myers of UCLA, Prof. Raymond Scheindlin of the Jewish Theo--
logical Seminary, and the faculty and graduate students at Harvard University’s
Center for Jewish Studies. Special thanks are also due to Prof. Jonathan Decter
of Brandeis University, whose detailed comments on this article contributed
greatly to the refinement of numerous points, as well as to the expansion of my
thinking about the subject.
1 See Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken
Books, 1974 [first published in 1941]), 156; Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
Zohar (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 1989 [first published in
Hebrew by Mosad Bialik in 1949]), 1:25. The question of canonization and
reception-history has been developed at greater length in Boaz Huss, “Sefer ha-
Zohar as a Canonical, Sacred and Holy Text: Changing Perspectives of the Book
of Splendor between the Thirteenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Journal of Jewish
Thought and Philosophy 7, no. 2 (1997): 257–307; idem, “Admiration and Disgust:
The Ambivalent Re-canonization of the Zohar in the Modern Period,” in Study
and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, ed. Howard Kreisel (Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion
University of the Negev Press, 2006), 203–37; Daniel Abrams, “The Invention of
the ‘Zohar’ as a Book: On the Assumptions and Expectations of the Kabbalists
and Modern Scholars,” Kabbalah 19 (2009): 7–142.
2 See Scholem, Major Trends, 156–204; Yehuda Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, trans.
Arnold Schwartz, Stephanie Nakache, and Penina Peli (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1993), 85–138; Daniel Abrams, “Eimatai ÿubrah ha-
Haqdamah le-sefer ha-Zohar?” Asufot 8 (1994): 211–226. Abrams’s piece is not
devoted to the classic medieval authorship question, but rather to when in the
reception-history of the text this Haqdamah was composed and included in the
form we have now. The ongoing project of Ronit Meroz also promises to shed
much light on the question of composition. See, for example, Meroz, “R. Yosef
Angelet u-khtavav ha-Zoharim,” in Ÿidushei Zohar: Meÿqarim ÿadashim be-sifrut
ha-Zohar, ed. Ronit Meroz (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2007), 303–404.
Most recently, the groundbreaking contribution of Elliot R. Wolfson points us to
the existence of an actual group of kabbalists in thirteenth-century Castile who
may have been the model for the fictional representation of Shimon bar Yoÿai
and his disciples. See Wolfson, “The Anonymous Chapters of the Elderly Master
of Secrets: New Evidence for the Early Activity of the Zoharic Circle,” Kabbalah
19 (2009): 143–278.
3 See above for a citation of the 1989 English translation of this classic work. The
emphasis on the metaphysical thought of the Zohar was also a major feature of
Scholem’s writing, and it set the tone for the study of this text within the method--
ological parameters of Jewish thought and philosophy. It perhaps goes without
saying that a wide range of topical studies were produced by other scholars in the
wake of Scholem and Tishby, and they are too numerous to list here.
4 A representative (if highly abbreviated) selection of this scholarship includes Michal

Oron, “Me-omanut ha-drush shel ba‘al ha-Zohar,” in Sefer ha-Zohar ve-Doro, ed.
Joseph Dan (Meÿqarei Yerushalayim be-Maÿshevet Yisrael 8 [1989]): 299–310;
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Elliot R. Wolfson, “Beautiful Maiden without Eyes: Peshat and Sod in Zoharic
Hermeneutics,” in The Midrashic Imagination, ed. M. Fishbane (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1993), 155–203; Michael Fishbane, The Exegetical
Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1998), 105–22; Moshe Idel, “The Zohar as Exegesis,” in
Mysticism and Sacred Scripture, ed. Steven T. Katz (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 87–100.
5 Elliot R. Wolfson, Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic
Symbolism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995); Daniel Abrams,
“Knowing the Maiden without Eyes: Reading the Sexual Reconstruction of the
Jewish Mystic in a Zoharic Parable,” Da’at 50–52 (2003): lix–lxxxiii; Joel Hecker,
Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005); Elliot R. Wolfson, Language,
Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2005).
6 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Forms of Visionary Ascent as Ecstatic Experience in Zoharic

Literature,” in Peter Schäfer and Joseph Dan, Gershom Scholem’s ‘Major Trends in
Jewish Mysticism’: 50 Years After (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1994), 209–35; idem,
Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 326–92; Melila Hellner-Eshed,
Ve-Nahar yotsei me-Eden: ‘al Sfat ha-Ÿavayah hamistit ba-Zohar (Tel Aviv: Am Oved
Publishers, 2005), now translated by Nathan Wolski as A River Flows from Eden:
The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 2009). As mentioned above, these notes that survey the trends in
Zohar scholarship are representative, but are by no means exhaustive.
7 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments in Sefer ha-

Rimmon,” Hebrew Union College Annual 59 (1988): 217–51; Elliot Ginsburg, The
Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1989), 186–296; Charles Mopsik, Les grands textes de la Cabale: Les rites qui font Dieu
(Paris: Éditions Verdier, 1993), 149–234; Joel Hecker, “Eating Gestures and the
Ritualized Body in Medieval Jewish Mysticism,” History of Religions 40 (2000):
125–52.
8 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Dimui antropomorfi ve-ha-simboliqa shel ha-otiyot be-sefer ha-

Zohar,” in Dan, ed., Sefer ha-Zohar ve-Doro, 147–81; Pinchas Giller, The
Enlightened Will Shine: Symbolization and Theurgy in the Later Strata of the Zohar
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); Yehuda Liebes, “Mitos le-
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
umat semel ba-Zohar u-ve kabbalat ha-Ari,” in Ha-mitos ba-Yahadut, ed. Ÿavivah
Pedaya (Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1996), 192–209;
Arthur Green, Keter: The Crown of God in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1997), 151–65; Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections:
Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002),
272–313.
9 Yehuda Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1993), 1–64, 151–69; Elliot R. Wolfson, “Coronation of the
Sabbath Bride: Kabbalistic Myth and the Ritual of Androgynisation,” Journal of
Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6 (1997): 301–44; Michael Fishbane, Biblical Myth
and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 267–305.
10 On this point, see the remarks of Liebes, “Ha-Mashiaÿ shel ha-Zohar,” in Ha-
ra‘ayon ha-meshiÿi be-Yisrael (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and
Humanities, 1982), 103–4.
11 See Scholem, Major Trends, 157.
12 Among an array of other works, Yehudah Liebes’s groundbreaking study, “The

Messiah of the Zohar,” powerfully demonstrated that the representation of
Shimon bar Yoÿai as the “great one” of his, and indeed all, generations, was
critical to the life of the text and to the depth of its reception among generations
of devoted readers. See Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 1–84, and notes. Other
elements of the literary approach are present in Yehuda Liebes, “Zohar ve-eros,”
Alpayyim 9 (1994): 67–119. This last essay explores the playfulness of the
narrative strata, including the use of humor in zoharic creativity. Other impor--
tant contributions to the literary approach, or to the study of the narrative
content, include Mati Megged, Ha-or ha-Neÿshakh: Arakhim estetiyim be-Sefer ha-
Zohar (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Poalim, 1980); Mordechai Pachter, “Bein laila le-voker:
Nituaÿ sifruti shel ma’amar ha-Zohar,” in Dan, ed., Sefer ha-Zohar ve-Doro, 311–
46; Naomi Tene, “Darkhei ‘itsuv ha-sippur be-sefer ha-Zohar” (Ph.D. diss., Bar
Ilan University, 1993); Michal Oron, “Simeini kha-ÿotam ‘al libbekha: ‘Iyunim
ba-poetiqa shel ba‘al ha-Zohar be-parashat sabba de-mishpatim,” in Michal Oron
and Amos Goldreich, eds., Masu’ot: Meÿqarim be-sifrut ha-Kabbalah u-ve-
maÿshevet Yisrael muqdashim le-zikhro shel Prof. Efrayim Gottlieb (Jerusalem:
Mossad Bialik, 1994), 1–24; Eliane Amado Lévy-Valensi, La poétique du Zohar
(Paris: Éditions de l’Éclat, 1996); Pinchas Giller, “Love and Upheaval in the
Zohar’s Sabba de-Mishpatim,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 7
(1997): 31–60; Aryeh Wineman, Mystic Tales from the Zohar (Philadelphia: Jewish
Fall 2009
Publication Society, 1997); Boaz Huss, “Ÿakham ‘adif mi-navi: R. Shimon bar
Yoÿai u-Moshe Rabbeinu ba-Zohar,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish
Mystical Texts 4 (1999): 103–39; Ronit Meroz, “Zoharic Narratives and their
Adaptations,” Hispania Judaica Bulletin 3 (2000): 3–63; Gil Anidjar, “Our Place in
al-Andalus”: Kabbalah, Philosophy, Literature in Arab Jewish Letters (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), 166–218; Eitan P. Fishbane, “Tears of
Disclosure: The Role of Weeping in Zoharic Narrative,” Journal of Jewish Thought
and Philosophy 11, no. 1 (2002): 25–47; David Greenstein, “Aimless Pilgrimage:
The Quotidian Utopia of the Zohar” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2003),
esp. 105–44; Hellner-Eshed, A River Flows from Eden; Wolfson, Language, Eros,
Being, esp. 1–45, 190–260, and notes (Wolfson’s work in this monograph opens
up the dynamic forces of poetic imagery and contemplative imagination in the
Kabbalah; his quest to “craft a poetics of Kabbalah,” and its relation to one of
Scholem’s many programmatic remarks, is articulated on pp. xi–xiv); Oded
Yisraeli, Parshanut ha-sod ve-sod ha-parshanut: Megamot midrashiyot ve-hermeneu--
tiyot be-sabba de mishpatim she-ba-Zohar (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005), 51–
112; Ronit Meroz, “Reqimato shel mitos: Diyun be-shnei sippurim ba-Zohar,” in
Study and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, vol. 2, ed. Howard Kreisel (Beer Sheva:
Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2006), 167–205; Michal Oron, “Motiv
ha-yanuka ve-mashma‘uto be-sefer ha-Zohar,” in Meroz, ed., Ÿidushei Zohar,
129–64; Yonatan Ben ha-Rosh, “Sodo shel Yanuqa ve-Oro shel Sabba: Hebetim
Poetiyim u-Metaforiyim be-Itzuv Demut ha-Yanuqa be-ÿativat ha-Yanuqa de-
Valaq ba-Zohar” (M.A. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007); Joel
Hecker, “Kissing Kabbalists: Hierarchy, Reciprocity, and Equality,” in Leonard J.
Greenspoon, Ronald A. Simkins, and Jean A. Cahan, eds., Love—Virtual and
Real—in the Jewish Tradition (Omaha: Creighton University Press, 2008), 171–
208; Nathan Wolski, “Mystical Poetics: Narrative, Time, and Exegesis in the
Zohar,” Prooftexts 28, no. 2 (2008): 101–28; idem, “Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza Were Walking on the Way: El Caballero Andante and the Book of
Radiance (Sefer ha-Zohar),” Shofar 27, no. 2 (2009): 24–47.
13 With regard to biblical studies, see the following representative studies: Michael
Fishbane, Text and Texture (New York: Schocken Books, 1979); Robert Alter, The
Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981); Meir Sternberg, The
Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); Robert Alter and Frank
Kermode, eds., The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1987); Steven Weitzman, Song and Story in Biblical Narrative:
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
The History of a Literary Convention in Ancient Israel (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1997). For representative research into the literary dimensions
of the midrashic and talmudic corpora, see Geoffrey Hartman and Sanford
Budick, eds., Midrash and Literature (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1986); James Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); David Stern, Parables in
Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1991); idem, Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish
Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univer--
sity Press, 1996); Aryeh Cohen, Rereading Talmud: Gender, Law, and the Poetics of
Sugyot (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998); Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories:
Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univer--
sity Press, 1999); Galit Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in
Rabbinic Literature (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000); idem,
Tales from the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003). Also see the studies of Richard Kalmin
cited below.
14 On this phenomenon, see the rich and wide-ranging study by David A. Wacks,
Framing Iberia: Maqâmât and Frametale Narratives in Medieval Spain (Leiden: Brill,
2007). Also see Katharine S. Gittes, Framing the Canterbury Tales: Chaucer and the
Medieval Frame Narrative Tradition (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991). The
correlation between the zoharic adventures along the road and the maqâma
narrative of Joseph ibn Zabarra, Sefer sha‘ashu‘im, is particularly striking. In both
frame tales, wisdom is revealed along the road by masters in disguise. See Jonathan
Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe (Bloom--
ington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 104. On walking as the foundational motif
of zoharic narration, see Greenstein, “Aimless Pilgrimage,” 144–58.
15 An important exception to this is the work of Gil Anidjar, “Our Place in al-Andalus,”
166–218. It was Anidjar who first suggested the intimate connection between the
Zohar and maqâmâ literature.
16 See the critical edition of this text in Arthur Green, “Perush shir ha-shirim le-R.
Yitzÿaq ibn Sahula,” in Reishit ha-mistiqah ha-Yehudit be-Eiropa, ed. J. Dan
(Meÿqarei Yerushalayim be-Maÿshevet Yisrael 6 [1987]), 393–491.
17 See Raphael Loewe, ed. and trans., Meshal Haqadmoni: Fables from the Distant Past
(London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004).
18 “Ha-tzitut ha-rishon min-ha-Midrash ha-Ne‘elam,” Tarbitz 3 (1931/32): 181–83.
Fall 2009
19 Also see Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 87.
20 Ibid., 169 n. 50.
21 See Green, “Perush shir ha-shirim le-R. Yitzÿaq ibn Sahula,” 398–400; Gershom
Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1974),
175; Elliot R. Wolfson, “Re/membering the Covenant: Memory, Forgetfulness,
and the Construction of History in the Zohar,” in Elisheva Carlebach, John M.
Efron, and David N. Myers, eds., Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in
Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (Hanover, N.H. and London: University Press of
New England, 1998), 233 n. 14.
22 Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 135–38. Now see a fascinating alternate position on this
question in Elliot R. Wolfson, “The Anonymous Chapters of the Elderly Master
of Secrets: New Evidence for the Early Activity of the Zoharic Circle,” Kabbalah:
Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 19 (2009): 178. In presenting a
manuscript text in which a group of mystics congregate around an “elderly master
of secrets,” Wolfson argues that this may represent an initial working out of the
zoharic tale, one that is bound up in the significance of anonymity in the
disclosure of kabbalistic secrets.
23 See Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (Philadelphia: The Jewish
Publication Society, 1992), trans. Louis Schoffman, 119.
24 It is my hope to compose an intellectual biography of Rabbi Todros Abulafia in the

social and political context of the Alfonsine court.
25 See Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 24.
26 See Marc Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London: Routledge,
1995), 135–44.
27 See Hayden White, “The Fictions of Factual Representation,” in The Literature of Fact,
ed. Angus Fletcher (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 21–44; idem,
“The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” Critical Inquiry 7, no. 1
(1980): 5–27. For a critique of this position, see Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative,
24. Consideration of the interplay between these two modes of narrative construc--
tion is also developed in Linda Hutcheon, “The Pastime of Past Time: Fiction,
History, Historiographical Metafiction,” in Michael J. Hoffman and Patrick D.
Murphy, eds., Essentials of the Theory of Fiction (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 1996), 473–95, rpt. from Marjorie Perloff, ed., Postmodern Genres (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 54–74.
28 For reflections on the opposition and relationship between what was remembered in
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
medieval Jewish culture and what actually happened according to so-called

“objective” criteria, see Yosef H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish
Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), 43. For an extensive
inquiry into this tension in the modern historiographical craft, see Peter Novick,
That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
29 See Ra’anan Boustan, “The Emergence of Pseudonymous Attribution in Heikhalot

Literature: Empirical Evidence from the Jewish ‘Magical’ Corpora,” Jewish
Studies Quarterly 14, no. 1 (2007): 18–38.
30 See Richard Kalmin, “Talmudic Portrayals of Relationships between Rabbis:

Amoraic or Pseudepigraphic?” AJS Review 17, no. 2 (1992): 165–97; idem, “Saints
or Sinners, Scholars or Ignoramuses? Stories about the Rabbis as Evidence for the
Composite Nature of the Babylonian Talmud,” AJS Review 15, no. 2 (1990):
179–205.
31 Thomas G. Pavel, Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1986), 11–72.
32 See Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature, 129.
33 On this phenomenon in the maqâma tradition, see Matti Huss, “Lo haya ve-lo nivra:
‘Iyun mashve be-ma‘amad ha-bedayon ba-maqama ha-‘ivrit,” Meÿqarei Yerushalayim
Be-sifrut ‘Ivrit 18 (2001): 58–104. More recently, see the reflections on Judah al-
Ÿarizi’s Taÿkemoni, in Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature, 159, 160, 162.
34 And yet, it is important to note, medieval Hebrew fiction often conflates the use of first
and third person—blurring the lines between confession and removed narration. A
prime example of this is Joseph ibn Zabarra’s Sefer Sha‘ashu‘im. See Decter, Iberian
Jewish Literature, 145, 258 n. 118. As is well known, many medieval works open
with the declaration: “Amar ha-meÿabber” (“thus said the author . . . ”). And despite
the fact that this phrase usually is a remark by the manuscript copyist, it does have
the effect of creating some measure of distance between the author and the reader.
35 On the use of this term in narrative studies, see the remarks of Shlomith Rimmon-
Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge,
2002), 72–86. Compare this with the classic reflections of Wayne C. Booth, The
Rhetoric of Fiction, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983),
169–266. On the interplay between the protagonist and the third-person narrator,
compare the observations in Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature, 163.
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36 This particular conception of scope orients the analysis in Gittes, Framing the
Canterbury Tales.
37 See, for example, Dorrit Cohn, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting
Consciousness in Fiction (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978); Adena
Rosmarin, The Power of Genre (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985),
52–108; Glennis Byron, Dramatic Monologue (London: Routledge, 2003); Ken
Frieden, Genius and Monologue (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985).
38 On this tension between third-person narration and the quoted voice of the
monologist, see Cohn, Transparent Minds, 66.
39 On the use of physical gesture as a dramatic technique in the Zohar, see Fishbane,
“Tears of Disclosure”; Hecker, “Kissing Kabbalists: Hierarchy, Reciprocity, and
Equality.”
40 See Liebes, “Zohar ve-eros,” 104; Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, 368;
Hellner-Eshed, Ve-nahar yotzei me-Eden, 45.
41 To an extent, this characterization is related to the redirection of sexuality and

masculinity to the spiritual plane of divine service and Torah study, a dialectic
that has been explored in detail by Elliot Wolfson. See Wolfson, Language, Eros,
Being, 318–19.
42 See the reflections on pilgrimage, with different nuance, in Greenstein, “Aimless

Pilgrimage,” 350–51.
43 On the significance of R. Shimon’s death in the narrative, see Liebes, “Ha-Mashiaÿ

shel ha-Zohar,” 191–94.
44 Compare Zohar 2:23b; 2:201a. Melila Hellner-Eshed has noticed this fact as well;
see Ve-nahar yotzei me-Eden, 70. Also see the remarks of David Greenstein,
“Aimless Pilgrimage,” 413.
45 The reference here is to R. Shimon’s use of Genesis 16:12 in a teaching the disciples
report having heard from him in a time past.
46 In this respect, the zoharic use of monologue would appear to support the argument
of Mikhail Bakhtin that pre-modern forms of dialogue are ultimately mono--
logues in masquerade; they lack the polyphonic and organic use of voice that
Bakhtin observed in Dostoyevsky and other modernist writers. See the lucid
explication of Bakhtin’s thought on this issue in Gary Saul Morson and Caryl
Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1990), 231–68. Among an array of writings, Bakhtin’s reflec--
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
tions on what he calls “the pre-history of novelistic discourse” are instructive for
our larger inquiry into the use of fictional discourse and voice in the Zohar. See
Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist; trans. Caryl Emerson
and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 41–83.
47 Such an association is more than substantiated by parallel zoharic texts. Among many
other examples, we may point to the much cited passage about the veils and garments
that surround the true essence of Torah (Zohar 3:152a). In that text, each level of
scriptural meaning correlates to an interior dimension of divine life; to penetrate the
deeper nuances of Torah is to ascend into the inner chambers of sefirotic emanation.
See the remarks of Elliot R. Wolfson, in Language, Eros, Being, 244.
48 It is this role as revealer of Torah, on a par with no less than Moses on Mt. Sinai,
that is explored in Boaz Huss, “Ÿakham ‘Adif mi-Navi,” 103–39. In this study,
Huss gives in-depth treatment to the depiction of both Moses and R. Shimon as
holy men who attained the prophetic rung of seeing through the ’aspeqlaria ha-
me’irah (the clear and bright lens—the sefirah Tif ’eret).
49 This is another area in which comparison with the maqâma literature is very
promising—particularly with respect to al-Ÿarizi’s Taÿkemoni. See Decter,
Iberian Jewish Literature, 162. The phenomenon of mysterious and disguised
strangers in the Zohar has also been discussed by Hellner-Eshed, Ve-Nahar yotsei
me-Eden, 177–81.
50 I once again call attention to the work of David Greenstein (“Aimless Pilgrimage”)
on this motif.
51 In addition to the text discussed in detail below, we may identify several other
representative (though not exclusive) cases: Zohar 2:49a–50a (in which a stranger
provides life-saving guidance through the dangerous desert, and then turns out to
be the bearer of unexpected wisdom); 2:80a–80b (a mysterious stranger teaches
the companions about the wisdom hidden in the natural world); 3:188b (the
yanuqa narrative).
52 In this respect, my approach is rather different from the perspective offered by

David Greenstein. See, for example, “Aimless Pilgrimage,” 464.
53 Compare the reflections in Elliot R. Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature Reflected in the

Symbolism of Medieval Kabbalah,” in Judaism and Ecology: Created World and
Revealed Word, ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2002), 322–23, in which Wolfson argues that the kabbalists
operated with a fundamentally negative view of the natural world—that it is a
Fall 2009
feminine dimension whose impurity must be subjugated, that the femininity of

the earth is itself but a window onto the masculine realm of the real Above.
54 On the conferral of this name upon the disciples, see the comments of Liebes, “Ha-
Mashiaÿ shel ha-Zohar,” 98–99.
55 This dialectic evokes the forms of the classical maqâmât—especially in regard to the
ways in which an episode is given closure. The ending of a narrative scene, in the
Zohar as in the maqâmât, is frequently structured by a moment of dramatic
recognition (anagnorisis) of the previously concealed identity of the protagonist.
On this phenomenon, see Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature, 133.
56 See Meroz, “Zoharic Narratives and Their Adaptations,” 44. Also see discussion of
Meroz’s position in Abrams, “The Invention of the Zohar as a Book,” 79.
57 See Pesiqta Rabbati, ch. 40.
58 On the kabbalistic significance and symbolism of the hadas (myrtle leaves) in the
havdalah ritual, see Elliot K. Ginsburg, “Tiksei ha-havdalah ba-kabbalah ha-
zoharit,” in Joseph Dan, ed., Sefer ha-Zohar ve-doro, 195–200. Also see Ginsburg,
The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah, 256–84.
59 In regard to this paradox, the insights of Geoffrey Hartman into the creativity of
William Wordsworth shed much comparative light: “It can be shown, via several
important episodes of The Prelude, that Wordsworth thought nature itself led
him beyond nature. . . .” See Hartman, Wordsworth’s Poetry: 1787–1814
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 33 (originally published by
Yale University Press in 1964). This paradox might well be correlated to the
reflections of Wolfson, cited above (and also see Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature,”
315). For it is precisely through nature that nature itself is transcended.
60 Here I am thinking particularly of Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, trans.

Laurence Scott (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), as well as the founda--
tional essays by Shklovsky, Tomashevsky, and Eichenbaum, republished in
Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, ed. and trans. Lee T. Lemon and Marion
J. Reis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965). My inquiry into the
guiding issues of voice and character is shaped by the work of Mikhail Bakhtin,
cited above (in particular, Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination).
61 A lucid articulation of narrative structure is to be found in Seymour Chatman, Story

and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1978). Important theoretical contributions also worth high--
lighting here include Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism,
PROOFTEXTS 29: 3
Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1975), and Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1977).
62 On this score, central influences include Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction; Rimmon-
Kenan, Narrative Fiction; and Cohn, Transparent Minds.
Fall 2009

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The Scent of the Rose: Drama, Fiction, and Narrative Form in the Zohar

Author(s): Eitan P. Fishbane

The Scent of the Rose:

PROOFTEXTS 29 (2009): 324–361. Copyright © 2009 by Prooftexts Ltd.

tions of previous Kabbalah scholarship, there is reason to believe that kabbalistic

DRAMA AND REPRESENTATION

Rabbi Ÿiyya and Rabbi Yossi came forward, prostrated themselves

These two pieces neatly enclose an extended kabbalistic exegesis. In this

R. Yehudah was walking from Kapotkaya to Lod to see R. Shimon who

And what of this verse with which he opened [his discourse]?45

Here, too, we find a monologic dramatization of the extraordinary greatness of

Surely this is what we have learned—that on every road where the

This moment of meta-reflection on the encounter reveals the sense of meaning

R. Shimon wept and said:

dramatic narrative;55 the culminating response of R. Shimon encloses the exegesis

He opened and said (Song 2:16):

theatricalize the hermeneutical claims made in a homiletical voice on either side

and imaginative methods. As we have seen in this essay, an assessment of zoharic

4 A representative (if highly abbreviated) selection of this scholarship includes Michal

6 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Forms of Visionary Ascent as Ecstatic Experience in Zoharic

7 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Mystical Rationalization of the Commandments in Sefer ha-

8 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Dimui antropomorfi ve-ha-simboliqa shel ha-otiyot be-sefer ha-

11 See Scholem, Major Trends, 157.

12 Among an array of other works, Yehudah Liebes’s groundbreaking study, “The

The History of a Literary Convention in Ancient Israel (Bloomington: Indiana

18 “Ha-tzitut ha-rishon min-ha-Midrash ha-Ne‘elam,” Tarbitz 3 (1931/32): 181–83.

19 Also see Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 87.

20 Ibid., 169 n. 50.

24 It is my hope to compose an intellectual biography of Rabbi Todros Abulafia in the

25 See Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 24.

medieval Jewish culture and what actually happened according to so-called

29 See Ra’anan Boustan, “The Emergence of Pseudonymous Attribution in Heikhalot

30 See Richard Kalmin, “Talmudic Portrayals of Relationships between Rabbis:

31 Thomas G. Pavel, Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

32 See Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature, 129.

41 To an extent, this characterization is related to the redirection of sexuality and

42 See the reflections on pilgrimage, with different nuance, in Greenstein, “Aimless

43 On the significance of R. Shimon’s death in the narrative, see Liebes, “Ha-Mashiaÿ

52 In this respect, my approach is rather different from the perspective offered by

53 Compare the reflections in Elliot R. Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature Reflected in the

feminine dimension whose impurity must be subjugated, that the femininity of

57 See Pesiqta Rabbati, ch. 40.

60 Here I am thinking particularly of Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, trans.

61 A lucid articulation of narrative structure is to be found in Seymour Chatman, Story

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