HISTORY OF THE JEWS -- CHAPTER I: THE DOCTRINE OF ABSOLUTE EVIL

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HISTORY OF THE JEWS -- CHAPTER I: THE DOCTRINE OF ABSOLUTE EVIL
 
Bible were never intended to be understood in a plain, simple sense, but that they contain something higher, mysterious, supernatural. "Is it conceivable," the Zohar makes one of Simon bar Yochai's circle exclaim, "that God had no holier matters to communicate than these common things about Esau and Hagar, Laban and Jacob, Balaam's ass, Balak's jealousy of Israel, and Zimri's lewdness? Does a collection of such tales, taken in their ordinary sense, deserve the name of Torah?And can it be said of such a revelation that it utters the pure truth ?" "If that is all the Torah contains," remarks Simon bar Yochai (or Moses de Leon), "we can produce in our time a book as good as this, aye, perhaps better.  No, no!the higher, mystical sense of the Torah is its true sense. The Biblical narratives resemble a beautiful dress, which enraptures fools so that they do not look beneath it. This robe, however, covers a body, i.e., the precepts of the Law, and this again a soul, the higher soul. Woe to the guilty, who assert that the Torah contains only simple stories, and therefore look only upon the dress. Blessed are the righteous, who seek the real sense of the Law. The jar is not the wine, so stories do not make up the Torah." Thus the secret lore of Moses de Leon naturally has free play to pervert everything and anything, and give it the seal of sublimity, and in this manner to promulgate a false doctrine, not only absurd, sometimes even blasphemous and immoral.  All laws of the Torah are to be considered as parts and constituents of a higher world; they resolve themselves into the mysteries of the masculine and feminine principle (positive and negative). Only when both parts meet, does the higher unity arise.  Consequently, whenever any one transgresses one of the laws, he obscures the brilliant image of the higher world

It is almost impossible to give an idea of the abuse which the Zohar, or Moses de Leon, practices in the interpretation of Holy Writ, and how he twists the sense of the words. In the verse, "Raise your eyes to heaven, and see who has created this," a profound mystery is supposed to reside, which the prophet Elijah learned in the celestial school, and revealed to Simon bar Yochai; namely, that God had been unknown and obscure before the creation of the world, in a manner existing, and still not existing. He was the "Who" (the unknown subject).  The creation is part of His self-revelation. It was by the creation that He first proclaimed Himself as God. The Zohar is particularly concerned with that side of man which is an eternal riddle to man, the soul, its origin and end. Like the older Kabbalists, the Zohar assumed the pre-existence of the souls in the brilliant world of the Sefiroth. They are there wrapped in a spiritual robe, and entranced in the contemplation of God's light. When the souls are about to enter this world they assume an earthly garment, the body; but as soon as they are to leave the earth, the angel of death divests them of this earthly garment. If a soul lives piously and morally here below, it receives its former heavenly robe, and can once more enjoy the blissful ecstasy of God's presence; if not, particularly if it departs from the world impenitent, it wanders about naked and ashamed till purified in hell. The nakedness of the soul, paradise and hell depicted in fantastic, baroque, and terrible images are themes for which, the Zohar often and gladly makes digressions.

What happens to the soul during sleep, and the shadows of life sin, impurity in small and great things—are likewise favorite subjects for discussion in the Zohar, to which it frequently reverts, present  ing them in the greatest variety of guises and repetitions. One of the older Kabbalists arrived at the notion that to the higher world, the world of light, of holiness, and of angels, there was a sharp antithesis a world of darkness, of unholiness, of Satan, in short the principle of evil, which was likewise developed into ten degrees (Sefiroth) at the creation of the world. In spite of their opposite characters, the two worlds are of one origin, forming opposite poles, and are in the same relation to each other as the right side is to the left. Accordingly, evil is called in the language of the Kabbalists the left or other side. The Kabbalists gave another representation of the Satanic empire. On the border of the world of light, the world of darkness is situated, and encompasses it as the shell surrounds the kernel of the fruit. Hence the Zohar metaphorically designates evil, or sin, with its ten degrees, as shell (Kelifa). This side is the favorite topic of the Zohar; for here it can apply its peculiar exposition of the Scriptures. The ten Sefiroth of the left side, the Satanic kingdom, are enumerated and denominated by names which savor of barbarism. The names sound like those of the princes of the demons in the book of Enoch, and are perhaps borrowed thence : Samael or Samiel, Azael, Angiel, Sariel, Kartiel.

The Zohar identifies all blasphemers and wicked people with the evil principle of the "shells" (Kelifoth) the first serpent, Cain, Esau, Pharaoh, and Esau's empire, Rome, and the civil and spiritual power of Christendom in the Middle Ages, which rested on violence and injustice. Israel and righteous people, on the other hand, belong to the world of light, the right Sefiroth. "He who goes after the left side (sin), and defiles his actions, draws upon himself the impure spirits; they attach themselves to him, nor do they ever leave him." The laws of the Torah have no other object than to effect and cherish the union of the souls with the world of light. Every transgression of them brings the souls to the world of darkness, evil spirits, and impurity. The Zohar coarsely represents the connection of the souls with light or with darkness by the image of wedded union, as, in general, it asserts the masculine and feminine principle in the higher world, even in reference to the Deity. As long as Israel lives in exile, the divine unity is deficient and disrupted; God will become one only in those days when the Mistress (Matronita) will espouse the King. Moses de Leon would have left a gap, if he had not spoken of the Messianic period the keynote of the Kabbala and determined its date. In fact, the sudden revelation of the doctrine so long held secret rests on the assumption that the time of the Messiah is near. But here the forger betrays him  self. Instead of indicating a period or a year for the appearance of the Messiah approximating the age of Simon bar Yochai' (in the second century), the Zohar, with its casuistical playing with letters and numbers, demonstrated that it would happen in the beginning of the fourteenth century, therefore in the lifetime of the author. " When the sixtieth or the sixty-sixth year will pass the threshold of the sixth thousand, the Messiah will show himself;" but some time will pass before all nations will be conquered, and Israel be gathered together. The Messiah will first be summoned to appear on earth from his secret abode in Paradise, "the bird's nest," where he has been dwelling in bliss since the beginning of the world. A bloody conflict will then break out in the world. Edom and Ishmael (Christian and Mahometan nations) will vehemently contend with one another, and eventually both will be annihilated by a mightier conquering people. Signs and miracles will presage the time, and the resurrection of the dead and a general diffusion of the Kabbalistic knowledge of God will constitute the end of the world.

Moses de Leon intended to arouse in the minds of his contemporaries the hope that they would behold the time of the Messiah with their own eyes. He was perhaps as much a victim to Messianic enthusiasm as Abraham Abulafia. Despite the Zohar's endeavor to exalt rabbinical Judaism and its law, and by a mystical explanation to give every custom, however trivial, a special signification and higher import, it carps at and criticises the Talmud and its method, though in an obscure, equivocal manner, and with the most innocent air in the world. It represents the study of the Kabbala as of much higher importance than the study of the Talmud, and even of the Bible. The Kabbala has the power of soaring, and is able to follow the flight of the Deity in His inscrutable guidance of things; the Talmud, on the other hand, and its adherents, have clipped wings, and cannot elevate themselves to higher knowledge. The Zohar compares the Mishna (Talmud) with a lowly slave; the Kabbala, on the other hand, with a powerful mistress. The former has to do with inferior matters, with " clean and unclean," with "permitted and prohibited," with "what is and is not fit to be used." As long as this woman rules with her "now pure, at another time impure blood," the union of the Father with the Matrona (God with Israel) cannot take place. In the Messianic period, on the other hand, when the higher knowledge will awake, and gain the ascendency, the Kabbala will once more assert its dominion over the slave (Talmud), as in the time of the lawgiver Moses. The Zohar lastly compares the study of the Talmud with a rugged, unproductive rock which, when struck, gives out scanty drops of water, causing only disputes and discussions. The Kabbala, on the other hand, is like a spring flowing abundantly, to which only a word needs to be spoken to cause it to pour out its refreshing and vivifying contents. When the Zohar or Midrash of Simon bar Yochai was published, it aroused the greatest wonder among the Kabbalists. They seized upon it with avidity. Moses de Leon received vast multitudes of orders to send copies. The question, whence all at once had come so comprehensive a work of an old teacher of the Mishna, not a trace of which had been known till then, was thus answered: Nachmani had exhumed it in Palestine, had sent it to his son in Catalonia, by a whirlwind it had been carried to Aragon or Alicante (Valencia), where it had fallen into the hands of Moses de Leon, who alone possessed the original document. The repute of the newly discovered Kabbalistic treasure soon spread through the whole of Spain. The school of Abulafia at once gave the Zohar the tribute of its acknowledgment, and considered it indisputably genuine.  Moses de Leon's wildest hopes were more than realized. There were, of course, Kabbalists who doubted that the Zohar had originated with Simon bar Jochai and his school, but none the less did they pay homage to the book as to a pure source for Kabbalistic theories. When the Kabbalist Isaac of Accho who had escaped the massacre that had ensued upon the capture of that city, arrived in Spain, and saw the Zohar, he was staggered, and became desirous of coming to the root of the question, whether this alleged ancient Palestinian work was really genuine, as he had been born and educated in the Holy Land, had associated with Nachmani's pupils, and yet had never heard a syllable about it.
 

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