Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the Perplexed.
We are joined by Professor Daniel Matt.
Professor Matt is a scholar of Kabbalah and the Zohar.
He has been featured in Time and Newsweek and has appeared on
National Public Radio and The History Channel.
He has published over a dozen books, including The Essential
Kabala, Translated into 8 Languages, Zohar, Annotated and
Explained, and God in The Big Bang, Discovering Harmony
Between Science and Spirituality.
Several years ago, Daniel completed an 18 year project of
translating and annotating the Zohar.
In 2016, Stanford University Press published his 9th volume
of the Zohar Pritzker Edition, concluding the Zohar's main
commentary on the Torah. For this work, Daniel has been
honored with a National Jewish Book Award and a Corret Jewish
Book Award. The Corret Award hailed his
translation as a monumental contribution to the history of
Jewish thought. Daniel received his PhD from
Brandeis University and for 20 years served as Professor of
Jewish Spirituality at the Richard S Dinner Center for
Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley,
CA. He has also taught at Stanford
University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Daniel lives in Berkeley with his wife Hannah.
His book Becoming Elijah, Prophet of Transformation was
the Rabbi Sacks Book Prize winner in 2022.
He currently teaches Zohar online.
For information, visit www.danielcmattthats2tsdanielcmatt.com.
Without further ado, Professor Matt.
Thank you for joining the Judaism Demystified podcast.
This is actually Judaism Mystified, as you mentioned off
camera. I think that's a great moniker.
So we were going to discuss your book Becoming Elijah.
Why is your book called Becoming Elijah and what's the
significance of his name? Yeah, I entitled the book
Becoming Elijah for two reasons and one I'll explain and the
other I think we'll discover later as we as we discuss this
amazing unique figure. It means through throughout most
of the book, through I think 95% of the book.
What becoming Elijah means is how did he undergo this
transformation from who Eliyahu is like in the Bible?
He's really a a zealot, A fierce zealot for the one true God.
And then who he becomes in Jewish tradition, which is
really a kind of compassionate Jewish superhero, right?
He shows up in the nick of time to save people.
He somebody's falling from the roof, he'll swoop by almost like
Superman, and scoop him up. He can help people who are in
poverty. He can inspire rabbis or or
Mystics. So it seems so different than
this fierce quality in the Bible.
So I really try to trace how he goes through this transformation
from the biblical zealot to a compassionate hero.
In that sense how does he become the Eliahu Hanavi we all know
and and love and wait for each each Pesach as to his name.
Really you know you find so many names in the Bible that have a
divine element right Shimu Al many names that end with Al Dani
Al and or you have Yahoo right Yerma Yahoo Yusha Yahoo.
Many biblical names have a divine element but Elijah is
unique because he has two Ali Yahoo My God is yudhay vave
right? Yudhay Vav is just a urban
abbreviation for Yudhay Vave. So my God is Yahoo.
It's almost that. He's permeated by God.
He's suffused with God. Maybe he's intoxicated with God.
He's such an intense figure, and his name really reveals that.
You know, it's I'm excited to see this journey of how we go
from Eliahu and Tanakh to to the Eliahu we know today.
I learnt the story of Eliahu Navi during COVID, actually,
when we were in lockdowns and I was going to say from a Lahim at
that time we had time, you know, And it struck me as I was
reading it for the first time. I'm like, whoa, like, you know,
like this is not how how I'm used to picturing him.
And this, this idea of of how how this metamorphosized
throughout time always interests me.
So this is this is going to be exciting.
Yeah, for me too. I really worked on Eliahu during
COVID especially. It was kind of going, it was
going slow, and then I didn't have the excuses I usually have
and I actually got a lot done during during that strange time.
Fantastic, so. Yeah, go ahead.
So I was going to say, so let's start with Eliahu in Tanakh.
Let's start with his demeanor and his his persona in Tanakh.
Right. Yeah.
Let let's run through a few of the of the stories and and what
what his character is like. First of all, he seems to pop up
out of nowhere, right? We don't hear anything about his
birth, his growth, his childhood.
I mean that's true of many prophets, but with Elijah, it's
even more so Right in the middle of the Book of Kings, we just
hear all of a sudden that he's confronting the king of Israel,
right? He's confronting Akhav, Ahab.
And what does he say to Ahab? We don't know why he says this,
but he basically, he just declares there will be no rain.
So the first thing we hear from Elijah is this is this prophecy
of a drought. He says there'll be a drought.
He doesn't say why, but it's pretty clear that this is
because Ahab and Jezebel, right, the wicked Jezebel things are
usually blamed on the woman Ahab and Jezebel have been
worshipping. Baal have been promoting the
worship of Baal and Asherah in Israel, and that's why God is
now going to punish. Well, we have already in the
Shema, right? If you don't follow the word of
Hashem, if you don't follow God's word, then the rain will
stop. And Elijah says there'll be no
rain. So this doesn't go over very
well with the king and the queen, obviously.
And Elijah has to flee. He flees to a Creek by the
Jordan River and he's fed miraculously by Ravens.
This is the first miracle. Elijah's really characterized by
miracles. In fact, really there this is.
Elijah and his disciple Alicia are the great miracle workers.
Throughout the whole Bible, no one else performs as many
miracles as the as the two of them.
So the Ravens feed him miraculously.
He can drink water from the Creek, but after all, he's
declared A drought and pretty soon the Creek dries up.
He has to flee again, and God says flee to the area near near
modern day Lebanon. And there God says, you'll
you'll find someone who will sustain you.
He goes there he finds a widow, and this widow doesn't seem very
able to sustain Eliyahu. The widow is is cooking the last
meal. She says.
I'm going to cook one more meal for my little boy and myself and
then we'll die. Elijah miraculously provides her
with with food. He says your your jug will never
run out of oil. Your jar.
We'll never run out of grain until the drought finishes.
So the woman is overwhelmed, and she recognizes the holiness, the
power of Eliyahu. But before too long, her little
boy gets very sick. He's on the verge of death.
Perhaps he dies. He at least goes into a coma.
Or he dies and the widow lashes out at Elijah.
Why did you come here? Why did you kill my son so?
Eliyahu prays to God and miraculously brings the boy back
to life. Perhaps through resuscitation
that the boy is is brought back to life and.
He reads kind of like a ancient CPR, like he discovered CPR
unless he blows into. Yeah, yeah, you, you know, you
can explain how how it happens. And still the the widow is, you
know, overwhelmingly it's overwhelmed and eternally
grateful. And then it turns out it's it's
a few years have passed since the beginning of the drought and
God tells Eliahu the time has come for the for the drought to
end. So Elijah needs to meet again
with King Ahab. He hasn't seen him since that
first declaration of the drought.
He runs into King Ahab's steward, Obadiah, Obadiah.
And Elijah says, I I I need to meet with Ahab.
And Obadiah says, well, you know, I might if I set up a
meeting with Ahab. How do I know you'll show up?
You never You never seem to. No one can locate you right
Elijah really already, even before he later becomes who he
becomes. He already in the Bible, appears
and disappears very quickly. In fact, Ovadja says something
interesting. He says when I leave you, Ruach
Hadonai, the spirit of Yudhevave will carry you off to I know not
where. So already there.
It seems that Elijah can be carried by the wind, can can be
carried by the spirit, but a lot, Eliao says.
I'm going to be here, I'm going to meet with Ahab.
And he tells the king that he wants to have a contest, Wants
to have a contest between Baal and the true God of Israel on
Mount Carmel or at that beautiful and impressive
mountain, modern day Haifa. So Ahab gathers all of Israel,
or at least many, many Israelites.
They come to the mountain, and Elijah basically wants to have a
contest between hundreds of prophets of Baal, 450 prophets
of Baal and Elijah alone. He's very often the loner.
Elijah alone. And Elijah says each of us, the
prophets and and I, each of each team is going to sacrifice a
bull and we'll see who can call down fire from heaven to burn up
the sacrifice. So at this at this point, just
for context for everybody who's listening the up until now the
Israelites are are having they're kind of having like a
dual loyalty right. They're they're it's not like
they're just following ball. They're also following Hashem.
They're kind of like playing it safe.
They're, they're, they're, you know, having an affair.
Yes, yes, really. Elijah is forcing them finally
to choose, right? Everyone likes a contest.
So the people, they're somewhat attracted both to Baal, Baal and
Asherah, the male and female Canaanite deities, on the one
hand, and still they haven't rejected the God of Israel, that
they don't know who's going to answer their prayer.
They want to, you know, cover their bets.
But Elijah is really black and white, OK, later he becomes
something different, as we'll see.
But the biblical Elijah is very much a dualist.
It's either you're with Yudhavate or you're rejecting
Yudhavave. So in fact, he says to the
people Adbatai a tempo srim Al snehasi IPM.
How long are you going to jump back and forth between the two
branches, right? You're like a bird, not sure
which branch it's going to land on?
Elijah's says. Elijah says stop acting like
that. Pick Yuthe Vave or pick Baal,
we're going to have a contest and see.
So he lets the prophets of Baal go first.
They start crying out to their to their God, calling out to
Baal for hours. Nothing happens.
Then Elijah says, You know, why don't you try a little harder?
Maybe, maybe your God is sleeping.
Maybe he's off on a journey. Maybe he's trying to relieve
himself. Seems that's what the Hebrew is
really saying, although very few translations take it that way.
But this could, you could say, is the first moment of sarcasm
in the Bible. Some people say that Elijah
invented sarcasm. You know, just cry out a little
louder, maybe you can wake up your God.
So now the prophets have all go into a frenzy.
They start gashing themselves. They dance, they cry out.
Still nothing. They finally give up.
Elijah steps forward with a very short prayer, one or two line
prayer. He calls down fire from heaven.
The fire comes, incinerates his sacrifice, and the people are
won over. The people bow down and what do
they cry out? Hashem Hu Ha Elohim, Hashem Hu
Ha Elohim Yudhay Vave Is the true God.
OK, that may sound familiar, because that of course has
entered Jewish liturgy. And when is it?
When is it chanted? At one of the most dramatic
moments in the entire Jewish year, the very conclusion of Yom
Kippur. But at the end of NI Allah the
Cantor chants, and the congregation responds not two
times as it was chanted on Mount Carmel, but seven times.
But it's clearly taken from this, from this passage in the
Book of Kings. So the great declaration of
faith, right? Elijah has won the people back
to God. You could say it's his greatest
moment of triumph. But it doesn't last too long,
because meanwhile Jezebel is back at the palace, and it was
her prophets who were defeated. And of course, after Elijah
wins, soon after that, rain comes down South.
Fire has come down. The rain has come down to end
the drought. But Elijah isn't very
magnanimous toward the prophets of Baal.
He doesn't try to win them over to monotheism.
What does he do? He slaughters all 450 prophets
of Baal. Maybe it means he had them
slaughtered. But the Hebrew is of Ayish
Khatim, right? He was the shokrate.
He slaughtered them, perhaps. And with his own hands, he kills
all 450 prophets of Baal. Isabel is incensed.
When Ahab gets back to the palace, she now wants to take
her vengeance on Elijah. And she actually says, tomorrow,
Elijah, you're going to be like one of them.
You'll be like one of those prophets.
What? Isn't she just outright kill
him? She says she's going to kill him
by the next day. That really gives Elijah a
window of opportunity, a window of escape, and Elijah escape
southward out of the Kingdom of Israel into the Kingdom of
Judea, where Ahab really can't. Yeah, but Jezebel really can't
catch him. But he goes further, to
Beersheva, into the desert of the Negev, and he's really
broken. So soon after his great moment
of triumph, he feels that what's going to happen now, Isabel will
bring the people back to the worship of Baal.
The Israelites are so ambivalent for the moment they've been won
over, but he really feel he really feels he's a failure.
You could say he has a kind of death wish.
He actually asks God to take his life.
He says I'm no better than my parent, my father's.
I'm no better than my ancestors take my life.
Fortunately, God doesn't give in, at least not right away.
An Angel revives Elijah and he finds himself.
Elijah finds himself wandering. He doesn't really know where.
Perhaps he walks for 40 days. You can kind of get a hint. 40
days has some connection with a famous mountain and he ends up
at Mount Sinai. Read the Book of Kings.
Calls it Horreve. But Horreve is Sinai, Jewish
tradition. So he's at Mount Sinai.
Moses, you remember, was on Mount Sinai for 40 days with
Elijah. It's taking him 40 days to get
there. And he has an encounter with the
Holy One, blessed be he. He has an encounter with God, a
direct encounter with God. In some ways there, you know,
there are parallels here between what happened to the people of
Israel at Mount Sinai, originally hundreds of years
earlier, and what happens with Elijah at Mount Sinai.
You remember in the Book of Exodus, there's fire and smoke.
Seems like the mountain is burning, There's trembling, a
kind of earthquake. And similar things happen with
Elijah. You have a very powerful wind,
then you have an earthquake, then you have fire.
But the Book of Kings goes out of its way to say Lo baruach
Adonai. God was not in the wind.
Lobarash. I don't know.
God was not in the earthquake. Lobaesh.
I don't know. God was not in the fire.
So if God is not in these loud phenomena of nature, where is
God? God is to be found one of the
most beautiful phrases I think in the whole Bible after these
loud natural phenomena. What is it?
What happens? Elijah senses or he hears call
de Mamma daka, right? This is often translated from
the King James Bible and onward. A still small voice, but that's
not actually what the Hebrew means.
Call can mean voice or sound. Here.
It's really, I would translate it, a sound of sheer stillness.
Call de Mama daka. For those of you who know Hebrew
grammar, it's really a smihud. It's really a construct.
Call de Mama the sound of de Mama.
It's not the call that is daka, because call is masculine.
It's the de Mama, that's daka. It's the sound of of thin
silence, the sound of thin stillness.
That's where God is to be found. You could say it's almost a
precursor of meditation. You don't look, you don't find
God in these loud phenomena. You find God in a moment of
silence, a sound of silence. It could be that Simon and
Garfunkel got the name of their famous song from this phrase in
the Book of Kings. It's really a sound of silence.
That's where God has found. But Elijah doesn't really get
the message because actually, what happens?
God says before this, the sound of silence.
God says, Malachafo Eliyahu, what are you doing here?
Maybe that's a critique of Elijah.
Why have you fled from the people?
You should be with the people. You should still be trying to
bring them back to God. Well, Elijah says what am I
doing here? Kano Kineti.
I've been zealously zealous, right?
He really identifies himself as a zealot.
This is a self identification, Elijah says.
I am zealotry personified and the people have rejected your
covenant. Elijah says they're out to get
me. He really feels persecuted.
He has something of a persecution complex reasons for
that. He is being persecuted, but he
somehow can't let go of that. Then, after that question from
God and the answer, it's then that you have the wind, the
earthquake, the fire, finally the sound of sheer stillness.
And then God asks again, Malachafo.
Eliahu, what are you doing here? Elijah?
The same exact question. Now how does Elijah respond?
Has he finally learned? Has he discovered God's
presence? Has he learned maybe.
For this critique, you don't have to be loud, and you don't
have to lash out at the people. You should try to be gentle.
No, he just answers the question the same way.
Kano Quineti, I've been very zealous.
They're out to get me. They've rejected your covenant.
So it seems that Elijah doesn't really learn the lesson, you
might say. And then it's almost that God
gives in to Elijah's request. You could say.
Some people would say he's the only prophet who's fired.
God says go. In a moment, resignation.
I'm sorry. Resignation.
Yeah yeah, he resigned or God. Well, God says go find your
successor. But he says go find your
successor. I want you to anoint Elisha.
Elisha Ben Shafat is going to be your successor.
Elijah's never met him. God says go find him here.
You'll find him in a certain place and he's your successor.
And Elijah realizes his time is now drawing close.
He wanted God to kill him. God hasn't killed him, but.
His career is drawing to a close.
He anoints Alicia. Other things happen.
Afterward he he confronts King Ahab again over the famous
vineyard of Navote. But we'll leave that for another
time and please. Before you move on from the
story, first of all with the sound of sheer stillness, it
reminds me of TI Liam the Khadu Miyati.
La Silence is the brave. Do you understand it as that he
didn't get the message or is it more that he's rejecting the
message? Yeah, it's hard to know.
You know, there's so many ambiguous things in in the
Elijah's story. We'll come to a very dramatic
one very soon. You really can't tell.
You know, some people say, in fact we have the same question
from God, right? Malachafoeliahu.
And then Elijah's answer is exactly the same.
Conocanati. I've been zealously zealous.
Some Bible scholars say, well, they're not really two passages.
It was one passage and some scribe mistakenly copied it.
Again, it only happened once. And then you have the the wind,
earthquake, fire, and and the sound of silence.
But from the way we read the the passage now, it seems that
Elijah hasn't learned anything. Maybe he's rejecting this idea
of of gentleness. He says he he condemns the
people. He can't stop condemning the
people. So in a sense he's in a sense
he's giving up. It is a kind of of resignation.
He's he's unable to reframe his, his understanding of, of or his.
He's unable to reframe, reframe his, his attitude towards the
people. He just can't do it.
Yeah, and that really explains what we're gonna get to soon,
how he changes his transformation in the Bible.
He can't do it. But before you know it, by the
time we get to rabbinic literature, he he can do it.
So I think it's really I I think it's exactly that.
The rabbis are are troubled by the fact that Elijah can't
change course and they make him change course.
You know, I think, I think what's what's always striking to
me when reading these, I mean I've been I I read this story
very early on in my life. My father used to tell me
stories of Tanakh since I was a little boy and he, you know, I I
noticed that there's like a juxtaposition obviously between
Moshe Moshe's experience at Harsenai and his are obviously
obviously the the text is trying to bring those two stories
together and make us realize the contrast in.
In a way the role is reversed where God is playing the role of
kind of what Moshe did, where he's like defending the people
and don't give up on the people. And Mahaney not in a way like do
not do not do this. But Eliah, he's almost
challenging Eliahu the same way he God kind of plays that role
the opposite way in in this sort of Moshe.
I always find that to be very, very fascinating.
Yes. That wouldn't be the only time.
There's also textual comparisons between Noah and Yona and the
roles are reversed again there too there are textual
similarities which enough of the extent but in in by know off God
is playing the I'm gonna destroy the world they're evil.
But by Yonah he's playing the you know benevolent like forgive
them and you know these are these are you have compassion on
the board you know and I can have compassion on everyone.
So we see that there's a this interplay is more than it's more
than just here it's it's sort of something that goes on in
Tanakh. It's interesting.
Just wanted to add that, that's. What I want to do?
Another another observation is also how they exit.
You know, their story ends. Moshe's is like a humble kind of
private burial where we don't know where he's going and and
the whole like, you know taken up in a chariot to the heavens.
It's a very it's it's like purposefully.
It seems like it's a purposefully like kind of
exactly trying to make a different differentiation
between the two characters. Yeah, yeah, I know there are a
lot of comparisons and then some important contrast between
Eliyahu and Moshe. You know the midrash, I think
it's it's Pasichta Rabati, relatively late midrash, It
lifts. I think it's something like 30
or 40 parallels between Moshe and Eliahu.
There's many, many things but but the differences are really
striking too. And Moshe learns to be
compassionate a lot earlier than Eliahu.
But we're really coming now to the to the end of of Eliahu's
biblical career. You could say he he anoints
Elisha, he does one or two more things.
There's a couple more things. But then we find Elijah and
Alicia walking by the Jordan. They kind of do a farewell tour
actually. Eliahu goes to various places
around the Jordan visiting Binet, Hanne, Viim, kind of the
profits and training. And there seemed to be a school
of prophets and they they recognize Eliahu as a master and
Eliahu wants to to bid farewell. And then Eliahu and Alicia are
all alone right by the Jordan. And we have this spectacular
description, one of the most dramatic moments in the whole
Bible. Perhaps a chariot of fire and
horses of fire appear. In fact, the movie Chariots of
Fire took its name from from this scene a chariot of fire and
horses of fire appear. They come between Elisha and
Eliahu, and Eliahu is transported, carried up to
heaven in a whirlwind. So it's in a chariot and in a
whirlwind. Again we have the wind, not
here, it's a Sahara. But like the ruach alia was
carried off by the wind. And the question really is, here
we have a beautiful moment of of ambiguity.
Did Eliahu die? Does this mean he died of
spectacular death or does it mean he escaped death entirely?
And I've asked you know scholars about this.
A11 wonderful scholar in Jerusalem Shlomo na a.
He said it's it's intentionally. It's intentionally ambiguous.
The Bible doesn't want to let you know.
But something interesting happens.
How does Alicia react? Alicia, says Avi Avi Rekhavistra
El Farashov. But my father, my father, my
master, my mentor, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen.
Now, is he talking about the chariot?
Maybe he's talking about Elijah himself.
Elijah is the chariot. Elijah is the one who's fighting
for Israel. But more significantly, what is
a lot? What does Elisha do?
He tears his clothes. Of course, in Judaism, you tear
your clothes when you're in mourning, right?
If you're mourning over someone, we're right.
We have Jacob tearing his clothes, other biblical
characters tear their clothes, and Alicia is tearing his
clothes. Why?
Because he thinks Elijah has died.
We don't know if he's died or if he's up there in heaven.
Alicia thinks he's died. But this is the opening for the
traditional belief in Judaism and in Christianity and in
Islam, that Eliyahu never died. He's up there in heaven.
He's still in heaven. And if we're moving to perhaps
the last thing in the Bible, that will speak about the
prophet Malachi, right? The prophet Malachi, the last of
the minor prophets. At the very end of the entire
section of Niveem, right? Torah.
Niveem Kituvim. The Torah, the writing, the
Torah, the Prophets, the writings.
The very last lines of the prophets is the this brief book
of Malachi. The final chapter of Malachi.
Where do you what do you hear there?
Hinay Anokhi Sholayakhlakhem ET Eliya Hanavi here.
He's called Eliya rather than Eliyahu.
I'm go. I'm sending to you Elijah the
prophet before the coming of Yom Hashem before the coming of the
day of Yudhevawe, the day of the Lord.
So that's about as close as the Bible ever comes to saying the
day of the Messiah, the days of the Messiah, the the Bible
speaks about Yom Hashem, the day of of the Lord, the day of Udave
Elijah is going to appear again right before the culmination of
history, right before the time of the Messiah, you could say
that's how the rabbis understand it.
So this must mean that Elijah is still alive, he's in heaven,
he's waiting there, could mean that he'll be brought back to
life. But that that's not what the
verse says. I'm sending to you Elijah the
prophet. So Elijah is in heaven and he
will reappear. That's already being stead in
the Bible itself that allows the rabbis.
In a moment we'll get to who Eliyahu becomes in the Talmud of
the Midrash. That allows the rabbis to say,
look, the Bible itself is telling us that Elijah didn't
die even though Elisha was fooled to thinking he died.
He was really up in heaven and available.
Amazing. Well, why do you, why do you
think that the Naville left it ambiguous to begin with his
death? What do you think was the
significance of that ambiguity? I'm not sure.
I mean 11. Possibility is that it means he
did die, but he died in a spectacular way.
You know, you could say everyone goes to the other world, to the
other dimension after death, But Elijah did it in the
spectacular, dramatic way, and Alicia tears his clothes.
Maybe the Pshad is that he died, but it's it's left open.
I don't know. Maybe just because it's great
literature, it's great writing, and it's it's more powerful and
something is, is mysterious. There's something so
intrinsically mysterious about Eliyahu, right?
He's really, he's really one-of-a-kind.
He's a loner. It's interesting how later he
becomes so much of the part of the Jewish family, right?
We'll end up talking about the Seder.
Elijah's at the Seder as Lida I lodges at every circumcision.
Elijah's there every every Saturday evening when we
conclude Shabbat. He's part of the Jewish
families. He's in the Jewish Home in the
Bible. He has no home.
He has no family. He may never have married.
We never hear that he had a child.
He's the ultimate loner. He's a he, he, he.
In fact, he says I'm alone. Aninish Arti livadi.
I'm alone, he says again and again.
So he he's unique and alone and in his life he was unique.
And in his death he's mysterious and unique.
We we just don't know what would happen to him.
And that leaves open everything else about his post biblical
career. It's almost like it's almost
like they want to tell you that there's unfinished business with
him. Yeah, that's a great phrase.
Unfinished business is really what it's about.
There's something, there's something incomplete.
There's something incomplete in the story and there's something
incomplete in Elijah's personality.
He he had, he has work to do, right.
He hasn't gotten the message. He has work to do and and that's
where we'll we can move now. Yeah.
So let's move to the next segment about Eliahu and Avi in
the Talmud. So who is he in the Talmud?
He's. He appears a good number of
times in the Babylonian Talmud, in the Jerusalem Talmud, in the
Midrash. So what?
What's he like? He hasn't lost his his power, He
hasn't lost his intensity, He hasn't lost his zeal.
But he's starting to to to transmute that zeal into
compassion. I would say one thing that
happens with Elijah is his zeal or even his rage really becomes
transformed into compassion. He's basically there to to help
people. He'll help people in need.
In the Midrash you find stories about people who have lost
everything, who don't have a child, and Elijah announces that
a child will be born. Elijah helps somebody find a
gold coin. And the Talmud, it's not so much
that type of miracle story, it's more that he, he's in touch with
the rabbis. You have to be pretty special to
to gain what's called Gilui Eliyahu, a revelation of Elijah.
You don't have that phrase exactly in the Talmud.
It's a later medieval phrase, but it really describes what
happens in the Talmud. We have time and again, certain
rabbis, right, certain special worthy rabbis who who merit and
encounter with Elijah. So what happens when they
encounter Elijah? Elijah will will teach them
something. He doesn't necessarily perform a
miracle immediately. He'll teach the rabbi something
and help them understand a difficult passage.
Sometimes he might report a teaching from the Heavenly
Academy. From Yeshiva Shomala, right?
There's an earthly bait, Midrash, but there's also
yeshiva Shamala. So who's the head rabbi in the
Yeshiva Shamala, the Holy One, blessed be he.
And who are the students? The students are the souls of
the righteous. If you lived a worthy life, if
you studied a lot of Torah, when you get to heaven, you get to
study Torah in the greatest Academy possible in the Yeshiva
Shamala. So Elijah is is he gains
admission into the Yeshiva Shamala.
In some ways he's an Angel. He's described clearly as an
Angel later, but even in the Talmud he's already angelic.
So he's an Angel who has a permanent place of a seat
reserved for him, the Yeshiva Shamala.
And he can convey teachings right?
The other people, you're either on earth or you're in heaven.
Elijah is the in between, right? We spoke a moment about a moment
ago about the ambiguity. Elijah is is the 11 scholars
called him the the virtuoso of the in between.
That's really who he is. So he he he straddles heaven and
earth. He'll be in the yeshiva Shamala.
Then he'll meet a rabbi on earth and teach him something.
Sometimes the rabbi will ask a specific question.
Elijah will answer it. Sometimes in late Midrash,
Elijah asks the rabbi a question and the rabbi might come up with
with an answer. So he's in dialogue and one of
his main roles is that he'll be the one to announce the
Mashiach. So the rabbis pick this up from
Malachi. I'm sending to you Elijah,
before the day of the Lord. For the Rabbis that means he's
going to announce the Mashiach. He even have a discussion.
When will Elijah arrive? Right.
We're yearning for the Messiah, and the Talmud actually says we
don't know exactly when he'll arrive, but we do know when he
won't arrive. Elijah will not appear on which
day of the week? Elijah won't appear on Friday.
Why? Apparently because people are
too busy getting ready for Shabbat.
If you're preparing for Shabbat, you don't want to be interrupted
by having to go out and greet Elijah.
So the Talmud says maybe, maybe he's half in jest.
Elijah won't come on on Friday because we understand the reason
to be because people are too busy getting ready for Shabbat.
Then the question is, well, maybe he can come on Shabbat.
Wouldn't that be wonderful? If Elijah came on Shabbat, the
Messiah would come right after. What's the problem?
Can you fly on Shabbat? But you can't travel more than
2000 cubits. It's more than 2000 cubits from
heaven to Jerusalem. So can Elijah fly on Shabbat?
The Talmud actually discusses this and the question is really
a halachic question. If you're 10 hand breaths above
earth, OK, I think it's about about 2 1/2 feet.
If your ten hand breadths, this is a tephache.
If your 10 to fahim above earth, maybe you can fly.
It's not decided. So we don't know if Eliyahu can
fly on Shabbat or not. And actually we can jump ahead
now to something we were going to discuss later, but it fits in
beautifully now. According to one explanation,
This is why we chant songs to Eliahu ET Havdallah.
Because he can't come on Friday. We don't know if he can come on
Shabbat, so we have to play it safe.
He won't travel on Shabbat. OK, Eliyahu, Shabbat is now
finished. No more excuses.
You have to come. That's how we sing to Eliahu on
on every Moto Shabbat. I personally, oh, sorry, Say,
Benji, go ahead. No, no, no, go ahead.
Go ahead. I was going to say something
that's interesting about his character development in the
Talmud also is that he's kind of like sensitive to you know look
at look at people from a different angle like that.
He's very black and white in the Navi, but in the in the Agada
there's a famous Agada. But like one of the rabbis asks
him which one of these people in the marketplace are going to
Allama ban he's he points out these, you know, two jesters,
these two because they make people laugh and like God really
like that's a side to them that only like God sees.
So he he's like he's looking deeper into people and giving
them like kind of like Damakov's flute, you know versus the the
Eliahu and the Tanakhu is not like that at all.
Yes, yes. That's a beautiful example.
He's really he's changing. He's start.
He's becoming more of a Mensch. He's becoming more human and and
more sensitive. You know what you mentioned
remind me of something wonderful.
You have a great statement in in the Talmud.
It comes two times in the Talmud.
Ehlu VA ehlu de ray elohim Khayim, Right?
If there's a dispute, well, maybe only one person is, right.
No, both these and those are the words of the living God.
One of the two times that appears, it's spoken by Eliyahu.
So in the Bible, he's so black and white, right?
You're either for God or you're for Baal.
There's nothing in between. And to Talmud, he learns to
appreciate differences and to to bridge differences.
And one of his roles, one of his messianic roles, according to
the rabbis, according to the Mishnah, is that he will resolve
disputes. He'll find a way to bring two
parties together. He'll bring peace between
contending, contending people. It's.
Another Yeah. Sorry, sorry.
Go on, go on. Go on, go on.
Another very important thing in the Talmud is that he is a
shapeshifter. That's an amazing phrase.
I used to think that it came from Marvel Comics, because
there you have, you know, characters who can take on
different form, but it actually it's a term, it's a term in
academic study of folklore. That's how it first appeared.
A shapeshifter you find it's an ancient folklore.
You even have it in the Epic of Gilgamesh, you have it in Greek
mythology, you have it, you have it in in fairy tales and science
fiction. You have it in Harry Potter,
Star Trek, Star Wars. So a shapeshifter is someone who
can take on a different identity, a person who can
become someone else. And Elijah does that OK, in the
Bible he's always you know who he is and intense.
I mean, he can be compassionate, he's often zealot, but he
doesn't change his basic characters, basic identity.
In the Talmud he usually appears as an old man.
OK, by the time the Talmud he is pretty old.
I mean, he was born in the in the 9th century BCE.
But he's not only an old man. He could be a slave.
He could be a horseman, a Persian, a Roman dignitary, an
Arab. His most amazing shape, that
most amazing shape that he takes on is in a story about Rabbi
Mayer, right? The great sage, Rabbi Mayer was
disciple, colleague, disciple of Rabbi Akiva Remayer one time had
to rescue his sister-in-law. His sister-in-law was
imprisoned. In a Roman brothel.
So Rabaimer rescues her from the brothel, but because of that,
the Romans are out to get him, and they actually post his
picture on the gates, On the gates of Rome.
They say anyone who finds this person, you'll get a reward.
So Roman soldiers are out looking for a bemayor and they
actually spot him and they're about to grab Rabaimer.
But who shows up in the nick of time?
Eliao and Avi, in the form of a prostitute.
The prostitute Elijah. The prostitute embraces Rabbi
Mayer. The Romans say, ah, that
couldn't possibly be the holy Rabbi Mayer we know.
He'd never do that. And in that way, Elijah saves a
great sage of the Talmud. So he's a shapeshifter.
And also that story shows something else.
He kind of he breaks the rules, you know?
He doesn't. He does the unexpected.
He he's really unpredictable. And he's something of a
trickster, too, that appears already in the Talmud, in the
Midrash, and more so in in later stages.
He he is. It's hard to It's hard to figure
out. You know, as you're telling me
these incidents in the in the Talmud, my intuition is telling
me that what the Rabbis are trying to do here.
And I'm not saying that with conviction.
I'm just this is just what's coming to me as you saying it,
it's almost like they want to critique Elio Navi, but the but
Khazal was is never going to critique Elio Navi.
So what they're actually doing is, is that they're portraying
him in a way that the the reader who knows him from Tanakh will
automatically see the difference of the persona over here.
And what they're basically telling you is, you know, this
is what God wanted from him to be what we're portraying him as.
But they're not gonna say that outright because he was one of
the greatest prophets. So what they're gonna do is, is
they're going to anecdote with anecdotes, present Eliyao in the
way which maybe God was aspiring him to be in natural.
That's just. That no, that's very good.
It's very good. The the rabbis are really re
imagining him re refashioning him and that that really happens
age by age. It's almost that each generation
reimagines Elijah. So in a sense who Elijah becomes
shows you the values of that particular age, right?
In the Bible it's the battle against idolatry and Elijah
champions that by the time of the rabbis Judaism has
developed, Judaism has evolved, right?
Ethics are so vital, right? The Ahabda, Laura Kamocha,
Zeklao Gaudobatara, the most important principles love your
neighbor Elijah is one who who enables that and furthers that.
But I think you know really the the term you could use here is
tikkun. Sounds like a strange term to
apply to to Eliao and Avi. But he undergoes A tikkun really
means a repair or a a amending. Something about his his harsh
character has to be mended. And you can say the rabbis are
bringing that about not overtly but by showing as you say
showing anecdotally how he's changed.
But I I'd like to think also I think that's definitely true.
But I think you could say as well taking a broad perspective,
Elijah realizes that he that he has to change.
Yeah. So over the ages Elijah is
changing himself as as he's being changed he's being changed
and he's changing himself. He he's finally getting that
message of called the Mama Daka of the of the value of of
gentleness and perhaps 11 more brief story we should look at
before we move on to to Kabbalah and the medieval time.
The famous story I'm sure many of you know what's called Tanu
tanu or Tanu rochel akhnai. The oven the oven of Akhnai.
It's a famous story in the Talmud.
Rabbis are arguing, they're discussing as they're as they
always do, and they're discussing whether a certain
kind of oven, an oven that's constructed in a certain way.
We don't have to go into all the details, but basically they're
trying to decide is this particular oven, can it become
impure? Is it subject to tuma?
Is it subject to impurity? And you have a disagreement
between Rabi Eliezer on the one hand and all of the other,
Hakamim on the other. The other Hakamim say it can be
rendered impure. Rabi Eliezer says no, this
particular type of oven can never become impure.
But they vote. And Rabi Eliezer is, you know,
way, way outnumbered. And he says, you know, I'm not
going to give in. He says, if if I'm right, if I'm
right, I want this carob tree to prove it.
And the carob tree is uprooted, just as Eliezer predicted.
But the rabbis don't accept it. They just said we we don't
follow carob trees. We we follow our own discussion.
Eliezer doesn't give in. He says, OK, if I'm right, I
want the water in that aqueduct there to begin flowing
backwards. The water flows backward.
The rabbis say we don't, We don't go by water.
We go by our discussion. Finally, Eliezer's getting
desperate. He says, If I'm right, let the
walls of this Midrash collapse. The walls actually begin to come
in. But Rabioshua is there and out
of Rabioshua's out of respect Rabioshua.
The walls don't collapse. They just kind of stay inclined.
Still the rabbis aren't willing to to give in to Rabi Eliezer.
Finally a voice comes out of heaven.
A but Cole, a heavenly echo, a heavenly voice comes out and
says, uh, Eliezer's right still the rabbis won't give in.
How can you not give in to a heavenly voice 'cause Reb Yoshua
says, quoting the Torah Lova Shamayimhi, It's not in heaven.
Torah is no longer in heaven. God gave us the Torah and the
way we decide is how we have to decide determine the halacha.
So it's an amazing story telling us about the power of rabbinic
teaching and rabbinic discussion.
But that's not the end of the story.
We find out that sometime later another Rabbi Rab in a ton runs
into Eliahu. He has a Gilui Eliyao.
He has a revelation of Elijah. And he says, you know, I'm
wondering how did God react to that when the people rejected
the heavenly voice, What did God say?
And Eliyahu says, famous line, you all know Nitsuni Banai,
Nitsuni Banai. My children have defeated me.
God was trying to intervene and
change things and say, let's go with Eliezer, but the rabbis now
have the ball in their hands. It's an amazing story about the
power of halachic discussion. But what to me is remarkable is
that we only know what God felt. We only know what God was
thinking because of whom, Because of Eliahu.
So even though he has a minor, he just has a line or two in
that story. It's a very it's a very
significant moment. He can convey how God feels.
He knows how God feels. He knows what's going on in the
upper world and he he reveals it to to the rabbis.
Amazing. Let's let's turn to the mystical
books, Kabbalah Kasidut. Let's understand the persona of
Elio Navi in these texts. Yeah, so he's already changed a
lot, right from the Bible to the Talmud.
He's really become kind of the Eliyao Hanavi that that we know.
But there's another element that's hinted at already in
rabbinic literature, right? Eliahu is teaching the rabbis,
but with Kabbalah, we really find that Eliahu inspires the
Mystics. After all, we said that he's in
touch with the ruach, right? He's carried by the ruach and
then he's taken up to heaven in the Sahara in the whirlwind.
But really, there's some connection here between Eliahu
and Ruach Akodesh. OK, the Holy Spirit.
Really. I would say that in the
Kabbalah, Eliyahu conveys the Holy Spirit to serious spiritual
seekers. How do we know this?
Well, the early Kabbalists, and of course Speaking of Kabbalah,
Kabbalah develops very gradually.
But you could say Kabbalah really emerges as a full blown
movement in Judaism in the 12th and 13th centuries in southern
France and Provence and then spilling over the the the
mountains into Spain. That's where Kabbalah merges the
12th and 13th century. The Zohar is composed in Spain
in the 13th century. But the earliest Kabbalists from
the end of the 12th century, the beginning of the 13th century,
they don't themselves claim to have encountered Elijah.
But in many traditions about them it's reported that they had
Gilui Eliahu, they had a revelation of Elijah.
So what does that mean? I think one thing it means is
that is that if a kabbalist came up with a radical new idea,
let's say a kabbalist said God isn't male, God is equally male
and female. Or God is Infinity.
The name for God is insof Infinity or God needs us.
It's not just that we need God, God needs us.
OK, all these ideas have roots. They have hints already in
rabbinic literature, but the Kabbalists came out and
developed them into full blown concepts and and ideas, and if
they were challenged about their ideas they could say I didn't
invent it, Elijah told me. So I I don't want to say that
that's simply an excuse. I I think what's going on here
is some it's really the question what goes on in the creative
mind? How does an artist, how does a
genius come up with a new idea? You know, you can think of this
in music or sculpture or painting.
Great artists will often say it wasn't me, it was the muse,
right? It was the spirit.
It was somehow a divine illumination.
It came through me. I was the channel, but I wasn't
the inventor. And I think that's very, very
profound and I think it applies to mysticism.
The Kabbalists didn't invent these ideas.
They somehow they somehow, I would say they looked so deep
within that they discovered something beyond.
And Elijah is the figure that they attribute the illumination
to. In other words, he's a
personification of Ruach Hakodesh.
He's a personification of the Holy Spirit.
Now it's very interesting. You have one kabbalist, famous
kabbalist, Moshe Cordevero. He actually says, you know, a
person might feel that he's coming up with it himself, but
that could be Eliahu speaking to him.
In other words, the question is, does this happen within a person
or does it happen by him encountering something beyond
his normal self? It's very hard to pin that down.
And the Maharal, The Maharal of Prague.
Yehuda Lev of Prague. He says it seemed it might seem
to the person as if those words came from himself, but they were
the words of Eliahu. So who is what is Eliahu
becoming? He's becoming the the Channel 4
illumination, the Channel 4 inspiration.
And in a remarkable passage, Khayyam Vital right.
One of the great students, perhaps the greatest student of
Isaac Luria in Svat Khayyam Vital actually creates a menu or
I would say a a system, a technique.
How can you attain Guilui Eliahu?
He actually like a science. Like a science.
Almost a science. Listen, listen.
To. To his list, this This is how he
says It's remarkable. He says if you want to encounter
Elijah, here's what you have to do.
First of all, tishuva, OK. Turning back to God doesn't
sound especially mystical. In fact, most of this list is is
just normal rabbinic teaching fulfilling them its vote.
It's #2 sincere Kavanaugh during prayer.
Really meaning what you're saying.
Intense study of Torah? OK, nothing up to theirs at all.
Remarkably, especially mystical. That's normal, ethical Jewish
teaching. Now it gets a little more
interesting and ascetic. Lifestyle.
OK, limiting food and drink and sensual pleasures.
Eliminating negative traits? That's pretty difficult.
Seclusion. Frequent immersion in a mikvah
immersion and ritual bath meditating this this is
remarkable. I would call it.
You could call this normal mysticism.
That's a phrase that that Max Kaduchen invented.
A scholar of the 20th century said if you really want to
understand rabbinic Judaism, he's not talking about Kabbalah.
If you really want to understand the Talmud, it's a normal
mysticism. What does that mean?
There ways that you can encounter God through your daily
activities, right through a bracha.
For saying Abraha, you become aware of God's presence in the
world. So this isn't an intense an
intense version of that. But Vital is trying to say
there's a way to encounter Elijah.
But what's significant is that he sees Elijah as one who's
conveying Ruachha Kodesh, the Holy Spirit.
I would say one other thing that Louis Ginsburg, great Talmudic
scholar of the 20th century, he says something I think is an
exaggeration, but this is what he says.
What Moses was to the Torah, Elijah was to the Kabbalah.
Of course you can't have the Torah without Moshe Torat Moshe.
It's the Torah of Moses. To say that Elijah is that
central to Kabbalah. I think it's stretching a little
bit, but the reason he says that is because of the the things
that I that I mentioned. Because the Kabbalists
attributed their teachings to Elijah, and because Vital says
it's possible to have a revelation of Elijah so that to
be a Mystic is to be in touch with something beyond yourself,
something beyond your normal state of consciousness.
And Elijah is the is the go between.
Elijah is that virtuoso of the in between who connects you with
something beyond your normal awareness.
So it's in a way the Kabbalists are sort of.
While the Sages try to bring Elijah back down, it seems like
the Kabbalists, instead of rendering him incomplete and
trying to and trying to fix what's left to fix, they kind of
doubled down on the persona of who he was and kind of just
relegate him way up there in the heavens.
It's really interesting you say that because, you know, it's
it's hard to be too black and white here.
You know, we've talked about his, his change or
transformation. There's a person I I respect
very much, an Israeli scholar, Oded Israeli, the scholar of
Kabbalah Beersheva. But he says this is overblown.
Elijah doesn't change that much between the Bible and the
Talmud. I think.
I think he's wrong. I I think, you know, we can't
see important change. But what you're saying brings
brings me back to that. You know, you do find Elijah
already compassionate in the Bible, right?
He brings this little boy back to life.
He's trying to bring the people back to God because he believes
in the one true God. It's not that he's a vicious,
but. He's detached, but he's
detached. He's detached, right.
He's not in touch with the people.
He becomes more human in Khazal. But of course you know for the
for the rabbis too, he has a a unique nature.
He really, he's really an Angel. He's really an Angel.
Already in the Talmud, of fact that Talmud near the beginning
of the entire Talmud right at the very beginning of Brachod.
The rabbis say, you know Michael, the Angel, the
Archangel Michael, he can cross the whole world in one swoop.
For Gavriel it takes 2. For Elijah it takes four.
Elijah can cross the whole world and four glides.
So he's an Angel, but he's really, he's half human and half
Angel. He's the most human of all the
angels because he's still he can, he can be he he can, he can
get upset, right? He can get upset.
And the rabbis talk about that. But one Rabbi, 1 rabbi who was
visited by Elijah. Now we've talked about why
Elijah will will visit a rabbi because the rabbi is a sincere
seeker or very great scholar. Sometimes Elijah will stop
coming to a rabbi, a regular rabbi who he's come to very
often. He'll stop coming to him.
Why? Because the rabbi did the
tiniest thing wrong, the tiniest ethical infraction.
Elijah will stop coming. So for one rabbi, Elijah shows
up, then he stops coming, then he comes back.
The rabbi says, you know, you know, why did you come back?
And the rabbi says, well, you know, because because you
insulted me, you said, you said that I get angry.
And the rabbi said, look, you're getting angry right now.
So Elijah can get angry and he can, he can be upset about
things. But basically the rabbis are are
humanizing him. And I think you're right, the
Kabbalah then almost almost divinizes him.
Want to read you one, one very brief quote.
I actually have it at the very beginning of of my book.
This is from that same Kabbalist, Moses Cordavero.
Look what he says, his mystery. He's talking about Elijah.
His mystery is really the mystery of divinity spreading.
The divine energy clothes itself in him, extending to the world.
Elijah never appears in the world without the mystery of
divinity revealing itself through him.
The mystery of God on earth is the mystery of Elijah.
The closest that divinity can possibly come to humanity is the
mystery of Elijah. It's really a remarkable
passage. I I found that at the very end
of my work the book actually what was already finished and I
found it. I found that I couldn't believe
that the Cordavero said that. He said it's kind of lost in one
of his multi volume works on the Zohar.
But you know it's shocking to say this, but I think you may
have thought this already or people hearing this.
It almost sounds like this is a Christian talking about you know
who the famous, the famous Jewish boy in in Galilee to say
that divinity has entered him. It sounds almost UN Jewish and
yet hear Cordoviro saying that. But it comes back to what you
were saying. The rabbis are bringing him down
to earth somewhat. And the Kabbalah sees him as the
embodiment of of Ruach Hakodesh. And in some in some kabbalistic
literature, correct me if I'm wrong, he's kind of associated
with the Angel Sandalphon which is like it's he's kind of like
the the spiritual brother of Metatron who's who's Khanoch.
So, like, there's yeah, he's, he's elevated to that stature.
Yes, he's identified with Sandalphon.
Occasionally he's even identified with Metatron, but
more more common as you identify with St.
Alphon. So he is an Angel and and a very
prominent Angel. And that's in kabbalistic
literature. Not that you wouldn't find in
the Talmud, but you, but you find it in Kabbalah, yeah?
So I think one of the maybe it's intentional or not intentional,
but I think the the direction that the Kabbalah took Elianabi,
he he's kind of like, you know the the rabbinic tradition is
kind of kind of feels like it's like static or uncreative
because there's this Iridata Dorot and you have this
imaginative new kind of movement which is like revelatory, right.
It's a new it's it's, it's it's kind of the opposite, where the
further down you go in history, the more revelations become, you
know, part of, like you, you understand what I'm saying.
You're saying it in in Kabbalah. Kabbalah, it's like the
opposite. It's almost like, OK, the rabbis
of the past were were greater in in let's say tradition, but now
it there's this new idea where like their imagination can kind
of reveal new things that they. Yes, yes.
Opposite, yeah. Very much so.
And I would say, you know what? What makes it especially
interesting is that Kabbalah is simultaneously new and ancient.
I'll I'll say what I mean by that.
You know the Zohar, the Zohar rite, the masterpiece of
Kabbalah which is attributed to Rabashima and Barochai, right?
Orthodox kabbalists really. All Hasidim, all kabbalists
would insist that the Zohar really goes back to the 2nd
century, was composed by or in the circle of Rashbir or Bashima
and Barochai. But I think the three of us and
most most modern Orthodox and non Orthodox Jews would Most
most non ultra Orthodox. Orthodox Jews would say that
that would admit the Zohar is a medieval work.
And the Zohar calls its teachings Milin, Hadatin,
Atikin, new ancient words. So what does that mean?
If something's either new or ancient, how can it be new and
ancient? Well, the Zohar simultaneously
knew an ancient. First of all because it pretends
to be ancient. It pretends to be the work of
Rashby. But really it's written in the
13th century, I think mostly by the Kabbalist Moshe de Leon,
Moses de Leon. So it's in that sense it's new
in ancient. It's composed right now in 13th
century Spain, but it pretends to be 1100 years earlier.
But it's also new in ancient in a different way, these radical
ideas about God. Take for example Shekinah the
the God is is is a feminine presence.
Now the Kabbalah does not invent the word shrinah, right?
It never appears in the Bible, but you have it a hundreds of
times in the Talmud, in the Midrash.
So the question is, who is Shreena?
For Khazal, she's not the wife of God.
You would never find in the Talmud that the Shreena is
married to the Holy One, blessed be he.
But you do find descriptions of Shreena in which she seems to be
somewhat motherly, somewhat the the compassionate protective
figure, right? She's hovering over the people.
Israel. She's sharing exile with the
people. The transcendent Karush Baruchu,
he's up in heaven. But Shrinah is somehow the part
of God that's with the people. So the roots of the Kabbalistic
notion of Shrinah are there. But she's not overtly feminine.
And in the Zohar, she's misses God, you know, she's married to
the Holy One, blessed, but he. So that's something that's new
in ancient in a sense. You could say it's even more
ancient because we spoke about Baal.
Right. But who's Baal's partner in the
ancient Near East? Asherah, right.
And the people are not only worshipping Baal, the masculine
Canaanite God, they're worshipping the goddess Asherah.
And we know that this was very widespread.
You you mentioned then see, I'm sorry.
They had these notions, OK. They had these notions.
They were attracted to Asherah. You know, you mentioned before
the people were torn between the worship of Baal and the worship
of Yudhay Vavehe. Some of them wanted to have
their cake and eat it too. Some of them wanted to worship
Baal and Asherah and Yudhay Vave.
Some of them went. Some of them went even further.
Archaeologists have found inscriptions.
You know, I'm offering, I'm giving this offering.
I'm offering this prayer to Yudhay Vavehe and his asherah.
So some Jews thought that Asherah was the consort of udhe
Vavhe, right? We know that it was actually a
statue of the asherah in the temple in the bed of Mikdash for
a good number of decades, right? During the rule of Kingman
Asherah, I think it was or one or another kings had actually a
statue of Asherah in the temple, which meant that must mean that
we're Israelites who thought that Asherah was the goddess.
The rabbis. The Bible, of course, eliminates
this. The rabbis speak of God almost
solely in in masculine terms, but you could say Shekinah is in
some way, I'm saying to a limited extent, is in some way
the return of the ancient goddess into Judaism.
That's what's so shocking about Kabbalah, and that's why the
Kabbalists were very careful about spreading their teachings
right. They were intentionally cryptic
and secretive because they knew this was, this is quite
shocking. Sholem, the great scholar
Gershom Sholem has a wonderful phrase for this.
He he says it's this is the revenge of myth.
The return of the goddess is the revenge of myth.
That myth, that Canaanite myth, which had been battled, which
had been defeated by the rabbi, by the Bible, already by the
rabbis, it somehow retained A subterranean life and then it
emerges in the heart of rabbinic Judaism in the Kabbalah.
So in that way too, it's new. It's new and ancient so.
It's so interesting. Go ahead.
Sorry. Go ahead, go.
Ahead, go ahead. Anjun No.
I was gonna say in a way like Maimonides lit the match that
brought this all from under the surface unintentionally.
But you know this is now like kind of the revenge.
It's an anti maimonidean movement.
Yes, yes. Maimonides is so important to
the birth of Kabbalah. You know, we can talk about this
more more at length than other time, but it's so it's so vital.
The Kabbalah is in many ways a reaction against Maimonides as
if he had gone too far, as if he had rationalized things too
much. God becomes so abstract and so
removed. For some of the Kabbalistic
theology, Maimonides is very important in a positive way,
right? They basically their idea of God
is insof. God is Infinity.
Maimonides never calls God insof.
But that depiction that the scripture of God is very
Maimonidean, it's really right. God is beyond anything you can
imagine. God is beyond anything you you
can describe. There's even a more radical name
than Insof and that's the name Ayan spelled with an Aleph Aleph
Yud Nun. What does Ayyan mean?
It means nothing. I don't mean it doesn't mean
anything. It means nothing.
It means nothingness. That's the name the Kabbalah
gives for the highest level of God.
It's really indistinguishable from Insof.
Infinity and Ion are are really one in the same.
Now what? Where does Ion come from?
It really comes from Maimonides negative theology.
They're just taking negative theology to the extreme.
Maimonides says what The more you deny about God, the more you
negate about describing God, the closer you are to understanding
God. The Kabbalah just takes that to
the extreme. Let's actually call God Ion.
That's the that's the most accurate thing to say.
God is No. It's not that God is nothing.
God is no thing. Right.
It's it's almost like it's almost like they're hedging in a
way because they're they're they're kind of taking this
aspect this this ain't self and then they're they're adding the
other side of it, which is more like radical and it's kind of
like they they can kind of dance between the two.
But I also wanted to mention something that came to my mind
and Yermiyahu, there was a there were a group of Jews who were
worshipping the Queen of the Heavens.
And. And and that that in a way that
even crept into our Sidor during during the High Holidays, the
Rosh Hashanah Kippur during the the Parnassa part where where
people did the D carnosa that whole there's a pasuka.
It's brought in over there from Yermiyahu that references that.
It's very interesting how that part of.
The yeah, I think they're they're they're weaving Kava
note for malkata shamayim. So, so that the goddess is
there, the goddess is there in the background.
Right. Ashira, Right.
You have that word ashira a good number of times in the Torah,
right? Don't plant an ashira.
So what is an ashira? It's a tree.
It's either a pole or a tree. It's probably a tree.
It's a sacred tree. So it's nature worship and
goddess worship. It's there and the Bible is
fighting it. And my mind is, you could say,
you know, it's trying to put the nail in the coffin by saying God
is totally abstract. The Kabbalists say, what do you
mean? You know, God is male and
female. So you're right.
It's almost like the Kabbalists want to have their cake and eat
it too. They say ultimately God is in
SOF, God is nothingness. But and really, there's an
amazing passage in the Zohar where the Zohar says this fear
wrote a real only from our perspective.
Ultimately, everything is just in SOF, but because of the the
limits of the human mind, we have to picture God in this way.
So they're kind of admitting that this is, to a certain
extent, a human projection. Right.
It's a it's like the what became known as seder histal shalut in
in the Hasidic works. But you know what's interesting
is that, you know, I, I, we, we joke about this a lot.
But it's kind of like a literal metaphor.
So when it when it it suits them, when it suits the argument
for it to be literal, then it's literal, but when it doesn't
argument then it's. So it's interesting how they
kind of, you know, have this amazing kind of way of
introducing these ideas. Very unique way of doing it for
sure. Yeah.
No, you're you're right. You're right.
There's very little in the Zohar about NSOF, maybe a total of 2
pages about NSOF and Ian, the thousands of pages on Shrinan,
her romance with the Kurdish Borochu, with the Holy One,
blessed be he. So even though ultimately they
say it's, it's from our perspective, that's what that's
what they're writing about. So before we move on to I want
to plug your your translation of the Zohar.
But I do want to end going back to the first before we move to
the next segment is the stories of Eliana V in on the High
Holidays or he comes on Pesa right.
And he he comes to every Brit milah and he, you know he shows
up on mute Shabbat. So I from what I understand or
the way I see it is that in a way that's kind of God's quote
UN quote punishment for his behavior in in the Navi where
he's where he has to like you wanted to kill all you want all
the Jews to die. You weren't willing to stand up
for them. Now, these are the three main
ways that Jews declare their loyalty to Hashem.
And I'm gonna make you go to each one of these.
You're gonna be there, 'cause you're gonna, you're gonna bear
witness to the continuity that you wanted to deny.
So I think that's a, you know, one of the thing that I wanted
to point out before but I forgot.
Yeah, I I would say that that applies especially to one of
those three. You know, I I think where it's
clearest is in Breit Mila Cano. Why does Eliahu show up at a
circumcision? Right.
There's actually a chair for Eliahu right?
Known as Kisei Eliahu. There are many of these.
There's a woman in Beersheva who's written extensive studies
on comparing different chairs of Eliahu.
It's an amazing work of art. So why does Eliahu show up at at
the At the Covenant of Circumcision?
The earliest explanation of this is in a beautiful midrash.
Midrash known as Pirque de Rabi Eliezer write the chapters of
Rabi Eliezer. We mentioned Eliezer before, who
was the one in that story of the oven of Achni Very interesting,
idiosyncratic figure in the Talmud.
So there you have in Pircade Rabi Eliezer it it retells what
happened at Sinai, right? God says Malachafo, what are you
doing here? And Elijah says Kano Kineti.
I've been so zealous. And according to the Midrash,
God says, oh, you're always zealous.
Why are you always zealous, Eliao?
You can never stop being zealous.
And Eliao says, well, qui azvu brich ha, they've abandoned your
covenant, right. And the word breathe, of course,
is the same as Brete Mila, the covenant of circumcision.
God says, you think they've abandoned the covenant.
From now on, you have to show up at every breach.
You have to show up at every covenant to to witness exactly
what you said to witness. The people of Israel have kept
the covenant. So there, there.
It's the clearest example where it's punishment.
Some scholars say, you know, even there, it's not punishment.
It's actually it's a reward. You care so much about the
covenant. You can be at every covenant.
But I think the simple explanation of that passage is
that is that really, it's a punishment for Elijah's
zealotry. He's been too zealous.
He's been too antagonistic to the people.
He denies that they keep the covenant.
Now he'll witness that they have the covenant, the Seder and
Hobdell. I think they're a little
different. The Seder.
OK, now anybody who you could say every Jew in the world has
some relationship with Eliyahu, because you know you can find a
Jew who doesn't even go to Sholan Yom Kippur.
They may they may show up at a Seder.
If not this year, Last year, when they were a kid, what
Jewish kid was not at a Seder at some point in his life?
There might be a few, but very, very tiny percentage.
And what it What do you remember?
You remember what's so remarkable?
Remember opening the door for this figure, even if he doesn't
seem to appear? You open the door for Elia.
You have a cup on the table for Eliau.
So what's the origin of that? It's very interesting.
The door actually opening the door originally has nothing to
do with Eliau, you could say. It has to do with what we say at
the very beginning of the seder called Dejfin Ye TE viejul.
Anyone who's hungry let him come and eat.
Some people would open the door at their seder so that people
who needed to come in could come in.
Or another reason before it's ever connected to Eliahu.
Another reason for opening the door is that this is known as
Leil Shimurim, right? The night of protection.
Already in Exodus. This night is described as a
Leil Shimurim. There probably means a vigil.
You should keep vigil on this night.
You're about to leave Egypt. You're staying up all night.
The first born have just been killed or baking matzah, getting
ready for the the journey. This is a night to prepare for
the journey. It's a little shimmerim.
The rabbis took that to mean if this is a night of protection,
you're so well protected you don't have to lock your door.
So it was a custom in the Middle Ages before Elijah ever appears
at a Seder. There was a custom to have the
door unlocked or have to the door open, but then it turns
into opening the door for Elijah.
That's a relatively late point. The door is open even before the
door is connected to Elijah. Now what about the cup?
Having a cup on the table for Elijah?
The this doesn't appear until the 15th century.
It's not in the Talmud, it's not in the early codes, it's not in
Maimonides. No mention about a cup for
Elijah anywhere before the 15th century.
Why? Why do you have a cup?
Well, everybody has to have a cup.
We're hoping that Elijah will come to announce the mashiach.
He's going to need a cup of wine too, if he shows up.
We don't want to delay the seder.
The seder takes long enough as it is.
We don't want to delay the seder to find a cup, make sure it's
clean, make sure it's kosher to Pesach to get wine.
So we have a cup of wine already.
But the gallon of Vilna has a more interesting explanation.
How many cups of wine are you supposed to drink at the Seder?
There's actually a debate about this already in the Talmud.
According to the manuscripts of the Talmud, it's not clear
whether it's four cups or five cups, right.
We now drink 4 cups, but there's a reference to to 1/5 cup.
But at a certain point there was a debate about this.
In the Talmud. There was a debate.
The gown of Illness says it's still not clear.
It's still not clear whether it should be 4 cups or five cups.
When Elijah comes, he'll he'll resolve all doubts, right?
We mentioned this before that Elijah will resolve disputes.
He'll also make. He'll help us understand what
the right halachic decision is. He won't make a decision, but
he'll clarify things enough that we'll see what the right
decision is. So he's going to resolve the
doubt. So we pour 1/5 cup, but we don't
drink it. And it's called the Cup of
Eliahu. Not because necessarily he's
going to drink it, but because he'll resolve whether we should
drink it. But once it was poured, it was
understood that's is poured for him.
So that's why the the origin of of the door and the origin of
the cup. And now both of them are are
connected directly, directly with Eliahu.
It's a beautiful. Yeah.
Please. Oh, I was going to say, when we
talked about Eliahu and resolving old doubt in Tanas,
Eliahu was extremely black and white in terms of how we went
about things. Extremely.
There was no, he didn't give a minuscule and I don't know when
I hear the idea of Alia removing doubt, I think that's that's
kind of displaying his persona. One that was he was always sure
about everything and he was at 1000 mph and there was no, there
was no in between for him. There was no everything.
You got what I'm saying? Yeah, but on the other hand,
he's going to be able to reconcile things.
You know, he'll show. He'll show when it's clear.
So in that case, in that sense, he's like he was in the Bible
without any doubt. But he'll he'll make peace
between contending parties. And really, what?
Remember, remember what Malachi says already in Malachi the
Hishev Levavot al Banim, the Lev Banim Alavot Tom.
Maybe that's the most messianic thing possible.
To bring parents, bring children's hearts back to their
parents, bring parents hearts back to their children.
So he'll reconcile things. Even though he was black and
white, he'll be the one to to make peace.
So he he bridges, he bridges those those two extremes.
Touches those, those points, yeah.
One more thing about Pesach that the real reason, the real
connection between El Rio and Pesach is not the door, it's not
the cup, it's that what is Pesach.
Pesach is the time of redemption, right?
The redemption from slavery in Egypt.
And according to the rabbis the Mashiach will come on Pesach.
So for the final redemption will be on Pesach, just as the
original redemption from Mitzrayim was on Pesach.
If the Messiah is going to come on Pesach, he's going to have to
be announced by Liahoo. So that I think is really the
the original connection between Elihal and Pesach.
Then the door and the cup is what we what we remember, what
we know now. So.
And and Abdullah, we really spoke about really that Elijah
won't come on Friday. Well, could he come on Shabbat?
Well, we don't know if he can fly on Shabbat or not.
OK, he can't come on Friday. He can't come on Shabbat.
As soon as Shabbat is done, no more excuses of Liao.
You have to come. But here too you could say it's
really about Mashiach. Because after all, Shabbat is
Mein olam Haba, a a taste of the world to come, and the Mashiach
is described as Yom shakulo Shabbat The time that's in,
that's full time Shabbat, seven days a week, 724 Shabbat.
So it makes sense that Elijah would be connected with that
messianic aspect. Of Shabbat.
But singing, you know, singing. Tu Eliahu.
Singing. Invoking his name at the close
of Abdallah. So beautiful.
When I was growing up, my father taught us a melody that was new
then. I'm sure I'm sure you know it.
Al svat Yam Kineret. Right?
Al svat. Yam kineret.
Arman Rafti Ferret gan El shamnatua Bo ETS Loya nua niigar
shamrak na R ka O FIDA R lo me sham toh rahu MI π eliahu.
What about a little boy studying Torah at Yom Kineret straight
from the mouth of Eliahu? So that was a song we sang.
It was a poem written in the 1920s, but my dad fell in love
with it and taught us that was kind of connecting Eliahu, he
didn't want just Eliahu ha Navi. He wanted some some new melody,
some new flavor. But I think many Jews connect
Eliahu primarily with the Seder, but for for many of us with with
havdallah too. I couldn't help but notice that
it could be purposeful or not, and I think it is.
But I couldn't help but notice that the character of Rabbi
Shimon Bar Yokai that's using the Zohar kind of has the same
kind of motifs where in the in the Talmud he is this strict
person who only sees black and white, and he's sent into The
Cave and you know, he he is he he's like, he has, he's kind of
sent to gehen om right, an extra.
He sent that extra year back into The Cave, 'cause he didn't
learn his lesson and he didn't know how to, you know, interact
with human beings. And he thought they should be
learning Torah all the time. And then and then in this dohar
in the Kabbalah, he's like the face of God.
And he is almost like he becomes kind of like this kind of
deified, deified character in a way like like El Yao Navy.
So I feel like there's like some type of.
Yeah, very interesting. There's definitely a close
connection. He's so harsh and extreme and
you know so chauvinistic in terms of Israel and and the and
the goyim and then in in the Zohar he, he's this beatific
figure and he's almost, he's really divinized in a sense.
So the connection between Rashby and and Eliyahu and in the
Zohar, Eliahu appears and he's he's in touch with Rashi.
But especially in the later parts of the Zohar what's called
Tikkune Haz Zohar and Rayamehemna.
They're two later parts of the Zohar written a little bit after
the other parts and there Eliahu plays a very prominent role And
he and Rashbi, he and Rabashimon are in are in close discussion
of and in fact and Eliahu praises Rabashimon and says, you
know you oh it's a really connect.
You know, it's interesting you mentioned The Cave story.
Eliahu makes a short appearance there right at after their
rubbish Shimon and his son rebel Lazar in The Cave for 12 years
and Eliahu doesn't have direct contact with him.
What happens is that Liao passes by at the end of 12 years and
says who's going to tell rubbish Shimon that he can come out
because the Roman emperor had died, the emperor wanted to kill
him or the Roman Roman ruler who wants to kill him had died.
And Eliahu makes it known but Rabashima has no direct contact.
Well, what happens in the Zohar? That story is retold the story
of Rabashima in The Cave. But what happens?
Eliahu goes in every day and teaches them Torah.
He doesn't appear at the end of 12 years.
He appears every day and teaches Torah.
Trabashima So you could say and that's where the the origin
story of the Zohar in the Zohar, the Zora says Herbashima when he
was in The Cave, Eliahu taught him Torah.
What's the record of what Eliahu taught him?
The Zohar. So the Zohar was born from the
Gilui Eliahu from Eliahu appearing to Rabishimon.
That seems to be the Zohar's own understanding of how the Zohar
emerged. And that's how kabbalists
understood it, that the Zohar was composed in The Cave
dictated or inspired by Eliahu. So Eliahu and Herbashima really,
really closely connected. So most of our listeners know
how much we love the Zohar. But I wanted to actually get
into your book because the translation of the Zohar, which
is phenomenal what you've done. I want to understand why you
felt it was necessary to translate the source in so many
translations exist and you mentioned these controversial or
revolutionary ideas that that introduced.
What is it about? It's very obvious.
I mean, everybody today is most, most Jews are very interested in
Kabbalah and Kasidu. Why do you feel like it is
relevant to today's reader? Yeah, well, first my
translation. The reason I translated it was
really because someone asked me to.
A woman in the Pritzker family, Margot Pritzker married to Tom
Pritzker, who's the CEO of the Hyatt Corporation.
And she became in fascinated with Jewish mysticism and she
started studying with an Orthodox rabbi, Emmani Yuhreel
Pupko. You may know or or know of him
of a very well known Orthodox family, the Pupko family in
Pittsburgh and Montreal and Seattle.
So Margot Pritzker began studying Parsha, Chavua and
Torah and Midrash with Rabbi Yuhio Pupko in Chicago.
And after a while she wanted to study Zohar.
So they began studying the all the Old English translation that
existed then. It was back in the early 1990s,
I think, and that's the known as the Sensino translation.
It was done in the 1930s. It's actually not bad, but it's
more of a paraphrase. Sometimes it skips over
difficult passages, sometimes there'll be a footnote.
We've skipped the the next 10 pages because they're
impenetrable and there's no commentary.
But still I I I found it interesting and and useful.
So they started studying Zohar using that, and after a while,
either Margot Pritzker said to Rabia Puko or he said to her
this is inadequate, let's do a new one.
So it actually came out of their Torah study.
Their Torah study being dissatisfied with what existed,
they wanted to have a new one translated and they contacted me
through through Arthur Green and I originally I was overwhelmed
by it. I was fascinated, but I I said,
you know, I I have to take some time to think about this because
I, I had some idea of what it would involve.
So I said let me think about it. I had yet met or even talked
with Rabbi Popko or Margot Pritzker, just art, Green said.
Of course I understand you need to think about it.
So I thought about it for a week, for a few weeks, for a
month, for a couple months. Then I decided let's let me try
it. So without contacting them, I
just I had a month off from teaching in December, January
break for one month. I sat down and I just translated
Zohar. Every day, three hours a day, a
few hours a day, whatever I could manage.
And after that month I decided I'm definitely not doing this.
It was just too it was too I thought I would drown in the
Zohar. So I called art.
I said it's a wonderful opportunity, but I have to say
no And Art Green said, He said, OK, I understand you you that
you're gonna say no, but why don't you just meet them and
tell them no? So that was my mistake.
I agreed to meet with them. I met with with Margot Pritzker
and I'm sitting with Margot Pritzker and Rabbit Pupko and
Art Green. I basically tried to talk Margot
out of it. I said Tishby already has
translated a lot of it and there's this Ensino translation
and and I just, I just feel it's it's too much.
She said OK, I understand, but if you did do it, how long would
it take? I said 12 to 15 years.
She said you're not scaring me. Tell me.
When she said that something flipped inside of me.
I said OK, I'll do it. So I was.
I was won over and turned into 18 years with an 18 year project
from 1998 to 20/16/1997 to 2015. I actually did 9 volumes which
cover the Zohar and the Torah. There were three more volumes.
We also did other later sections of the Zohar on Shirhar Shirim,
the Song of Songs on Ruth, other passages.
And that's the Pritzkers wanted it done by certain date.
So at a certain point I agreed and I tutored two other people
who completed the entire project.
So the whole thing is 12 volumes and it ended up taking nearly
nearly 20 years, right? But.
The Zohar people don't realize that, you know, A lot of people
don't realize that the Zohar's like an anthology more than it
is a book, 'cause it, it takes, you know, it, it developed over
time. So like did you, did you take on
all of those parts of it or just some of?
It we we included everything that was completed.
I would say by the end of the 13th century we we excluded 2
components to later components, Tikuniha, Zohar and Raya
Mehemna. I mentioned them briefly a
little while ago. Those are imitations of the
Zohar, written a little bit after the main sections.
But even what we translated, as you say it's almost a library.
The main part of the Zohar is a a running commentary on the
Torah and that that it's really a midrash.
It's really a mystical midrash. In fact, its earliest, one of
its earliest names is Midrashan Elam, the Midrash, the which
could mean the concealed midrash or the midrash of the concealed.
It was also called Midrash Rashbi, the Midrash of Rabbi
Shimon. And gradually it's called the
Zohar. But to go back to your original
question, why I translated it so I translated it because Margot
wanted to be able to understand it.
But I also translated it because what they found that the earlier
translations were inadequate. So they were inadequate because
they didn't explain the symbolism, they didn't explain
the sources. So a lot of what I do in my
notes in half of each page is half his translation and half
his commentary. My commentary I show where the
rabbis where the Zohar's drawing on the rabbis, where they're
quoting from the midrash from the Talmud.
And I explain the the symbolism of the sifi rote of Shekinah, of
the other qualities of God. And I also talk about the unique
Aramaic, because we didn't mention so far the Zohar's
written in Aramaic. Why was it written in Aramaic?
Why was it written in Hebrew? Hardly anything is written in
Aramaic. In the Middle Ages, Jewish books
are written in Hebrew. The authors of the Zohar wrote
in Aramaic. Why?
Make it. Look to make it look ancient.
Actually, Rashbi, you know, could have written in Hebrew or
Aramaic, but they wrote in Aramaic to make it look
Talmudic. They.
Wrote they wrote in Aramaic to make it look like the Talmud.
Their claim is really this is the Talmud that disappeared.
This is the part of the Talmud that never made it to us and and
rub Moshe de Leon is making it available.
But the language the the Aramaic is obviously the one of the one
of the indicators that it's not Rabbu Shimon is that it's like a
very different dialect that he would didn't speak.
It's a very unique Aramaic. It's really there's no existing
Aramaic dialect that matches the Zohar.
In fact, in Graduate School, I once asked the very fine scholar
of Aramaic I'll leave out his name, 'cause I don't want to
cause of what? I'm going to say what he said.
I I want to do a readings course in the Zohar with this great
scholar of Aramaic because I wanted to see how he would
analyze exactly what you're saying, the unique style of the
of Aramaic. And what did he say to me?
He said I don't deal in corrupt Aramaic.
So the the Zohar isn't corrupt, but the Zohar is is unique, it's
idiosyncratic because how did Moshe delay on write it?
He wrote it because he knew what he knew the Talmud and he knew
Targum Unkulus. He knew the Aramaic translation
of the Torah cause. Traditionally that's studied
each week with a Torah portion, right?
Shanaya MI Gravekhad Targum, you read the Torah portion twice in
the original, once in the Aramaic.
Moshe de Leon grew up reading the Torah portion in Aramaic.
So he knew Aramaic from studying the Talmud, from studying the
Targum, and that's the Aramaic he used for the Zohar.
But he, I would say he's really thinking in Hebrew and writing
in Aramaic and exactly like you said.
That's how scholars finally caught him, 'cause they realize
this doesn't match the Bavli, it doesn't match Unclas exactly.
It's here and there. Sometimes a Spanish word will
drop in, sometimes it'll be Hebrew with an olive fatter.
At the end, like de Vecuta. There's no Aramaic word de
Vecuta, it's Hebrew de Vecut cleaving to God.
Most of land turns it into de Vecuta.
He does that again and again, adding an olive to a Hebrew
word. So the Aramaic is strange and
because of that many translations misunderstand it.
What's unique about my translation, really the most
important, one of the most important features of it is that
it's based on not a normal printed Zohar.
Our normal printed Zohar's have already been at the they've been
gone through such, gone through such a process of corruption,
you could say. What I did is I went back to the
original manuscripts of the Zohar and I changed the text
based on better readings, what I considered better readings in
the manuscript. So in a sense, I reconstituted
an Aramaic text of the Zohar that is not in print, although
it will be at some point. Right now it's on the website of
Stanford University Press, the publisher.
There you can find the Zohar, I think closer to its original
form than anything in print I've underlined, any time that I've
changed, made a change from the from the normal printed text so
my translation reflects that reconstituted text.
You could call it a critical Aramaic text.
It matches up with a normal printed Zohar most of the time,
but when it doesn't, it's because I I prefer to reading in
in a manuscript. So I imagine I I would imagine
like translating something like the Zohar with all these, since
you're a scholar of Kabbalah, you know, I imagine that there's
some influence from let's say later cause Kabbalah these
concepts developed like Spiro did not mean what they meant in
the Zohar in earlier time and and later obviously they
developed how do you were you, let's say, very careful in in
not, you know superimposing like modern ideas into solution.
That that's very important because you know that there are
many commentaries on the Zohar, traditional kabbalistic
commentaries on the Zohar, and I consulted as many of them as I
could. I borrowed from them.
I stole from them. You could say.
You know, scholars say what's the difference between what?
What's plagiarism? Plagiarism is when you copy from
a source, right? Well, what's research when you
copy from many sources? So I mean, I I I borrowed, I
borrowed, I I identified, I say here I'm relying on this
commentator or that commentator. The problem with Zohar
commentaries is exactly what you said.
They impose later understandings of Kabbalah on the Zohar, mainly
Isaac Luria, right? Luria was the most famous
Kabbalist. He was inspired by the Zohar.
His entire Kabbalah is based on the Zohar, but it's his own
unique understanding of the Zohar and a modern kabbalistic.
A modern Kabbalist will read the Zohar through the eyes of Luria.
I wanted to go back to Moshe de Leon or whoever else was
involved in the authorship. So I try to explain what the
Zohar meant in the 13th century and not not what it meant in the
16th century that that's hard to do.
But I bet that was what I what I tried to do.
I should say. I should say also what what
distinguishes my commentary from other commentaries is partly
that that I'm going back to what I call Pshatah Zohar.
I had one Zohar teacher in Jerusalem who spoke of that
Pshatah Zohar. The Zohar is so, so much
secretive but it's beyond the pshat.
But to see what the Zohar means before later Kabbalists do their
do their their thing on it so. I think.
I think pshat is important. People think it just means
simple meaning, but it actually means contextualizing, right?
You have to right. Sometimes it's sometimes it's
not the literal but the often the contextual, right?
So what I do in my commentary, I draw in traditional
commentaries, but I also draw on modern scholarship, modern
academic scholarship. Gershom Sholem, Isaiah Tishby,
Moshe Idel, Yehuda Libis, who's one of the finest Zohar scholars
in in the world. I draw on their works
frequently, so it's the only commentary.
I think that it that it includes both the traditional Kabbalistic
approach and a modern academic approach.
I try to balance the two 'cause I think you miss a lot about the
Zohar. If you think it was composed
back in the 2nd century, you don't realize that the Zohar
reflects what is going on in Spain at the time.
Christian domination, the King at the time that the tensions in
the in the Jewish community, Maimonides.
Maimonides is is such a force to contend with.
If you think it's composed in the 2nd century, Maimonides is
irrelevant. But the Zoar draws some
Maimonides on Rashi. Sometimes the Zoar will take
something right out of Rashi or Ramban or Ibn Ezra, sometimes
agreeing with it, sometimes disagreeing with it.
And in what way would it there's two.
Now that you brought it up, in what way #1 does it?
Do you see the influence of, let's say, the Christian
surroundings of De Leon? And in what way do we see the
contrast between the historical Rabbi Shimon and, let's say, in
his halakhic opinions and in the Zohar version of Rabbi Shimon?
Yeah, so the Christian influence is interesting.
The Zohar is is attacking Christianity, and yet it's also
influenced by Christianity at the same time.
The attack is is, you know, for example, the Zohar says it's
very important to to have children.
You can't if you if you really want to be holy, you have to
have children. And they're the probably
reacting against monasticism, against celibacy.
There's one famous passage in the Zohar.
It's for the most famous passage in the whole Zohar.
We know it because it's part of the liturgy, right?
There are other passages that are part of the spartic liturgy,
but there's only one Zohar passage that's part of the
Ashkenazic liturgy and that of course is Briksheme, right?
Bayana Rakhets that's chanted every Shabbat morning when the
Torah is taken out of the ark that appears in the Zohar.
It's actually not part. It's actually doesn't appear in
the earliest manuscripts of the Zohar.
But there you have an amazing line.
La al en Nash rakhizna the LA al bar elahin samishna.
We don't rely on any human we don't trust.
We don't believe in any bar Elahin Ben Elohim.
It could mean an Angel. But literally it's what a son of
God. We don't believe in any son of
God. It's really an anti Christian
polemic in the Zohra. We don't need a son of God.
We're all children of God. We are all Israel are children
of of the Kurdish Barakhu, the Holy One, blessed be he.
So it's a polemic against Christianity.
You have sometimes overt, sometimes more hidden attacks on
Christianity. Even the demonic, the demonic
force, Citra ahra, is identified with Christianity in some
places. On the other hand, you have
influence of Christian symbolism.
By this, I want to be careful what I'm saying.
I'm not saying anyone in the Zohar believed in Christianity.
Khas for Shalom, God forbid. But they're they're, you could
say maybe they're parodying Christianity.
They're they're adopting certain elements.
For example, triads. OK, what's the most famous triad
in Christianity? Obviously the Trinity, the
Zohar, plays with Trinitarian formulations.
For example, there were Christians who said they were
Christians who said to Jews, look, you have Trinity in your
own in your own prayer book. Shema, Yisrael, Hashem Alokino,
Hashem, Yudhe Vave, our Elohim Yudhe Vave.
There you have three divine names.
The Zor says, well, each of those names refers to one of the
10 Sifi wrote. So the Zohar is saying there is
a triadic structure, but it's not what you think.
They're attacking and imitating sometimes, sometimes
simultaneously. As for Bashimon, he appears in
the Talmud, right? He's a very important figure in
in the Mishnah and and the Talmud, but halachically his
opinion is not followed, right? You don't, You don't just
determine the halacha according to Rabba Shimon.
Sometimes his over will go out of its way to accept an opinion
to Rabba Shimon 'cause he's after all the Bozsina Kadisha.
He's the holy lamp of the Zohar. He, as you said, he's given some
divine qualities. 1 remarkable passage, he says.
Rabba Shimon says in the Zohar, you know my face is shining,
just like Moshe's face was shining.
The difference is he didn't know his face was shining and I know
my face is shining. So actually compares himself to
Moshe and seems to say in some ways he's greater than Moshe.
So the Zohar's remarkable and very, very beautiful, very
inspiring, also very troubling. And of course, it was used and
misused throughout the generations.
Then there were later, you know, attacks on the Zohar, especially
in the 19th and 20th centuries. Sholom really tried to, you
know, rescue the Zohar from from the attacks of the Husqala.
And I know your your, your whole project and your whole podcast
is devoted to a a more Maimonidean presentation of
Judaism. Zohar is fascinating there
because it's simultaneously influenced by the Rambam and and
and fighting against the Rambam. Well, we would love to have you
on again one day to discuss the further development of Kabbalah,
which would be very interesting. But before we go, first of all I
want to say you know give a shout out to our mutual friend
JJ Kimchi because we also we did an episode on the Zohar with him
and you did it on his podcast only.
So that it kind of that's kind of how we came together and I
just wanted to allow you to plug your your course for the
audience. Great, great.
Before I do that, there's one other thing I need to say about
Eliyahu and that's we talked about Kabbalah banakhasirism and
there's one element of Kasirism. It's very important and that
will explain my title. Becoming Elijah.
So in Hasirism you have a beautiful notion what's called
Bukhinat Eliyahu. Now some of you might know the
word Bukhinas is a test, but it really means more than that.
It means an aspect. And Hasirism teaches, especially
Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl. The Chernobyl Rebbe.
In his book MO Ore Naim, The Light of the Eyes, he says every
one of us has Bukhinat Eliyahu. Each of us has an aspect of
Elijah within. So what does that mean?
You could say it means passion or the the desire to uplift, the
desire to bring redemption, zeal, creative insight.
There's some something of that intensity of Elijah within each
of us. You could say it's a spark of
Elijah or a Birkinah, an aspect of Elijah.
But the problem is it's hidden, and we have to identify that and
fan that spark into a flame. And in that sense, each of us
can, as it were, Caviachal, become Elijah.
And that's why I called the book Becoming Elijah.
So on the one hand, it means how did Elijah turn from a zealot
into the compassionate Jewish superhero he really is, the
Jewish superhero. That's what becoming Elijah
means on the one hand. But it also means, as I say at
the very end of the book, where I talk about this Behnata Liahu,
that each of us can, can become Elijah.
So, so you just you're kind of taking me on another tangent
because the connection between Hinhas and Eliahu is, is that is
that something that like pre pre gilgul you know Kabbalah is that
is that something that is based on birhina or is that or was
that? Yeah, that, yeah, that is
fascinating. And let's spend just a minute or
two on on that Hinhas Hu Eliahu. That's the phrase that comes
Pinchas. Who Eliau Pinchas is Elijah.
Now that never appears in the Talmud or or the Midrash, but
apparently it was around already in the round the 1st century of
the Common Era. People identify Pinchas with
Elijah and why? It's pretty clear because they
are the 2 Great Zealots, right? They're the 2 greatest.
They're the two most zealous people in the whole Tanakh.
What does Pinchas do? He kills a fornicating couple,
right? A couple who's involved with
idol worship and fornication and a lot.
And pirchhas stabs them both in the belly.
And for that, God actually praises him.
What does God say? I'm going to give you
priesthood. I'm going to give to you and
your descendants. Britt again.
Britt. Britt.
Kahunat Alam. Why?
Because he says pinchas de con O ET kinati.
Because because Pinchas enacted my zeal.
My my zeal. Really.
The Hebrews zealously enacting my zeal.
The Kano at Kinati. It's the only two times in the
whole Bible that you have that that root kanah to be zealous.
Only two times Where it appears twice in one sentence, once is
with Pirghas and the other time is with Eliahu.
We mentioned Kano Kineti, right? Elijah describes himself as
zealously zealous, so it's clear they are the 2 great zealots.
So what does it mean to say Pinchas is Elijah?
You could say it just means they share a personality trait.
They are the two zealots in that sense.
Pinchas is Elijah, but it's more than that.
I used to think what you hinted at, that it's a gilgul.
Maybe Elijah was a reincarnation of maybe Elijah was a
reincarnation of Pinchas. But that's not what it means.
It means something much simpler. It really means Pinchas was
Elijah. They're really one in the same
person now. How could that be?
Historically, it makes no sense. Pinchas was born probably toward
the end of the 13th century BCE. Elijah lived 400 years later.
There's no way Pinchas could be Elijah.
But there's something strange in the Bible.
In the book of Joshua, the end of the Book of Joshua, we hear
that Pinchas was still alive. And even in the book of Judges,
this is a long time after Pinchas's career in the Book of
Numbers. Even in the Book of Judges
Elijah is serving at the Mishkan in Shiloh in Shiloh.
So he had a long life even according to biblical
chronology. If you if you stretch that a
little some people came to believe that Pinchas lived long
enough to turn into Elijah. It's not that he would died and
was reborn, not that he's reincarnated, just he changed
his name. Pinchas actually is Elijah.
Now this makes no sense. Historically even Ezra says
Pinchas was not Elijah, it was even Ezra is aware of people are
saying that he denies it but I think even though it's
historically ridiculous it's psychologically very revealing.
So that they they they shared this zealotry and and you could
say too that what it shows you is the the timelessness of
Eliyahu, right? If he's immortal, not only did
he live longer than he than he lived in the Bible, he lived
earlier than he lived in the Bible.
He somehow is is elastic enough that he stretches from pirhas to
to Biblical later times. He's from another era you know
like yeah it's it reminds me of kind of like Ogmel Kabashan that
he's put in the the time of Noah and and Avraham and Moshe really
because he's a he was hanging on to the boat of Noah.
He he's a remnant of that time he's he is the character that
would fit in that generation and he that that mentality survived
but. Yeah, so some some of that
applies to Eliao. We hear, we hear so many stories
about what happened after his career.
So Pilchas is what happened before.
And in fact, you know, I mentioned, we mentioned that
Midrash about the circumcision. Why does Eliahu show up in a
circumcision? Because God said to Eliahu,
you're always zealous. And in fact in that Midrash it
says you were zealous when you when you were Pinhas and you're
zealous now that you're Eliahu it.
It it hints at saying you were zealous when you were Pinhas
already. The the last thing on we, we
skipped this part, but I think it was very interesting and only
if you have a few minutes, but who he is in Christianity and
Islam. That's, yeah, that that's quite
a story, but I'll just try to to give a one or two highlights.
So Eliyahua's central, you could say he's really central to to
Judaism in, in many ways. He's also really significant in
the New Testament. Why is that?
Well, let's go back to Malachi, right.
Or as Christians would say, Malachi.
Malachi is the last of the minor prophets, right?
So he's the very end of Niveum. We have Torah, Niveum, Kituvim,
Torah, prophets, writings. The very end of prophet is
Malachi. But if you look, if you ever
open a Christian Bible, if you ever stuck in a hotel room and
you open a Gideon's Bible there, of course the Gideon's Bible has
the Old Testament and the New Testament, right?
The Old Testament is basically the Hebrew Tanakh.
But the books are in a little different order, right?
None of none of the books are different.
Some books are added in the Apocrypha, but every book of the
Hebrew Tanakh is in the Christian Old Testament.
But they're in a different order.
The Torah. You have the five books of
Moses, but then things start getting in different order.
And where does Malachi come? Malachi comes at the very end of
the entire Old Testament, and the Tanakh is kind of in the
middle of the Bible, the end of, you know, 2/3 of the way
through. In a Christian Bible, Malachi
ends the Old Testament, which means what that the Christian
Hebrew Bible ends with the prediction of Elijah coming
before the day of the Lord. That's the last page of a
Christian Old Testament. I'm sending to you Elijah, the
prophet before the day of the Lord.
What happens when you turn the page?
The Gospel of Matthew. So a Christian Bible connects
Elijah with Matthew, Elijah with the New Testament.
So does Elijah appear in the New Testament?
He does. Who is he who would announce the
Messiah? Now?
The Christian Messiah of course is Jesus, who announces Jesus,
John the Baptist. And in the New Testament, Jesus
says that Elijah. That John the Baptist is Elijah.
Jesus identifies John the Baptist with Elijah.
That does not that Elijah died is that Elijah is still alive
and now he's appearing as John the Baptist.
So it fits for Christianity that that Elijah will announce the
Christian Messiah. But it's more interesting than
that because Jesus himself seems to identify with Elijah.
Why is that? How could it be the Messiah and
Elijah that shows you something about the history of
Christianity? This is something it's hard for
a Christian to understand, but I think it's easier for a Jew to
understand. Jesus did not originally think
of himself as the Messiah. Very likely he thought of
himself as a prophet, and he very likely thought of himself
as Elijah. He may have thought that he was
Elijah. He actually gives a sermon in
his Shoal in Nazareth, right? Not Serret.
And he he he he refers to Elijah and Alicia.
How? Why does he refer to them 'cause
he says no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.
He why? So he refers to a Elijah who
wasn't accepted by the Israelites.
And he feels that he isn't being accepted by many of the Jews in
Nazareth, right? Everyone in there is Jewish,
he's Jewish and other Jews. He has a high opinion of
himself. He's not sure the Jews accept
that he's a prophet so a lot. So Jesus may have identified
with a. Then eventually Jesus comes to
think of himself as A after his death Messiah.
That's later in his career, in his short career.
So if he's the Messiah, he can't be Elijah, who has to be Elijah.
John the Baptist. So John the Baptist is Elijah.
Jesus probably was first thinking of himself as Elijah,
then as the Mashiach. So in that sense he's very
significant. In testament.
What happens at the end? The end, of course.
Jesus is crucified and he's dying on the cross.
What's the last thing that he says?
He quotes a verse from Psalms. He quotes it in Aramaic.
A Li a Li. Lama Shavaktani.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
It's amazing that that's the last words of Jesus.
It's very authentic because nobody would make that up,
right? A Christian wouldn't say that
Jesus feels that he's abandoned. So it's very possible Jesus
really did say that He felt that he was doing holy work.
He felt that he understood what Torah meant, right?
He'd never thought of anything, of inventing a new religion.
He just wanted to be a Jew. He could say he was an early
Jewish Mystic. He felt he had an an intimacy
with God and then he's killed. He's he's being executed.
He says God, why have you forsaken me?
So He says, a Lee, a Lee Lamashevaktani.
Some people in the crowd thought what that he was calling out to
Eili Yahoo. The New Testament says that some
people think that he was calling out to Eliyahu.
Now he wasn't. He was calling out to God.
But that shows you how important Eliyahu was in the the mentality
of the time. That's fascinating.
Amazing stuff. And and the last one on Islam
and then? We'll so that that very briefly
on Christianity, on Islam there's an Elijah figure in
Islam. Elijah actually is alive and
well in Islam. He's not called Eliyahu,
although sometimes he is Iliyah Ilias, he's called Al Khidir,
which in Arabic means of the green one.
So this is this this this mysterious figure very important
in Islam and he has many of the characteristics of Elijah.
He's immortal, he can appear in various guises.
He helps people in need and he inspires the Mystics.
The great Sufis felt that they were visited by Al Khidir.
Now why do I say Al Khidir is Elijah?
Not only does he share qualities with Elijah, when when Muslims
speak about Elijah, they refer to him as Al Khidir.
And more interesting than that, Jews living in Muslim lands,
Jews who speak Arabic sometimes refer to Eliyahu as Al Khidir.
They are really, they are really one in the same.
He's not mentioned in the Quran, but he's identified with a very
important figure in the Quran, a messenger, a messenger of of
Allah. And there's a story in the Quran
that appears in a different version in in medieval Midrash.
So there's there's definitely a sharing there.
So in Christianity and in Islam, both of them inheriting it of
course from the Tanakh Eliao becomes very significant.
Thank you for spending all this time you went overtime and we
really thank you for for that. Now if you go, just if you'd
like to plug your course. Yes, it is.
Very briefly, I teach a course online in Zohar, actually one in
English, where we look at my English translation, and another
course where we study the original Aramaic.
That doesn't require Aramaic fluency, but it does require
Hebrew fluency. If you can read a Midrashic
text, or if you can read the Tanakh and make some sense of
it, or if you can read Modern Hebrew, you're welcome to try
the the one we do the original Aramaic.
The English course is weekly, The Aramaic course is biweekly
and we basically study a few pages of the Zohar and discuss
it. I teach for about an hour and
the Aramaic group, it's smaller. We have discussion as we go in
English course. I teach for a straight hour and
then we have questions and answers.
You can find out about it. I don't need to say much more
about it. You can find out about it on my
website, which is simply Daniel C Matt, my middle initial C for
Hanan, Daniel C matt.com. If you Google Daniel Matt you'll
you'll probably find it certainly Daniel, Matt and
Zohar. The Stanford site has as I say
the Aramaic text you can find that Zohar, Stanford.
But for the course just on my website.
You're welcome, welcome to join it.
We have we study basically from after the Haghim through May and
then take a long summer break. Very nice.
I'm gonna put, I'm gonna put the link in the YouTube description
and I really, really want to thank you so much.
This was so fun. Great conversation and hope to
have you on again. Wonderful.
It was great exploring him with you.
All the best Shalom. Thank you.
Well done. Thank you so much.
Raka Shah. Hey guys, thanks so much for
tuning into the Judas and Demystified podcast.
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