The Zohar 3: Pritzker Edition, Vol. 3 » (1)

Daniel C. Matt is a leading authority on Jewish mysticism. For over twenty years, he served as Professor of Jewish Spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He has also taught at Stanford University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published six books, including The Essential Kabbalah; Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment; Zohar: Annotated and Explained; and God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony between Science and Spirituality. Matt is also the translator of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume One, winner of the National Jewish Book Award, and The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume Two, winner, along with Volume One, of the Koret Jewish Book Award. He spent the years 1998-2002 in Jerusalem working on this translation and currently lives in Berkeley, California.

This third volume of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition completes the Zohar’s commentary on the book of Genesis. Here we find spiritual explorations of numerous biblical narratives, including Jacob’s wrestling with the angel, Joseph’s kidnapping by his brothers, his near seduction by Potiphar’s wife, his interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams, and his reunion with his brothers and father.
Throughout, the Zohar probes the biblical text and seeks deeper meaning—for example, the divine intention behind Joseph’s disappearance, or the profound significance of human sexuality. Divine and human realities intertwine, affecting one another.
Toward the end of Genesis, the Bible states: Jacob’s days drew near to die—an idiomatic expression that the Zohar insists on reading hyperliterally. Each human being is challenged to live his days virtuously. If he does, those days themselves are woven into a garment of splendor; at death, they “draw near,” enveloping him, escorting him to the beyond.
Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Radiance) has amazed and overwhelmed readers ever since it emerged mysteriously in medieval Spain toward the end of the thirteenth century. Written in a unique Aramaic, this masterpiece of Kabbalah exceeds the dimensions of a normal book; it is virtually a body of literature, comprising over twenty discrete sections. The bulk of the Zohar consists of a running commentary on the Torah, from Genesis through Deuteronomy.

Library Journal

The Zohar is Judaism's best-known mystical text. It is also one of Judaism's most impenetrable texts written in obscure Aramaic. This new translation by Matt, a leading authority on Jewish mysticism, attempts to make this Kabalistic work more accessible to English speakers and free them from the errors and misrepresentations that exist in almost all popular accounts. The Zohar is often looked upon as the culmination of rabbinic studies, proper for only the most advanced rabbinic learners who have been initiated by living teachers via oral transmission, and who have invested time and energy into mastering the course of studies leading up to such a difficult, abstruse, and demanding text. Still, the American reader who wants a taste of the text will find no better window into the Zoharic world than this third volume of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, which wraps up the Zohar's commentary on the book of Genesis. Here the reader learns about well-known biblical narrative stories including Jacob's wrestling with the angel at Peniel, Joseph's kidnapping by his brothers, his near seduction by Potiphar's wife, his interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams, his reunion with his brothers and father, etc. All libraries should invest in purchasing the whole set of the Pritzker Zohar (Vol. 1: ISBN 0-8047-4747-4. $45; Vol. 2: ISBN 0-8047-4868-3. $45), which will soon replace other popular editions such as the one published by Soncino. [Further information, sample text, and photos are available at www.sup.org.-Ed.]-David B. Levy, Ph.D., MLS, Baltimore, MD Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.