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Books: Making the Book of Radiance Sparkle
Michael Fagenblat
A new translation of a kabbalistic classic is itself a �Holy Wedding� between the mystical spirit of the Zohar and the spirit of American English
"In a certain sense every great work in one language can be translated into another language only once." This is a bemusing remark by Franz Rosenzweig, for do not the great works prove themselves precisely by being translated again and again? How could Rosenzweig, a 20th-century German Jewish philosopher profoundly sensitive to both history and language, contend that masterpieces can be translated "only once"? As if to answer this question come the first two volumes of Daniel Matt�s new and annotated translation of the Zohar -- "The Book of Radiance" -- the most sacred and influential of all kabbalistic works. This new translation will quickly become the definitive and unrivaled English edition of one of the pre-eminent classics of world mystical literature, originally written in Aramaic in 13th-century Spain.
But Rosenzweig clearly had something else in mind beside the technical supremacy of one translation over another. He was remarking on how the proper rendering of a true masterpiece does not merely align words from two languages, but requires the receiving language to transform itself in order to welcome the alien work. It takes particular historical circumstances, cultural readiness and linguistic flexibility for an alien masterpiece to be welcomed in the form of a true translation.
The first English translation of the Zohar is evidence of that point. Attempted some 70 years ago in London, that version, published by Soncino Press, makes it clear that the time was not ripe for the Zohar�s unique and strange voice to be expressed in English. Instead of the weird imagery of the Zohar, a mythic novel describing the adventures of a circle of mystics questing for divine unity and new insights into the mysteries of Torah, we get a domesticated gentleman�s version, purified of its most striking expressions and connotations.
But a translation, as Rosenzweig says, is a "hieros gamos," a Holy Wedding between two alien spirits -- the Zohar, on the one hand, and the English language, on the other -- that, when the conditions are ripe, engenders a new spirit, a masterpiece in translation: In this case, Matt�s "The Zohar: Pritzker Edition."
That such a "marriage" can take place only once in a historical epoch is an assertion with which the author of the Zohar would probably agree, since for him the notion of a Holy Wedding, hazivvug hakadosh, between the divine male and the divine female takes place precisely through the right interpretation of Torah. Interpretative innovations, when done properly, become the "adornments and finery" of the Bride (malkhut) on her wedding day (the festival of Shavuot) when she unites with Her Husband (tiferet). In a way, Matt�s commentary and rendering of the Zohar adorn it with finery and escort it to the canopy, where it stands beautified and united with the modern English language.
But how is it that the Zohar�s voice can find life in 21st-century American English? Is our English more able than that of prior generations to reactivate the Zohar�s plangent Aramaic? Can it be at once as strange and as intimate, as allusive and as alluring, as the original Zohar? If Rosenzweig believed that translating a work such as the Zohar is a project of cultural and historical proportions, then this new translation by Matt, a leading American authority on kabbalah, who has taught at the Graduate Theological Union, Stanford and the Hebrew University, can be understood as an indicator of the cultural and historical Zeitgeist. Indeed, we can point to four ways in which Matt�s Zohar translation gauges contemporary American culture.
For one, the loose and strange poetic evocations render the act of reading the translation an engaging, at times visceral experience. Such an experience of language has long been the substance of American free verse and one can detect, oddly enough, an echo of Whitman or Wallace Stevens resounding in Matt�s translation. Take an example he himself uses to explain his work, the phrase "qumrin tehirin," which is the Zohar�s name for the demons encountered by the soul as it ascends from its slumbering body. Where existing translations render these mythic figures as "certain bright but unclean essences" (Soncino) or "the deceiving lights of uncleanness" (Tishby�s "Wisdom of the Zohar"), Matt names them "hooded, hunchbacked, dazzling demons of defilement."
This poetic achievement is not merely a liberty taken by a modern translator. The Zohar itself revels in the sounds of strange words, so much so that an 18th-century Italian mystic, Rabbi Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, recommended the book on lyrical grounds alone, writing: "Even if one does not understand, the language is suited to the soul." Professor Elliot Wolfson of New York University, one of the world�s leading scholars of Jewish mysticism today, agrees that the musicality of Matt�s translation reflects the original. At a recent session of the American Academy of Religion dedicated to this translation, Wolfson said: "Matt�s rendition of the Zoharic idiom captures the rhythm and cadence of the concocted Aramaic of the original."
There is now a scholarly consensus that the Zohar�s Aramaic was concocted -- most scholars, including Matt, suggest it was written by Moses de Leon, perhaps with contributions from a circle of mystics -- several hundred years after Jewish communities ceased speaking and writing the classic rabbinic language. According to testimony from Isaac of Acre, a 14th-century mystic who fled to Spain and sought out the newly discovered Zohar allegedly written by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in 2nd-century Palestine, de Leon�s wife insisted that her husband penned the Zohar himself and ascribed it to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai for marketing purposes. The author of the Zohar so managed to impress a thirsty if conservative tradition that his authority struck roots in a deeper past. Doubtless the act of writing in an Aramaic gleaned entirely from the preceding rabbinic period paradoxically led de Leon to his genius for linguistic association and invention. Indeed, in an interview on the translation�s website, Matt comments on the challenge of retracing the Zohar�s astonishing literary feat: "In exploring the Zohar linguistic search and spiritual search go hand in hand." The English reader, blessed with Matt�s commentary, is likewise able to follow the circuitous paths leading from the Zohar�s formulation of an image, a symbol or a myth through the vast labyrinths of midrashic, Talmudic, Biblical and 13th-century Castilian references.
Also palpable in this edition is the America of unrestricted resources and magnanimity. The casual reader will feel this in the magnificent illuminated frontispiece and by glancing at the long list of distinguished academics gathered like the Seventy for consultation. Behind the scenes stands the Pritzker family, whose extraordinary contribution to an otherwise marginal discipline of medieval Jewish scholarship would have put to shame Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile, at the time of the Zohar�s gestation and patron to the arts and sciences. Indeed, the material support that has enabled this monumental translation project -- it is estimated that its completion will take 15 more years, bringing the total to 20 years and 12 volumes -- could only have come from America�s private philanthropic sector, and this too must be counted among the cultural preconditions for a nation to receive a foreign masterpiece.
Of course, it is tempting today to dismiss the popularity of kabbalah among glitzy New Age circles as yet another wile of self-indulgence. But that a private donor would devote massive funding and much of her own time for a projected 20 years suggests that the lure of the Zohar has struck roots in the higher aspirations of American religiosity.
This translation can thus also be seen as an indicator that confirms Harold Bloom�s description of what he calls "the American religion," characterized primarily by its gnostic inclination to intensely individualistic quests for inner spiritual knowledge. The Zohar incorporates gnostic themes, especially those of a dualism between good and evil, and adds its famous concern for "the unification of the Blessed Holy One and his divine bride, Shekhinah."
Finally, this new translation marks the epoch of American spirituality in yet a fourth sense. For the New Age atmosphere that allows this translation to fly is accompanied by a grand example of thorough, down-to-earth American scholarship. Matt�s commentary is not only clear and helpful to the lay reader but also astonish-ingly comprehensive. It calls up every Biblical, rabbinic and midrashic reference that the Zohar reworks, as well as significant secondary references to traditional and aca-demic commentators alike. A 50-page introduction by Arthur Green, professor at Brandeis University and one of this generation�s leading scholars and popular teachers of Jewish mysticism, offers an eloquent, non-technical presentation of major themes in the Zohar. Scholars and serious students will further benefit by visiting the website, http://www.sup.org/zohar/, which houses the Aramaic text Matt has reconstructed for his translation. The Aramaic text is an invaluable by-product of this project, since it provides the nearest thing to a critical edition likely to be attained of the Zohar. The Zohar was, in all likelihood, originally not a book but a collection of pamphlets variously distributed, collected and frequently re-edited, thus precluding the very possibility of an original or even a best manuscript. Matt has thus made the somewhat maverick move of reconstructing the text of the Zohar based on numerous early manuscripts, and scholars seem to support his decision in light of the Zohar�s particular compositional history.
Rosenzweig claimed that a translation measured a nation�s "receptiveness," its "yearning" to accommodate the alien spirit of the foreign masterpiece and make it part of its own "historical development." Matt�s new translation bears just this desire to make the fantastic, poetic, traditional and ever-innovative Zohar an integral part of America�s historical development. Mysticism has become part of popular culture, and religious revivalisms trade on its promising yet often deceptive allure. We can therefore be grateful that Matt�s work respects the soundness of critical scholarship as much as it does the mythic genius of the Zohar. The spiritual pendulum has swung from the Enlightenment ideal of pure reason back toward that of mysticism. We are thus all the more grateful that Matt has separated the mysticism of the Zohar from the mystification it often receives.
In a "Zohar Conference" held last December at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Melila Hellner of Hebrew University, a world expert and master teacher of the Zohar, observed that "though now the secrets of the Zohar are leaking into open space, nevertheless these are �hidden secrets revealed to the eye,� as R. Joseph Gikatlia -- himself of the circle of the Zohar -- called them." Hellner was commenting on how Matt�s translation is the final nail pulled out of the coffin that confined the Zohar to secrecy. But, she says, the mystery of the Zohar will abide in the open air of translation, for the Zohar bears an intrinsic mystery and not merely an institutional secret. Hellner concluded by citing a phrase in the Zohar that might be applied to Matt�s project: "Behold the fragrance of words, see how sweet, how full of love."
Matt has given us a literal translation, an exacting commentary, and at the same time conveyed the fragrance of the Zohar�s words. Will the enigma of the Zohar suffer from such exposure? One trusts that will not be the case, for as the rabbinic adage has it, just like one who breathes the perfume of the cedar takes nothing away from the tree, so too one who breathes the fragrant words of this translation takes nothing away from the wonder of the Zohar.
Michael Fagenblat is lecturer and community educator for the Australian Center for the Study of Jewish Civilization, Monash University.
The Zohar: Prizker Edition / By Daniel C. Matt, Stanford University Press Vol. 1: 584 pp., Vol. 2: 496 pp.; $45 each
March 8, 2004
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