Roads to Utopia : The Walking Stories of the Zohar

As the greatest book of Jewish mysticism, the __Zohar__ is a revered and much-studied work. Yet, surprisingly, scholarship on the __Zohar__ has yet to pay attention to its most unique literary device—the presentation of its insights while its teachers walk on the road. In these pages, rabbi and scholar David Greenstein offers the first examination of the "walking on the road" motif.Greenstein's original approach hones in on how this motif expresses the struggles with spatiality and the everyday presented in the __Zohar__. He argues that the walking theme is not a metaphor for realms to be collapsed into or transcended by the holy, as conventional interpretations would have it. Rather, it conveys us into those quotidian spaces that are obdurately present alongside the realm of the sacred. By embracing the reality of mundane existence, and recognizing the prosaic dimensions of the worldly path, the __Zohar__ is an especially exceptional mystical treatise. In this volume, Greenstein makes visible a singular, though previously unstudied, achievement of the __Zohar__. Roads to Utopia: The Walking Stories of the Zohar 4 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Zoharic Texts Discussed in This Study 12 Roads to Utopia 14 Two Introductions 16 Studying the Zohar: A Unique Book and a Unique Motif 16 Spatiality and the Zohar: Places, Spaces, and Movement in and through Them 22 1. The Dregs of Tar 28 2. Walking with God 42 Orientation and Disorientation 42 The Walking Stories and the Traditional Commentators 44 The Repression and Resurgence of the Mundane 58 The Case of Rabbi Yose 59 3. The Spatial Orientation of the Zohar 71 The Problem of Space and Divinity 71 Space and Struggle 77 Roads: Space and Gender 90 Letters, Names, Words, Creation 102 Accepting Spatiality 104 4. The Body Wishes to Walk 121 Pure Walking—Silence and Freedom 122 The Context of Freedom 125 Outside the Beit Midrash 143 Textuality and Orality as Spatial Practices 163 5. The Broad Dissemination of Torah: “The Torah is not the heritage of only one place” 170 “The Torah is not the heritage of only one place” 170 To Walk or Not to Walk 170 The Nest 179 The Tower of Babel 183 Walking and Ecstasy 193 Rejoicing on the Margins 196 6. Zoharic Geographics 202 From Kfar Tarsha to Babylonia 202 From Love to Death 206 The Place of Fear 212 The Way of the Serpent 220 The Wilderness 224 Conclusion: The Quotidian Utopia of the Zohar 230 Reference Matter 236 Appendix 1: The Walking Motif in the Zohar—A Listing of Texts 238 Guf ha-Zohar: The Main Body of the Zohar 238 Midrash ha-Ne‘elam 244 Zohar Ḥadash 245 Tosefta and Sitrei Torah 245 Appendix 2: The Dramatis Personae of the Walking Motif Texts 246 Appendix 3: Characteristics of Walking Texts in the Zoharic Literature 252 Appendix 4: Walking Texts Cited in Early Kabbalistic Works That Quote from the Zohar 254 Notes 256 Abbreviations 256 Two Introductions 256 1. The Dregs of Tar 258 2. Walking with God 262 3. The Spatial Orientation of the Zohar 272 4. The Body Wishes to Walk 287 5. The Broad Dissemination of Torah 297 6. Zoharic Geographics 307 Conclusion 313 Select Bibliography 314 The Zohar and Commentaries 314 Writings of R. Moshe de Leon 314 Other Kabbalistic Works 314 Secondary Sources 315 Index 326 As the greatest book of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar is a revered and much-studied work. Yet, surprisingly, scholarship on the Zohar has yet to pay attention to its most unique literary device—the presentation of its insights while its teachers walk on the road. In these pages, rabbi and scholar David Greenstein offers the first examination of the "walking on the road" motif. Greenstein's original approach hones in on how this motif expresses the struggles with spatiality and the everyday presented in the Zohar . He argues that the walking theme is not a metaphor for realms to be collapsed into or transcended by the holy, as conventional interpretations would have it. Rather, it conveys us into those quotidian spaces that are obdurately present alongside the realm of the sacred. By embracing the reality of mundane existence, and recognizing the prosaic dimensions of the worldly path, the Zohar is an especially exceptional mystical treatise. In this volume, Greenstein makes visible a singular, though previously unstudied, achievement of the Zohar . This is the first in-depth study of the 'walking motif' of the Zohar. The Zohar is unique among Jewish mystical texts in continuously introducing and punctuating its teachings with references to its mystical adepts' 'walking along the road'. By carefully cataloguing and analyzing the use of the walking motif, this study seeks to show that it expresses a concern of the Zohar that is surprising for a mystical text: to recognise the steady, if problematic, presence of a non-mystical dimension to reality, the domain of the mundane This book opens new perspectives on the Zohar, the greatest book of Jewish mysticism, by examining its unique approach to narrative.