"Pop Kabbalah " & etc.

[pynchonoid]

PW Religion Bookline from Publishers Weekly January 6,
2004

[...] 

SPOTLIGHT ON... Pop Kabbalah 
 
Will The Real Zohar Please Stand Up? 
 
For centuries, Jewish mysticism, or kabbalah, was the
exclusive domain 
of expert rabbinic sages. Committed to orthodox
Judaism, they were 
equally committed to keeping kabbalistic tradition a
secret, shielded 
from the masses who might misunderstand its strange,
powerful 
teachings or be harmed by them. 
 
With Britney Spears and Madonna now claiming to be
kabbalists, 
however, the cat's out of the bag. Today, kabbalah is
for the 
everyone. Or is it? Daniel C. Matt's new translation
of the Zohar, the 
classic text of Jewish mysticism, has just started
appearing in two 
volumes (of a projected 12) from Stanford University
Press. (Volume 1 
was released last fall; volume 2 is due this spring.)
Depending on 
your perspective, Matt's work may prove that the
traditional 
kabbalists rightly kept their wisdom under wraps. 
 
 "The Zohar is a demanding book," Matt told BookLine. 
"Some people 
will want it on their shelf because they have the
Bible or extracts 
from the Talmud on their shelf, but they may not do
much with it once 
they've bought it." Actually, the book sometimes
verges on 
incomprehensible, but Matt has done much to open up
the cryptic, 
idiosyncratic Aramaic text for non-experts. The
beautifully produced 
tomes are the first-ever full-dress scholarly English
translation, 
complete with meticulous, voluminous footnotes. 
 
For all the relative accessibility, however, is it
possible to square 
Matt's Zohar with the kabbalah of the Material Girl,
or that of the 
traditional rabbis? A student of the controversial
Kabbalah Centre 
International, Madonna has even introduced
pop-kabbalistic symbolism 
in her videos. 
 
Whether the Zohar's authentic depths are open to
novices depends on 
what you think the book is. Outwardly, it is a
commentary on the 
Bible's first five books. Religious Jews, however,
have understood it 
to be the encoded secrets of the Godhead, the work of
a second-century 
A.D. rabbi, Shimon ben Yohai. Secular scholars see in
the Zohar 
something less impressive. Matt said he believes it
was actually 
composed in the 13th century by a rabbi, Moses de
Leon, who may have 
thought he was channeling the spirit of Rabbi Shimon. 
 
Matt contends that non-experts can still appreciate it
on a couple of 
 levels:  "First, the Zohar describes God in feminine
rather than 
exclusively masculine terms. That's a surprising thing
to any reader. 
Second, it shows us that God is incomplete or is not
fully actualized 
without our participation [in spiritual endeavors].
That is an insight 
that would affect any reader, Jewish or non-Jewish."
He also noted  
"the value of the Zohar as a celebration of the
imagination. It's not 
so much what the Zohar says as how it says it, showing
you new aspects 
of the biblical text that you might not have thought
of." 
 
All that is comprehensible, if not to Madonna fans,
then to modern 
secular readers with a level of academic
sophistication and interest. 
But, inevitably, Daniel Matt's translation is a
different Zohar from 
that of its masters among orthodox rabbis. To them,
depicting the 
Zohar as a work of  "imagination" rather than
revelation would nullify 
its value. --David Klinghoffer 
  
[...]
 
Excerpts from the starred reviews appearing in PW
Religion Forecasts 
on Monday, January 19: 
 
AMERICAN JEZEBEL: The Uncommon Life of Anne
Hutchinson, the Woman Who 
Defied the Puritans 
Eve LaPlante. Harper San Francisco, $24.95 (288p) ISBN
0-06-056233-1 
LaPlante, an 11th-generation granddaughter of
Hutchinson, provides a 
fast-paced and elegant account of Hutchinson's life
and work, 
including the reasons that Hutchinson's teachings
threatened the 
fabric of Puritan theology. After she moved to the
colonies with her 
husband, William Hutchinson, she began to teach that
men and women 
could attain salvation not through performing
religious works but 
through inward grace. The Puritans, who emphasized
that the covenant 
of works was the only guarantee of salvation, charged
her with 
antinomianism (an attack against the law of God) and
with violating 
God's commands that a woman should not teach. LaPlante
offers a 
stimulating account of Hutchinson's eloquent
self-defense at her 
trial. Knowing that the magistrates had no religious
or political 
grounds to convict her, since a woman was not a
subject of the law, 
Hutchinson stymied their questioning. LaPlante's
first-rate biography 
offers glimpses into the life and teachings of a
much-neglected figure 
in early American religious history. (Mar.) 
 
[...]

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P.S.  Thanks, davemarc, for taking the time to correct
jbor's absurd revision of NYC.  If only it were that
easy to untangle jbor's ongoing revision of Pynchon's
writing to support the neocon agenda.



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