307) SEFER HATZOREF AND THE STORY OF THE ‘LOST’ STOLIN GENIZA:

 

                      The library stamp of R.Yisrael Perlow of Stolin 

INTRODUCTION:

Some years ago, Professor Yitzhak Y. Melamed discovered what looked like a stamp from the famous lost Karlin-Stolin Geniza or Archive.

He made the discovery quite by accident as he was perusing through a two-volume list of Jewish library markings and stamps that the Allies had found and then catalogued after the Second World War. This catalogue is now held at the University of Chicago’s Regensburg Library. The Allies created this catalogue to document the Jewish books that had evaded destruction by the Nazis.

After the war, it was thought that the once-great Stolin Geniza had been irretrievably lost. However, from time to time rare Kabbalistic manuscripts had surfaced in, as Melamed puts it, “the murky world of Hebraica dealers”. One such manuscript was bought back by the Stoliner Chassidim themselves and another was purchased by the Jewish National Library of the Hebrew University. These, together with his accidental find, gave Melamed hope that the great Stolin Geniza and library had not been completely lost or destroyed. This article is based extensively on Professor Melamed’s intriguing investigation into the Stolin Geniza and his account thereof.^[1]

306) THE ZOHARIC EMPHASIS ON AVRAHAM AS DISSEMINATOR OF NON-JEWISH MYSTICISM:

 

Sefer haZohar

Moreh Nevuchim

INTRODUCTION:

Almost every single version of the various narratives about Avraham contain the well-known moral lesson that he rejected the idolatrous and occultist practices of his birth culture and pioneered a new monotheistic path.

In this article, however, based extensively on the research of Professor Oded Yisraeli^[1], we will explore a very different narrative of the same story. This narrative is from the Zohar which, according to Yisraeli, puts forward the view that:

[N]ot only did Abraham not separate himself from these practices but he himself was responsible for them[!]

Before we look at what the Zohar says in greater detail, let us first turn to the mainstream view as exemplified in the writings of Maimonides (or Rambam, 1135-1204):

305) THE EARLIEST VIEWS ON THE ORIGINS OF KABBALAH:

 

First edition of R. Menachem Recanati's commentary on the Torah (Venice, 1523)

INTRODUCTION:

We have previously looked at the origins of the Zohar, one of (modern[1]) Kabbalah’s foundational works, which first emerged around 1290.  The traditional view is that it was authored by R. Shimon bar Yochai, a second-century Tannaic sage; whereas historical evidence, as well as some rabbinic sources, point to its author being R. Moshe de León (1240-1305). The latter claimed to have found the writings of R. Shimon bar Yochai from a thousand years earlier and simply published[2] them in the Zohar. Either way, the Zohar only surfaced at around 1290.

This article, based extensively on the research of Professor Oded Yisraeli^[3] explores how three of the earliest mystics explained the origins of the Kabbalah in general.

Yisraeli takes an interesting tack because instead of relying on later scholarship, he focuses on early contemporaneous mystical sources which attempt to explain the origins of Kabbalah to other mystics. His research led him to uncover three primary yet divergent views on when and where Kabbalah originated.