509) When authority becomes the determinator of reason, meaning and truth

An early manuscript of Meirat Einayim by the 14th century R. Yitzchak of Acre

Introduction

This article—based extensively on the research by Professor Eitan Fishbane[1]—examines the rabbinic notion of the authenticity of a teaching or text being reliant on the perceived authority of its transmitter or originator. In other words, the greater the rabbi the more authentic the teaching, regardless of the intrinsic value, nature and validity of the actual teaching itself. 

As a test case, we analyse the writings of a fourteenth-century Kabbalist, R. Yitzchak ben Shmuel of Acre in his Meirat Einayim which is a supercommentary (i.e., a commentary on a commentary) on Nachmanides’ Commentary on the Torah. Interestingly, R. Yitzchak of Acre—who lived at the same time as R. Moshe de Leon who had claimed to have discovered the ancient Zohar—questioned the attribution of the Zohar to the second-century Tanna, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who lived a thousand years earlier.[2] 

469) Examining an unpublished manuscript of the Zohar

 Part 2

Abstract

A hitherto unknown manuscript of the Zohar was found in the Vatican Library. It tells the story of R. Yosi and R Aba going on a journey. R. Yosi reprimands R. Aba for not discussing Torah and keeping silent while travelling. R. Aba responds and eventually convinces R. Yosi that silence is a better path to follow. This would have been no minor matter, because the standard practice amongst the characters represented in the Zohar was indeed to travel and speak Torah words. It offered protection and rectification along the way. R. Aba’s path of silence, however, which was based on the importance of silent  Kavanah (concentration) – and the fact that he then initiated R. Yosi into that unconventional path of silent Kavanah – was seen as a subversive mystical theology. More importantly, R. Aba’s path of silent Kavanah may have represented a counter − and threatening − spiritualist movement of Kabbalists who opposed the dominating, standard and relatively conservative mystical school of the Zohar, where practice, words and sounds had to be appended to the Kavanah. These politics of theological subtleties may explain why this short manuscript text never made its way into the printed editions of the Zohar.