Making homework fun, I ran with an assignment on comparing texts during a week about authorship to create a Zohar fanfic set in some unspecified future. It has a ton of footnotes at the end because this is something with a dense symbolic field which footnotes help and because it feels like reading Daniel Matt’s English translation.
The numbers are simply the footnotes, the usual function of which doesn’t work here in blog format land. There are some references to further chapters and addendums in this text that do not exist, but most of the footnotes are based in real Torah texts or describing recognized kabbalistic symbol language.
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“There is a rose and then there is a Rose” : Metaphysical symbol fields, Realia, and Zohar Fanfic
Comparing and synthesizing both texts through the lens of authorship.
As they (1) were all traveling from the New Oblate of Ludomir for the chag, they came upon an old bus driver (2) picking flowers at the bus stop crossroads (3) murmuring and humming. Chazzan Sasha ben Yossi of Galilee asked the driver “By which bus do we come to Lod?” (4)
(text partially missing and fragmented. As the Fellowship travels on they realize this old murmuring bus driver is a powerful Torah scholar.)
At a rest stop, they saw the driver chuckling at herself (5) and she plucked aloft a variegated rose opening :
“As it says “There is a rose and then there is a Rose” (6) “בגין דאית שושנה ואית שושנה” And what is meant by this? There is nothing here but Explain me! (7) Come and see. Read not “בגין” b’gin and instead read “in the garden.”
And Rabbi Pinchas bar Kalonymus of Chelm-K’var interjected, “Your words are honey and milk were it not for this yod. (8)”
Suddenly a circle of flame enrobed in purple flickered above the driver’s head and the order of the world paused in its place.
“This yod?” Bridle your mouth! As if this were not itself mystery of mysteries! “This yod?!” This is nothing other than /The/ yod. /The/ supernal point expanding into/from haShem’s infinite darkness of being, the first of perceivable points. (9)
Within the garden, haShem expanded themselves from only Elohim in the world – as it says”bara bereshit elohim (10) – from Elohim alone to mixing Elohim / haShem. As it is known, the world cannot exist on strict judgement (11). As it says “colored red and white (12).” What is this red and white of the rose? These are the compassion and the mercy. These are the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge (13). These are the thirteen petals and the five bethorned leaves (14).
Chazzan Sasha exclaimed, “If these were the only words I heard in my life, dayeinu! (15)” And Rabbi Pinchas bar Kalonymus fell on his face.
She now continued, face alight, the rose now in her right as on Shabbat (16). :
B’gin! It is the five that protect before – See, beit and gimel, two and three become the unfolding bespiraled five (17). After the final nun (18), binah descending, with fifty (19) into Yesod’s singular. For this is Garden of Eden – the garden that witnessed those fifty gates. And in their midst Her yod (20), the ten, for the expansion from five must come through the gates of binah. Five come to protect and fifty come to open (21), each surrounding the generative yod of haShem, Creator of haAdam Rishon, root of all people, and the blueprint of the garden of Shekinah, the root of knesset israel (22.)
And this root-stem where all are held together? This is the secret of secrets unfolding from edut shushan (23.) “מִכְתָּ֖ם לְדָוִ֣ד”24) Miktam (25)? It is Yesod, giving gold to David (26). Why is the order Malkhut – Yesod – Malkhut? (27) This is the secret of “the female shall encircle” – masculine Malkhut “lDavid” and feminine Malkhut “shushan edut.”
Where all petals and thorns and leaves meet, this non-linear line between Yesod and Malkhut. Where does Yesod end and Malkhut begin? (28) The first mem is open, as a mikveh, as a rose opens; the last closed because she holds all (29) and without these two, a faction (30). And above Yoseph righteous datepalm who Yisrael “blessed with breasts and wombs, (31)” with the knowledge of Their (32) own depths (33).
Here she paused in reverence and began to hum a nigun.
Reb Nachson ben Ephraim the Silent (34) sang (35) :
כׇּל הַמִּסְתַּכֵּל בְּאַרְבָּעָה דְּבָרִים
מָה לְמַעְלָה, מָה לְמַטָּה,
מָה לְפָנִים, וּמָה לְאָחוֹר
כְּבוֹד קוֹנוֹ
And the encircling fire flared brilliant black. And the birds paused, flying but not flying. And a line of lightning froze the sky asunder. And the hairs of each stood. And she continued :
And the root above? (36) Ze is Binah making the five which circle round Tiferet’s heart, the rose center from which arises the smell of olam haba.” As it says “כְּרֵ֣יחַ שָׂדֶ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר בֵּרְכ֖וֹ יְהֹוָֽה” “as the smell of the field which haShem blessed. (37)” And from this center, from the heady scent, the thirteen (38).
And the root even beyond? This is Supernal Point, dark only to humans. Light beyond imagining, brightness blinding comprehension as it says “Even darkness is not dark to You. Night shines like day – light and darkness are the same (39)” for this is where keter and malkhut are one as the flame in the coal (40.)
And here they reached the bus transfer station to Kaifeng Chadash.
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1) This is The Fellowship, our group of rabbis, cantors, mashpiaah, and explorers on adventures to live mystic Torah reality
2) The bus driver is like Zohar’s donkey driver of old, Nasruddin, and all wise fool characters. This particular bus driver seems to be the very presense of Beruriah or her gilgul, as we shall see.
3) The petach enayim, the opening of the eyes, a common Hebrew Torah phrase from crossroads but one with an extra layer of significance for the Fellowship who live in the Zohar nexus of “Come and See!”
4) This is a probable sign that the ‘old bus driver’ is Beruriah, see Eruvin 53b.
5) Literal translation amends “laughing inwardly” as Sarah does when listening at the Opening of the Tent, see Gen 18:12; possibly a subtle reference that the bus driver is also somehow an embodiment of Malkhut.
6) Zohar 1:a 5 Literal translation amends “laughing inwardly” as Sarah does when listening at the Opening of the Tent, see Gen 18:12; possibly a subtle reference that the bus driver is also somehow an embodiment of Malkhut.
7) See Rashi on Gen 1:1 6 Zohar 1:a 5 Literal translation amends “laughing inwardly” as Sarah does when listening at the Opening of the Tent, see Gen 18:12; possibly a subtle reference that the bus driver is also somehow an embodiment of Malkhut.
8) R. Pinchas correctly points out that the Aramaic “בגין “has a yod in it that would not be present in the Hebrew “in the garden.” However the bus driver will have an esoteric reasoning for the letter as is often the case.
9) This is the beginning of beginnings, the Yod here being a reference to the first letter of the Tetragrammaton. In Kabbalah and Zohar framing, this is connected to Chokhmah, the first conceivable point of g-d. The tip of the yod is equated with Keter.
10) Gen 1:1
11) See Pesikta Rabbati 40
12) Zohar ibid.
13) This is likely a reference to Ezekiel 31:8 where the phrase “ם֒הי ִלֹאֱגן־ ַב “ ְּis found twice. See perek 8 of the text for a mystical extrapolation on this and another Ezekiel verse 28:13 with the same phrase.
14) Zohar 1:a and Zohar Pinchas 3:233b
15) ‘Enough,’ usually translated in English in a sense of positive “It would have been enough” from the Pesach seder. Dayeinu is also the site of gevurah, midrash saying it was on the second day of waters splitting g-d said “Enough” to stop. This may be the Chazzan’s subtle way of suggesting disagreement with Rabbi Pinchas’s interruption.
16) The traditional way of holding the kiddush cup on Shabbat, oft compared to a rose.
17) The five are the five thorns or five protective outer leaves around the rose. In the Zohar text there is a reference to the numbers of the FIbonacci spiral found in many plants, including the counted rose petals. The sequence starts 1, 1 and from there adds the last two numbers of the sequence to produce the next number : 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 etc Rose petals often have this 13 and 5 combo because they create this natural spiral sequence.
Here the bus driver breaks the letters of the word בגין to create another field of divine play space, adding up the gematria of Zohar Aramaic into the complex unfolding mathematics of the rose – beit equals 2 and gimel equals 3, adding up to the next Fibonacci number.
18) A nun midword is shaped נ ,but at the end of the word extends downward ן ; this is a dense association map. Binah is often associated with five – Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach and Hod – and with heh, the gematria of which is five. The final longer shape is symbolic sign of Binah descending into the world jsut a the letter lengthens to descend below the bottom writing line.
19) See addendum p 583 “Binah : 50 Gates of Wisdom”
20) See addendum p 622 “Yesod : The Secret of Yod” In which yod is a stand in for Tzaddik, Yesod, and the head of the genitalia.
21) A reference to earlier discussion of whether the five thorn/leaves are protective or attacking the rose, the text references subtly that ones view of the subject shifts the possibilities.
22) In this vision both Gan Eden, seen here as a blueprint of Shekinah in Olam haBa, and Adam are paired with haShem’s generative yod, associated with the head, both genital and cranial. The yod avoids the more phallic g-d letter vav and its non-divine dual zayin and can be associated with the g-d head of divine pleasure and creation.
23) Zohar Pinchas 3:233b
24) Psalms 60:1, the last half of the verse, referenced by the Zohar on the first half of the verse concerning .ׁשּו ַׁ֣שן ֵע֑דּות – the shushan edut.
25) Miktam is a technical term found in the Psalms whose particular meaning is unknown.
26) The text takes the word after “Shushan edut,” which is Malkhut as the sephirot next to Malkhut, Yesod.
27) “Shushan Edut” already references Malkhut. King David is also a reference to Malkhut. The bus driver is asking why the verse has two sites of Malkhut with Yesod between.
28) Referencing תם ָּ֖כ ְמ ִstarts with and ends with mem despite being read as a site of Yesod, both memes also read as Malkhut connections but being read from different perspectives. See “Bring me a Groom Slender and Pale : the Masculine Shabbos”
29) Malkhut who is the world that holds us all.
30) If both mems are removed, the middle of miktam “תם ָּ֖כ ְמ “ ִis kat “כת ” ַּsect or faction
31) Gen 49:25
32) Singular they used to complicate the side of Yesod and Malkhut in both singular vs dual vs plural as well as complicating the gender site.
33) Again Gen 49:25, Yosephs “blessings of the deep that couches below,” meaning that Yoseph/Yesod is fluidly connected to Malkhut, also referencing note 28, that Yesod is surrounded and even infiltrated by the double Mems, by Malkhut.
34) A non-verbal member of the Fellowship whose main interactions are to sing texts, often “restringing” phrases into new and even opposite meaning.
35) Chagigah 11b
36) Referencing the five that are the first connected to the stem of Yesod. May also be connecting the last word of Psalms 60:1 “מד ֵ ּֽל ַל “ ְto Binah.
37) Gen 27:27
38) The Thirteen Aspects of Compassion are traditionally seen as coming from Keter and therefore associated with the most ethereal of senses, scent.
39) Psalms 139:12
40) Sefer Yetzirah “בגחלת קשורה כשלהבת ,“Zohar 1:50b
eish zarah 