Admiration and Disgust: The Ambivalent Re-Canonization of the ...

The Ambivalent Re-Canonization of the Zohar in the Modern Period
names of 'knowledge and wisdom of the Kabbalah', as well as
their powerful attachment to the sanctity of Sefer ha-Zohar. 6
The classic formula of the Maskilim reflecting the negative approach
to Kabbalah, which enjoyed extremely broad influence, was that by
Heinrich Graetz, who referred to the Zohar as 'The Book of Lies'. He
blamed the Zohar that it 'blunted the sense for the simple and the true,
and created a visionary world, in which the souls of those who zealously
occupied themselves with it were lulled into a sort of half-sleep, and
lost the faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong'. 7
However, along with this harsh criticism of the Kabbalah on the
part of 19 th century champions of Enlightenment, a number of Western
European Jewish thinkers and scholars expressed a more sympathetic
approach. One of the most explicit expressions of this view is found in
the book by Adolphe Franck, a French Jewish scholar of law and
philosophy, entitled La Kabbale, ou la philophie religieuse des Hébreux
(Paris, 1843; translated into German a year later by Adolph Jellinek). 8
Many chapters of this book are devoted to establishing the antiquity of
the Zohar, to a description of its exegetical method and an analysis of
its religious doctrines. Franck (who based himself on a partial Latin
translation of the Zohar) argued that the Zohar was in fact based upon
the teachings of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, which were initially
transmitted orally and subsequently set down in writing, until they
were edited in a final manner in the 13 th century. According to Franck,
Sefer ha-Zohar is deserving of preservation, primarily because of its
historical value. According to him, Sefer ha-Zohar, like Sefer ha-
YeΩirah, is:
6 Y. L. Mises, Qin’at ha-Emet, Vienna 1828, p. 134.
7 H. Graetz, History of the Jews, Philadelphia 1897, vol. 14, p. 23.
8 On Franck and his book, see Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, pp. 47-48; P. B.
Fenton, 'La cabbale et l'academie', Pardes 19-20 (1994), pp. 219-222. The book
is based upon Franck's 1839 lecture, which was published in article form in 1841
under the title 'Sur la Kabbale, lus dans la séance du 17 août 1839', Memoires de
l'Academie des Sciences Morales et Memoires Politiques de l'Institute de France,
I (1841), pp. 195-348. Cf. Fenton, ibid., p. 236 n. 11. Further editions of 'La
Kabbale' were published in 1889 and 1892. In addition to the translation into
German, the book was published in Hebrew in 1909 and in English in 1921; see
Fenton, ibid., p. 222.
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