The Zohar in Plain English: 144 Essential Passages from Kabbalah’s Foundational Work, Newly Translated and Explained (Kabbalah explored)

Whoever has sung Kegavna on Friday night, said Berich Shemei before an open ark, or recited Patach Eliyahu at the start of the morning service has already been reading the Zohar. Possibly for years. Possibly without knowing.

The Zohar is the central book of Kabbalah and one of the strangest and most beautiful books ever written. For most English readers it remains out of reach. The complete translations run to many volumes and cost accordingly. The popular treatments offer the Zohar’s perfume without its text.

This book is the meeting in between. It contains 144 passages of the Zohar, chosen because they are the ones the tradition itself returns to: the passages quoted in the prayer book, sung at the Shabbat table, and cited in every later work of Kabbalah, together with the quieter teachings a reader needs in order to understand the famous ones.

Each entry gives you four things. A short preamble sets the scene. The original Aramaic follows, printed as the oldest editions print it. Then a new English translation, made directly from the Aramaic for this book. Then a full page of commentary whose one job is to hand the passage over: what it says, what it assumes you know, where its ideas came from, and what they ask of an ordinary life.

Read in order, the 144 entries follow the Zohar’s own sequence from the rose among the thorns to the cave where Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai received his wisdom, and the commentary tracks the ideas as they return and deepen from entry to entry. Read by the calendar, they accompany the synagogue year: every weekly portion and every festival is present at its station. Read by the famous doors, they take you straight to the passages you have heard about: the maiden in the palace, the Idra Zuta and the death of Rabbi Shimon, the invitation to the ushpizin, the lamp of darkness.

Also included: an appendix of the seven Zohar passages that entered the prayer book, with transliteration for reading aloud; three classic prayers of the Kabbalists; and a glossary.

No Hebrew beyond the alphabet is required, and nothing in the book punishes you for having less.

The eleventh volume of the Kabbalah Explored series. It stands alone.