Marc Gafni – EROS: PLATO AND THE ZOHAR PART 2
Marc Gafni
posted on marcgafni.com
please share comments at info@marcgafni.com
Kabala scholar Yehuda Libes reminds us of a third word. He suggests that the word Zohar, the name of the great magnum opus of Hebrew mysticism, is roughly synonymous with the Greek word eros. For the authors of the Zohar were not dry medieval scholastics; they were rather men of great passion and depth who believed that by entering the inside of the moment, the text, or the relationship, they could recreate and heal the world. Zohar, like eros, is powerful, intense and deep. It is the source of all creativity and pleasure.
*B – Further, the Zohar masters understood Eros to be the essential goal of the spiritual journey. Often in Hebrew mystical texts the erotic is called a Messiah experience. For them Messiah was not a historical happening as much as an inner event. The Hebrew word for messiah derives from the root word Siach. Siach means no more and no less than ‘conversation’. The core of the Zohar text is basically a series of sacred conversations. The messiah, they taught, lingers whenever we so fully enter conversation that the boundaries of ego fall away and we are left only with the raw joy of fellowship.
One of the most profound and difficult sections of the Zohar is called the Idra Rabba, the Great Gathering. Similar to the Symposium of Plato, it is the story of seven close friends came together for the holy fellowship. And like the Symposium, it is the passionate conversation and camaraderie of friends reveling in each other’s company as they search for depth which infused the gathering with Eros. In truth any conversation which is true, authentic and deep is erotic conversation.
In the great gathering of the men of the Zohar, as in the Symposium, both the form and content is about Eros. The value of the gathering then is the gathering itself. It need not justify itself in terms of any other standard or value. When one is willing to let go of agendas, stop networking and enter the depth of conversation, then one is on the inside. When the other person’s talk is no longer merely the time to work out what I will say next, when deep listening becomes mutual, when words begin to flow and time stands still, when a few hours seems but a few minutes, then the Gods of Zohar and Eros have been invoked.
When Diotima — the old wise woman in the Symposium – talks about Eros and Shimon Bar Yochai, hero of the Idra, talk about Zohar- clearly neither is referring to the narrow modern sense of sex. Rather, Zohar and Eros evoke a sense of merging with the flow of the moment, of moving from outside observer to passionate participant; Eros in the sense of being on the inside. Thus, “Zohar” is not merely the name of the work; it is an evocative word which seeks to capture glimmerings of Eros. The ultimate paradigm of identity between medium and message. Process and content merge in the word. The Zohar experience is the Erotic experience.
