(TRADITIONALLY ATTRIBUTED TO. Publicized by R. Moses b. Shem Tov de Leon). Sepher ha-Zohar [“The Book of Splendor”]

First Edition of the Bible of Jewish Mysticism. The most sacred and influential of all Kabbalistic works, the Zohar is the preeminent classic of world mystical literature, a quest for Divine unity and a search for insight into the mysteries of the Torah. A textually inferior but more esthethic reprint by Vincenzo Conti of Cremona immediately followed this Mantua edition (see next Lot). Kabbalists such as R. Moses Zacuto (Rama”z) esteemed more highly the Mantua edition for its precision and eventually the pagination of the Mantua edition became the standard. The Zohar purports to be the composition of the Mishnaic sage, Shimon bar Yochai along with a bevy of his second-century Galilean companions. Prof. Gershom Scholem was of the opinion that the actual author of the Zohar was R. Moses de Leon of Guadalajara. (Initially, Scholem set out to prove that the historian Heinrich Graetz was wrong in attributing authorship of the Zohar to De Leon, but ultimately Scholem, based on philological and other internal evidence, reversed himself.) Contemporary scholarship has moved away from this theory of single scholarship. Today, it is the opinion of Profs. Moshe Idel, Yehuda Liebes, et al that the Zohar is not the work of a single author but rather of an entire group of authors. Prof. Arthur Green sums up by saying, "It may be that the Zohar should be seen as the product of a school of mystical practitioners and writers, one that may have existed even before 1270 and continued into the early years of the fourteenth century" (Introduction to Zohar, Pritzker Edition, p. LVII). It is necessary to place the printing of the Zohar - first in Mantua in 1558, and a year later in Cremona - in proper historical context in order to appreciate how truly momentous was the decision to make public the teachings of the esoteric Kabbalah at precisely this nexus. In 1553, the Talmud was confiscated and publicly burned in Italy. The immediate aftermath of that tragic event was a new interest on the part of Jews in secular knowledge and philosophy. To stem the tide of secularization, some rabbis felt the times called for making available to the public for the first time - through the mass medium of printing- the hidden wisdom of Israel, the Kabbalah, first and foremost the Zohar. But others opposed this radical departure from the tradition of only allowing esoteric teachings to circulate in manuscript form. Furthermore, they feared that the combined effect of an absence of Talmudic texts and a proliferation of Kabbalistic texts would produce one, ignorant of Jewish law and steeped in Jewish mysticism. These underlying tensions are reflected in the Proofreader’s Introduction to the Mantua edition of the Zohar. The Pesak of the Gaon R. Isaac de Lattes, printed at the beginning of this edition, was the watershed decision which permitted the publication of the Zohar. (One of the arguments De Lattes utilized was that increased study of the Zohar would hasten the long-awaited Redemption.) In many later halachic discussions of the issue it is stated that De Lattes authorized the publication provided the edition would appear in Rashi script, making the text less accessible to the public. In fact, this is a major difference between the earlier Mantua edition and the later competing Cremona edition. Whereas the Mantua Zohar is in Rashi script, the Cremona Zohar is in square Hebrew type. In his signed article "Zohar" in the Encyclopedia Judaica, Scholem wrote that the Mantua edition was based on ten manuscripts while the Cremona edition was based on six manuscripts. This canard has been copied numerous times by later authors. However the colophon, signed by Abraham ben Meshulam Modena at the end of the Mantua edition, states that there were available to the editor no more than "five or six copies of the books of Zohar." The source for saying that the editor Immanuel Benevento had before him ten manuscripts of the Zohar is the colophon of Jacob Hakohen of Gazzuolo at the end of Tikkunei Zohar, but as Scholem’s student Isaiah Tishby pointed out, all indications are that the reference is to manuscripts of Tikkunei Zohar, rather than of Zohar. Tishby, p. 109, n. 1. See S. Assaf, “Le-Polemos al Hadpasat Sifrei Kabbalah,” Sinai 5 (1939), pp. 360-368; I. Tishby, Mishnath ha-Zohar, Vol. I (1949), pp. 108-110; A.Yaari, "The Burning iof the Talmud in Italy" in idem, Mechkarei Sepher (1958), pp. 216-219; M. Benayahu, Ha-Defuss ha-Ivri bi-Cremona (1971), pp. 121-137; S. Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (1977), pp. 630-632; D. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy (1963), pp. 325-27; Carmilly-Weinberger, Censorship and Freedom of Expression in Jewish History (1977), pp. 53-55; The Zohar, Pritzker Edition (2004); Heller, The Sixteenth Century Hebrew Book I (2004), pp. 484-5; EJ, Vol. XVI, col. 1212;