The classic work of Jewish mysticism whose origins date back 2000 years, the Zohar, is quoted liberally in all Jewish learning ; in the Zohar the idea of reincarnation is mentioned repeatedly.

The Zohar, which was written in the 13th century, is generally held as the most important esoteric treatise of the Jews.

There is a nature preserve at Ein Gedi, and several Dead Sea hotels are located on the southwest end at Ein Bokek near Neve Zohar.

According to Zohar, Lilith is the name of Adam's first wife, who was created at the same time as Adam.

According to the Zohar ( Volume 1, page 8b ) Habakkuk is the boy born to the Shunamite woman through Elisha's blessing:

According to the Talmud, the Midrash, and the Kabbalistic work, the Zohar, the ' deadline ' by which the Messiah must appear is 6000 years from creation.

Happy are those who will be left alive at the end of the sixth millennium to enter the Shabbat, which is the seventh millennium ; for that is a day set apart for the Holy One on which to effect the union of new souls with old souls in the world ( Zohar, Vayera 119a ).

In their view, Moses not only received the Torah, but also the revealed ( written and oral ) and the hidden ( the ` hokhmat nistar teachings, which gave Judaism the Zohar of the Rashbi, the Torah of the Ari haQadosh and all that is discussed in the Heavenly Yeshiva between the Ramhal and his masters ).

Following the dissemination of the Zohar in the 13th century, Jewish mysticism took on a metaphorically anthropomorphic erotic element, and Song of Songs is an example of this.

The Zohar (, lit Splendor or Radiance ) is the foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah.

There are people of religions besides Judaism, or even those without religious affiliation, who delve in the Zohar out of curiosity, or as a technology for people who are seeking meaningful and practical answers about the meaning of their lives, the purpose of creation and existence and their relationships with the laws of nature, and so forth ; however from the perspective of traditional, rabbinic Judaism, and by the Zohar's own statements, the purpose of the Zohar is to help the Jewish people through and out of the Exile and to infuse the Torah and mitzvot ( Judaic commandments ) with the wisdom of Kabbalah for its Jewish readers.

Joseph Jacobs and Isaac Broyde, in their article on the Zohar for the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, cite a story involving the noted Kabbalist Isaac of Acco, who is supposed to have heard directly from the widow of de Leon that her husband proclaimed authorship by Shimon bar Yochai for profit.

The Zohar instead declared Man to be the lord of the creation, whose immortality is solely dependent upon his morality.

The authenticity of the Zohar was accepted by such 16th century Jewish luminaries as R ' Yosef Karo ( d. 1575 ), R ' Moses Isserles ( d. 1572 ), and R ' Solomon Luria ( d. 1574 ), who wrote that Jewish law ( Halacha ) follows the Zohar, except where the Zohar is contradicted by the Babylonian Talmud.

Featured on Chabad. org is the multi-part article, The Zohar's Mysterious Origins by Moshe Miller, which views the Zohar as the product of multiple generations of scholarship but defends the overall authenticity of the text and refutes many of the textual criticisms from Scholem and Tishby.

Some Orthodox Jews accept the earlier rabbinic position that the Zohar was a work written in the middle medieval period by Moses de Leon, but argue that since it is obviously based on earlier materials, it can still be held to be authentic, but not as authoritative or without error as others within Orthodoxy might hold.

" The Zohar, written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai close to two thousand years ago, makes frequent and lengthy references to reincarnation.

Debate continued over the generations ; Delmedigo's arguments were echoed by Leon of Modena ( d. 1648 ) in his Ari Nohem, and a work devoted to the criticism of the Zohar, Miṭpaḥat Sefarim, was written by Jacob Emden ( d. 1776 ), who, waging war against the remaining adherents of the Sabbatai Zevi movement ( in which Zevi, a false messiah and Jewish apostate, cited Messianic prophecies from the Zohar as proof of his legitimacy ), endeavored to show that the book on which Zevi based his doctrines was a forgery.

Especially controversial were the views of the Dor Daim on the Zohar, as presented in Milhamoth Hashem ( Wars of the Lord ), written by Rabbi Qafiḥ A group of Jerusalem rabbis published an attack on Rabbi Qafiḥ under the title of Emunat Hashem ( Faith of the Lord ), and measures were taken to ostracize members of the movement.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, noted professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, claimed that " It is clear that the Zohar was written by de Leon as it is clear that Theodore Herzl wrote Medinat HaYehudim ( The Jewish State ).

Other Jewish scholars have also suggested the possibility that the Zohar was written by a group of people, including de Leon.

This view simultaneously believes that the Zohar was not written by Shimon bar Yochai, but was a holy work because it consisted of his principles.

This proves that the majority of the Zohar was written within the accepted time frame and only a small amount was added later ( in the Geonic period as mentioned ).

In the Encyclopaedia Judaica article written by the late Professor Gershom Scholem of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem there is an extensive discussion of the sources cited in the Zohar.

The author of the Zohar drew upon the Bible commentaries written by medieval rabbis, including Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra, David Kimhi and even authorities as late as Nahmanides and Maimonides.

The traditional Rabbinic view is that most of the Zohar and the parts included in it ( i. e. those parts mentioned above ) were written and compiled by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, but some parts preceded Rashbi and he used them ( such as Sifra deTzni ` uta ; see above ), and some parts were written or arranged in generations after Rashbi's passing ( for example, Tannaim after Rashbi's time are occasionally mentioned ).

A major commentary on the Zohar is the Sulam written by Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag.

As for what is written in the Zohar III, p. 231: He whose sins are few is classed as a " righteous man who suffers ", this is the query of Rav Hamnuna to Elijah.

He later said that if it had been within his capabilities, he would have written a full commentary on The Zohar in two-hundred volumes, but he was unable to begin the work only because of a lack of means.

The Idra, which means threshing floor in Aramaic, is a Kabbalistic work included in printings of the Zohar, and was probably written and appended to the main body of the Zohar at a later date.

The popular songs of this album are Baderekh el HaOsher ( On the Road to Happiness ) and Eikh Hu Shar ( How He Sings )-which many assumed to be written on Zohar Argov, but as Robas told, was written about successful singers falling into drug abuse in general, such as Janis Joplin on Jim Morrison.

His position is based on his belief that most Kabbalistic works written after Sefer Yetzirah ( including the Zohar ) are forgeries.

Its objects were to combat the influence of the Zohar and subsequent developments in modern Kabbalah, which were then pervasive in Yemenite Jewish life, to restore what they believed to be a rationalistic approach to Judaism rooted in authentic sources, and to safeguard the older (" Baladi ") tradition of Yemenite Jewish observance that they believed to be based on this approach.

The book Ra ` aya Meheimna, the title of which means " The Faithful Shepherd ," and which is by far the largest " book " included in the book of the Zohar, is what Moshe, the " Faithful Shepherd ," teaches and reveals to Rashbi and his friends, who include Tannaim and Amoraim.

" In terminology, what is called Kabbalah inTikunei haZohar and Ra ` aya Meheimna is simply called razin ( clues or hints ) in the rest of the Zohar.

Among modern the modern critics of Kabbalah was Yihhyah Qafahh, who wrote a book entitled Milhamoth ha-Shem, ( Wars of the Name ) against what he perceived as the false teachings of the Zohar and the false Kabbalah of Isaac Luria.

The Zohar tradition has influenced Jewish folkore, which postulates God created Adam to marry a woman named Lilith.

While the traditional majority view in religious Judaism has been that the teachings of Kabbalah were revealed by God to Biblical figures such as Abraham and Moses and were then transmitted orally from the Biblical era until its redaction by Shimon ben Yochai, modern academic analysis of the Zohar, such as that by the 20th century religious historian Gershom Scholem, has theorized that De Leon was the actual author.

Conversely, Elijah Delmedigo ( c. 1458 – c. 1493 ), in his Bechinat ha-Dat endeavored to show that the Zohar could not be attributed to Shimon bar Yochai, arguing that if it were his work, the Zohar would have been mentioned by the Talmud, as has been the case with other works of the Talmudic period, that had bar Yochai known by divine revelation the hidden meaning of the precepts, his decisions on Jewish law from the Talmudic period would have been adopted by the Talmud, that it would not contain the names of rabbis who lived at a later period than that of Simeon ; and that if the Kabbalah was a revealed doctrine, there would have been no divergence of opinion among the Kabbalists concerning the mystic interpretation of the precepts.

In recent years there has been a growing willingness of non-Orthodox Jews to study the Zohar, and a growing minority have a position that is similar to the Modern Orthodox position described above.

This has also been pointed out by R ' David Luria in his work " Kadmus Sefer Ha ' Zohar.

Founded in the 3rd century CE by Plotinus, The Neoplatonist tradition has clear echoes in the Zohar, as indeed in many forms of mystical spirituality, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

Despite the preeminence of Tikunei haZohar and despite the topmost priority of Torah study in Judaism, much of the Zohar has been relatively obscure and unread in the Jewish world in recent times, particularly outside of Israel and outside of Chasidic groups.

The authenticity of his claim of authorship of the Zohar has been challenged by both secular and religious scholars.

Since its discovery on Lost Jerusalem ( Earth ), an artifact known as the Zohar has been highly sought after.

KOS-MOS also has some form of energy manipulation tied to the Zohar.

Abudarham speaks of the custom of reading the Torah on the night of Hoshana Rabbah, out of which has grown the custom of reading Deuteronomy, Psalms, and passages from the Zohar ; reciting Kabbalistic prayers.

His second work-a magnum opus titled Ohr Yakar (" Precious Light ")-was a 16 volume commentary on the Zoharic literature in its entirety and a work to which Ramak had devoted most of his life ( the modern publication of this great work has started during the mid 1960s and reached partial fruition in 2004 Jerusalem, though the 23-volume set left out about two-thirds of the Tikkunei Zohar ; additional volumes are still being published ).

In order to get more information about the people behind the shipments of the Syphon Filter virus, Zohar has a lone recruit sabotage an arms bazaar while eliminating Chechen forces and gathering evidence.

The Zohar lists him as a Great Angel Chief and has 53 legions of lesser ranks serving him and superintended the reading of the Torah at the Sabbath.

She has worked and performed with Zohar, the group led by composer Erran Baron Cohen.