I'm looking forward to listening to this. Before I do, here's my rant.
If you don't have 100 minutes to spare for a shiur, in summary, the GRAs shitto makes no sense because he's trying to reinterpret the zohar and force all the rishonim into it. His method is a departure from his otherwise logical approach. The GRA couldn't accept that the Zohar is obviously a forgery so he was forced to come up with an explanation using 17 arguments that all contradict eachother. That is how bad kabbalah is: the Zohar is a PLAGUE and it must be purged from the Jewish consciousness.
But good luck saying that to anyone other than the most maverick of Torah thinkers. Even MO rabbis refuse to touch the zohar with critical eyes. It is assumed to be part of the canon like Tanach.
It is a book filled with superstitions, erroneous statements that contradict reality, angel worship, black magic.
It's worse than the hechalot books because everyone agrees they are heresy.
Moshiach has his work cut out for him.
I despise the zohar and the way it has brain damaged klal yisrael.
One could argue that superstitions, black magic, erroneous statements that contradict reality, angel worship, and black magic are to be found in Gemara.
And what makes the Talmud's modification rational?
Our halachic corpus is based solely on widespread acceptance, there's no central authority. Even the canonization of Tanach is predicated on the same principle.
The Zohar was accepted based on the conceit that it was authored by Rabbi Shimon Ben Yohai. This fraud, combined with the fact that the Zohar contains numerous things that don't fit with texts which had been canonical for hundreds of years by the time it came out, disqualify it as something we should take seriously (not to mention that its incorporation into the halakhic process was based on claims of prophetic visions). Just as an example, it mentions rabbis as interacting who were from totally different generations. In traditional rabbinic mesorah this is utterly disqualifying. Insofar as it touches on halakha (as mentioned in the podcast it is largely not a halakhic work at all) it is a corruption rather than a legitimate development of Jewish Law (more on the distinction here: https://thenewdigest.substack.com/p/what-exactly-is-the-common-law?r=18b35&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)
I'm looking forward to listening to this. Before I do, here's my rant.
If you don't have 100 minutes to spare for a shiur, in summary, the GRAs shitto makes no sense because he's trying to reinterpret the zohar and force all the rishonim into it. His method is a departure from his otherwise logical approach. The GRA couldn't accept that the Zohar is obviously a forgery so he was forced to come up with an explanation using 17 arguments that all contradict eachother. That is how bad kabbalah is: the Zohar is a PLAGUE and it must be purged from the Jewish consciousness.
But good luck saying that to anyone other than the most maverick of Torah thinkers. Even MO rabbis refuse to touch the zohar with critical eyes. It is assumed to be part of the canon like Tanach.
It is a book filled with superstitions, erroneous statements that contradict reality, angel worship, black magic.
It's worse than the hechalot books because everyone agrees they are heresy.
Moshiach has his work cut out for him.
I despise the zohar and the way it has brain damaged klal yisrael.
One could argue that superstitions, black magic, erroneous statements that contradict reality, angel worship, and black magic are to be found in Gemara.
Why then, is the Zohar uniquely a plague?
Because it's treated as an authorative source of halachah. The Talmud discusses non rational ideas and practices, it does not codify them.
What makes anything authorative?
And what makes the Talmud's modification rational?
Our halachic corpus is based solely on widespread acceptance, there's no central authority. Even the canonization of Tanach is predicated on the same principle.
Zohar entered that corpus in the same fashion.
The Zohar was accepted based on the conceit that it was authored by Rabbi Shimon Ben Yohai. This fraud, combined with the fact that the Zohar contains numerous things that don't fit with texts which had been canonical for hundreds of years by the time it came out, disqualify it as something we should take seriously (not to mention that its incorporation into the halakhic process was based on claims of prophetic visions). Just as an example, it mentions rabbis as interacting who were from totally different generations. In traditional rabbinic mesorah this is utterly disqualifying. Insofar as it touches on halakha (as mentioned in the podcast it is largely not a halakhic work at all) it is a corruption rather than a legitimate development of Jewish Law (more on the distinction here: https://thenewdigest.substack.com/p/what-exactly-is-the-common-law?r=18b35&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)