First of all, as stated, this was said in the Book of the Zohar, which is defined as holy,
if it contains a good prophecy that was disproven (about a bad prophecy one can say that perhaps Israel repented and was forgiven),
what does that say about it? Can it still be seen as a holy book?
This book, after all, was written by human beings (who the author or authors were—we won’t get into that, and it isn’t essential to the issue; in my opinion it’s clear it wasn’t Rashbi), not the finger of God engraved on stone,
so maybe it contains other mistaken matters too?
How can we dismiss that out of hand?

If the great kabbalists and commentators on the Zohar, from whose throats the holy spirit speaks, erred about matters of this world,
what does that say about their understanding of matters of the upper worlds?

Maybe both the writers of the Zohar and its interpreters fulfilled Rashi’s words: “They thought they saw, but did not see”?

Benjamin, you are very biased on these topics. These are irrelevant claims. Who said kabbalists can’t make mistakes? Don’t they disagree among themselves? Who said they have the holy spirit? They have knowledge and skill in thinking within the field of Kabbalah. That’s all.
And beyond all that, there are many more mistakes in the Torah and in the Talmud, and the gates of apologetics have not been locked. Everything depends on whether you want to preserve the honor of the text or not.

Good evening, have a good week,

Could you give examples of mistakes in the Torah?

If your words imply that kabbalists do not have the holy spirit (even though they boast of even more than that—that the prophet Elijah appeared to them, or Ahijah the Shilonite, and the Ari also boasted that he was a reincarnation of Moses, etc.)—what authority do their words have about the upper worlds?
Skill in thought and knowledge can be attained by anyone—an unbeliever and even an idol-worshipping gentile.

That the world was created in six days, for example. The identifying signs of the hare. Not to mention mistakes among the Sages, in the fully revealed realm.
The kabbalists don’t boast of anything like that. That’s just your tendentiousness. Even if one of them said Elijah appeared to him, or Ahijah the Shilonite, and even if I take that literally, it still doesn’t mean he has the holy spirit and that he is a prophet who doesn’t err. The source of kabbalistic claims could be tradition combined with spiritual intuition. The Raavad also spoke about the holy spirit appearing in his study hall.
I’m done with this discussion.

And what about Rabbi Akiva, who saw Bar Kokhba as the messiah, and in the end it ended in disaster? The Mishnah and the Talmud are considered much holier and more important than the Zohar.

Regarding the hyrax and the hare, in the Septuagint the opposite is written—that they do not chew the cud. The hyrax is translated there altogether as rabbit.
It is possible that the version in our hands is not the original version. It is also possible that the translator of the Septuagint had a Hellenistic education and therefore corrected mistakes. That’s why atheists or skeptics in the Western world don’t bring up that mistake at all.

The Zohar could have been just another approach like any other approach. But Moses de Leon and the kabbalists of Castile forged it and attributed it to Rashbi, thereby undermining the foundations of Judaism. Today, instead of seeing it as just another approach, people see the Zohar as a composition from the time of the Tannaim that may not be disputed. Even though anyone with eyes and sense can see that Rashbi could not possibly have composed it, if only because the Zohar contradicts ideas and even explicit statements of Rashbi in the Mishnah.

If the author had said this was his own book with his own ideas, one could have relied on it. The Zohar is no different from the Book of Jubilees, Enoch, or Besamim Rosh.

Rabbi,
You said: the source of kabbalistic claims could be tradition combined with spiritual intuition.
In the kabbalistic tradition, Aristotelian elements, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism… and also Christian elements got mixed in.
Every first-year student of Jewish thought knows that.

As for spiritual intuition—if, as you say, kabbalists do not necessarily even have the holy spirit, how are kabbalists any different from idol worshippers?

And in general, in my opinion, intuition helps and is important for a person in managing his life in this world as it is. Beyond that,
in spirituality and in recognizing what lies beyond this world—intuition can only lead to idolatry.

Your words definitely end the discussion.
If, as you say, kabbalists can make mistakes and they are not at the level of prophets, and do not necessarily even have the holy spirit,
then the entire Kabbalah—which they call the Torah of truth—has no certainty whatsoever as to its truth.

A,
If you tell an average Haredi person that the Mishnah and the Talmud are holier and more important than the Zohar—he’ll think you’re a heretic.

With God’s help, 16 Tevet 5782

Prophecy is a message a prophet received from God that at a certain time a certain thing will happen. And there is guidance from a sage based on reasoning or on hints in the Torah. The end-times proposed by the sages of Israel are of this latter kind. These are times that are a “time of favor” capable of redemption.

The fact that a certain time is a “time of favor” capable of salvation does not mean that redemption will come then even if we sit with folded arms. On the contrary, a “time of favor” obligates the Jewish people to make use of it both for spiritual awakening, for correcting deeds, and for stirring themselves to immigrate to the Land of Israel. This is how Hasidim and kabbalists understood the various times of favor, and they aspired to accompany them with awakening to physical and spiritual action to bring redemption closer.

Thus the redemption expectations of the 16th century led to major immigration and settlement in Jerusalem and Safed. And thus the expectations of salvation that intensified after the crises of 5408–5409 and Sabbateanism led to a large stream of immigrants to the Land of Israel—Western Sephardim and Ashkenazim—who significantly increased the Jewish settlement in the land.

Even in the Diaspora, the crises brought spiritual awakening: the growth of Hasidism, which emphasized serving God with feeling and enthusiasm, and alongside it a revival of Torah study in Lithuania, Poland, and Central Europe. The eternal people did not lose its way because of crises, but rather grew from them with even greater force.

With blessings, Amiyoz Yaron, may his light shine forth

Another parallel may be drawn between the shock of the expulsions from Spain and Ashkenaz in the 15th century, and the shock of 5408–5409—that from both of these upheaval-filled periods there emerged the great codifications that to a large extent unified the Jewish people around a halakhic code.

If the upheavals of the 15th century produced the Beit Yosef, the Darkhei Moshe, and the Shulchan Arukh, which together with the glosses of the Rema created a basis for pan-Jewish halakhic rulings—then in the 17th century there arose the literature of the “commentaries” on the Shulchan Arukh: the Sma, the Shakh, the Taz, and the Magen Avraham, the Helkat Mechokek and the Beit Shmuel (and the Knesset HaGedolah in Sephardic communities), which turned the Tur and the Shulchan Arukh into the basis for halakhic ruling throughout the Jewish Diaspora.

Likewise, in the wake of the upheavals of the Bar Kokhba revolt and its suppression, the Mishnah emerged. Thus when shocks and upheavals hit the Jewish people, halakhic codification emerges, restoring and preserving the cohesion of the nation.

With blessings, see there

Paragraph 2, lines 1–2
… and the Shulchan Arukh, which together with the glosses of the Rema created a basis for pan-Jewish halakhic rulings…

Maimonides, from his introduction to the Commentary on the Mishnah (translation of Rabbi Kapach, Mossad HaRav Kook 1963):

And there remains here a great matter that must be explained. It is this: if a prophet prophesied evil concerning people who deserved it—for example, if he prophesied famine or sword, or that their land would be overturned, or that lightning and the like would strike them—and none of this came to pass, but instead they were forgiven and their situation passed in peace, this does not prove the prophet false, nor does he thereby become a false prophet liable to death. For God, may He be exalted, relented of the evil, and perhaps they repented and turned away from their sins, or God in His wisdom gave them more time and postponed their punishment to another time, as He did with Ahab when He said to him through Elijah (I Kings 21:29): “I will not bring the evil in his days; in his son’s days I will bring the evil upon his house,” or He forgave them because of some good they had done previously.

But if he promised that good things would come at a certain time, such as saying that there would be peace in that year and there was war, or saying that the year would be rainy and blessed and there was famine and drought, and so on—then he is a false prophet, and it becomes clear that his claim was vain and false. About this Scripture says (Deuteronomy 18:22): “The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not fear him”—that is, his piety, uprightness, and wisdom should not frighten or deter you from killing him, since he acted arrogantly and claimed something grave and spoke falsehood about God.
For if God promises good to a people through a prophet, He certainly fulfills it, so that their prophecy may be verified among human beings, and this is what they of blessed memory said about it (Berakhot 7a): “Any word that goes out from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, for good—even conditionally—is not retracted.”

And if you say:
Maybe these prophetic statements in the Zohar about the year 5408 were not said by a prophet, and therefore the error occurred,
and Rabbi Michael says that it is not necessarily the case that the one who said them had the holy spirit,

then I would ask: if so, maybe in other things written in the Zohar about the upper worlds there was also error?
Words of imagination, nonsense, and vain dreams.

With God’s help, 17 Tevet 5782

To Benjamin,

Maimonides rules in Laws of Repentance 2:9 that Yom Kippur is the “end point of pardon and forgiveness for Israel.” Is that a “prophecy” that on Yom Kippur all of Israel’s sins will be forgiven even if they sit with folded arms and do not repent? On the contrary, Maimonides continues: “Therefore everyone is obligated to repent and confess on Yom Kippur.”

That is to say, the “end” is a time of favor, a golden opportunity that must not be missed and must be seized. And so too, when the Zohar says that the year of “With this Aaron shall come into the sanctuary,” a verse said in the Yom Kippur service, is a time for redemption—the simple meaning is that this time is like Yom Kippur, a golden opportunity that must be used for spiritual elevation and action to bring redemption nearer.

Even with an “end” explicitly stated in prophecy, such as Jeremiah’s prophecy that after seventy years they would return from exile, human choice still has weight: whether the prophecy will be fulfilled in a limited or broad way, as the Sages said that had Israel responded to Cyrus’s declaration and “gone up like a wall,” the Second Temple would have endured forever.

How much more so with times of salvation inferred by the sages of Israel through reasoning or through midrash and hint—they are “times of favor” that demand vigorous action from the people, awakening to repentance and action toward aliyah and building the land. An opportunity is given here, an opportunity that must not be missed.

With blessings, see there

Paragraph 4, line 1
… inferred by the sages of Israel…

This is not a matter of a “time of favor.”

The words of Maimonides are clear, and the words of the Sages in Berakhot that he cites are clear:

“For if God promises good to a people through a prophet, He certainly fulfills it, so that their prophecy may be verified among human beings, and this is what they of blessed memory said (Berakhot 7a): ‘Any word that goes out from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, for good—even conditionally—is not retracted.’”

If you were right in your words, then in practice it would be impossible to verify with full certainty the words of a prophet and that he is a true prophet and not a false one.
Because if he prophesied evil and it was not fulfilled—they would say they repented.
And if he prophesied good and it was not fulfilled—they would say it was a time of favor for the Jewish people and they failed to take advantage of it.

In the Zohar (Vayera 115b), the year 5600 of the sixth millennium is also mentioned as a year in which the gates of wisdom above and the springs of wisdom below will open in preparation for the seventh millennium, which corresponds to the Sabbath. And indeed, from that period there was noticeable progress in science that brought great refinement to the world (see Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu’s article, “A Lesson in Kabbalah: A Taste of Study in the Zohar with Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu,” on the Makor Rishon website).

It is worth noting that the year 1648, in which the Peace of Westphalia was concluded, paved the way for the establishment of the modern nation-state in Europe. The power of the Austrian Empire and of Spain declined dramatically, and the full independence of Holland and Switzerland was recognized, as was the de facto sovereignty of the German principalities, Protestant and Catholic. France and Sweden also consolidated their status as European powers (and in the East the Ukrainians were freed from the yoke of the Kingdom of Poland).

And so Wikipedia says in the entry “Peace of Westphalia”: “For scholars of political science, the treaties of Westphalia symbolize a significant milestone in the development of the sovereign state. This is because in the treaties, for the first time in history, the right of every state to determine its religious character was approved. Likewise, formal equality among the various states was approved, and the feudal loyalty of weaker states to the stronger state, according to the feudal system, was abolished. Hence the treaties are attributed with influence on the emergence of the modern system of nation-states and the development of nationalism in Europe.”

Exactly three hundred years would pass before that process would begin also in Asia and Africa, and in 1948 India and Israel would gain independence—a process that would bring, like a snowball, the independence of the other states of Asia and Africa, and in parallel the beginning of the restoration and ingathering of the Jewish people in their land. For with every new “nation-state” that arose, the Jews felt less and less “at home” and were pushed to return to their homeland.

And as Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook explained, the various “end-times” foreseen by the sages of Israel did not bring complete redemption, but they were milestones in the long progress of the eternal people toward its return to its land. Thus, the year 5408 marked the beginning of the process of “He set the borders of peoples,” which in the long term led to the renewed revival of the Jewish people.

With blessings, see there

To Benjamin,

You are conflating “prophecy,” which is an explicit message received by a prophet from the Most High, to whom one must listen if he is fit for prophecy and gives a sign for the fulfillment of his words (through a good prophecy that is fulfilled), with wisdom. The last of the prophets was Malachi, and nowhere did Rashbi claim to be a prophet. The authority of a sage comes from his reasoning, or from his reliance on the texts, or from his tradition transmitted person to person.

The words of Rabbi Yehoshua (Zohar I, 139b) are said in relation to sages who said that redemption would come in the sixth millennium, and about them Rabbi Yehoshua says that even in the sixth millennium one must still wait another four hundred and eight years, Out of a clear understanding that redemption is a long-term process, not something that happens all at once in one fell swoop,’. but rather an awakening that will grow toward the ‘end of the night’ of the sixth millennium.

And if Rabbi Yehoshua (139b) describes a process that comes from a powerful spiritual leadership of “With this Aaron shall come into the sanctuary,” then Rabbi Yehuda (115b) describes a process driven by much less powerful leadership, leadership of the type of Noah, whose influence will be slow and limited, beginning much later, “in the six hundredth year of Noah’s life,” and who knows when it will reach its peak.

Maimonides already wrote in his introduction to the chapter Helek against a simplistic literal interpretation of the aggadic statements of the Sages that brings them into contempt. The words of the sages are profound, and they embedded their deep ideas in parables and hints. Words of wisdom must be understood with wisdom.

With blessings, Eliam Fishel Workheimer

Thank you for enlightening me with yet another Zohar prophecy that was not fulfilled—
“And in the six hundredth year of the sixth millennium, the gates of wisdom above and the fountains of wisdom below will open, and the world will be prepared to enter the seventh.”

Galileo and Copernicus, who overturned the entire astronomical-physical picture of the world, lived in the 15th–16th centuries.
Isaac Newton lived in the 17th century.
The Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century.

All the springs of wisdom did indeed continue to open into the 19th century, but their beginnings were much, much earlier.

As for the “Peace of Westphalia”—how does that fit with what came afterward in the blood-soaked 20th century?
World War I, World War II, and the Holocaust?

And generally speaking,
you and others whom you quote, like Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, are trying to explain away—at a distance of almost 500 years after the Zohar’s prophecy about the year 5408—why this prophecy supposedly did not fail,
while ignoring the quotations I brought at the beginning of the page from the kabbalists of that very generation,
who surely knew and understood the Zohar no less well, and probably better, than those offering explanations today.

And Rabbi Moses Cordovero, the Ramak, determined many years before 5408:

“That although several end-times have been hidden because of our sins—nevertheless, nothing in the world will go beyond the year 5408.”2.

In this path continued the great figures of the generation of 5408–5409: Rabbi Samson of Ostropoli, the great kabbalist, who was killed in that year3. Rabbi Mordechai Dato, author of Migdal David, who states clearly: “In the year 5408 the dead will rise from the dust”4. Rabbi Sheftel Horowitz, who says in a poem:

“5408 in the count of the sixth millennium — I said in my heart to go free”

Rabbi Naphtali Katz determined:

“In the year 5408 the messiah will take the kingship from him” (from the Turkish sultan).

Likewise Rabbi Shabbetai HaKohen, the Shakh, laments:

“The year 5408, for which I thought, ‘With this Aaron shall come into the sanctuary.’”

Another point: the claim was also heard that the writer or writers of the Zohar (Rashbi or others) were not prophets, so one should not ask why the prophecy about the year 5408 was not fulfilled.
This claim is rather absurd, because it is essentially saying that the author of the Zohar was not at a sufficiently high spiritual level to receive from on High information about matters of this world (the time of redemption), but on the other hand his spiritual level
was high enough to receive knowledge about the Divine Chariot and the structure of the upper worlds,
which is the main subject of the Book of the Zohar.

Is such an absurdity possible?