Question

Hello Rabbi!
For some time now I’ve been listening to the Rabbi, and I first came across the Rabbi through the podcast “Rosh BeRosh,” and I really connected with the Rabbi’s views and rational priorities.
For quite a while I’ve been engaged in extensive research on Kabbalah in general and on the kabbalists, and a number of questions have come up for me.
1. What is the source of the Zohar?
Anyone who has studied the Talmud knows that none of the sages of the Talmud wrote any book, small or large. Any schoolboy can testify that it was forbidden to write down anything besides the Written Torah. And yet all the words of the Sages were called the “Oral Torah.”
As best I understand it, the Zohar was revealed about 750 years ago in Spain by Moses de Leon, who claimed that he had a book of Rashbi and sold a copy of that book to some wealthy man who agreed to buy it.
In a short study I conducted, I discovered that Moses de Leon was merely a copyist of books and nothing more. (Some associated him with a student of Nachmanides, but there is no real evidence for that.)
In general, the accepted view is that Moses de Leon disseminated the book and attributed it to Rashbi. We even have testimony about this from a sage named Rabbi Isaac of Akko, who was one of the Tosafists. In his testimony he says that he met Moses de Leon, and the latter told him that Rashbi’s book was lying in his house, and that when Rabbi Isaac came to Moses de Leon’s house, he would show him the book. Some time passed, and Rabbi Isaac came to Moses de Leon’s house, but was informed that he had died. Rabbi Isaac says that he went to Moses de Leon’s uncle and asked him whether Moses had a book from Rashbi, and the uncle said that he had never heard of such a thing. Rabbi Isaac then went to Moses de Leon’s house and asked his wife and daughter, and they answered that yes, they had heard of this book, but that he had made the whole thing up out of his own head. She herself had asked him, “Why are you writing these things and attributing them to Rashbi? This is all from your own heart.” And he answered her: “If I attribute all this to myself, people won’t buy the book, so I’ll attribute it to Rashbi.” And that is how the testimony of Rabbi Isaac of Akko ends.
That is the first story of how the Zohar was revealed. The second story was brought by the Chida, who notes that he heard from some sage that the Zohar was discovered in the possession of a gentile king in a country whose name we do not know, and that he sent it to Jews whose names we do not know, and from there the book was publicized by Moses de Leon.
There were a few other strange stories about how the Zohar was revealed, but what they all have in common is that Moses de Leon disseminated it. And that’s not the only thing they have in common. The one thing all these stories share is that there is no tradition whatsoever that Rashbi actually wrote this book. The only testimonies that Rashbi did write the book came from the Ari and a few other kabbalists who studied the Zohar (whom I’ll ask about later).
So my question is: how can we accept a book that has no tradition behind it and that no sage knew of? And not only that — many people like to say that Kabbalah, true to its name, is something received through tradition, passed from rabbi to student. But there is no evidence that this is true. On the contrary! Nowhere throughout history do we find any rabbi quoting anything from this book in any way.
And here are several proofs that the Zohar cannot belong to Rashbi:
1) The religion of the Ishmaelites. In other words — Islam is mentioned in the Zohar. But the Zohar was supposedly written by Rashbi and his son in the period of the Tannaim, and the Ishmaelites had no religion at that time. Yet in the Zohar we see that the Ishmaelites have a religion, and it even refers to their period with the words “to this very day.” Here is the quote from the Zohar: Zohar, Parashat Shemot 17a: “Ishmael, who did many evils to Israel and ruled over them … and to this very day they rule and do not allow them to stand in their religion.” The question is: exactly when in the period of the Tannaim, or up until their period, did the Ishmaelites rule or cause trouble through their religion?! There was no exile under the Ishmaelites in Rashbi’s time. This kind of reference to the exile of Ishmael causing trouble appears several more times in the Zohar: Zohar – Ra’aya Meheimna, Pinchas 242b; Zohar – Ra’aya Meheimna, Pinchas 246b.
2) Christianity in the Zohar? Yes. Christianity was not a religion in Rashbi’s time, the time of the Tannaim, but a small sect of drifters and simpletons who followed it. Christianity was founded as a religion only about two hundred years after Rashbi’s time by Constantine, may his name be erased. Yet the Zohar tells us that Christianity already exists: Zohar Hadash: Ruth 32a. According to many researchers, Zohar Hadash too was written by Rashbi and his disciples.
3) Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair. According to the Zohar, Rabbi Pinchas was the father-in-law of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Examples from the Zohar: Zohar – Idra Rabba, Naso 144b; and Zohar – Balak 200b, where it is mentioned that Rabbi Pinchas’s daughter was Rabbi Shimon’s wife. But in the Talmud — Babylonian Talmud, tractate Shabbat 33b — it is told that the Holy One commands Rashbi and his son Rabbi Elazar to leave the cave where they had stayed for several years, and then it says that Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair heard this, with emphasis that he was the son-in-law of Rabbi Shimon. His son-in-law!!! So the question is: does the Zohar not contradict the Babylonian Talmud?
4) The terms Babylonian Talmud, Jerusalem Talmud, and the Mishnah appear in the Zohar. The Mishnah is mentioned in Zohar Ra’aya Meheimna, Pinchas 243a — and it literally quotes what is written in the Mishnah: “From when do they recite the Shema in the morning?” But the Mishnah was written about two generations after Rashbi. Are they trying to say that Rashbi predicted the text of Rabbi Judah the Prince, the compiler of the Mishnah?
5) The Zohar mentions that tefillin are not worn on Hol HaMoed. In the Talmud we do not find any trace of this issue; on the contrary, there are several cases in the Talmud from which one can prove that they did wear tefillin on Hol HaMoed. Also, Rabbi Judah the Prince learned from Rashbi, so if Rashbi wrote the Zohar, why then did he not tell Rabbi Judah the Prince to write in the Mishnah that tefillin are not worn on Hol HaMoed?
6) If Kabbalah is the secrets of the Torah, which are revealed only to the discreet, how could he write a book full of such terrible secrets in the common language? (Aramaic.)
7) The Zohar is the study of Kabbalah, to the extent that for the kabbalists it was like a second Torah. Well then, from whom did Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai learn this teaching, which his teachers and colleagues did not know?
8) If the book had circulated in Spain all that time until Rabbi Moses de Leon, there were great and famous sages in Spain known throughout the world who preceded Moses de Leon, and no one saw it or knew of it or even hinted at its existence. And then all of a sudden Rabbi Shimon arose from his midst and brought him his book, the Zohar, for him to copy? Does anyone still believe such nonsense?
9) The story says that Rashbi sat in a cave out of fear of the government, and while sitting there in the cave, buried in sand up to his neck, he wrote a book against the law, since “matters transmitted orally you are not permitted to say in writing”! Something that no one among all the sages of the Talmud had dared do for five hundred years. And all his colleagues said nothing and did not even hint that he had written a book and violated a rule; they did not try to excommunicate him or even say one word against him! And the first to write down the Oral Torah was Rabbi Judah the Prince, for the reason of “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” He was Rashbi’s student and lived after him. And before him we do not find even one person who tried to do so.
10) The things written in the Zohar are Ma’aseh Merkavah. We are told in the Talmud that one does not expound upon Ma’aseh Merkavah except to a single individual, and only if he is wise and understands on his own, and even then only in outlines. The only one who dealt even a little with Ma’aseh Merkavah, and only partially, was Maimonides, who wrote in the introduction to Guide for the Perplexed that the book deals briefly with Ma’aseh Merkavah. And what is Ma’aseh Merkavah? How God governs His world; what happens after death; what the Holy One is; and many other things that contradict what is written in the Zohar. So is it permitted to write a book that is entirely Ma’aseh Merkavah? Even if it’s all in parables! There are things that one may not expound even through parable (for example, describing couplings between one sefirah and another).
11) The Aramaic of the Zohar does not match the Aramaic of Rashbi’s time. Therefore there is no chance that Rashbi or his students wrote the Zohar, because the spoken Aramaic in that period was at least 300 years earlier than the Aramaic of the Zohar.
All these claims should be enough to prove that Rashbi did not write the Zohar. And for those who say that the Zohar is holy but that later things entered into it, such as Christianity and Islam — then how did the rabbis permit the Zohar to be printed? After all, from the time the Zohar was revealed by Moses de Leon, no one attributed importance to it until the time it was printed, about 200 years later. And the only ones who truly gave it authority were Rabbi Moshe Cordovero and the Ari.
And now I’ll come to the second question regarding those kabbalists:
2. Rational thinking versus a mystical approach?
If you ask any kabbalist where Kabbalah began, he will answer explicitly that Kabbalah began with the early kabbalists, namely the Ari and Rabbi Chaim Vital. And I, as a researcher, wanted to know: who were these people from whom all of Kabbalah takes its bearings? Since I strongly encourage critical thinking toward certain topics, and especially toward rabbis about whom no one dares open his mouth, I decided to research the matter.
Of course every little child knows the Ari; everyone knows that all later kabbalists drink from his well. But I wanted to know: who was he? The wisdom of Kabbalah does not quench my thirst, and the kabbalist is not holy to me. I wanted to know whether he was a Torah scholar. From what spring did he draw his holiness? Was he killed sanctifying God’s name? Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote for us the book In Praise of the Ari, in which he tells us that already in his youth in Egypt he yearned to study Kabbalah. So he came to Safed, where the kabbalists had made their nest. He did not come to study Torah in the yeshiva of Rabbi Yosef Karo, or to receive ordination — no! Rabbi Chaim Vital tells us only of signs, wonders, and miracles that his master performed, things that not even Moses our teacher did, nor the prophets, the Tannaim, the Amoraim, or the Geonim, to the point that he made him into a son of God, a little deity, all through Kabbalah. If so, then all the Torah of Israel that we possess is like garlic peel compared to the kabbalists, even if they know no Torah. Moses our teacher was not called “holy”; King David, Solomon with all his wisdom, Isaiah son of Amoz, Jeremiah, all the men of the Great Assembly, all the sages of the Talmud — all of them are as a drop in the bucket compared to one kabbalist. And what am I, and many like me, to do, when we do not believe any of this? After all, all these testimonies to the signs and wonders he performed were all testified to by Rabbi Chaim Vital, who himself wrote a book about himself, In Praise of Chaim Vital. And who has heard the like of this? Who has seen such a thing — that an honorable man should not be ashamed to write such terrifying praises about himself? And the terrible miracles that he wrote about himself, he also wrote about his teacher. And today it is clear to us that the Ari wrote nothing during his short life, and that Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote everything in his teacher’s name. And what did Rabbi Chaim Vital write? Not Torah, not wisdom — only Kabbalah that he made up out of his own heart, Kabbalah that has absolutely nothing to do with the Torah of Israel and has no tradition behind it. And even if the Ari did write all these things himself, does that make him a great and holy man of God? Did he leave us even one book in Jewish law, or in any branch of Torah knowledge at all? Why, Rabbi Chaim Vital himself wrote nothing in Jewish law or Torah aside from nonsense and fantasies. And who was Rabbi Chaim Vital?
It is no great honor to our ancient literature that until the generation of the Enlightenment no one even tried to write the history of the great figures of Israel, not even those who illuminated the world with their wisdom. Apart from some brief memories in Sefer HaKabbalah of the Raavad and the letter of Rav Sherira Gaon, we have no biography even of Rav Saadia Gaon and the Geonim after him; until about 300 years ago there was not even a biography of Maimonides, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Rabbi Judah Halevi, Ibn Gabirol, Nachmanides, etc. In general, there is not one of the great figures of Israel who lived before about 250 years ago for whom we had such material. But since then and until today many biographical books have been printed, including some that would have been better for us and for all Israel had they never been written at all. And among them we may safely count the biographies of certain kabbalists, fools, or charlatans. The first among them is the book In Praise of Chaim Vital, which Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote about himself. Rabbi Chaim Vital was not a known man even in his own city, was not a great Torah scholar, and no one paid attention to him. Only when the Zohar was printed (Mantua and Cremona), and the disease of Kabbalah stuck to the skin of every spiritual invalid, did it reach Rabbi Chaim Vital as well. And circumstance handed him what he wanted, when he heard that a young man from one of the wealthy families of Egypt (the Ari) had also fallen ill with that disease and had come to Safed. There he met the Ari and became his student. And Rabbi Chaim Vital found in him a vehicle for his light-mindedness, and spread a report that Elijah the Prophet was like a regular member of his teacher’s household, and that all the prophets, the Tannaim, and the Amoraim rolled about beneath his table as a matter of course. And he, Rabbi Chaim Vital in his own glory, the veteran disciple of the son of God, was the one who came and went in heaven and on earth, and his great rabbi, who with the breath of his mouth could excommunicate the whole world or build new worlds, would not do anything small or great without him. Rabbi Chaim Vital tells us in his introduction to Etz Chaim that his teacher knew the thoughts of the heart — and this is heresy against the foundations of religion, to attribute a quality of the Holy One (“the hidden things belong to the Lord our God”) to flesh and blood. Rabbi Chaim Vital also tells us that he himself was the Messiah son of Joseph, and later, after that rumor passed, he informed us that he himself was the Messiah son of David. One can even look in old books at “the ban of the rabbis of Damascus,” who excommunicated Rabbi Chaim Vital, because after the Ari’s death Rabbi Chaim Vital returned to Damascus and there proclaimed that he was the Messiah son of David, and they killed him in bitter disappointment and stoned his grave as the law requires for a false prophet. And Rabbi Yishai Abulafia told Ephraim Deinard about 250 years ago that he still remembered from his youth that there had been an old man who still remembered the pile of stones on Chaim Vital’s grave, and every time people passed his grave they would throw more stones on it.
Proofs that Chaim Vital violated explicit Torah prohibitions:
We find in Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry, chapter 11 toward the end, that it is forbidden to practice sorcery, to conjure by means of a ghost, to speak to the dead in one way or another, etc. Not only that — Maimonides tells us that the very prohibition includes believing that such things are true and that only the Torah forbade them. Maimonides calls people who believe in this lacking in understanding and deniers of the thirteen hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is interpreted.
And so, following the Written Torah and the tradition of the Oral Torah, our pure master Maimonides ruled in Sefer HaMitzvot (negative commandment 38): “The prohibition with which we were warned is not to seek knowledge [that is, any specific matter] from the dead, according to the imagination of [people living in this world], who think that they are [in truth] really dead, even though they eat and feel [and as the Sages expounded in Berakhot 18b: ‘these are the wicked, who even in their lifetime are called dead’] … and one who transgresses this prohibition is liable to lashes.” And our master added in Laws of Idolatry (11:13), in the following two paragraphs: “Who is one who seeks from the dead? [For example:] one who starves himself … so that the dead person will come in a dream and inform him of what he asks about. And there are others … who say certain things and burn a particular incense [exactly as Chaim Vital practiced, and we will quote this below] and sleep alone, so that a certain dead person will come and speak with him in a dream. The general principle is: anyone who performs an act [that is, any act whatsoever for the sake of having the dead speak with him or contact him in some way, such as prostrating himself with arms and legs spread on a grave, or making mystical unifications with the soul and body of the deceased, and many other fantasies of that kind], in order that the dead person should come and inform him — receives lashes! As it says: ‘There shall not be found among you … one who seeks of the dead.’”
And now I will present a simple proof showing that Chaim Vital learned from his teacher to do this abomination, namely to violate the explicit prohibition of seeking of the dead. These are his words in Sha’ar HaYichudim (4, 4): “And when you prostrate yourself on his grave, intend that through your prostrating yourself upon it with arms and legs spread, etc. […] then, through the extension of his soul into the bones, they will be as though they were alive, and then he will be able to speak with you about whatever you ask and desire […] and while you are prostrating yourself upon him [upon the grave of the dead] with the above intention, make whatever unification you wish, and then his soul will extend into his bones for the time being, and he will tell you profound secrets of wisdom.” End quote.
Now it is proven and clear that in teaching this matter, besides the fact that Chaim Vital was seeking of the dead and transgressed an explicit Torah prohibition, he also placed a stumbling block before those who came after him and taught this in a written book for future generations! So it turns out that he caused others to sin by seeking of the dead! And to this day that corruption still seeps into people’s hearts. As he himself said, “then he will be able to speak with you whatever you ask and desire … and he will tell you hidden mysteries”! In other words, based on what we learned above, this is seeking of the dead in the full sense of the term!
Rabbi Chaim Vital also wrote the following (p. 349, sec. 26): “To see in a dream a dead person or your friend or whomever you wish. Take on Friday night one or two wicks and place them in a lamp. Before lighting them say: I am lighting these candles in the name of so-and-so, dead or alive, or my son, or my friend, that he may come to me in a dream and I may see him. Then light the lamp. On Saturday night take the wicks, whatever remains of those that you lit on Friday night, and place them under your pillow and sleep, and you will see whomever you wish.”
The eighteen formulas for dream-questions that he gathered one after another, under the heading “These practical traditions too I tried and they did not work for me,” teach us that Rabbi Vital was very occupied with divining through dreams, and repeatedly sought to receive information [from the dead] in his sleep from that side of reality. Unfortunately, it did not succeed for him.
Here are a few more examples from Sefer HaPe’ulot, which teach us how deeply Vital fell into the sin of “seeking of the dead,” and more. On page 11, section 45: “To bring the dead in a dream. Go to his grave and picture him as if he were alive before you, only asleep, and call him three or four times in such a way that if he were alive he would wake from his sleep.
On page 12, section 50: “To bring the dead in a dream so that he will answer his question. He should write these names on wood or on a stone upon the earth over his grave in ink: Ozfan Suza Demayel. And he should write beside the head of the dead or beside any place on his body, whichever side it may be. Afterwards he should also sow coriander seed on the grave, and after seven days he will see that dead person in a dream and he will answer his question. Every single night he will see him until he erases the names. Tested and tried.”
On page 13, section 56: “To bring a spirit in a dream that will tell you the truth about whatever you ask it, whether about theft or anything else. Go to the grave of a dead person and call him three times by name. Put your head by the grave at the dead man’s head, and call him three times by name. Say: You, so-and-so, by Azazael or Atnel, the guardian of the bones of the dead and the lord of the dead, under whose hand are their bones, I adjure you that you take from him permission and power to come to me on any day or night. Come to me in peace and quiet and tell me the truth about everything that I ask of you. Take earth from the grave above his head and put it in a clean linen cloth. When you go to sleep place it under your right ear and sleep on it, or remain awake, and at night the dead person will come to you and tell you the truth about everything; he will answer, and you need not fear anything.”
On page 14, section 63: “This I found in a true book. At the hour when a person is dying, whisper in his right ear, and then in his left,, and then on his forehead: I adjure you by the name of Azaziel, master of spirits, and by the name of Chafniel, his prince, who has a thousand mouths and in every mouth a thousand tongues, and with every tongue gives praise to his Creator, and by the name of Dumah, prince of souls, and by the Ineffable Name from whom all the hosts of heaven, upper and lower, receive, which is Yahadonehi, blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever, that immediately after your passing, without noise or fear, you will come to me to speak with me and tell me everything I ask of you truthfully, without trickery or deceit. And I promise you that I will give charity to the poor for the sake of your soul. And whenever I call you by your name you will come to me, whether by day or by night. And you will not go except with my permission, after you tell me everything I ask you truthfully.”
There in section 66: “An herb called santa, long and straight, with small leaves […] whoever takes water at the fourth hour of the night and goes to the grave of a dead person, with whatever spirit he wishes to speak, should pour the water on the grave together with this herb, and the water should be fumigated with costus and musk, and he should say, ‘Surgi purgi surgi and come and speak with me.’ Do this for two days, and on the third it will come to you and speak with you whatever you wish.”
There in section 68: “Another formula. Write these names on a stone or wood on his grave, and write them beside his head. Afterwards sow cilantro seed on his grave, and after seven days the dead will appear in a dream and tell him even without his asking. Every single night you will see him until you erase the names mentioned, and these are they: Aoufan Sova Regoyel.”
And here are more examples showing that he violated explicit Torah prohibitions:
These are the things he wrote in his book Sefer HaChezyonot (edition of the Ben-Zvi Institute, page 47, section 4): “In the year 25 there was in Safed the sage Rabbi Lapidot Ashkenazi, of blessed memory, who knew true future events, and this was because he would bring before him the soul of a living person or of someone deceased, even from the ancients, and it would tell him whatever he wished. And one day I went to his house concerning a certain matter [that he should reveal certain things to him]” and see there.
Page 48, sections 5–6: “In that year I saw a woman skilled in oil drops on water [something like modern coffee reading], and she said to me,” etc. “In the year 30 there was a wise woman who spoke of future things and was also skilled in the wisdom of oil drops. They called her ‘the mistress of dreams.’ And I asked her regarding the oil in a whisper, as is the custom […] again I returned to ask in a whisper about the oil,” etc.
And there is another prohibition, namely sorcery, and thus Maimonides wrote in Sefer HaMitzvot (negative commandment 34): “The prohibition with which we were warned is against every act of sorcery [actually performed through a physical act], and this is what He, may He be exalted, said: ‘There shall not be found among you … a sorcerer.’ One who transgresses this prohibition is liable to stoning if deliberate, and a fixed sin offering if inadvertent. He, may He be exalted, said: ‘You shall not let a sorceress live.’” And in Laws of Idolatry, chapter 11, our master rules concerning the sorcerer: “A sorcerer is liable to stoning.” As we already wrote in the previous article, our master warns and says that sorcery is one of the forms of idolatry, and is a complete falsehood! The reason the sorcerer is liable to stoning is not because he actually changes reality by the power of sorcery, heaven forbid, but because he implants delusions in people’s hearts that sorcery has power, and thus one who practices sorcery is liable to death because he implants in the hearts of fools that idolatry has power! And our pure master informed us that whoever believes and thinks that sorcery has power has a mind and understanding like that of little children and babies!
And here is how Chaim Vital did not skip over this prohibition either. These are his words in Sefer HaChezyonot: page 50, section 12: “In the year 38 I was expounding in Jerusalem before the congregation on Sabbath morning. Rachel, sister of Rabbi Yehudah Mishan, was there, and she told me that the whole time I was expounding, she saw a pillar of fire over my head and Elijah, of blessed memory, at my right helping me, and when I finished expounding, both disappeared. Also in Damascus in the year 62 she [that same Rachel] saw a pillar of fire over my head while I was prayer leader on Yom Kippur […] and the said woman regularly sees visions and demons and spirits and angels, and she is correct in most of her words from childhood into adulthood.”
Page 54, section 21: “In the year 69, on Hol HaMoed of Passover, Rabbi Yosef Sigora went to the house of a certain falil [a Muslim sorcerer], skilled in sand divination and in seeing demons. First he asked by sand-lot, in a whisper, as is the custom […] then the next day that falil came to my house to see me […] and I myself asked […] and now I will tell you the matter of the twenty-eight kings mentioned, as the sorcerer falil explained it to me.” End quote. And on page 62, section 23: “On the sixth of Av, Rabbi Y. Boom brought down an angel from among the attendants of Tzadkiel, the prince of that day, and it appeared in a glass vision, as is the custom, and I asked it,” etc.
Here is another quotation from his book Sefer HaPe’ulot, where he instructs how to violate an explicit Torah prohibition:
“To guard against the borosha, Bruja [witch in Spanish], which kills infants […] immediately when the child is born, place in his mouth the circumcised organ of his father” (Rabbi Chaim Vital, Sefer HaPe’ulot, 216). … For epilepsy [to heal a person suffering from seizures], take a lad who has never had a seminal emission in his life and bring forth semen from him, and with that emission and semen smear the lips of the sick person, and that illness will never return (ibid., 325).
And another example from the book Toledot HaAri: “There was an incident involving a woman having a difficult labor, who was in danger, and her relatives came to the Rabbi’s house to perform a remedy to save her. The Rabbi [the Ari] answered: It is true that she is in danger, and she has two sons in her womb, and there is a remedy for her if it can be found. They said to him [to the Ari], let the master tell us. He said to them: the remedy is that a man who has never seen a seminal emission in his life should come and place his organ in her mouth, and immediately she will give birth and be saved. They said to him: who is that man? We will go to him. He said to them: I know, but I do not have permission to reveal it, lest I cast aspersions on others. But do this: issue a proclamation throughout the city that any man who knows of himself that he has never seen a seminal emission in his life should come and save three Jewish lives [the woman in labor and the twins in her womb]. And so they did. And when the great Rabbi Moshe Galanti the elder heard this, he immediately got up and came with them and put his organ in her mouth, and she immediately gave birth” (Sefer Toledot HaAri, ed. Meir Benayahu, Ben-Zvi Institute, pp. 224–225). And why say much more after this repulsive and abominable act!
And a few more examples:
Example A: (page 158, sec. 28): “If you smear the girl’s breasts with pig’s milk before she knows a male, they will not grow any more” [her breasts]. [That is, in Vital’s solution, not only is there belief in magical and mystical power learned from pagan beliefs, and not only is there teaching of delusions, but this itself borders on severe perversion. At the very least he should have warned that the girl should apply it herself. But here there is an instruction that someone else should do this terrible act to her. His solution was supposedly meant to address a girl whose breasts developed very large at a young age — the parents are afraid this will bother her in life, and there is a remedy: someone should take milk from a sow and smear it on her breasts before she is with another man. And this is an instruction that this act is outside the bounds of nature. From his saying “before she knows a male,” clearly he means there is some mystical action by which the milk can work magically before she has intercourse with a man].
Example B: On page 321 Vital writes in that same book: “For epilepsy [the falling sickness], take a boy who has never had a seminal emission in his life, and people should extract semen from him [that is, rub his sexual organ forcefully], and with that emission and semen smear the lips of the sick person, and the illness will never return”. [And I do not understand how it is possible to put such things in writing. Not enough that there is trauma to the child, not enough that there is belief in magical power — there is also intervention and touching by other people who are supposed to extract semen from him! And what is the boy supposed to do without sinning?].
Example C: In the aforementioned Sefer HaPe’ulot, Vital writes something horrifying and grotesque, deviant at the most extreme levels imaginable. Truly, were it not necessary to expose the terrible falsehood that entered the religion of Israel, I would not even put these words into writing. But there is no choice and we must present them. This is his wording (page 216, sec. 260): “To guard against the borosha, which kills infants … immediately when the child is born place in his mouth the circumcised organ of his father.” End quote.
Example D: Thus he writes (part 4, page 157): “… and now I will explain the charms I set aside for myself. If you smear your face with bear’s milk, you will become wise. [That is, according to this delusion, by some mystical power in bear’s milk a person will become wise. This is exactly like claiming that if a spider bites you, you’ll become Spider-Man.] … If you carry a bit of a hoopoe egg and its tongue, you will succeed in your ways. [That is, a person’s success depends on a hoopoe egg and its tongue. And of course these things are pro-Christian and even more severe than matters of idolatry, since they are directly connected to the beliefs of the Sabians.] … If you put a hare’s heart or a dog’s heart in your belt, sorcery will not harm you.” End quote.
That is, Vital admits that sorcery has power, and even teaches people to fear sorcery. Thus it turns out that Vital admits the power of idolatry operating in the world. In other words, Vital attributes enormous importance to matters of idolatry, and is even afraid of it as though there is some magical or mystical power in idolatrous matters to affect a person. Put differently, there is another god in the world. Example 7: On page 33 in Sefer HaPe’ulot, Vital wrote: “To restore a thing to its former state, and to speak with the dead, one should look where there is a raven’s nest and take the eggs and boil them thoroughly until they are hard … and keep this stone and place it on a dead person and he will speak to you whatever you wish. [And here it is proven and clear that by these words Vital violated the prohibition of seeking of the dead, as the Torah says (Deuteronomy 18:10–13, Parashat Shoftim): “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, an observer of times, an enchanter, or a sorcerer; or one who casts spells, or one who consults a ghost or a familiar spirit, or one who seeks of the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you. You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God.” And our pure master wrote (Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot, negative commandment 38): “The 38th commandment is that He warned us against asking a report from the dead, as people imagine that they are really dead, even though they eat and feel, and they think that whoever does such-and-such and wears such-and-such, the dead person will come to him in sleep and tell him what he asks. This is His saying, may He be exalted (Shoftim 18), ‘There shall not be found among you etc. … one who seeks of the dead.’”
And here first of all I should note that I searched and could not understand what he meant by “borosha,” and after a short effort I was horrified to the depths of my soul. The matter made me terribly nauseated, to the point that I had to spit into a cup from sheer nausea and anguish.
“Borosha” in Vital’s usage is apparently “Lilith,” that is, a nickname for the disgusting pagan Lilith who rapes young men and lies with infants! And only after I managed to understand that the word “borosha” means “Lilith” or something connected with her, such as sorcery or illness and so on, only then could I understand the obscenity written here and the perversion that borders on accursed pedophilia in every sense. And not only that, but astonishingly, Vital himself took little boys and had them place their organ inside the mouths of newborn babies!!! That is among the most severe pedophilia I have ever heard of!
And how do I know that this refers to the stinking, idolatrous Lilith of the sorcerers? Because Vital wrote in Sefer HaPe’ulot (page 140, sec. 41): “Concerning Lilith, who kills children from eight days after birth, and in the vernacular [she is called] ‘borosha.’” End quote. That is, this affliction is called “borosha,” after the jealousy of Lilith, or it refers to her herself. In any case, we learn from this that it is directly tied to the pagan Lilith of the Zoharic sorcerers and their followers.
And Vital continues and writes something horrifying and shocking to every human being! This is his language: “Concerning Lilith, who kills children from eight days after birth, and in the vernacular [is called] ‘borosha’ … I also tried [to make a cure] then, and I put the circumcised organ of a small boy into the mouth of the child immediately when it was born before it had suckled … and on other occasions I did all of the above and other things as well … and these are they: to place the circumcised organ of the newborn’s own father in the child’s mouth before it had suckled.” End quote.
That is, Vital, who inclined after magic and idolatry, testifies and writes in his own pen that not only did he instruct people to shove the circumcised organs of fathers into the mouths of infants newly born into the world, but he himself took little boys and shoved their sexual organs into babies that had just been born. And this is one of the gravest acts of perversion ever found in the religion of Israel.
In our terms, if someone today were to listen to Vital’s words and do some of these abominations, first of all one should immediately call the police and report the perpetrator with every effort, because this is mental destruction, perverse devastation, and among the gravest things the religion of Israel has ever known, especially when coming from someone regarded as the head of this filthy and accursed Kabbalah.
It can also be learned that Vital did not merely study in order to know the sayings of delusional fantasists, but he actually performed deeds and instructed others to perform deeds, as he himself testifies dozens of times in the above-mentioned book. As a result of his words, many sorcerers have arisen in our generation who teach people to make amulets, charms for salvation, magical and ugly removal of the evil eye, from the notorious Sabian nation.
For if the head of this idolatrous and accursed Kabbalah, which blasphemed the Creator Himself, teaches people to make amulets, and causes people to think that one can create peace between a man and his wife through Japanese names or triangular shields, or keyboard scribbles, what does that say about those who follow in his path? And it is proven that all of Vital’s learning came from Greek and Babylonian books that continued the false beliefs of the Sabian religion. And so all the new Lurianic and Zoharic Kabbalah, impure and accursed, supposedly from the mouth of the Almighty, is built entirely around the foundations of the nations of the Sabians, continuing the ways of the Egyptians, Greeks, and heretics — may God save us from them, amen.
 
And I will conclude my question with this: how can we uphold leaders of the kabbalists when all we know of them is only signs and wonders? And who guarantees us that the Zohar was really written by Rashbi? There is no historical testimony that Kabbalah was passed from rabbi to student.
Also, belief in reincarnation of souls is a delusion that entered the Jewish people as a result of the Zohar. Reincarnation of souls is a foreign belief that appears neither in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), nor in the Mishnah, nor in the Talmuds, nor in the midrashim.
The early sages did not believe in this matter, and ever since the outbreak of belief in the fake “Kabbalah” and in the “Book of the Zohar,” the later authorities have stumbled in it.
And Rav Saadia Gaon writes explicitly: “And I say that among people who are called Jews, I found some who believe in transmigration and call it transfer, and its meaning, according to them, is that the spirit of Reuben will be in Simeon and afterward in Levi and afterward in Judah. Some of them, or most of them, think that the spirit of a human can be in an animal and the spirit of an animal in a human, and many other such delusions and confusions” (The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, sixth treatise, chapter 8).
Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides writes: “The final reward is the life of the world to come … to the point that some of the ancient nations … because of this were forced to believe in the folly of reincarnation, namely that when the soul of the dead departs from him it revolves and enters another body … This view was not held by any true sage, nor was it believed by any possessor of Torah, but it is among the absurd opinions of those who believe in the eternity of the world, whose name God has blotted out from His world …” (quoted in Samuel Ibn Tzartza’s book Mekor Chaim).
Rabbi Samuel Ibn Tzartza: “And whoever believes in it inclines toward the belief of a certain nation called pagans, who have no religion at all … and they say that when the soul leaves the body of a good person it enters the body of a child born at that very hour, and if the person was evil it enters the body of a dog …”
Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela:
“… Near them, about ten miles away, there is a nation that fights with the people of Sidon, and the nation is called the Dogzians, and they
are called pagans, unbelievers, and have no religion … and they are steeped in lewdness … and they say that when the soul leaves the body of a good man it enters the body of a small child born at that very hour that the soul leaves his body, and if the man was evil it enters the body
of a dog or the body of an animal — such is their foolish way…” (The Travels of Rabbi Benjamin)
Rabbi Joseph Albo, author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim:
“And from here some sages derived the opinion of reincarnation, for since they saw that the correct view according to the Torah is that the soul is not a material faculty but a substance standing on its own, as we have said, they judged from this that just as the spiritual substance enters the human body at the beginning of its formation, so too it is possible that a soul that has already served in a human body should return again to dwell in a body. But this is not correct, for if the supreme wisdom decreed to place the spiritual substance, whose nature is not to possess free choice, in the human body in order to make it a possessor of free choice in a body — for this is certainly a great elevation for it, and it was in this matter that the angels erred concerning man, as our Sages said in Bereshit Rabbah … nevertheless, a soul that has already served in the human body and possessed free choice — why should it return again to the body? And in what way is the seminal drop prepared to receive a soul that has already served in a body more than to receive a soul that has not yet served in a body and did not yet possess free choice? Still more far-fetched is the claim that the souls of people are reincarnated into the bodies of animals, and God knows” (Sefer Ha-Ikkarim, discourse 4, chapter 29).
“Everything is in the hands of Heaven except fear of Heaven.” “For Rabbi Chanina said: Everything is in the hands of Heaven except fear of Heaven, as it is said: ‘And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear’” (tractate Niddah 16b). The kabbalists claim that a person’s soul returns in reincarnation in order to repair the soul. If the return of the soul is a repair, or a spark of another person, then this contradicts the principle of free choice given into human hands, since whether one is righteous or wicked is then imposed upon him from Heaven. If a person is punished for sins he committed in a previous incarnation, then there is no free choice here.
And there is much more that we find regarding this. Also Maimonides, who was the head of Jewish law and the pillar of our tradition, and who transmitted the tradition in the most correct way, did not mention even in passing the belief in reincarnation of souls, and from his writings it can be understood that he rejects it.
There are also testimonies, for example regarding Rabbi Yosef Karo, that he did not write the book Maggid Mesharim, and yet they attribute it to him.
These questions generally deal with how much place mystical thinking and miracles and wonders occupy at all in the Jewish religion. Our Torah is law and justice, and we do not attribute any significance to signs and wonders. There is even a dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides whether there is any commandment in the Torah to believe at all. Our religion is not based on believing blindly everything rabbis say, but also on arousing a critical approach. Rabbis too can make mistakes. Rabbi Akiva was mistaken regarding Bar Kokhba, Moses our teacher was mistaken, King David was mistaken, and even in the period of Baal and Asherah most of the people of Israel went after idolatry. Even a religious court can mistakenly permit pork. So the proof that “the great sages of Israel said so” proves to me neither anything nor half of anything.
That is my question, Rabbi, and I would be very glad if the Rabbi would address it and I could receive an answer to my words. I tried asking this in yeshivot and with rabbis, and for the most part I got very negative feedback just for daring to research the topic at all. So thank you very much to the Rabbi for encouraging a critical approach!