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Shimon bar Yochai, the Cave, and the Book Written in His Name

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai hid in a cave for thirteen years and emerged with fire in his eyes. Centuries later, the Zohar was published in his name.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Thirteen Years Underground
  2. Rashbi and the Center of Kabbalistic Teaching
  3. Who Actually Wrote the Zohar
  4. The Torah That Yochai's Son Carried

Thirteen Years Underground

The Romans had sentenced him to death for speaking against them. Shimon bar Yochai and his son Elazar went underground, into a cave in the Galilee. They buried themselves in sand up to their necks to preserve their clothing. They studied Torah without interruption. Thirteen years. When they finally emerged, their gaze had become so intense that whatever they looked at turned to ash. They had to return to the cave for another year until the fire in their eyes softened enough to look at the world without destroying it.

Thirteen years in the dark had not produced a scholar with sharper arguments. The cave produced something stranger. It produced a man whose relationship to fire had changed, who could not see the ordinary world at first because the ordinary world was too fragile for what he had become. The year of re-entry was as necessary as the thirteen years of study.

Rashbi and the Center of Kabbalistic Teaching

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, known by the acronym Rashbi, became the most radiant figure in the Kabbalistic tradition. His name was attached to the conversations and teachings that would eventually become the Zohar, the central document of Jewish mysticism. The tradition preserved in Zoharic and Kabbalistic sources shows Rashbi in the fields and valleys of the Galilee after the cave, surrounded by a circle of disciples, receiving illuminations that he and they discussed and argued and recorded. The Zohar in this telling is what emerged from those years of cave study followed by years of teaching: a record of mystical conversations, a commentary on the Torah that saw the text as a living organism containing every secret of the divine structure.

Who Actually Wrote the Zohar

The question is not simple and the tradition has always known it. The Zohar was first published around 1280 CE in Castile, Spain, by Moshe de Leon, who circulated it as a discovered ancient manuscript composed by Rashbi's circle in second-century Palestine. For centuries many accepted the attribution as literal. But the scholarly and internal tradition also contains its own scrutiny. The language of the Zohar is a form of Aramaic that does not match second-century Galilean Aramaic. It contains references and structures that appear anachronistically medieval. The great sixteenth-century Kabbalist Yitzhak Luria, known as the Ari, treated the Zohar as the work of Rashbi without question. Isaac ben Samuel of Acre, a contemporary of Moshe de Leon, tried to trace the manuscript and found no earlier copies.

The tradition preserved in the sources here does not resolve the question. What it does is hold both possibilities in parallel: that Rashbi received teachings of such depth and compression that they required centuries to unfold into the form the Zohar takes, and that Moshe de Leon was the instrument through which that unfolding happened. The second option does not require dishonesty. It requires a different understanding of authorship, one in which the soul of the Rashbi who had fire in his eyes from thirteen years in a cave was genuinely the source of what Moshe de Leon wrote thirteen centuries later.

The Torah That Yochai's Son Carried

A separate tradition in the Kabbalistic sources plays with the name. Shimon bar Yochai means Shimon son of Yochai. The Torah of Yochai is the Torah that passed through the lineage to which Shimon belonged, the specific form of Torah that the family line of Yochai transmitted. In this reading, what Rashbi received was not simply the general Torah that all Israel received at Sinai. He received the particular stream that had been flowing through his family toward him, and the cave was the place where that particular stream became concentrated enough to produce fire.

The tradition does not distinguish sharply between the father's Torah and the son's Torah. What mattered was the inheritance: what Rashbi taught was not invented by him but received through a lineage, compressed through the cave, and then given out in the fields and conversations that became, eventually, the text published under his name.

Rabbi Shimon Bar YochaiZoharKabbalahTorahMysticism
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From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Mitpachat Sefarim 1:4Mitpachat Sefarim

I'm talking about the kind of claim that makes you question everything you thought you knew. Well, buckle up, because I've got a story that's going to take you there.

This comes from a text called Mitpachat Sefarim, which translates to something like "The Wrapping of Books." It's a polemic, a fiery argument, written in response to some pretty wild accusations flying around in the 18th century.

The author is absolutely furious about a particular individual – described as an “insane one from Frankfurt” – who is printing things openly "for all nations." This person, it seems, is claiming to be a Jew, but according to Mitpachat Sefarim, he's secretly telling outsiders that he also adheres to the teachings of the Zohar. The Zohar, the foundational work of Jewish mysticism! Can you imagine? He’s accused of “uttering lies with his mouth.”

It gets worse.

This "uncircumcised and impure one" – the language is not subtle, is it? – is explicitly distorting the teachings of Rashbi. Rashbi, short for Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the sage traditionally credited with authoring the Zohar himself! "Woe to the eyes that see such things," the author laments. The disrespect! The sheer audacity!

Now, who is this "evil water" stirring up so much trouble? Mitpachat Sefarim identifies him as a follower of Eivshitzar. This is likely a reference to Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, a prominent rabbi of the time who was embroiled in a major controversy surrounding accusations of Sabbateanism, a heretical movement that followed the false messiah Shabbtai Tzvi.

The author sees this whole situation as a catastrophe. He believes that this individual "has blackened the face of the exile with his foolishness." He claims that “almost the entire faith has been lost through him, and he has made the foundations of the Torah like shadows." Strong words. The author continues, lamenting that those who "have nurtured and multiplied and excelled in Torah" have been provoked and driven away. He believes this person has incited and expelled all the enemies. It's a picture of a community under siege, a faith undermined from within and without.

What strikes me most is the sheer passion, the raw emotion pouring out of these words. It’s a snapshot of a community confronting internal divisions and external pressures, trying to defend its most sacred traditions against what it perceived as a dangerous and heretical attack. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? How do we protect what we hold dear without resorting to the same kind of vitriol and division that we condemn in others? It's a question that resonates just as powerfully today as it did centuries ago.

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Mitpachat Sefarim 1:16Mitpachat Sefarim

The Mitpachat Sefarim, a fascinating and somewhat controversial text, grapples with just that. It suggests that a truly free Jewish person – someone deeply immersed in Torah study, devoted to God, and confident in their understanding of its secrets – isn't necessarily obligated to defend every single word of our sacred texts as absolutely authentic, pure, and beyond question. Why? Because the authorship isn't always as straightforward as we might assume. Take the Zohar, for instance. This foundation of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, is traditionally attributed to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a towering figure from the 2nd century CE. But the Mitpachat Sefarim throws a curveball.

It argues that while the Zohar is indeed associated with Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai – and named in his honor, a common practice with many books of that era – the actual compilation wasn't his own work. Instead, it was the labor of generations of his students, students of his students, who gathered and organized the material.

Where does this idea come from? The Mitpachat Sefarim points to a "genealogical book" that seems to hint at a later date of composition. There's even a suggestion that a printed date mentioning one year after Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s death is a typo, meant to say six hundred years! That's quite a difference, isn't it?

The author claims to have arrived at this conclusion not through historical research alone, but through b'se'od, divine inspiration. They believe the Zohar was compiled around three hundred years after the time of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the Tanna (a sage of the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law)) himself.

Now, this isn't about diminishing the importance of the Zohar or Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. It's about understanding the complex process by which our tradition has been transmitted and shaped over time. It acknowledges that even the most revered texts may have evolved through the contributions of many hands, guided by a shared commitment to preserving and expanding upon the wisdom of the past.

What does this mean for us today? Perhaps it invites us to engage with our tradition with both reverence and a critical eye. To appreciate the layers of meaning and interpretation that have accumulated over centuries, while remaining open to questioning and exploring the origins of our most cherished texts. It's a reminder that tradition is a living, breathing thing, constantly being reinterpreted and reshaped by each generation.

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