Preface
The Zohar-Book
of Secret relates the following tale: As they journeyed the
sun began to decline, Rebbe Zera said to
Rebbe Yosi, “Why are you quiet?” Rebbe Yosi replied, “I
was staring into my knowing and realized the world does
not stand, but on the leaders of the people. If the leaders
merit
then it is good for the world and good for the people,
but if the leaders do not merit then woe to the world and
woe
to the people.” Five
hundred years ago Rebbe Yitzchok Luria known as the
Ari fathered the Cabala-the key to the
Zohar-Book of Secret. For 1500
years the Zohar remained an obscure text that teased Torah
scholars until the time of the Ari; Rebbe Yitchok Luria
was called the
Ari/Lion because of the way in which he devoured the Torah/Teaching—in
the middle of the cold Sfat winter in northern Israeli the
Ari would open his window, learn Torah and sweat. The Ari had
the
propensity to read the Torah inside out or backwards and gleam
marvelous understandings from the inverted text; he taught
how Yisroel/Israel could change the placement of the letters
to read
Rosh Li/My Head.
When the head is wrong then the world is wrong;
the head of the Jewish People are the Rabbis; the institution
of the Rabbis
began at the same time and in the same place as the Ari in
northern Israel. Yosef Caro had been composing the modern
compendium of
Jewish Law and was an old man by the time the Ari came to
Sfat. The Ari passed away a young man a few years after arriving
and Yosef Caro passed away an old man around the same time.
These two traditions, the Cabala and the Law, are what parented
the
institution of the Modern Rabbis.
The institutional gestation
of the Rabbis took over 250 years before the composite work
of the Rebbe Yosef Caro became
a unifying message to world Jewry—One Law, but the mysterious
Cabala like the Zohar-Book of Secret, remained underground.
In Eastern
Europe the birth of the rabbinic tradition took place when
these two schools of thought, mystery and law, collided.
Five hundred years before the Ari and Yosef Caro the Rambam
had gathered from the Talmud-Book of Law, written 2000
years ago, the laws governing the 613 commandments given
to the
Jewish People
in the first five books of the Torah/Teaching received
by Moshe 3500 years ago. It was the first time that the law
was gathered
and it happened 3000 years after the Torah was given. How
did the people before the Rambam follow the law if it was
not gathered?
To understand this dilemma and also to understand
the rise and fall of the Rabbis it must first be explained
the structure
of the Torah and how the Rabbis came to inherit t position
as: the Watchers of the Wall.
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