"If Not Now, When?": The Popularization of the Zohar as an Eschatological Imperative

A number of early modern kabbalists held that the appearance and popularization of Kabbalah were harbingers to the onset of the messianic era. These authors believed that the printing of the Zohar and other kabbalistic classics signalled the end of times. They regarded their place in history and the simultaneous call to promote the circulation and absorption of this literature as the unique privilege of their generation. Isaac de Lattes, active in Italy in the sixteenth century, who worked tirelessly to bring the Zohar to print, justified his mission by invoking the notion of apocalyptic immediacy: “Behold, the seventh year, the year of shemita is approaching. ‘If not now, when?’ In the seventh millennium when the world will be destroyed?”

In contrast to a number of Jewish mystics living in the post-expulsion period, who interpreted historical traumas and events, such as the mass expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, in an apocalyptic framework, in the formulation of Isaac de Lattes it is the greater availability of the hidden facets of Torah that foreshadow the impending eschaton. In amplifying this message, authors of kabbalistic works emphatically underline that not only the sod, or the most esoteric layers of the Zohar, merit exegesis but even the plain sense or peshat demands attention, careful reading, and comprehension. Kabbalistic manuals that I will survey in my paper, are presented not as ancillary and inferior to the original works they were designated to mediate, but rather as essential and indispensable.