Anger and Kabbalah: Confronting Divine and Human Rage in the Zohar
The Bible portrays God as capable of catastrophically destructive anger, as well as infinite mercy. Rabbinic texts severely condemn human anger, comparing it to idolatry, while portraying God as engaged in an internal struggle with his own anger. In the Zohar, the central work of Kabbalah, anger plays a central role in the cosmic drama. Unrestrained divine anger can lead to the emergence of a demonic realm, ruled by the diabolical Sama’el and Lilith. Human action is required to appease divine anger and restrain the evil forces. How should we, in our turbulent time, understand these Jewish stances to this much-decried emotion?
Session 1: We are going to confront a theme that is both a central issue in Jewish thought and also, lamentably, an urgent issue for our time: anger. We will look at this theme through a variety of Jewish texts, including biblical, rabbinic, and kabbalistic texts, with an emphasis on the latter.
Session 2: This class will have 3 parts: a brief introduction to the Zohar, a discussion of the divine anger in the aftermath of the Korach rebellion, and a Zoharic exploration of the power of incense to appease divine anger.
