Question: I don’t understand Hebrew just yet, so what should I do when we are reading The Zohar? Should I look at the letters or just listen to the text?

Answer: All languages but Hebrew are meant for communication in this world. Hebrew, on the other hand, is not a spoken language but a record of spiritual actions from ZAT de Bina (its seven lower Sefirot), Zeir Anpin, and Malchut on the matter of Malchut. The symbols describe these spiritual actions.

So look at the text before you as a sequence of commands in a computer program: It is simply a record of spiritual properties, forces, and actions that you must carry out within yourself. This is how I view Hebrew. I don’t treat it as a literary language used to make text flow smoothly, as in other languages.

While you don’t usually look at the letters and combinations when reading the Kabbalistic texts, you still look inside the word and its inner meaning. You look at the symbol since each letter is always a symbol.

Hebrew has so much data, information hidden within the language, that it’s impossible to reflect it in a translation. After all, the sequence of letters of the text describes the Sefirot, the order of actions. How can that be recorded in another language?

In each letter we should see a symbol of some spiritual property or action that it signifies.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/30/10, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar, Article “Yitro (Jethro)”

Related Material:
Timeless Language
Letters Are Qualities
The Iron Rules Of Spiritual Grammar

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