Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar: The Other Side of Kabbalah

Nathaniel Berman’s Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar: The Other Side of Kabbalah offers a new approach to the central work of Jewish mysticism, the Sefer Ha-Zohar ( Book of Radiance ). Berman explicates the literary techniques through which the Zohar constructs a mythology of intricately related divine and demonic personae. Drawing on classical and modern rhetorical paradigms, as well as psychoanalytical theories of the formation of subjectivity, Berman reinterprets the meaning of the Zohar’s divine and demonic personae, exploring their shared origins and their ongoing antagonisms and intimacies. Finally, he shows how the Zoharic portrayal of the demonic, the Other Side, contributes to reflecting on alterity of all kinds.