The Garment of the Torah

Tradition Judaism Source Zohar III 152a (Beha’alotekha), in Adolphe Franck, The Kabbalah, trans. I. Sossnitz (1926), Part II ch. II. Late 13th century, Castile; the text presents itself as 2nd century Era c. 1280 CE

The Teaching

The recitals of the law are the vestment of the law. Woe to him who takes that vestment for the law itself! … There are foolish people who, when they see a man covered with fine clothes, look no further than the garment, and yet it is the body that lends value to the clothes; and still more precious is the soul. The law also has its body. There are commandments that may be called the body of the law, and the ordinary recitals which are mingled with them are the clothes which cover the body. The simple-minded take heed of nothing but the vestments or the recitals of the law; they know nothing else, and do not see what is hidden under this garment. The well-informed think not of the vestment, but of the body that the vestment covers. Finally, the wise, servants of the Supreme King, they who dwell upon the heights of Sinai, think of the soul only, which is the foundation of all the rest, and which is the law itself, and in time to come they will be prepared to contemplate the spirit of that spirit which breathes in the law.

— Zohar III 152a

Commentary

The Zohar gives scripture three layers, like a person. The stories are its clothes, the commandments its body, and underneath both is a soul. Most readers, it says, stop at the clothes, the way a fool judges a man by his coat.

The image cuts both ways. It warns against mistaking the story for the meaning. But it doesn’t discard the clothes either. A body needs them to walk around in public, and the soul of the teaching reaches the world dressed in stories. The garment is how the teaching travels and the reason people take it to be something else.

The last line goes past the soul to “the spirit of that spirit,” a further depth the wise are only preparing for. The Zohar keeps that horizon open, and leaves the reader with the sense that even the deepest reading so far is another garment.