{"collection":"Texts of Judaism","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_jud_zdm_zdm037_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_jud_zdm_zdm037_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_jud_zdm_zdm037_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/jud/zdm/zdm037.htm","summary":"This is an excerpt from the Zohar, the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah, presented as a mystical teaching delivered by Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai to his students. The passage addresses an apparent contradiction in Deuteronomy: how can God be described as a \"consuming fire\" while Israel, cleaved to God, remains alive? Rabbi Simeon resolves this through an extended meditation on the two-colored flame of a candle or burning coal \u2014 the lower dark/blue flame, which consumes the fuel beneath it, represents the astral or lower divine fire that destroys, while the upper white flame, which consumes nothing and never changes color, represents the pure Divine light in which Moses dwelled and from which he descended from Sinai unharmed. The distinctive claim is that Moses' phrasing \"thy God\" (not \"our God\") encodes this distinction: the consuming fire is the lower astral level, while the eternal, unchanging white light is the God of those spiritually elevated. A third, invisible flame above the white is briefly invoked as pointing toward the highest, inexpressible mystery. The passage exemplifies Zoharic exegesis: close reading of scriptural word-choice used to map a layered cosmology of divine fire onto human spiritual experience.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Zohar: Genesis: Chapter XXVIII. Rabbi Simeon's Analogies of the Divine Life in Man","tradition":"Texts of Judaism","translated_text":null,"word_count":597}