Found in Translation

Deep within the pages of Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar, a mystical Jewish text written centuries ago, lies a provocative vision of the future: green tefillin. Found on folio 144b, a cryptic passage links these vibrant tefillin to the Shechinah—the feminine aspect of Divine presence. Some interpret this as a bold hint that, one day, women will wear tefillin, and they will be green.

If you’ve never heard of this before, it’s no wonder: Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar, rich with allegories and Jewish mysticism, has never previously been fully translated into English—until now.

Composed in Aramaic, the mystical Jewish texts collectively known as Zoharic literature first emerged in the 13th and 14th centuries CE and contain distinct mystical emphases, including explorations of topics like the nature of God, the universe, souls, and reincarnation. These works have influenced the development of Jewish mysticism, including kabbalah, as well as Jewish thought and ritual over the past seven centuries.

The most famous such book is the Zohar, which provides a mystical commentary on the entire Torah. In contrast, Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar has a far narrower focus, comprising 70 tikkunim, or commentaries, on the very first word of the Torah: bereshit, meaning “in the beginning.” While the Zohar and Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar are the most prominent texts, Zoharic literature encompasses more than 20 distinct compositions, as identified by scholars like Gershom Scholem. These include sections contained within the main Zohar corpus, and separately published works like the Zohar Chadash.

“The Zohar has been translated into Western languages before,” said David Solomon, a 62-year-old Australian educator, scholar, and translator. But what sets Solomon’s work apart is monumental: For the past 14 years, he has dedicated himself to producing the first complete English translation of Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar, uncovering layers of Jewish mystical wisdom previously inaccessible to most of the world. “Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar is a later revelation but was printed just prior to the emergence of the Zohar. It’s regarded as a very sublime kabbalistic text; it is both more opaque and more revealed than the Zohar.”

When he began his translation project more than a decade ago, Solomon was surprised that no English translation existed of Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar, despite it being considered an integral Jewish mystical text, and studied by kabbalists for generations. For centuries, the only way to study the entirety of Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar was solely in Aramaic, which made it one of the most difficult and mysterious texts for people to access. A Hebrew translation was undertaken in the 1990s, and in the early 2000s a French translation of the introduction to the tikkunim was completed by Michael Sebban.

“I was astonished that the Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar had never been fully translated into English,” said Solomon. “The tikkunim are quoted extensively across mystical Hasidic and kabbalistic literature,” he added, referencing a lineage of influential texts and figures, including the Arizal, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and the Chabad movement’s seminal work, the Tanya. Important kabbalistic concepts, such as the idea of the “Four Worlds”—which refers to four planes of existence through which Divine energy flows, serving as a bridge between the spiritual and material realms—is found within Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar (Folio 98B).

The Aramaic within Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar is diabolically difficult to decipher. “If the Zohar is Ulysses,” said Solomon, “then Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar is Finnegan’s Wake.”

As part of his translation into English, Solomon consulted the recent Hebrew translation, but didn’t always find it helpful. “If you are experiencing ambiguity in the Aramaic, the Hebrew will often have the same problem,” he said. “There were many times when I would go to the Hebrew in search of trying to understand and clarify what was being referred to, and it wouldn’t help me because the same problem I saw in the Aramaic was pushed over into the Hebrew.”

In addition, Solomon recognized the importance of presenting Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar in a way that would resonate with more than just serious scholars.

“Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar is saturated with references to Jewish texts,” Solomon explained. “My goal as a translator was to ensure that even a nonspecialist or someone without knowledge of Hebrew or Aramaic could open this profound, kabbalistic work and experience it in English much as an experienced kabbalistic scholar would.”

How Solomon—hailing from a well-known Australian Jewish family, which includes a brother who serves as a current Australian Supreme Court judge—became the first to translate this seminal kabbalistic text into English is a story in itself.

“My interest in kabbalah was sparked when I was 11 years old,” he told me. “I had a very influential Jewish studies teacher in Perth, one of two men to whom I’ve dedicated this translation.”

Solomon completed his undergraduate degree in English literature and earned a master’s degree in Jewish mysticism. During this period, he translated Isaiah Tishby’s The Doctrine of Evil and the ‘Shell’ in Lurianic Kabbalah, published by Cherub Press in 2022. He began working on translating the tikkunim in 2010 and completed a Ph.D. in Zoharic translation in 2018.

When I asked Solomon—who is fluent in Hebrew, Aramaic, Yiddish, French, Spanish, Greek, and German—how many people in the world today would be able to translate a dense mystical Aramaic text like Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar into English, he estimated there were half a dozen.

While Solomon shies away from labels, he observes Shabbat, keeps kosher, and is a member of an Orthodox synagogue in Melbourne. Yet, as an academic, he grapples with the inherent tension surrounding Zoharic texts. Orthodox tradition attributes the Zohar and Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar to the second-century sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai—but academic scholars date these texts to a far later period, generally the 13th century CE.

When asked how he reconciles these seemingly contradictory perspectives, Solomon offered a pragmatic response: “It doesn’t bother me either way,” he said. “We shouldn’t always be looking backward to points of revelation. The fact that it was revealed in the 13th century doesn’t make it any less authentic a revelation.”

Solomon noted that both views share common ground. “Whether you believe it was written in the Tana’atic period or by medieval Spanish mystics, everyone would agree it was only revealed in the 13th century,” he explained. To support this, he cited the absence of any mention of any Zoharic texts in the writings of the Rambam, one of the most prominent Jewish sages of the 12th century.

Translating, annotating, and printing Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar has been a labor of love. Sefaria, a free online library of Jewish texts, purchased a creative commons license for Solomon’s English translation (the first two volumes are already available online), but Solomon wanted to ensure that his translations could live on in hard copy in Jewish libraries and personal collections across the world.

Together with his wife, Marjorie, Solomon founded Margalya Press, a boutique printing company dedicated to producing a limited edition of the first-ever complete English translation of Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar—which he calls a poem “that is incredibly deep and mysterious.” Presented as an elegant, seven-volume set, the collection features approximately 400 pages per volume, designed with both beauty and scholarship in mind.

The first six volumes contain Solomon’s meticulous translation, while the seventh volume offers detailed annotations, references, and insights into the text’s mystical depths to enhance accessibility. Solomon reformatted the original Aramaic into a line-by-line poetic structure that mirrors the English translation, making the dense, complex text far more readable.

This dual-language presentation allows readers to experience the rhythm and flow of the Aramaic alongside its English counterpart, transforming an ancient mystical work into an engaging, modern masterpiece. A major feature of the hard copy of Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar is that it presents an exact letter-by-letter replication of the Constantinople 1740 Hebrew text of Tiqqunei Ha-Zohar—a “mother” edition of the mystical work. Most texts that have emerged from medieval manuscripts continue to evolve since their earlier printings, so this replication of a classic and revered earlier edition is a unique publishing feature.

“I think there is a tremendous beauty to it,” said Solomon. “Readers of [non-Jewish] literature and mystical literature will read it and scan through it, and it will speak to them.”

If preorders of Tiqqunei Ha-zohar are anything to go by, the work will have wide appeal to buyers across the world including in Australia, the United States, Israel, and more exotic locations like Thailand and Egypt, which are due to be receiving their hard copies in early 2025.

Nathan Wolski, a lecturer in Jewish studies at Monash University and a fellow scholar of kabbalah, understands the immense challenges of translating Jewish mystical texts. As a contributor to The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, he knows what it takes to bring these ancient works into the modern world. For him, Solomon’s achievement is nothing short of groundbreaking.

“David has accomplished what many, myself included, thought impossible,” Wolski said. “This translation is a remarkable gift to the Jewish people—one that will resonate for generations to come.”