The classic anthology of the Zohar, and still the best doorway into it for the serious Hebrew reader.
Mishnat ha-Zohar takes the sprawling, difficult Aramaic of the Zohar and does three things no other work had done: it translates the central passages into clear Hebrew, arranges them by subject rather than by parashah, and surrounds them with introductions and running commentary that explain what the text is actually saying.
The result is a guided tour through the heart of Jewish mysticism — the hidden God and the world of the Sefirot, creation, the sitra aḥra and the problem of evil, the soul and its destiny, Torah and the commandments, Israel among the nations, exile and redemption. The essays that open each section remain, decades on, among the finest writing on the Zohar in any language.
Never surpassed in scope, Mishnat ha-Zohar is a standard text in university Jewish-studies courses and a fixture on the shelves of rabbis, scholars, and students of kabbalah.