This is Part 2 of our exploration of Moon Knight. We look at Moon Knight #38, part 2 of the story of the villain Zohar!

Looks like an amulet

Our hooded figure lays out Rabbi Spector’s body

“Master, thy soul has shed its skin and ascended the ten spheres to union with God. Thence hast thou returned to thy disciple with the hidden wisdom of angel and seraph… from thee, Elias Spector, I have learned the Lord’s names of power to summon forth the Divine Spark from within my mortal form. Such secrets must remain mine alone and none others. Now, as Zohar, I shall illumine truth and scourge the sinful in God’s name, bringing atonement and a cleansing to this world.”

I LOVE THIS

10 spheres = Sefirot

But what about Kaddish and soul taking time to ascend?

Wisdom of angel and seraph - reminds me of heichalot lit

God’s names having power

Zohar - central text of Kabbalah - literally splendor

Marc goes after Curly, the gangster the hoodlums named last issue

“I’m the angel of death, beer-belly. You don’t want to make me angry.”

Mr. Weiss drops by the Spector home to pick up the Rabbi’s books and papers

All donated to the seminary

“Most of these manuscripts are one of a kind, aren’t they?”

Marlene looks at a photo of Elias with his students. Elias in a chair, all his students standing behind him

Traditional Jewish learning

Megillah 21a explains a teacher should sit on the ground while disciples stand around him

Zohar is stealing materials, including an actual scroll

“In the name of heaven, do you think Zohar will allow this mystic wisdom to pass into the hands of the sinful and ignorant? Know the divine spark of justice, mortal woman--”

He shoots electric blasts at her

Spark of justice - Din of the sefirot is the one most inclined towards sitra achra, the other side

Ezekiel 1:4

וָאֵ֡רֶא וְהִנֵּה֩ ר֨וּחַ סְעָרָ֜ה בָּאָ֣ה מִן־הַצָּפ֗וֹן עָנָ֤ן גָּדוֹל֙ וְאֵ֣שׁ מִתְלַקַּ֔חַת וְנֹ֥גַֽהּ ל֖וֹ סָבִ֑יב וּמִ֨תּוֹכָ֔הּ כְּעֵ֥ין הַחַשְׁמַ֖ל מִתּ֥וֹךְ הָאֵֽשׁ׃

I looked, and lo, a stormy wind came sweeping out of the north—a huge cloud and flashing fire, surrounded by a radiance; and in the center of it, in the center of the fire, a gleam as of amber.

Maimonides identifies Chashmalim as the fourth rank of angelic hierarchy

Word used in Modern Hebrew for electricity

Zohar has written אמת on Elias’ forehead

“The secrets are safe with me, father of my soul, and through them mankind shall be brought to do penance.”

Christian term

Marc and Marlene go to the seminary library at Rabbi Reuben Davis’ request

Wind up chatting with Mr. Weiss

Declares Elias as world’s expert in Kabbalah

Marlene asks what Kabbalah is

Marc doesn’t know, he resisted Jewish “religious” studies

Mr. Weiss starts explaining Kabbalah

“You see, those initiated in the secret traditions claim to own passwords that open the gates of heaven to the soul searching for its creator.”

Again, this is heichalot literature. Meditative ascent

Between late antiquity and early Middle Ages (3rd century to 6th or 7th?)

Hekhalot Rabbati (“Greater Palaces”), detailing the ascent of Rabbi Ishmael

This is the most solid Jewish mysticism in a comic book we have encountered. Beats Rucka

“Union with God brings great bliss and knowledge. But it can also lead to madness. Some have attempted to wield magic power through Kabbalah, to pervert the knowledge of God to selfish ends.”

Hagigah 14b: Four men entered the pardes — Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Acher, and Rabbi Akiva. Ben Azzai looked and died; Ben Zoma looked and went mad; Acher destroyed the plants; Akiva entered in peace and departed in peace.

Long a concern of such perversion, rabbinic hesitance to looking behind the veil

Marlene asks why someone would desecrate a grave

“The soul of a dead man, free of the body, journeys to God more easily than a living man’s soul. There are legends suggesting that a soul can be brought back to its dead body by necromancy and made to utter its knowledge of God to a living Kabbalist.”

Practical Kabbalah = essentially magic

Writes of forbidden and permitted activities

“This is the word EMETH, ‘truth’ in Hebrew. INscribing it on the forehead of one dead and reciting appropriate spells is believed to bring the breath of life back into its form.”

That form being, essentially, a golem

“The body can be returned to death by erasing the first letter, which leaves the word METH or ‘dead’ in Hebrew”

Marlene attends a Kabbalah lecture with Mr. Weiss

Marc goes to the “seminary chapel”

Zohar shows up, citing Deuteronomy 21:18

Ben sorer u’moreh

“It is written, a wayward and rebellious son shall be put to death that you might rid yourselves of evil in your midst.”

Sanhedrin 68b - limiting of a possible ben sorer u’moreh

From when he grows two pubic hairs, which are a sign of puberty and from which time he is considered an adult, until he has grown a beard around. The reference here is to the lower beard surrounding his genitals, and not the upper beard, i.e., his facial hair, but the Sages spoke in euphemistic terms. As it is stated: “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son” (Deuteronomy 21:18), which indicates that the penalty for rebelliousness is imposed upon a son, but not upon a daughter; and upon a son, but not upon a fully grown man. A minor under the age of thirteen is exempt from the penalty imposed upon a stubborn and rebellious son, because he has not yet reached the age of inclusion in mitzvot.

משיביא שתי שערות ועד שיקיף זקן התחתון ולא העליון אלא שדברו חכמים בלשון נקיה שנאמר (דברים כא, יח) כי יהיה לאיש בן בן ולא בת בן ולא איש קטן פטור שלא בא לכלל מצות:

Zohar again cites the Isaiah 1:18 motivation of cleansing sinners through punishment

Marc realizes the same quote is from Reuben Davis’ eulogy....

“Thou shalt honor thy father”

“I have become as a God to mete out justice in the name of the Creator”

“For the suffering Zohar inflicts upon your body, your soul will be redeemed.”

Connected to concepts of Gehenna, of suffering to redeem a soul

Zohar either psychically moves or materializes stained glass ark that he shatters over Marc

Wishes to continue, lest the ignorant learn the names of God

Mr. Weiss giving a lecture on Kabbalah

Pointing to an image of the sefirotic tree behind him

Writes גדולה in place of חסד or רחמים

A: this allows for direct parallel with גבורה

B: I Chronicles 29:11 - lecha Adonai hagedulah...

“It is a fundamental belief among Kabbalists that the Tetragrammaton and other secret names of God are the most powerful tools for conjuring occult forces and commanding nature itself.”

Marlene thinks she hasn’t been this fascinated since first learning hieroglyphics

How does this relate to the tension of the very Jewish Moon Knight being in service to the Egyptian God?

Jewish slaves in Egypt

Word Balloon Podcast May 1, 2017, Dan Slott Part 2 Talks Secret Empire Silver Surfer Silk’s Origin

31:05-32:02 - “It took until Moon Knight...when you think about it, is the worst Jewish character”

Zohar attacks the seminary students who fight back

Zohar keeps citing verses

Seems to cite Proverbs 10:6, 10:8

“Violence filleth the mouth of the wicked, but the prating fool shall fall”

MK uses a mirror to reflect a blast back at Zohar

“Father of my soul, I, who have slain the evil son of your loins, call thee up against this stranger… with the charmed vowels of the Tetragrammaton, KELSHADDAY”

El Shadday is not Tetragrammaton. IS a name of God

But I LOVE that he write KEL

Suddenly Elias Spector’s corpse rises up

Elias goes to choke his son

Marc thinks he’ll die before laying hands on his father again

Asks dad for forgiveness

Marlene runs in, erases the aleph

Elias starts to fall

Marc mentions feeling like a new person

Seems like a play on multiple identities

But also a possibility that Zohar was victorious in redeeming him?

Has he performed teshuva?

Hilchot Teshuva 2:4

Among the paths of repentance is for the penitent ...to change his name, as if to say "I am a different person and not the same one who sinned;"

מִדַּרְכֵי הַתְּשׁוּבָה...וּמְשַׁנֶּה שְׁמוֹ כְּלוֹמַר אֲנִי אַחֵר וְאֵינִי אוֹתוֹ הָאִישׁ שֶׁעָשָׂה אוֹתָן הַמַּעֲשִׂים