Roads to Utopia

the long version

This is the first in-depth study of the 'walking motif' of the Zohar. The Zohar is unique among Jewish mystical texts in continuously introducing and punctuating its teachings with references to its mystical adepts' 'walking along the road'. By carefully cataloguing and analyzing the use of the walking motif, this study seeks to show that it expresses a concern of the Zohar that is surprising for a mystical text: to recognise the steady, if problematic, presence of a non-mystical dimension to reality, the domain of the mundane.