Zoharic Aramaic · Zohar Readers
ORIGINAL LANGUAGE FIRST
Pedagogical transliterationve-i teima de-anan paqdin ... piqadona dilan ihu le-nafsha, de-ihi mishtakkekha ...
WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT
The first איהו in פקדונא דילן איהו לנפשא points back to פקדונא דילן, ‘our visitation/charge’: it is directed to the nefesh. The following דאיהי points to the feminine נפשא: she grows quiet and remains among the bones. The noun chain prevents guesswork: בשרא, רוחא, נפשא, גופא, and גרמי are all overtly present.
SEE HOW IT WORKS
ZOH-R02
Pedagogical reading guide
Zoharic Aramaic
question about visiting graves → contrast לאו על גופא אלא על נפשא → רוחא attends נפשא → נפשא attends גופא → פקדונא דילן = איהו → נפשא = דאיהי → conclusion לא על בשרא
EXAMPLES
Close translation — ‘And if you say that we visit the cemetery at the beginning of every night—it is not for the body, but for the nefesh. For as long as the flesh endures, the ruaḥ attends the nefesh, and the nefesh attends the body. But now our visitation is for the nefesh, for she grows quiet and remains in stillness among the bones. Therefore, at the beginning of every night, the ruaḥ’s visitation is for the nefesh, and not for the flesh.’
SOURCE REFERENCE
APPROVED STUDY LAYERS
Resolve איהו and איהי from explicit local antecedents in a compact Zohar paragraph.
Unpointed Zoharic Aramaic with masculine איהו and feminine איהי; the antecedents are supplied by syntax, not by an English paraphrase.
Draw arrows from איהו and איהי to their antecedents. Then list every body/soul noun and its role in the sentence.
איהו → פקדונא דילן. איהי → נפשא. בשרא/גופא are the flesh/body; רוחא attends נפשא; נפשא attends גופא; גרמי are the bones among which the nefesh remains. The final contrast excludes בשרא as the object of the night visitation.
Exact bounded unit from Hebrew Wikisource page זהר חלק ג קע א; the full containing block is retained in evidence.
REMEMBER