Abstract
The Zohar, the greatest work of Jewish mysticism, is deeply concerned with the nature of exile and the exilic situation in which God, the cosmos, and the Jew all find themselves. In one of his more profound comments on this situation (Zohar Hadash 38a), the thirteenth-century author suggests that the divine name that accompanied Israel into exile was itself a broken one.¹ The Zohar knew and accepted the ancient tradition that “wherever Israel is exiled, the divine Presence is exiled with them.”
The name that accompanied them was אהיה , pronounced ehyeh, God’s “I am” or “shall be.” The name,