Dr. Biti Roi teaches Kabbalah and Hasidism at the Hebrew University and in the graduate program at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. She is a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Her book Love of the Shekhina: Mysticism and Poetics in Tiqqunei ha-Zohar (Bar-Ilan University, 2017) was awarded the World Union of Jewish Studies Prize for the best book in Jewish Studies and is forthcoming in English in the “Olamot” series of Indiana University Press.
Last Updated
September 9, 2025
Books by the Author
Articles by the Author
The Tikkunei Zohar, a kabbalistic work composed in 14th-century Spain, offers seventy interpretations of the Torah’s first word, bereshit. This article traces how: The understanding of the Torah as multivocal culminated in its formulation, “the Torah has seventy faces,” in the 12th-century Numbers Rabbah (Part 1). The Tikkunei Zohar saw this as a key theological principle and applied it programmatically (Part 2). R. Nathan Spira and Ramchal interpreted other words of Torah, and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov wrote his famous stories to prepare readers for the Torah’s seventy meanings (Part 3).
The Tikkunei Zohar, a kabbalistic work composed in 14th-century Spain, offers seventy interpretations of the Torah’s first word, bereshit. This article traces how: The understanding of the Torah as multivocal culminated in its formulation, “the Torah has seventy faces,” in the 12th-century Numbers Rabbah (Part 1). The Tikkunei Zohar saw this as a key theological principle and applied it programmatically (Part 2). R. Nathan Spira and Ramchal interpreted other words of Torah, and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov wrote his famous stories to prepare readers for the Torah’s seventy meanings (Part 3).
