DICTIONARY / VOCABULARY
Material on this page is drawn from the Dictionary of the Zohar by Judy Barrett, a work in progress, copyright 2018 by the author. Feel free to download and use these pdf files for your study. Please let us know if you find them useful, and alert us to any errors or questions.
Note: The Zohar includes many verses from the Bible, in Hebrew. With experience or the help of a translation you will learn to recognize these verses and handle them separately. The vocabulary on this website is primarily Aramaic, the language of the Zohar when it is not quoting the Bible.
Dictionary of the Zohar’s Introduction (updated 2017)
The Zohar begins with a long introductory section of teachings and stories, the Haqdamah. This is the vocabulary you will encounter if you simply open the Zohar at the beginning. This file, in the format of the Dictionary in progress, will be your guide.
English to Aramaic Thesaurus of the Zohar (draft) new 2017
The Dictionary translates words from Aramaic to English; this new resource is the other way around. This gives a picture of the Zohar’s varied vocabulary for key concepts, and will also be an invaluable tool for anyone wanting to write in Zohar Aramaic!
Vocabulary by Categories
Most Frequent Words: Files beginning MFW are drawn from a list of Most Frequent Words in the Zohar, very kindly provided to us in 2011 by Professor Moshe Koppel of the Computer Science Department at Bar-Ilan University, who used the digital text of the Zohar at http://www.hebrew.grimoar.cz/.
MFW Conjunctions and Interjections
Eugene Fleischman Sotirescu has created flash cards and quizzes to learn and test your Zohar Aramaic vocabulary!
The Aramaic Language of the Zohar 
October 14, 2014 at 5:21 pm
Question regarding a word that appears in Haqdamat: דאיהו What is the translation? Thx. And really thanks for this site. I was really hesitant about trying to read the Zohar in Aramaic, as even my Hebrew reading is very s-l-o-w, but I am loving it! I read first in English also reading Daniel Matt’s notes, then in Aramaic, then in Hebrew, and finally in English again. It is really so beautiful in Aramaic. I find there are certain phrases that really resonate with me, such as the sentence in which this particular word appears: “. בארצנו, דא יום שבת דאיהו דוגמת ארץ החיים” Thank you again for all of your efforts to make this website available!
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October 14, 2014 at 7:41 pm
Thank you thank you for asking a question about the language of the Zohar!
The word you mention, דאיהו, is the prefixed conjunction ד plus the pronoun איהו. In Hebrew, it would be שהוא.
דא יום שבת דאיהו דוגמת ארץ החיים = זה יום הבשת שהוא
…
This is the Sabbath day, which is [literally: that it (is)] the symbol/paradigm/image of the Land of Life.
Hope you will continue to find this site useful and keep asking questions. Happy reading!
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May 1, 2015 at 10:23 am
כל הכבוד לך! אתר חשוב ויפה מאוד!
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October 14, 2014 at 8:41 pm
Thanks! guessed somewhat close,in my head it translated …for it [is] pattern of… love it, the Aramaic that is. Thx again!
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October 14, 2014 at 8:46 pm
Your translation works too! ד can be “that”, “for” and other nuances of meaning.
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Pingback: English to Aramaic thesaurus | The Aramaic Language of the Zohar
July 13, 2017 at 10:21 am
Love the new English to Aramaic thesaurus. Kol HaKavod!
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July 13, 2017 at 1:48 pm
Fantastic work! Yashar Koah Judy!
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August 17, 2020 at 12:56 pm
Thanks for this great website! 🙂 here’s the thing tho, I CAN NOT COPY PASTE THE ARAMAIC TEXT FROM THE PDFS, it’s comes out as a garbled mess, this is because of the type of font you used, do you have a version of the mfw pdfs with the normal hebrew font? thanks for your time. 🙂
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August 18, 2020 at 10:34 am
So glad you are using the site!
Not being a technician I’m not sure what would count as “the normal Hebrew font”! If you email me, Justin_Lewis@umanitoba.ca, we’ll try to sort that out.
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