Woe to the Wicked

The Zohar presents a less formal approach to religion that provides much more room for personal interpretation than, say, the Bible or Torah. The entire first chapter we read was titled, "How to Look at Torah" which advises the reader to look for a deeper meaning behind the stories presented in the Torah, and specifically to not take them literally.

Woe to the wicked
who say that Torah is merely a story!
They look at this garment and no further.
Happy are the righteous
who look at Torah properly!

The Zohar emphasizes how stories in the Torah are not merely stories, but allegories with much deeper meaning than the superficial. There are four levels of increasingly secretive interpretations of Biblical text (known as PaRDeS) presented in the Zohar, which closely analyze biblical text without imposing outside ideology onto them. In my opinion, the Zohar seems to be an archetype religious text. It strongly encourages personal interpretation, while presenting its own interpretations in a conversational way, interacting with the reader, not monologuing to the reader.

The controversy behind the authenticity of the work is pretty interesting, and the fact that many rabbis censured it because of its mystical nature (though many others held it in high acclaim directly because it opposed religious formalism). If I were to possess religious views of any sort, I would much appreciate a text like the Zohar to guide me through my interpretations, at least initially. If only I were a 40 year old Jewish man... (Though that has probably changed by now, hopefully)