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Several websites claim that the Zohar predicted the event of 9/11 (for example, this, this, this, and this). The following quote is from the last link:

On 9-11, not only the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed after being flown into by hijacked airliners, but a third 47-story skyscraper, part of the same complex, also tumbled to the ground, at 5:20 pm, the very same day. The Zohar predicted this tremendous event would occur on the 25th day of the month of Elul, in its most recognized edition. However, in the 18th century, the Genius of Vilna (famous Jewish sage) stated the text was off by two days – that the most correct version of the Zohar reads that this devastation would occur on Elul 23. September 11, 2001, was the 23rd day of Elul!

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    Omit "three high places shall fall down in that city" and read all the rest of the quote - it will seem completely irrelevant. In all the huge body of ancient literature you can find a description of practically any event you can imagine, if you are satisfied with one short phrase...
    – sashkello
    Commented Mar 11, 2014 at 0:33
  • @sashkello Can you give a longer version of the quote then? And if it is that common, try to find any quote saying, for example, six buildings will fall on a date 6 months later.
    – ike
    Commented Mar 11, 2014 at 15:55
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    1. There is a longer quote in your own links. 2. It is not buildings, it is "high places". With good amount of imagination it can be interpreted as "three important people were killed / resigned", "three churches were desecrated", "three important cities were captured" and a lot more, for example. Three has a symbolic meaning and is encountered all the time. But I did find six, in fact, in a few Russain tales there is a dragon with 6 heads and Ivan bravely slashes them. With right amount of imagination you can interpret it as the destruction of six items of whatever.
    – sashkello
    Commented Mar 11, 2014 at 22:17
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    "the ruler of that city shall die" - the only really clear quote from Zohar and it is wrong.
    – sashkello
    Commented Mar 11, 2014 at 22:19
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    Here are some preceding lines: "This teaches us that in the future, The Holy One, Blessed is He, will build Jerusalem and one star will spark within seventy pillars of fire and seventy sparks will receive light from it in the middle of the sky. The other seventy stars will be swallowed within it. It will give off light and blaze for seventy days." - looks completely irrelevant.
    – sashkello
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 0:33

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The English text in the first link seem to be the bloggers own translation of the passage, at least if I understand what he writes correctly. This could very well be a biased translation since the blogger wants to prove that the texts makes a certain prediction. I found a separate English translation of the passage for comparison. The Messiah Texts: Jewish Legends of Three Thousand Years It's on Google books, so I cannot copy-paste the translation, but the central passage is translated as:

And on that day three lofty walls of that city of Rome will collapse, and a mighty palace will fall and the ruler of that city will die.

This is quite different and does not match 9/11 very well. 9/11 did not happen in Rome, and it wasn't just three walls the fell that day. And neither the ruler of Rome nor the ruler of New York died that day.

And if you starts to read the surrounding context, they don't fit very well either. For example a star with seventy flames was supposed to be revealed on the firmament on the same day and then disappear again after seventy days. I don't remember this happening.

I don't know Hebrew so I cant say which translation is most correct, but from the given I strongly suspect the prophecy only vaguely fits 9/11 if you create you own biased translation and crop the context.

If you read further in the bloggers analysis of the passage, he posits that the prophecy refers to Osama bin Laden hiding in a cave, from where he will detonate a nuclear bomb, escape in a plane, and become ruler of the world. It did not exactly happen like this...

Btw. the footnote in the above book states that:

Adolf Jellenik calculated that this passage refers to the death of Pope Nicolas the III on August 22, 1280 (...)

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