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Sefer Yetzirah

Sefer Yetzirah

This tremendous influence from the 10th century on is totallyin opposition to the situation prevalent prior to that time. Inancient Jewish literature, in the Talmudic and Midrashic literatureand all its branches, and in the mystical literature such as theHekhalot and Merkavah Literature and all its works, one does notfind any mention of Sefer Yetzirah and its special terminology. Ina few midrashim which were edited in the Middle Ages one findstraces of it, but in those works which were composed and editedin ancient times itself, there is no parallel or even a hint of theconceptual world of this work. The picture which emerges is thatthe author of Sefer Yetzirah was a lone thinker, without a schooland without disciples; who left no mark on his surroundings.Only hundreds of years after his work was written was it takenup and did it become influential.

We do not know when Sefer Yetzirah was written. Therehave been attempts to establish its date based on a statement inTB Sanhedrin, which states that R' Hanina and R' Oshiya werestudying Hilkhot Yetzirah, and they created a "triple calf' (therehave been numerous explanations of this phrase, ranging from athree-year old calf to a calf with three heads), and ate it at afestive meal. There were those who thought that Hi/khot Yetzirahwas a reference to Sefer Yetzirah, and as R' Hanina and R'Oshiya lived in the 4th century C.E., it is possible that the bookwas written about that time. But that is no proof: Sefer Yetzirahdoes not deal with creating a "triple calf' or any other type ofcalf, but with the theoretical principles of creation, and there is noproof that there exists any connection at all between that statementin the Talmud and Sefer Yetzirah itself, which might have beencomposed two hundred years before that time or two hundredyears after it.

Sefer Yetzirah has two or three expressions which indicate alink of some type to the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature, butthis is at most a marginal linguistic link. In terms of their worldview, their basic concepts, and their approach to understandingthe cO/{lIIllgollical and cosmological phenomena, it is difficult to

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One of the most important texts that ancient Judaism gave toJewish mysticism in the Middle Ages and in the modern era is abrief treatise, only a few pages long, known as Sefer Yetzirah,which deals with the principles of the creation of the world andthe way it exists, i.e., cosmogony and cosmology. This book,whose background, era and place of origin are all unknown tous, became one of the foundation stones of Jewish thought in theMiddle Ages: among those who wrote commentaries on it wereR' Sa'adiah Gaon, R' Shabbetai Donolo, R' Judah Halevi (in thefourth section of his Kuzari), R' Judah ben Barzilai of Barcelonaand many others among the Jewish rationalists; and, alongsidethese, the leaders of Hasidei Ashkenaz, such as R' Judah He-Hasid, R' Eliezer of Worms, and R' Elhanan ben Yakar; theearliest kabbalists in Provence (R' Isaac Sagi Nahor); and thescholars of Gerona and other kabbalists. Various concepts whichare found for the first time in Sefer Yetzirah, and first andforemost among these the concept of sefirot, suppliedterminology and symbolism for the Jewish thought in the MiddleAges. It is difficult to find another single treatise with such greatinfluence, one which does not represent a particular school orstream, and which is of so small a size.

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find a substantive meeting point between the two types of works.This fact is especially noticeable if we compare Sefer Yetzirah toother works dealing with the secrets of the act of creation, firstand foremost of these being Beraita d'Ma'aseh Bereshit. In theseother works, the proximity to the Hekhalot and MerkavahLiterature, and primarily to the expositions of "the work of theChariot" - which describe the structure of the world Above - isvery great, and it appears that they at least belong to differentbranches of a single spiritual and cultural stream. Sefer Yetzirahis not like that: there is almost nothing it shares with the othercosmogonical works in the ancient literature, and the more weexamine identical problems which are discussed in both, the morepronounced is the difference and the less the possibility ofproximity and influence. It is very possible that Sefer Yetzirah isalso a product of the spiritual ferment which gave birth to theancient mystical literature, but the author of this work chose forhimself a unique and separate path, and formulated a terminologywhich has no parallel, in order to express thereby his spiritualworld.

Due to the small size of the book and its unique terminology,the majority of the book cannot be understood by us. We arclacking terms which are synonymous with the terms used here,and we are forced to explain them in accordance with the verylimited scope of the book itself. As a result, there have been anextremely large number of proposals - some very far-fetchedindeed, to find meanings within the work itself. These meaningsmay be very difficult to contradict, but they certainly cannot beproven from the book itself.

Sefer Yetzirah expresses great spiritual daring, and for thisalone, in addition to the fact that it had so great an influence, itwould deserve a place in the foremost ranks of treatises of Jewishspiritual creativity. The writer felt that he had the right tocompletely reexamine some of the most basic assumptions ofJewish thought, both those in the Bible and those in the Talmudicand Midrashic literature, to offer suhl'llitllt('14 I'm them, and to

follow his own individual path without taking into account thefact that hallowed sources such as these had adopted differentpositions. There is no doubt that the author of Sefer Yetzirahbelieved that he was revealing hidden and profound strata ofGod's ways in creating the world and maintaining it, strata whichhad been concealed from the eyes of the greatest of scholars.

The opening sentence of Sefer Yetzirah encompasses withinitself the entire significance of the complex feeling of the authorto the world of thought which preceded him: "With thirty-twopaths of hidden wisdom God the Lord of Hosts the God ofIsrael, the living God decreed ... and created His world."

These thirty-two paths, which are hidden and secret, arecomposed of two groups, as explained further on: ten sefirot andthe twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The simplemeaning of the term sefirot in its original meaning is ciphers, i.e.,the numbers from 1 to 10 (the number 0 was not known inancient times, and both the Romans and the Greeks, as the Jews,wrote letters instead of numbers. The smallest number was 1.The Arabic culture brought to the east and to Europe the conceptof 0, whose origin is evidently in India). In other words,. thecreation of the world was carried out by means of thirty-twopaths, which were like a typewriter: twenty-two letters and tenciphers.

This idea is not at all new in Jewish thought, at least in itsoriginal form. In Tractate A vot we are told: "With ten sayingswas the world created," and here the reference is to the ten timesin Genesis I that it states, "and God said." In other words, in thebeginning there was no world at all. Ten times God saidsomething, a statement composed of the letters of the Hebrewalphabet, and behold - there was the world. From this one canconclude that by combining the powers of the letters with thenumbers, God created the world out of nothing.

However there is a major difference between the statement inAvot and the opening sentence of Sefer Yetzirah. The statementin the M ishnnh is expositional, summarizing that which was

The Ancient Jewish Mysticism Sefer Yetziralt

stated in Genesis I in a different form. Rather than giving God',-statements one by one, the Mishnah summarizes them by stating,"With ten sayings was the world created." This is the typicalmethod used by the Sages to expound on and to summarize tilt'words of the Bible, and there is no intention here to add to themThis is a description of what a person can find when he reads till'Book of Genesis - the number of God's sayings which createdthe world. Sefer Yetzirah, on the other hand, seeks till'fundamental principles: with the aid of thirty-two paths, whichare the letters and the ciphers, God created His world. This is nota description of Genesis I but a scientific statement, that a certaincombination of these thirty-two paths brings about the creation.This is not an exposition or a description, but a formulationwhich seeks to find the scientific truth regarding the way that tlu:world was created - and if this is scientific truth, then bringing itto light means that one will be able to repeat the process, in all OJ

in part. Thus whoever knows the secret of the thirty-two pathscan possibly participate in the process of creation, either of aworld or of a creature.

The framework within which this matter is contained in SeferYetzirah evidently seems to hint that the secrets of this book hadbeen revealed to Abraham, and by means of them he discoveredthe existence of the One God. It was through this that Abrahamunderstood the existence of God and arrived at a belief in Himbefore the giving of the Torah. The end of the treatise (Chapter ()Mishnah 4) states:

As Abraham our father, peace be upon him, perceivedand looked and saw and investigated and understood andinscribed and engraved and combined and fashioned, andwas successful, the Master of All, blessed be He, appearedto him and placed him in His lap and kissed him on his headand called him "My beloved one" and made a covenant withhim and his seed, "and he believed in God and it wasconsidered for him as a merit."

In other words, Abraham understood by himself, by thepower of his "perception," the way the world was created, andthus he realized that there was one creator. The divine revelationto him and the covenant God made with him came afterwards, inthe wake of Abraham's understanding by himself' andinvestigating by himself. Sefer Yetzirah is, between its openingsentence and its concluding sentence, a review of the processwhich Abraham went through and which brought him to be thefirst person to believe in the one God.

The term sefirot at the beginning of Sefer Yetzirah does notonly refer to the first ten ciphers and nothing else. The first partof the book is devoted to a series of explanations of the meaningof this term, which is referred to in full as "the ten sefirot ofbelimah," and the part played by these sefirot in the process ofthe creation. The author gives a series of explanations of the termsefirot, and even though these explanations are not totallycontradictory, they are definitely very different from one another.

The number of sefirot is ten, no more and no less, states theauthor:

There are ten sefirot of belimah, ten and not nine, tenand not eleven. Know with wisdom and be wise withknowledge, test them and investigate them and clarifymatters completely and place the Creator in His abode.

The importance of the number ten is brought in anotherpassage:

There are ten sefirot of belimah, the number of tenfingers, five against five and the solitary covenant isdirected at the center as the milah (meaning either "word" or"circumcision") of the tongue and the milah of the genitals.

In other words, the importance of the number stems from thefact that it adorns the covenant, five opposite five. There are fivefingers on each hand and in the middle is the tongue, the sourceof the "word," and there are five toes opposite five, with thecircumcision between them. There is a play on words in the two

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meanings of milah here, but this passage also informs us thatthere is a cosmic meaning to the physical figure of man.

How do these sefirot fulfill their functions by the fact thatthey are the round number of ten? To this, the author answer,clearly:

The term sefirot of belimah implies ten which have noend. The depth of the beginning and the depth of thending, the depth of good and the depth of evil, the depthof height and the depth of the abyss, the depth of east andthe depth of west, the depth of north and the depth ofsouth, the solitary God, the faithful King, rules over all ofthem from His holy abode and for all eternity.

From this passage and parallel ones in the book, one canunderstand the basic cosmological view of the author of Sef,Yetzirah: in the midst of the cosmos is "the holy hekhal," or "Hisholy abode," the Temple in Jerusalem (or the place of theTemple, before it was built). From it ten infinite directions spreadout, these being the sefirot of belimah. These directions, or"depths," join to five dimensions: the three dimensions of space,namely length, width and height (north, south, east, west, above,below), and to them is added the fourth dimension which isaccepted in physics today as well - time, i.e., the beginning andthe ending. These four dimensions create physical reality. Thefifth dimension, according to Sefer Yetzirah (which has not yetbeen discovered by physics) is the ethical one - good and evil.

It is difficult to know what exactly the author of SeferYetzirah had in mind with this fifth dimension. The medievalcommentators, who did not know more than we do of theoriginal meaning of the book, would explain it as referring to thevil which is reserved for the wicked and the good reserved forthe righteous, i.e., gehinnom and paradise. However, thisinterpretation is not appropriate to the infinite qualities of theother dimensions. Gehinnom and paradise are places withbounds, and indeed the concepts of reward and punishmentgenerally have limits, whereas here the implication is that these

dimensions are infinite. Another possibility which is found ill HII'medieval commentaries, which was influenced by neo-Platouicphilosophy, is to regard "good and evil" as spirituality andmatter: the infinite good spirituality of God as opposed to Hispresence in the material which is evil. Sefer Yetzirah itself doesnot contain any proof for any such interpretation.

There is no contradiction between regarding the ten sefirot asthe ten first ciphers and the view of them as the directions for theinfinite expansion of the universe, although the one does not haveto follow from the other. However the author of the work adds tothis interpretation another one, which is totally different in nature:

The ten sefirot of belimah are, one: the spirit of the livingGod, may the name be blessed of the Eternal One, a voiceand spirit and speech, and that is the divine spirit. Two:spirit from spirit, He inscribed and engraved upon it thetwenty-two letters ... Three: water from the spirit, Heinscribed and engraved upon it formlessness and void, mudand clay which He engraved as a type of row ... Four: firefrom water, He inscribed and engraved on it the Throne ofGlory, the serafim and the ofanim and the holy hayot andthe ministering angels, and from the three He formed Hisabode.

The sefirot are presented here as stages in the process of theforming of the elements, of which there are three according toSefer Yetzirah: air, water and fire. The source of the air which isthe basis for all of existence is the divine spirit, the spirit of theliving God, which is described as the first among the ten sefirot.The second sefirah is an evolution of the elemental spirit or wind,the air which is a component of universal existence, from thespirit of the living God. The third sefirah is the formation ofwater from within the elemental air, while the fourth sefirah bythis count is the formation of fire from within the water.

The se]! rot in this description are thus not directions,dimensions OJ' cipher», hut stages in the process of the formationand evolution Id thl' I'kllwnts which comprise existence. These

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are not elements precisely according to the meaning of the term inGreek science, which sees all of reality comprised of foulelements (earth is the element missing here), because, in theoriginal view of the theory of elements, these have existed for alltime. The aim of the author in this passage was specifically tostress that the existence of these elements is secondary, as theyevolved and were formed from the supreme divine existence,which is the spirit of the living God.

The absence of the fourth element is explained later in SeferYetzirah: According to it, earth is but another form of snow, inaccordance with the verse, "For he says to the snow, 'Be you onthe earth'" (Job 37:6). Thus earth is not an element as such,being but water. However, as we will see later on, the author hadother reasons for deciding on three elements and not four.

The significance of the formation process is clarified if weexamine what the results were of the devising of the elementsdescribed in this process of the development of the sefirot. Thefirst sefirah, the spirit of the living God, is not only God's spirit,but is also "a voice and spirit and speech, and that is the divinespirit," i.e., the first sefirah signifies the formation of God'scommunicative element, for "a voice and spirit and speech" arethe components in God's making contact with the prophets, withreality, and also possibly the source of the utterances whereby theworld was created. "The divine spirit" is not God's spirit initself, but the spirit which beats within the universe, in thoseplaces where God chose to reveal Himself, whether in aprophet's heart or in the study hall. The first sefirah is thus thatof God approaching the world, the beginning of the processwhich brought about the formation of the universe in which Godis present.

The second sefirah, "spirit from spirit," is the one in whichthe letters of the alphabet were created: "He inscribed andengraved upon it the twenty-two letter paths, three imot (seebelow), seven doubles, and twelve regulars, and one spirit fromthem." It is very difficult to understand the 1111'11 phrase, "and on"

spirit from them," however the general gist of the description isclear: the spirit mentioned here, the second sefirah of "the divinespirit," is the one which enables the expression of the twenty-twoletters of the alphabet. While in the first stage, "the spirit of theliving God," or "the divine spirit," God's approach to the worldwas formed, here the tools were fashioned whereby thiscommunication is implemented, the spirit which operates thedivine speech by means of the letters of the alphabet. Theseletters are divided into three groups, two of them clearlygrammatical - the seven "double" letters (bet, gimmel, daled,kaf, peh, resh, tav), which are described further on: these are theletters which, when marked by a dagesh (a dot inside the letter)have a different pronunciation than when the dagesh is notpresent (generally, resh is not considered a "double" letter, butthere are a few instances in the Bible where it appears as such);and twelve letters which are "regular." Furthermore, there arethree letters which are imot, this being a term used only in SeferYetzirah. This term is evidently not grammatical in nature buttheoretical and conceptual. These are the three letters ale], memand shin, which represent the three basic elements respectively:avir (air, i.e., wind), mayim (water) and esh (fire), as these arethe central letters in the names of these elements. According toSefer Yetzirah, the elements, too, are first and foremost theproducts of the special letters in the alphabet, which are thesource of existence.

These two primary stages thus do not represent any tangibleexistence, but God's approaching the world and the formation ofthe tool whereby He communicates with it - language. The thirdstage, "water from the wind," already represents a certain type ofreality: "He inscribed and engraved upon it formlessness andvoid, mud and clay, which he engraved as a type of row." Thisevidently refers to what is described in Genesis 1:2, whichprccodes the first saying of the creation ("Let there be light"),stating: "And the earth was without form, and void ... and theSpirll III (lllci moved upon the face of the waters." Water,

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Sefer Yetzirah

according to a possible explanation of this verse, was not createdwithin the process of creation represented by the ten utterance ••,but in an earlier process which is the third sefirah, and th..formation of water, according to Sefer Yetzirah, was thformation of the formlessness and void, which also appears inGenesis as something which preceded the creation process. TIll'author of Sefer Yetzirah evidently understood the picturerepresented by formlessness and void as a sort of series 01columns and rows of water, the primeval water, which laterserved as raw material in the creation process.

The fourth stage, the fourth sefirah, "fire from water," refersto celestial beings which are fire by their nature - the Throne ofGlory, the seraphim, the ofanim, the ministering angels, i.e., thepowers of the Chariot which Ezekiel saw, and the angels whichare fire by their nature. Together with everything else, at thisstage of cosmic development- God created His "Abode," which,according to this, seems to be made of fire.

What, then are these stages which are represented by the foursefirot which developed one from the other? Are these stages inthe creation process or not? It would appear that we candetermine that the author of Sefer Yetzirah came to complementwith his words the description of processes which are notmentioned in Genesis. He does not regard his cosmogonicaldescription as a repetition of what the Bible states and does notinclude in the sefirot the ten utterances with which the world wascreated. According to him, these sefirot are stages in the creationprocess which preceded the creation itself, which preparedexistence for "Let there be light," the actual beginning of thecreation. Whatever Sefer Yetzirah mentions in connection withthese four stages of development is not mentioned as beingcreated later on, in the description of the Biblical acts of creation.One is thus to understand that in this work we find an attempt tocomplete the classical description of the creation of the Book ofGenesis, and to determine common elements to the processeswhich preceded "Let there be light" and the processes thereafter.

A great deal of difficulty exists in the fact that after listingthese four sefirot, the list ceases. In the versions of Sefer Yetzirahwhich we have, there is an attempt to rectify matters, by addingthe six "depths" mentioned earlier: north, south, east, west,above, below, as if they thus round off the number of sefirot toten. However, it is possible that this was an attempt by a latecopier or editor to harmonize a difficult text, for there is noreason, according to Sefer Yetzirah, to differentiate between thesesix and the four others - beginning and ending, good and evil,for together they represent the ten sefirot according to theexplanation that these are the dimensions of reality. It wouldappear that we have to relate to this enumeration of four stages asan indication of another aspect of viewing the sefirot of SeferYetzirah, because we do not have the data to enable us to form awhole which unifies the different views into a coherent internalunity which we can comprehend.

However, this does not exhaust the classifications of the tensefirot in Sefer Yetzirah which are totally different from oneanother. The author states: "The ten sefirot of belimah - their endis connected to their beginning and their beginning to their end asa flame is attached to a coal, that the master is solitary and there isno second, and before one what do you count." In spite of thenumerous interpretations and hypotheses regarding thisstatement, it appears that we do not have the key to understand it.What is the connection between the sefirot and the "solitarymaster," and what is the connection to "and before one what doyou count"? These are extremely difficult questions. However, bethe explanation as it may, "their end is connected to theirbeginning and their beginning to their end as a flame is attached toa coal" is not exactly a description of either sefirot or thedimensions of reality, nor of the stages of the development ofthese clements one from the other. The passage hints clearly thatthe s<'f/rol of belimah have other characteristics which are notImifit-d. Another passage is also devoted to this:

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The ten sefirot of belimah - their appearance is like thatof lightning. They are infinite, God's word is in them,going to and fro .. and they bow before His throne.

In the midst of the cosmogonical discussion, these wordsconjure up, in full force, a picture of the upper Chariot ofEzekiel, and even an echo of the characteristic terminology of theHekhalot and Merkavah Literature - "their appearance is like thatof lightning," and it thus appears that the sefirot have theappearance of lightning. This is not in keeping with the firstdefinition of the sefirot, nor with the directions in which thecosmos expands, nor even with the stages of the development ofthe elements. Here the sefirot are viewed as a subject ofobservation and experience, something one can see. One finds inthis description an element of dynamism, of activity within theframework of the divine powers, "at His word, they pursue as astorm," "before His throne they bow down" - these are imageswhich cannot be linked to the scientific principles of the earlierviews of the sefirot. It is clear that there is not only a scientificcosmogony here, but within this cosmogony there are elementsthat can serve as components in a mystical experience and in thedescription of dynamic activity in the esoteric realms of theGodhead. It is not surprising that the kabbalists of the MiddleAges adopted the term sefirot in Sefer Yetzirah and used itas thefoundation stone for their views of the Godhead, because thisterm is so rich and complex that one could find place within it forthe mystical symbolism which had been developed in the studyhalls of the kabbalists in Provence and in southern Spain at theend of the 12th century. Other circles of Jewish mystics inEurope in the Middle Ages, such as the hug ha-iyun, with aprofound neo-Platonic mysticism, based on systems of lights andnumerical and linguistic combinations, were built upon thefoundations that had been laid in Sefer Yetzirah, and this was truefor other groups as well. The enigmatic meaning and the mysterywhich prevent us from understanding the simple meaning of theauthor of the work served as a gold mine for couuueutators, both

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Sefer Yetzirali

rationalists and mystics, in the Middle Ages.Without in any way minimizing the status of the mystical

element which emerges from the few pages of Sefer Yetzirah, westill have to state that the main and central aspect of the book is anattempt to formulate scientifically a Jewish cosmogonical view.This statement is important, because we often tend to regard themysticism of language as one of the characteristics of Jewishmysticism in general. Indeed there is no doubt that, in thekabbalah of the Middle Ages, a tremendous and complex mysticalview of the Hebrew language was formulated, one which wasnurtured to a large measure by earlier traditions, including amongthese the traditions of Sefer Yetzirah. However the original aimof the author of the book was not to fashion a mysticism, but tounderstand in a principled and methodical way the structure of theuniverse and the way it came about. As the source for theformation of the cosmos are the words of God, and these wordsare composed of Hebrew letters, it is in them that one must seekthe source for the creative power and the power of continuedexistence of all of reality. This is a scientific and not mysticalapproach, and especially when the very view that language is thesource of the cosmos is one held in common by both SeferYetzirab and the Sages - "Bezalel knew how to combine theletters from which the Heavens and the earth were created," and"with ten utterances was the world created." And this is even inaccordance with the ancient mystics, who, for example,described the secrets of creation which were given to Enoch-Metatron in the form of "the letters with which the heavens andthe earth were created." What Sefer Yetzirah added was logicalscientific thought and not mysticism. The mystical elementevidently lies in the view of the sefirot which is to an extentpurely scientific, possibly even mathematical and physical, butwhich, beyond a certain limit, has an aspect of mystical vision.

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