Sefer Yetzirah XII. Sefer Yetzirah One of the most important texts that ancient Judaism gave to Jewish mysticism in the Middle Ages and in the modern era is a brief treatise, only a few pages long, known as Sefer Yetzirah, which deals with the principles of the creation of the world and the way it exists, i.e., cosmogony and cosmology. This book, whose background, era and place of origin are all unknown to us, became one of the foundation stones of Jewish thought in the Middle Ages: among those who wrote commentaries on it were R' Sa'adiah Gaon, R' Shabbetai Donolo, R' Judah Halevi (in the fourth section of his Kuzari), R' Judah ben Barzilai of Barcelona and many others among the Jewish rationalists; and, alongside these, the leaders of Hasidei Ashkenaz, such as R' Judah He- Hasid, R' Eliezer of Worms, and R' Elhanan ben Yakar; the earliest kabbalists in Provence (R' Isaac Sagi Nahor); and the scholars of Gerona and other kabbalists. Various concepts which are found for the first time in Sefer Yetzirah, and first and foremost among these the concept of sefirot, supplied terminology and symbolism for the Jewish thought in the Middle Ages. It is difficult to find another single treatise with such great influence, one which does not represent a particular school or stream, and which is of so small a size. This tremendous influence from the 10th century on is totally in opposition to the situation prevalent prior to that time. In ancient Jewish literature, in the Talmudic and Midrashic literature and all its branches, and in the mystical literature such as the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature and all its works, one does not find any mention of Sefer Yetzirah and its special terminology. In a few midrashim which were edited in the Middle Ages one finds traces of it, but in those works which were composed and edited in ancient times itself, there is no parallel or even a hint of the conceptual world of this work. The picture which emerges is that the author of Sefer Yetzirah was a lone thinker, without a school and without disciples; who left no mark on his surroundings. Only hundreds of years after his work was written was it taken up and did it become influential. We do not know when Sefer Yetzirah was written. There have been attempts to establish its date based on a statement in TB Sanhedrin, which states that R' Hanina and R' Oshiya were studying Hilkhot Yetzirah, and they created a "triple calf' (there have been numerous explanations of this phrase, ranging from a three-year old calf to a calf with three heads), and ate it at a festive meal. There were those who thought that Hi/khot Yetzirah was a reference to Sefer Yetzirah, and as R' Hanina and R' Oshiya lived in the 4th century C.E., it is possible that the book was written about that time. But that is no proof: Sefer Yetzirah does not deal with creating a "triple calf' or any other type of calf, but with the theoretical principles of creation, and there is no proof that there exists any connection at all between that statement in the Talmud and Sefer Yetzirah itself, which might have been composed two hundred years before that time or two hundred years after it. Sefer Yetzirah has two or three expressions which indicate a link of some type to the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature, but this is at most a marginal linguistic link. In terms of their world view, their basic concepts, and their approach to understanding the co/{liillgollical and cosmological phenomena, it is difficult to 19H I()C)
Sefer Yetzirah find a substantive meeting point between the two types of works. This fact is especially noticeable if we compare Sefer Yetzirah to other works dealing with the secrets of the act of creation, first and foremost of these being Beraita d'ma'aseh Bereshit. In these other works, the proximity to the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature, and primarily to the expositions of "the work of the Chariot" - which describe the structure of the world Above - is very great, and it appears that they at least belong to different branches of a single spiritual and cultural stream. Sefer Yetzirah is not like that: there is almost nothing it shares with the other cosmogonical works in the ancient literature, and the more we examine identical problems which are discussed in both, the more pronounced is the difference and the less the possibility of proximity and influence. It is very possible that Sefer Yetzirah is also a product of the spiritual ferment which gave birth to the ancient mystical literature, but the author of this work chose for himself a unique and separate path, and formulated a terminology which has no parallel, in order to express thereby his spiritual world. Due to the small size of the book and its unique terminology, the majority of the book cannot be understood by us. We arc lacking terms which are synonymous with the terms used here, and we are forced to explain them in accordance with the very limited scope of the book itself. As a result, there have been an extremely large number of proposals - some very far-fetched indeed, to find meanings within the work itself. These meanings may be very difficult to contradict, but they certainly cannot be proven from the book itself. Sefer Yetzirah expresses great spiritual daring, and for this alone, in addition to the fact that it had so great an influence, it would deserve a place in the foremost ranks of treatises of Jewish spiritual creativity. The writer felt that he had the right to completely reexamine some of the most basic assumptions of Jewish thought, both those in the Bible and those in the Talmudic and Midrashic literature, to offer suhl'llitllt('14 I'm them, and to follow his own individual path without taking into account the fact that hallowed sources such as these had adopted different positions. There is no doubt that the author of Sefer Yetzirah believed that he was revealing hidden and profound strata of God's ways in creating the world and maintaining it, strata which had been concealed from the eyes of the greatest of scholars. The opening sentence of Sefer Yetzirah encompasses within itself the entire significance of the complex feeling of the author to the world of thought which preceded him: "With thirty-two paths of hidden wisdom God the Lord of Hosts the God of Israel, the living God decreed... and created His world." These thirty-two paths, which are hidden and secret, are composed of two groups, as explained further on: ten sefirot and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The simple meaning of the term sefirot in its original meaning is ciphers, i.e., the numbers from 1 to 10 (the number 0 was not known in ancient 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 concept of 0, whose origin is evidently in India). In other words,. the creation of the world was carried out by means of thirty-two paths, which were like a typewriter: twenty-two letters and ten ciphers. This idea is not at all new in Jewish thought, at least in its original form. In Tractate A vot we are told: "With ten sayings was the world created," and here the reference is to the ten times in Genesis I that it states, "and God said." In other words, in the beginning there was no world at all. Ten times God said something, a statement composed of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and behold - there was the world. From this one can conclude that by combining the powers of the letters with the numbers, God created the world out of nothing. However there is a major difference between the statement in Avot and the opening sentence of Sefer Yetzirah. The statement in the M ishnnh is expositional, summarizing that which was 00 01
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 typical method used by the Sages to expound on and to summarize tilt' words of the Bible, and there is no intention here to add to them This is a description of what a person can find when he reads till' Book of Genesis - the number of God's sayings which created the world. Sefer Yetzirah, on the other hand, seeks till' fundamental principles: with the aid of thirty-two paths, which are the letters and the ciphers, God created His world. This is not a description of Genesis I but a scientific statement, that a certain combination of these thirty-two paths brings about the creation. This is not an exposition or a description, but a formulation which seeks to find the scientific truth regarding the way that tlu: world was created - and if this is scientific truth, then bringing it to 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 paths can possibly participate in the process of creation, either of a world or of a creature. The framework within which this matter is contained in Sefer Yetzirah evidently seems to hint that the secrets of this book had been revealed to Abraham, and by means of them he discovered the existence of the One God. It was through this that Abraham understood the existence of God and arrived at a belief in Him before the giving of the Torah. The end of the treatise (Chapter () Mishnah 4) states: As Abraham our father, peace be upon him, perceived and looked and saw and investigated and understood and inscribed and engraved and combined and fashioned, and was successful, the Master of All, blessed be He, appeared to him and placed him in His lap and kissed him on his head and called him "My beloved one" and made a covenant with him and his seed, "and he believed in God and it was considered for him as a merit." In other words, Abraham understood by himself, by the power of his "perception," the way the world was created, and thus he realized that there was one creator. The divine revelation to him and the covenant God made with him came afterwards, in the wake of Abraham's understanding by himself' and investigating by himself. Sefer Yetzirah is, between its opening sentence and its concluding sentence, a review of the process which Abraham went through and which brought him to be the first person to believe in the one God. The term sefirot at the beginning of Sefer Yetzirah does not only refer to the first ten ciphers and nothing else. The first part of the book is devoted to a series of explanations of the meaning of this term, which is referred to in full as "the ten sefirot of belimah," and the part played by these sefirot in the process of the creation. The author gives a series of explanations of the term sefirot, and even though these explanations are not totally contradictory, they are definitely very different from one another. The number of sefirot is ten, no more and no less, states the author: There are ten sefirot of belimah, ten and not nine, ten and not eleven. Know with wisdom and be wise with knowledge, test them and investigate them and clarify matters completely and place the Creator in His abode. The importance of the number ten is brought in another passage: There are ten sefirot of belimah, the number of ten fingers, five against five and the solitary covenant is directed 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 the fact that it adorns the covenant, five opposite five. There are five fingers on each hand and in the middle is the tongue, the source of the "word," and there are five toes opposite five, with the circumcision between them. There is a play on words in the two () 03
meanings of milah here, but this passage also informs us that there is a cosmic meaning to the physical figure of man. How do these sefirot fulfill their functions by the fact that they are the round number of ten? To this, the author answer, clearly: The term sefirot of belimah implies ten which have no end. The depth of the beginning and the depth of th ending, the depth of good and the depth of evil, the depth of height and the depth of the abyss, the depth of east and the depth of west, the depth of north and the depth of south, the solitary God, the faithful King, rules over all of them from His holy abode and for all eternity. From this passage and parallel ones in the book, one can understand the basic cosmological view of the author of Sef, Yetzirah: in the midst of the cosmos is "the holy hekhal," or "His holy abode," the Temple in Jerusalem (or the place of the Temple, before it was built). From it ten infinite directions spread out, 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 is accepted in physics today as well - time, i.e., the beginning and the ending. These four dimensions create physical reality. The fifth dimension, according to Sefer Yetzirah (which has not yet been discovered by physics) is the ethical one - good and evil. It is difficult to know what exactly the author of Sefer Yetzirah had in mind with this fifth dimension. The medieval commentators, who did not know more than we do of the original meaning of the book, would explain it as referring to th evil which is reserved for the wicked and the good reserved for the righteous, i.e., gehinnom and paradise. However, this interpretation is not appropriate to the infinite qualities of the other dimensions. Gehinnom and paradise are places with bounds, and indeed the concepts of reward and punishment generally have limits, whereas here the implication is that these 04 Seier Yd:III,1t dimensions are infinite. Another possibility which is found ill HII' medieval commentaries, which was influenced by neo-platouic philosophy, is to regard "good and evil" as spirituality and matter: the infinite good spirituality of God as opposed to His presence in the material which is evil. Sefer Yetzirah itself does not contain any proof for any such interpretation. There is no contradiction between regarding the ten sefirot as the ten first ciphers and the view of them as the directions for the infinite expansion of the universe, although the one does not have to follow from the other. However the author of the work adds to this interpretation another one, which is totally different in nature: The ten sefirot of belimah are, one: the spirit of the living God, may the name be blessed of the Eternal One, a voice and spirit and speech, and that is the divine spirit. Two: spirit from spirit, He inscribed and engraved upon it the twenty-two letters... Three: water from the spirit, He inscribed and engraved upon it formlessness and void, mud and clay which He engraved as a type of row... Four: fire from water, He inscribed and engraved on it the Throne of Glory, the serafim and the ofanim and the holy hayot and the ministering angels, and from the three He formed His abode. The sefirot are presented here as stages in the process of the forming of the elements, of which there are three according to Sefer Yetzirah: air, water and fire. The source of the air which is the basis for all of existence is the divine spirit, the spirit of the living 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 the spirit of the living God. The third sefirah is the formation of water from within the elemental air, while the fourth sefirah by this 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 formation and evolution Id thl' I'kllwnts which comprise existence. These o.
Sefer Yetzirah are not elements precisely according to the meaning of the term in Greek science, which sees all of reality comprised of foul elements (earth is the element missing here), because, in the original view of the theory of elements, these have existed for all time. The aim of the author in this passage was specifically to stress that the existence of these elements is secondary, as they evolved 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 Sefer Yetzirah: According to it, earth is but another form of snow, in accordance with the verse, "For he says to the snow, 'Be you on the earth'" (Job 37:6). Thus earth is not an element as such, being but water. However, as we will see later on, the author had other reasons for deciding on three elements and not four. The significance of the formation process is clarified if we examine what the results were of the devising of the elements described in this process of the development of the sefirot. The first 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 divine spirit," i.e., the first sefirah signifies the formation of God's communicative element, for "a voice and spirit and speech" are the components in God's making contact with the prophets, with reality, and also possibly the source of the utterances whereby the world was created. "The divine spirit" is not God's spirit in itself, but the spirit which beats within the universe, in those places where God chose to reveal Himself, whether in a prophet's heart or in the study hall. The first sefirah is thus that of God approaching the world, the beginning of the process which brought about the formation of the universe in which God is present. The second sefirah, "spirit from spirit," is the one in which the letters of the alphabet were created: "He inscribed and engraved upon it the twenty-two letter paths, three imot (see below), seven doubles, and twelve regulars, and one spirit from them." It is very difficult to understand the 1111'11 phrase, "and on" oo spirit from them," however the general gist of the description is clear: the spirit mentioned here, the second sefirah of "the divine spirit," is the one which enables the expression of the twenty-two letters of the alphabet. While in the first stage, "the spirit of the living God," or "the divine spirit," God's approach to the world was formed, here the tools were fashioned whereby this communication is implemented, the spirit which operates the divine speech by means of the letters of the alphabet. These letters are divided into three groups, two of them clearly grammatical - the seven "double" letters (bet, gimmel, daled, kaf, peh, resh, tav), which are described further on: these are the letters which, when marked by a dagesh (a dot inside the letter) have a different pronunciation than when the dagesh is not present (generally, resh is not considered a "double" letter, but there are a few instances in the Bible where it appears as such); and twelve letters which are "regular." Furthermore, there are three letters which are imot, this being a term used only in Sefer Yetzirah. This term is evidently not grammatical in nature but theoretical and conceptual. These are the three letters ale], mem and shin, which represent the three basic elements respectively: avir (air, i.e., wind), mayim (water) and esh (fire), as these are the central letters in the names of these elements. According to Sefer Yetzirah, the elements, too, are first and foremost the products of the special letters in the alphabet, which are the source of existence. These two primary stages thus do not represent any tangible existence, but God's approaching the world and the formation of the tool whereby He communicates with it - language. The third stage, "water from the wind," already represents a certain type of reality: "He inscribed and engraved upon it formlessness and void, mud and clay, which he engraved as a type of row." This evidently refers to what is described in Genesis 1:2, which prccodes the first saying of the creation ("Let there be light"), stating: "And the earth was without form, and void... and the Spirll III (lllci moved upon the face of the waters." Water, ()
- Sefer Yetzirah according to a possible explanation of this verse, was not created within 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 th formation of the formlessness and void, which also appears in Genesis as something which preceded the creation process. TIll' author of Sefer Yetzirah evidently understood the picture represented by formlessness and void as a sort of series 01 columns and rows of water, the primeval water, which later served as raw material in the creation process. The fourth stage, the fourth sefirah, "fire from water," refers to celestial beings which are fire by their nature - the Throne of Glory, the seraphim, the ofanim, the ministering angels, i.e., the powers of the Chariot which Ezekiel saw, and the angels which are fire by their nature. Together with everything else, at this stage 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 four sefirot which developed one from the other? Are these stages in the creation process or not? It would appear that we can determine that the author of Sefer Yetzirah came to complement with his words the description of processes which are not mentioned in Genesis. He does not regard his cosmogonical description as a repetition of what the Bible states and does not include in the sefirot the ten utterances with which the world was created. According to him, these sefirot are stages in the creation process which preceded the creation itself, which prepared existence for "Let there be light," the actual beginning of the creation. Whatever Sefer Yetzirah mentions in connection with these four stages of development is not mentioned as being created later on, in the description of the Biblical acts of creation. One is thus to understand that in this work we find an attempt to complete the classical description of the creation of the Book of Genesis, and to determine common elements to the processes which preceded "Let there be light" and the processes thereafter. 208 A great deal of difficulty exists in the fact that after listing these four sefirot, the list ceases. In the versions of Sefer Yetzirah which we have, there is an attempt to rectify matters, by adding the six "depths" mentioned earlier: north, south, east, west, above, below, as if they thus round off the number of sefirot to ten. However, it is possible that this was an attempt by a late copier or editor to harmonize a difficult text, for there is no reason, according to Sefer Yetzirah, to differentiate between these six and the four others - beginning and ending, good and evil, for together they represent the ten sefirot according to the explanation that these are the dimensions of reality. It would appear that we have to relate to this enumeration of four stages as an indication of another aspect of viewing the sefirot of Sefer Yetzirah, because we do not have the data to enable us to form a whole which unifies the different views into a coherent internal unity which we can comprehend. However, this does not exhaust the classifications of the ten sefirot in Sefer Yetzirah which are totally different from one another. The author states: "The ten sefirot of belimah - their end is connected to their beginning and their beginning to their end as a flame is attached to a coal, that the master is solitary and there is no second, and before one what do you count." In spite of the numerous interpretations and hypotheses regarding this statement, it appears that we do not have the key to understand it. What is the connection between the sefirot and the "solitary master," and what is the connection to "and before one what do you count"? These are extremely difficult questions. However, be the explanation as it may, "their end is connected to their beginning and their beginning to their end as a flame is attached to a coal" is not exactly a description of either sefirot or the dimensions of reality, nor of the stages of the development of these clements one from the other. The passage hints clearly that the s<'f/rol of belimah have other characteristics which are not Imifit-d. Another passage is also devoted to this: 0(>
Sefer Yetzirali The ten sefirot of belimah - their appearance is like that of 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 words conjure up, in full force, a picture of the upper Chariot of Ezekiel, and even an echo of the characteristic terminology of the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature - "their appearance is like that of lightning," and it thus appears that the sefirot have the appearance of lightning. This is not in keeping with the first definition of the sefirot, nor with the directions in which the cosmos expands, nor even with the stages of the development of the elements. Here the sefirot are viewed as a subject of observation and experience, something one can see. One finds in this description an element of dynamism, of activity within the framework of the divine powers, "at His word, they pursue as a storm," "before His throne they bow down" - these are images which cannot be linked to the scientific principles of the earlier views of the sefirot. It is clear that there is not only a scientific cosmogony here, but within this cosmogony there are elements that can serve as components in a mystical experience and in the description of dynamic activity in the esoteric realms of the Godhead. It is not surprising that the kabbalists of the Middle Ages adopted the term sefirot in Sefer Yetzirah and used itas the foundation stone for their views of the Godhead, because this term is so rich and complex that one could find place within it for the mystical symbolism which had been developed in the study halls of the kabbalists in Provence and in southern Spain at the end of the 12th century. Other circles of Jewish mystics in Europe in the Middle Ages, such as the hug ha-iyun, with a profound neo-platonic mysticism, based on systems of lights and numerical and linguistic combinations, were built upon the foundations that had been laid in Sefer Yetzirah, and this was true for other groups as well. The enigmatic meaning and the mystery which prevent us from understanding the simple meaning of the author of the work served as a gold mine for couuueutators, both 10 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, we still have to state that the main and central aspect of the book is an attempt to formulate scientifically a Jewish cosmogonical view. This statement is important, because we often tend to regard the mysticism of language as one of the characteristics of Jewish mysticism in general. Indeed there is no doubt that, in the kabbalah of the Middle Ages, a tremendous and complex mystical view of the Hebrew language was formulated, one which was nurtured to a large measure by earlier traditions, including among these the traditions of Sefer Yetzirah. However the original aim of the author of the book was not to fashion a mysticism, but to understand in a principled and methodical way the structure of the universe and the way it came about. As the source for the formation of the cosmos are the words of God, and these words are composed of Hebrew letters, it is in them that one must seek the source for the creative power and the power of continued existence of all of reality. This is a scientific and not mystical approach, and especially when the very view that language is the source of the cosmos is one held in common by both Sefer Yetzirab and the Sages - "Bezalel knew how to combine the letters from which the Heavens and the earth were created," and "with ten utterances was the world created." And this is even in accordance 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 and the earth were created." What Sefer Yetzirah added was logical scientific thought and not mysticism. The mystical element evidently lies in the view of the sefirot which is to an extent purely scientific, possibly even mathematical and physical, but which, beyond a certain limit, has an aspect of mystical vision. ) I I