The Kabbalah: The Sefer Yetzirah Or The Book Of Creation

Justin Henry
11/23/14
Jewish Mysticism The kabbalah is a school of thought and branch of Judaism that seeks to truly know God Himself. The word kabbalah actually comes from the Hebrew word for "to receive". It was a collection of extended literature that analyzed Biblical texts and sought to establish direct contact with God. The Kabbalah itself is filled with many conepts and esoteric ideas, that although they have been passed down through the generations, they can often appear seperated and even conflicting. The Sefer Yetzirah, or the Book of Creation, contains the most basic mystical concepts and was the most important text of early Kabbalah. Dating to around 200 CE, post-talmudic, it states in its last chapter that an angel visits Abraham
and gives him the secrets of the Universe. It is also the first text to offer description of the sefirot, the ten categories that represent God. The text also says that the world must be understood in three different ways which are the written, the spoken and numerical. The written (Hebrew Text) is seen to be so important because each letter of the Hebrew alphabet also had a numerical value, for example Yod (five) and Hey (Ten) were letters often used in the names of God. In Genesis, God says "Let there be...." ten times in order to create the world and was considered an important clue into grasping how God created the world. Furthermore, each letter is also linked to celestial bodies, angels and days of the calender along with everything else that can be perceived. The Zohar is the foundational literature of Kabbalah and goes further into explaining the ten sefirot.
Commonly arranged into a "Tree of Life" or Etz Chayim, the sefirot emanate with Keter (Crown) on top followed by both (Wisdom) and Binah (Understanding) like a canopy. These are the intellectual sefirot and are closer to Ein Sof (Infinity). Than there is Chessed (Kindness) and Gevurah (Power) which are closer to God's physical emanation and are followed by Tifferet (Beauty). Than Netzach (Endurance) and Hod (Splendour) followed by Yesod (Foundation) and finally ending with Schechina (Presence) which could be seen as the roots of the tree. All of the sefirot however are divided equally between masculine and feminine aspects. Each aspect is a different facet for humanity to expereince one God and follow a spiritual journey within ourselves. Divine Names of the God were something that became extremely important for the mystic for in the Bible, Moses asks God for His name and God replies with, "I am that I am". Due to the different combination of letters in Hebrew it led to the four-letter name, YHVH, or the Tetragrammaton. The pronounciation of this is commonly and even favored by Hebrew scholars to be "Yahweh". Jehovah is still used in some translations. "YHVH was pronounced only oncea year by the High Priest in the Temple, and it was pronounced Adonai. In normal religious context, YHVH is referred to with the term Hashem (The Name)." (Rosen
64) The Zohar mentions the seventy letter (and sometimes seventy two) name of God. Other mystics, "invented entirely new "names" for God by comining letters from crucial biblical texts." (Rosen 67) Most Medieval philosophers and theologians described God as a "Prime Mover" and that He made the world out of nothing, (ex nihilo). Some Jewish mystics believed in an almost pantheistic view where God and the Universe were one. "It is said that God created and destroyed seven universes before creating the one in which we now live. Our universe, Kabbalists tell us, is based on principles of balance and harmony." (Zetter 94). This explanation was derived from Midrash, another commentary on the Bible. The Zohar offers different explanations on what is Good and Evil. As explained in Midrash, the seven worlds that God had made and ultimately destroyed helped him to refine the chaos into our world but this process left a sort of residue or klippot. It is the remains of those old worlds that cause evil in our world. Another explanation is influenced by Gnostic thinkers, God uses different qualities in the sefirot and so too can each quality be understood differently, an example of tough love. These differing ideas on creation were further elaborated on by the spiritual thinker, Yitschak Luria, who found both the orthodox explanation and the early mystical theories unsatisfactory. Eventually, he came up with what was called tzimtzum which meant contraction. Luria sought to explain that instead of "sending out his energy" that God's first act was to "gather in His breath." God reduced himself and made space for the rest of creation so to speak. Luria also had a way of explaining the origin of evil and what God allowed it.
To him evil could be categorized by evil on a worldly scale and evil that were specific to mankind. Whenever God, the Ein Sof reduced himself he placed three perfect vessels, (the three upper sefirot), into a vacuum but the other lower seven sefirot could not survive the initial act. Luria's theory was called shevirat keilim or "smashing the vessels". This released both all the good in the world and klippot, which as described before was responsible for all of the evil due to imperfection. God meant for our souls to try to repair the damage left, so humanity isn't necessarily intrinsically evil but imperfect beings. To rectify the damage however, we must give ourselves to God and truly know him utilizing the sefirot. Adam Kadmon was a term used by early Kabbalists to describe the first human made by God, but Luria expanded the idea to include that a sort of refined matter came about during the process of tzimtzum and this matter was the material used for the rest of creation. From this idea of Adam Kadmon came the concept of the Golem. Some Kabbalists "thought that placing the correct name of God in an effigy might bring it to life." (Rosen
127) In Eastern Europe, Hasidism became a popular movement founded by Baal Shem Tov, also known as Israel Ben Eliezer. Baal Shem Tov translates to "Master of the Good Name", and he was a man who traveled to teach and "restore lost souls". He valued the Torah but preferred to emphasize attachment to God through "prayer, song and dance." The movement accepted ideas of informal worship, special dress and a dedication to God in all thoughts and actions. This created a more socially cohesive community while also helping to dedicate followers to a mystical way of life. Depite, the atrocities done onto the Jews during the Holocaust, Hasidism has continued to grow more popular. Obviously, this has been an overly simplified overview on the history and esoteric systems Judaic mysticism and the Kabbalah. The reality of the subject is far more complex and intricately developed than I am actually capable of describing on my own. Today, serious study of Kabbalah has increased, however many teach watered down versions, rejecting the serious religious practice over popular mystic alternatives. Overal howrver, the Kabbalah holistically seeks to improve every aspects of our lives and if we learn to improve our own lives we can than improve the lives of others.