Summary
The Sefer Yetzirah, which means “Book of Formation,” is
a short book about the theories of ma’aseh bereshit, the
mystical account of the creation of the universe. The Sefer Yetzirah
is the earliest Hebrew text of speculative mystical Jewish thought,
appearing sometime between the third and sixth centuries C.E. Like
the theories of ma’aseh bereshit, the Sefer Yetzirah
addresses the creation of the universe, drawing heavily on images
from the very beginning of Genesis, the first book of the Bible’s
Old Testament. Basing its speculations on theories that had long
been discussed by kabbalists, the book argues that God created the
world with thirty-two secret paths of wisdom. These paths of wisdom
are composed of the ten sefirot and the twenty-two
letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
The first chapter of the Sefer Yetzirah explains the sefirot—the first
time the sefirot appear in Jewish literature. The sefirot of
the Sefer Yetzirah differ from the ten “aspects of God” that appear
later in kabbalistic thought. Here they take the form of numbers
with mystical qualities, each one representing the stages of creation. Beginning
with the first sefirah, Keter, the sefirot emanate
from one another as one number follows another. The first sefirah is
the spirit of God. Next come air, water, and fire. From the air
come the twenty-two letters of the alphabet. From water comes chaos
and from fire come the angels and God’s throne, as described in
the ma’seh merkavah. The next six sefirot represent
the various dimensions of space. The final sefirah, Shekhinah,
represents God’s presence in the world of material reality.
Analysis
The Torah tends to personify God as a humanlike being
who can talk and interact with people on earth—the familiar image
of an old bearded man in the sky. The Sefer Yetzirah presents God
as an unknowable, genderless force entirely devoid of form or emotion.
In the Torah, God creates simply by using the power of his word,
his command. But in the Sefer Yetzirah, God creates through emanations,
or offshoots, of himself. God becomes a part of the universe, everywhere
and nowhere at once, a spirit with infinite power. This initial
mystical theory—that the world was created through the emanations
of the sefirot—forms the foundation of kabbalistic thought
and is the single most powerful source of controversy surrounding
Kabbalah. Everything about the sefirot, from where
they came from to what they mean, has been disputed by followers
of Kabbalah for many hundreds of years.
