"Sefer Yesirah" and Its Contexts. Tzahi Weiss

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      In rabbinic literature, only one source is known to me of a midrash that discloses a definite acquaintance with the tradition about the creation of the world from twenty-two letters. That singular source appears in the same sections of Tanḥuma published by Urbach, and in it, it is written that the Torah that lit up the darkness of the primordial chaos for God also put at his disposal the twenty-two letters: “While He was creating the world, the Torah was, as it were, shedding light before Him, for the world was without form and void, as it is said: ‘For the commandment is a lamp and the Torah—light’ (כי נר מצוה ותורה אור) (Prov. 6:23). The Holy One, blessed be He, said: I shall ask for laborers. The Torah said to Him: I shall put forth for you twenty-two workers. And these are the twenty-two letters of the Torah.”³⁵

      This midrash, which seems to be expressing a notion similar to the process of creation from the twenty-two letters envisioned in Sefer Yeṣirah, belongs to the later strata of rabbinic literature and has, to the best of my knowledge, no parallels. It is reasonable to assume that, at the time of this midrash, a new approach to the creation of the world from letters penetrated the margins of the rabbinic literature. Since this tradition was alien to the rabbinic ones, it was adapted by the midrash according to a more familiar tradition about the creation of the world from the Torah. The claim of the midrash is that the letters from which the world was created were given to God by the Torah, and it is therefore the Torah that is the origin of the alphabetic letters and the world. The midrash mainly focuses on the dialogue between God and the Torah and on the crucial role that the Torah had in the process of creation and does not address the role of the alphabet in creation as an issue of interest. Similarly, yet as a mirror image, as we shall see, Sefer Yeṣirah operates in the same manner with regard to the tradition about the creation of the world from the letters of the ineffable name.³⁶ Throughout Sefer Yeṣirah, from its second chapter forward, the ineffable name of God and its letters have no role in the creation of the world and the letters of the ineffable name: yod, he, and waw are neither defined as a distinct group of letters nor do they have any symbolic meaning that connects them to the name of God. In the only instance that Sefer Yeṣirah does mention the letters of the ineffable name in relation to the creation of the world, those letters are defined as three letters from the group of the twelve simple letters. In this case, Sefer Yeṣirah appropriates the tradition of the creation of the world from the ineffable name and adapts it to its core tradition about the creation of the world from twenty-two letters. It is exactly this manner of adaptation rather than adoption that stresses what can be considered a core percept, as opposed to an appended one in both the rabbinic literature and in Sefer Yeṣirah and thereby accentuates the essential disparity between them.

       Hekhalot Literature

      The dominant attitude toward the creation of the world from letters in the Hekhalot literature, as in the aforementioned rabbinic sources, favors the letters of the ineffable name. The Hekhalot literature is a heterogenous, multilayered corpus of texts created, written, and edited over a long period. Most manuscripts in this literature were edited only during the late Middle Ages, in the circles of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz.³⁷ Consequently, attempting to designate the traditions found in this literary corpus contextually, according to period and location, is problematic. Nevertheless, there are significant differences between the Hekhalot texts and those of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, and there is no reason to doubt the origins of the Hekhalot literature in Babylonia and even earlier in Palestine. The common scholarly assumption is that most of this literature was created between the late tannaitic and geonic periods.³⁸ I have therefore chosen to adopt an approach to the Hekhalot literature that is based on an inclusive and comprehensive overview rather than a reading of specific isolated paragraphs. This overview allows us to distinguish and extract the predominant approach to the creation of the world from letters in the Hekhalot literature.

      The creation of the world from the ineffable name figures in the version of a prayer transmitted by R. Akiva to R. Ishmael at the end of ma’aseh merkavah, in which R. Ishmael asks how one can look above the seraphs, to which R. Akiva responds that when he stood in the first celestial palace, he uttered a certain prayer that allowed him to see from the first palace as far as the seventh: “R. Ishmael said: I said to R. Akiva: How can one contemplate above the Seraphs that stand above the head of ROZYY³⁹ YWY, God of Israel? He told me: when I ascended to the first palace, I prayed a prayer, and I saw from the first palace to the seventh palace … and what was the prayer? Blessed be You, YY, Unique God, who created His world with His one name, who makes everything with one utterance.”⁴⁰

      The special formula in the blessing of R. Akiva enlightens us as to the existence of two traditions of creation that appear side by side: the creation of the world from the ineffable name; and from the speech of God: “who created His world with His one name, who makes everything with one utterance.” This is similar to the thought expressed in the above-mentioned Prayer of Manasseh.⁴¹

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