Preface & Prologue to the Book of Formation - Sefer Yetzirah

Preface – Beth Luey explains that a preface tells you, the reader, about “the inspiration for the book, origins and evolution of the project, and so forth.  It should be regarded as optional reading, however, and should not include anything such as methodology or theoretical background that the reader needs to understand the book” (Beth Luey, Handbook for Academic Authors. Third Edition. Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 173).

It seems to me, Nathaniel, that a prologue is like a preface, only more elaborate.

In the meantime, before I've reorganized this Preface, the Foreword, and the Introduction, I want to post what I have written so far, as is.

If you are eager to study this book, skip to the Foreword.

If you haven't yet read the Foreword, at least study my Key to the Book of Formation.

If you haven't yet examined the key, you'll be reading just another incomprehensible mystical text.  Furthermore, if you compare my translation, comments, and presentation with other editions, you'll have no clue – you'll be truly mystified – why my edition is different from others.  There are roughly half a dozen English language renderings of the Book of Formation.  Mine is based on a critical edition of the book, which the others are not.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan is the most recent, and also most reliable, translator and explicator of the Book of Formation.  As much as I respect him, he worked from the Vilna edition.  Vilna, Lithuania, of the eighteenth century was one of the few scholarly Jewish communities at that time. Torah scholars in Vilna issued a critical edition of the Talmud (in the late eighteenth century), for example, that is used for study today.  It was entirely newly typeset and proofread by Vilna's Torah scholars.  Until recently, an untold number of editions of the Talmud have been reprinted from the exemplary Vilna edition by photographic offset.  Recently, with the advent of computerized scanning software, new editions have been issued with the clarity of digital printing technology.  Nonetheless, these digital editions vary almost not at all from the text and the format of the Vilna edition.

The other critical (and beautiful) edition of the Talmud was printed in Slavuta, Ukraine, at about the same time as the Vilna edition.  An untold number of editions of this Talmud have also been reprinted by photographic offset.  I am unaware, though, whether an edition of the Book of Formation was ever printed in Slavuta.

It would seem, then, that the Vilna critical edition of the Book of Formation is the best source for studying and teaching this book.  This would be so if the Torah scholars in Vilna had the best earlier editions at hand. However this was not so.

(As far as I can tell, the Vilna text was first typeset under the supervision of Rabbi Shmuel Luria and then printed in Warsaw in 1894.  Rabbi Luria claims that his edition reflects the edition of the Arizal – the foremost source of reliably systematized Kabbala since the sixteenth century.  In my opinion, Rabbi Shmuel Luria's claim is misleading.  The Arizal never wrote any of his teachings, not to mention edit any earlier text.  He only taught orally, and anything in print that has been attributed to the Arizal was committed to writing by his disciples.)

The most accurate text of the Book of Formation has been printed from an early manuscript from Shabtai Donolo (913-970). This text itself was not likely available for critical study and printing in Vilna, though. Donolo's text only came to light in the 1800s in Florence (Firenze), Italy, and was published for the first time.

Donolo was born in the Kingdom of Naples (Napoli) in a town named Orsaia.  As an adult, he was one of the foremost scientists in Lombardy, Italy.  He earned a living from practicing medicine, and he published medical and astronomical treatises.  The Kalonymos dynasty of Torah scholars in Rhenish Germany – Judah HaHasid and Eliezer of Wörms – probably learned their Kabbala from the manuscript of Shabtai Donolo.

As far as I can tell, Donolo's might be the version used by Rabbi Joseph Karo (1488-1575) of Safed, Israel, (who had been expelled early in life from Spain in 1492).  Considering that Rabbi Karo was associated with the circle of Safed mystics, I believe (with evidence) that he was working with an edition that is superior to Vilna edition.

The sixth chapter of Donolo's text is longer than the Vilna edition, including several more mishnahs after the point where the Vilna edition ends. The last mishnah of Rabbi Joseph Karo's, in fact, is virtually the same as the last mishnah of Donolo's text if we judge by what Rabbi Joseph Karo uses in his Tikun Leil Shavu'ot.

My notes – the "Companion" – are the focus of my efforts.  Even so, my progress in composing this translation with adequate notes has been agonizing slow.  If my readers come closer to understanding the Book of Formation, it will be because of the content of the "Companion."  Without the "Companion" my efforts are pedestrian, and you can rely on Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan for engaging yourself with the text of the book.

Methodology

Some great rabbis have found it impossible to understand mystical books like the Book of Formation because they lacked having received knowledge from a Sage who himself acquired his own knowledge from another knowledgeable Sage. The simple meaning of the Hebrew word kabbala is "reception." Torah mysticism is inaccessible without receiving instruction from a knowledgeable Sage. It is possible that these great rabbis ignored such mystical books, although the books are as much from the Tannaim * as is the Mishnah, because a superficial view of the content was strange to their intellect.  It could also be that without receiving keys to the ideas in mystical texts (like the Book of Formation), elements contained within these books appear to defy logic.  These rabbis had never experienced a "mouth to mouth" study of mystical concepts which would have answered their questions and dispelled their doubts.

I have, though, received my instruction from my Rebbe -- a Sage -- who himself acquired his own knowledge from another knowledgeable Sage.  It is not a secret who my Rebbe is.  As I will come to explain, I'm refraining from mentioning his name on this page.  I do not want the faults of my presentations to be laid at his feet.

My Rebbe's father was a known and respected Kabbalist.  My Rebbe published his father's notes on the Zohar.  He then went on to publish, in three volumes, his own elaboration on his father's brief notes.  These began as public speeches.  The speeches were delivered in the Yiddish language in the time between the 1950s into the 1990s, Yiddish being the mother tongue of a reasonably large constituent of the population of Brooklyn, children speaking fluently by having learned from their elders.  This speech community was connected without break to the Yiddish speaking population of Jews who had lived in Europe before Communist suppression of Judaism and before the feverish resort to death camps in Central Europe.

This material is now available for a wider audience of those willing and able to study the Zohar from a Sage – my Rebbe's father – who himself acquired his own knowledge from a knowledgeable Sage.  What the Rebbe originally elaborated in Yiddish has now been translated into Hebrew under his supervision, has been published, and is available by catalog or from an English language web site.  (These texts are not likely to be translated into English, though.)

Also, unlike earlier generations, this mystical knowledge is now available to the entire world of Torah students, presuming that by "Torah student" one means someone who can handle the Aramaic language of the Zohar alongside the Hebrew language.  In our generation, "mouth to mouth" has come to mean from the Sage's precise text printed with the imprimatur of an editor who studied mouth to mouth from a Sage – my Rebbe's sagely father in this case.

Admittedly, the contemporary audience is self-selected, but this is no more so than during earlier generations.  What has changed is that today we bring the mystical teachings into our homes instead of wandering around the Jewish world to find and seek admittance to the tiny circles of mystics – mostly secret circles.

Even so, Maimonides rules in his Code,

The things that we have said . . . are like a drop in the ocean compared to what needs to be said. . . .
So therefore I (Maimonides) say that only someone who has filled himself with bread and meat [what we would call "meat and potatoes"] is fit to tour the Pardeis — Orchard of the Torah [the "Structure of the Divine Chariot" and the "Structure of Creation"].  (The Book of Knowledge, "Fundamental Laws of the Torah," Chapter 2, Halacha 11 and Chapter 4, Halacha 13)

My Rebbe's father is thirteen generations removed from the mystic Rabbi Judah Loeb, Chief Rabbi of Prague, known as the Maharal, author of several esoteric books.  It has not been unusual for a chief rabbi who rules on practical matters of Jewish conduct (halacha) like the Maharal to also be an authority in the realm of the mystic and esoteric dimensions of the Torah.  In fact, my Rebbe's father was the Chief Rabbi of the Ukrainian city Dnipropetrovs'k (once known as Yekatrinislav).

In earlier generations, some accomplished Talmudists have also been mystics.  Such was the situation of Torah scholarship in Rhenish Germany, Provence, Spain, and in the Torah academies of Babylonia.  We have esoteric Torah books from each generation, or at least from scholars quoting what they learned from their own teachers.

In Babylonia, Rabbi Sa'adia Gaon (10th century), head of the Academy of Pumpedita taught some of his students the Book of Formation.  These students assembled what they understood into a written commentary.

The systematic study of the Zohar is traceable back from student to teacher to the Holy Arizal and his small circle of disciples in Safed, Israel (16th century).  This system of Kabbala of the Arizal is known as Lurianic Kabbala, named after the Arizal's family name Luria.  Thus, everything that I have studied and that I know is most recently from the Lurianic circle of mystics.  The simple meaning of the Hebrew word kabbala is "reception."  So, I have received this tradition of mystic studies directly through the generations from the Arizal – the foremost Kabbalist in the generations since the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. In academic circles, this system is called "Lurianic Kabbala."

My Torah education since 1972 has been within the Hasidic system called Chabad, an abbreviation for Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge in Hebrew – chochmah, bina, va'da'at.  Everything that I know within this system is from rigorous studies in a traditional yeshivah framework from expert teachers who were, in turn, students from a previous generation.  The lessons were traditional Talmud subjects, but in the Chabad system classes are added in the esoteric realm of Judaism.

The system of this traditional education derives from the author of the book Tanya (1796).  The author, His Holiness Rabbi Shne'ur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1813), known as "The Rav," the "Ba'al haTanya," and the "Alter Rebbe," was born in Lithuanian Russia (Mohilov [Mahilyow] County, Reissin region) bordering on Muscovite Russia.  Rabbi Shne'ur Zalman lived the last years of his life in the townlet Liadi, where he established the first Chabad yeshiva – academy of traditional Torah study.

The culmination of such a level of Torah studies is to stand on one's own two feet to study independently and to teach what one knows to younger students, even those who are uninitiated.  This level of Torah accomplishment is supposed to be both in Tanya and its accompanying esoteric literature as well as in the Talmud with the derived rulings on the Jewish way of life – Halacha.

For Further Research

Based on the first printed edition in Amsterdam, 1736.
Jerusalem: B'feirush uv'Remez, 1964.

"Clarifying and explaining in clear language the essence of Kabbala, its foundations, and its topics to the point where its paths are illuminated for those who have had no idea or knowledge of the esoterica of the Torah" (title page).