Created Light in Rav Sa'adyah Gaon's Commentary to Sefer Yetzirah

In an earlier post, I quoted Rav Sa’adyah Gaon (Resag) explaining the concept of creation presented by Sefer Yetzira (SY) as words and numbers being etched in air thus creating things. At the time I suggested that “air” is a stand in for “space” and I also pointed out that, Resag cautions us not to take these images literally. They are only concepts that SY translates into something we humans can perceive in our mind. As I read on in SY, in Perek 4 Mishna 1 Resag returns to the subject of air/space in more detail and introduces the concept of “created matter”, – Davar Nivra - which was subsequently discussed by Rambam in MN as “created light” – Ohr Nivra. I believe this will shed a new light on Rambam’s usage of the term and its meaning.

Note: the following quotes are my English translation of a Hebrew translation of an Arabic translation. Rav Kafieh in his usual thorough way has given us a formidable tool. SY original is Hebrew. Resag translated it into Arabic. Rav Kafieh translated the Arabic back into Hebrew. The Hebrew translation of the Arabic translation is not identical to the original Hebrew. We witness the obvious: translations are interpretations and we cannot always rely on one to give us the true intention of the original. A caution to those who come to definite conclusions about the author’s intentions based on translations e.g. MN and Pirush Hamishna for one. Here is the original Mishna[1] and my translation of the R. Kafieh retranslated Resag translation.

עשר ספירות בלימה, אחת רוח אלקים חיים חי עולמים נכון כסאו מאז, ברוך ומבורך שמו תמיד לעולם ועד. וזו היא רוח הקדש,

“Parallel to the ten defined numbers, first there is the living God’s will, the life(force) of the worlds whose throne is there from beginning to end, blessed be His name forever. That is the holy will.”

Note how Resag translates “Ruach” – will. Resag then proceeds to explain that the numbers that are visualized as the tools used in the creation of the universe are there because of the will of the living God - רוח אלקים חיים.  The idea is that there was no physical activity on the part of God other than His willing things into existence. Resag explains:

“Saying these three things about the Creator - חי עולמים נכון כסאו מאז, ברוך ומבורך שמו -

imparts a great secret. That is, it is telling us how we should visualize in our minds the existence of God, by using a metaphor as an approximation but not as [a] corporeal [depiction]. SY suggests that we visualize the relationship of God to the world just as we see the life force in its relationship to a living thing. We could therefore say metaphorically that He is the life force of the universe. From that, we can now move to the next level, the level of the intellect, and refer to Him as the intellect of the universe. The idea is to help us understand that a living thing, especially one who thinks, its body is more naturally refined [adin in Hebrew.] and more advanced than other bodies [e.g. plants or inanimate objects- DG], allowing for a life force to attach itself to it.  That life force can now sustain an intellect, because the life force is more refined than the body and the intellect is more refined than the life force. This conclusion leads us to visualizing that air, which is simple and refined, is the substance in which God’s will, namely His ability, spreads creating in it and giving it mobility just as the life force gives mobility to the body. The Creator is present in all this just as the intellect is present in the life force, directing it. Therefore, the closest metaphor for Him is that He is the intellect of the universe. Just as the intellect is not divisible even if the body is, so too the Creator is indivisible, even if the universe should divide. Just as the intellect does not die when the body dies so too the Creator would not cease to exist should the universe cease to. Just like the intellect, although is part of the soul, it is superior directing it, so too the Creator, although He is found in everything, He is superior over all and everything is directed by him. And just as the intellect permeates every part of the body, every bone, ligament, every dense matter, all are impacted by its direction so too the Creator is found in everything; no mountain, sea, or dense entity is without Him, just like air is everywhere… With these metaphors, the opinions of the believers will be strengthened in accepting that God is everywhere… that He watches over mankind’s actions… that He hearkens to every prayer for He is with the supplicant[2]…” 

We humans cannot apprehend something that is completely abstract. For us to recognize something as existent we have to visualize it in our terms. Without that, we will always question whether the entity we deduced logically or intuitively to exist, really does exist. SY is teaching us how to accomplish this by offering visualizations of God in a metaphorical sense; comparing His existence to the most abstract thing we know - our intellect. Just as our intellect resides in us so too do we place God’s will, the result of which we can perceive by looking at our environment, in air that permeates everything around us. The “air” Resag uses in this metaphor so far is the real air that surrounds us, the one we breathe.

“We focused our [minds until now on the] idea that God is found everywhere using the palpable air we are surrounded by [as a metaphor]. We now [turn to] the even more refined “air” but also only as an approximation and allegory and not in a corporeal or exact perspective. The Scriptures refer to this second refined “air” as glory, “His glory fills the whole earth” (Yeshayahu 11:2) … The nation refers to it as Shechinah … and the author of this book refers to it as רוח אלקים חיים – the will of the living God… It is through this second refined “air” that the words of prophecy are brought and all the wonders are revealed to the prophets…. That is a “created thing” without doubt for anything that is not God is created.”

  

Resag is systematically leading us to accept the existence of an entity that is physically non-existent. He takes us to the limits of physicality and then tells us that this “refined air” is only imaginary, “an approximation and allegory”. In other words, when we use the words glory, Shechinah or anything similar as it relates to God, It is nothing but a mental visualization. We picture a presence as a proxy for God not that God has place and thus presence.  The “created thing” is a creation of our imagination, a visualization that allows us to conceive the “existence” of such an entity. Having visualized this “created thing” or “created light” we can now conceive a connection between that unknowable and unreachable entity and us.

“And it is with this second refined air which is to the world as is the life force to man, that Moshe heard the “created words” in the visible air which is referred to as “the voice of the living God” (Devarim 5:23)…. And from it comes the knowledge of wisdom that God grants to His chosen…. It also is the source of courage and strength that God grants to the ones He wants to [grant]…”   

The way I understand Resag is that in the process of speculation about God and creation, we humans create in our minds certain pictures that help us actualize abstract concepts. We have to be careful and keep in mind that we are visualizing “created things”, “created lights” and hearing “created sounds”. We are seeing things created in our mind and although the experience is so intense that it appears real, it is no more than a mental vision. That is why he emphasizes several times that all these descriptions of “created things” are “an approximation and allegory”.  

I know that in other writings Resag comes across differently. It would appear in those places that he believes that God creates light, sound and entities to represent Him, a quite difficult idea to swallow, at least to me; here he is quite clear that it is only visualization. The commentary on SY was written about two years before his Emunot Vede’ot, according to Rav Kafieh, and was written for a more sophisticated audience, the reader of SY. I feel comfortable reading it as a standalone, presenting his undiluted opinion.  With this in mind, I also understand why Rambam accepts the concept in numerous places in MN although he insists at the same time that no physicality can be adduced to God. The preferred approach would be “negative apprehension” – Yediah Shelilit – but as a less sophisticated alternative, “created light” is acceptable.  

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[1] It is also important to know that SY comes in a variety of different versions with quite marked variances. I adapted here to the version used by Resag. The different versions also have different numbering of chapters and mishnot. 

[2] This reminds me of Rambam in MN 3;52 “Man does not sit, move, and occupy himself when he is alone in his house, as he sits, moves and occupies himself when he is in the presence of a great king…”

Early Impressions On Sefer Yetzira with Commentary of Rav Sa'adyah Gaon.

I am still working my way through Sefer Yetzira (SY) with the commentary of Rav Sa’adyah Gaon (Resag) and here are some of my early impressions and thoughts.

1. Resag explains SY as a philosophical treatise on Jewish theology based on an Aristotelian concept of physics and metaphysics. I am not well versed enough in the different schools of Aristotelian thought extant during the Middle Ages, to identify into which school Resag placed the SY – but I know enough to recognize the general concepts. For example, in the third chapter SY talks about the various letter combinations and the number of combinations possible with words of different sizes. Resag explains it as a representation of the variables that result from the combination of the basic substances Air, Water, Fire, and Earth and derivatives thereof. In another place, he interprets SY as discussing the natural position of the substances. This type of discussion is one of the central themes of SY according to Resag. A reader of SY who is steeped in Aristotelian thought would understand it this way without too much trouble even though it is written in a much-abbreviated form containing many code words.
2. Considering the above and knowing that Resag lived in 882/92 to 942 and the fact that he places the authorship of SY to the same time the Mishna was composed and written, Greek philosophy and Judaism are quite old friends. Resag believed that the Tannaim already had a tradition of rationalizing religion and seeing it from a rational perspective. Even if SY was written later than Resag suggests, it apparently was already accepted and canonized at his time. Consequently, it must have been authored, at the latest, during the era of the early Geonim or late Amoraim.
3. Clearly, Rambam was not an innovator when he explained Judaism rationally and in concert with the science of his time. This was an accepted way of thinking going back to antiquity. It does not take away from the greatness of his work and the thoroughness and completeness of thought he presents. It however mutes the criticism leveled against him that he was misguided by the Greeks. On the contrary, he was doing what Jews were doing for generations while his detractors had lost touch with their tradition.
4. SY accepts astrology as science. Resag clearly does not. In fact the way he puts it when he explains the astrological propositions, “This, God will make you understand, is the central theme of the author of this book”. At the end of the presentation, he closes by saying “I expand on this so much only because the author of this book has made it the central theme of his work”. Rav Kafieh notes that in his introduction to Iyov, Resag comments that astrology is a plain theory that has no basis in reality other than being a theory. 
5. Resag has no problem disagreeing with a book that apparently was widely accepted as authentic to the point that it had a tradition of being written by Avraham Avinu. At the same time, he finds it valuable to write a commentary to it and accept those things he finds worthwhile. He indeed sees it as a precursor to the theology presented by the Torah. The torah accepted some of these ideas and rejected others, adding its own theology.

I just wanted to share some thoughts for the upcoming Chag.

Chag Sameach.

Resag and The Authorship of Sefer Yetzirah. Avraham Avinu May Have Been Wrong!

Rav Sa’adyah Gaon here, is known as the author of Emunot Vede’ot an early and probably the first Jewish philosophical work written in the middle ages.  Less known is that he was also the author of an Arabic translation and commentary on the Sefer Yetzira. Traditionally, Sefer Yetzira is thought to be a mystical/kabalistic book transmitted from antiquity attributed to Avraham Avinu. Rav Sa’adyah (Resag) explains it in a philosophical rationalist way. I got interested in it through reading a chapter in Yosef Dan’s History of Kabbalah where he dissects Resag’s commentary. Rav Kafieh Z”L, the great and prolific Yemmenite scholar and writer, translated the commentary into Hebrew and made it accessible to a contemporary reader. I started reading it and if I have the fortitude and perseverance will continue to do so and comment as I come across interesting subjects. As a start I will translate a short segment in the introduction which I find fascinating and again illustrates how close-minded and far we have come from our great medieval Halachists and thinkers.

Sefer Yetzira deals with creation as the name suggests. It discusses the transition from absolute nothingness to existence. Resag explains that it does not discuss science as we know it but how science came into existence. It is not metaphysics which deals with the non-physical; it is also not physics which attempts to understand physical existence. It attempts to understand what we would call in modern parlance the moment of the “Big Bang”. As I was reading this, I had an insight about how Resag understands Ma’aseh Breishit as opposed to Ma’aseh Merkavah from one side and Physics from the other. Ma’aseh Breishit is the divider or rather the transition from one to the other. I am not sure if Rambam agrees with that though I have a hunch he may. I will have to think further about that as I read further. Sorry, I am digressing.

In the introduction, Resag presents nine different theories about how the world came into existence starting from the Aristotelian eternal universe ending with the Torah creation from nothingness and every other rational possibility in between. The eighth theory argues for God creating what he calls “air” and placing “numbers” and “words” in it. The idea is that everything can be described mathematically considering everything physical has substance that can be represented by numbers while the concept that holds things together is represented by words. This is the idea described in Sefer Yetzira and Resag suggests that as we read on we will get a clearer picture. I will come back to this in a separate post as Resag gives a very interesting insight on what occurred at Sinai. The ninth theory, is what Resag calls the Torah approach and the correct one which holds that physical existence came into being in one leap without the intermediate period of “air”, “numbers” and “words”. This theory accepts that there are “numbers” and “words” but they are part of existence as we know it rather that the cause for existence. The cause for existence is God and we do not know, nor can we ever know, how that transition from nothingness to existence came about.

This presentation indicates that the proponent of the eighth theory, namely the author of Sefer Yetzira, though not wrong intrinsically, is however wrong conceptually. In other words, his concept of creation is lacking as he conflates process with actuality. Now comes the surprising and shocking to some, very instructive to others, part which I will translate verbatim (almost).    

“Having presented these nine theories…. We will now complete the introduction to this book by commenting on the tradition that we received from the ancients as well as it is noted at the end of this book itself, that Avraham Avinu authored this book, and that once he understood God appeared to him. They are not suggesting that he [Avraham] set down the words [orally or to paper] in this form but rather that he developed these ideas [concepts] in his mind, establishing that words and numbers are the source of everything as we will explain [in the book and commentary]. He taught these ideas to himself and to his monotheistic followers. These were transmitted continuously orally within our nation [community], just as the Mishna was transmitted orally and unwritten and as parts of the Scriptures were transmitted orally, for example Shlomo’s parables which were copied by Chizkyahu the Judean king and his people. At the time that the nation’s sages gathered to collect the ideas [concepts] of the Mishna and attach their own words to them thus setting them down so too did they do with the concepts of this book. That is why we find [in this book] some verses and this [specific] order. (I am not sure what these last few words mean – DG). The place this book was written is Eretz Israel, as the letters are based on their language where there are two Dalets and so on and Resh with a Dagesh and without as is their custom.”

I find this fascinating especially in view of the traditional point of view that is common in our contemporary community. First, it tells us that when a sefer is attributed to someone it means that it is based on that person’s ideas rather than authorship. But even more fascinating is that it presents Jewish theology as an evolving process. In other words, Avraham developed his own ideas about God and creation which were not necessarily complete until Sinai (see the first chapter in MT Hilchot Avodah Zara for an identical presentation and my article here for a discussion on the subject as it pertains to the apprehension of God). It is at Sinai that the completed Jewish theologies of creation was established and were put to words in the first chapters of Breishit. Avraham’s ideas were a stepping-stone to the concepts at Sinai but fell short of the true understanding of creation.

I leave you with these thoughts.

Shabbat Shalom.