Publisher's Synopsis
Uncover the many secrets of the mysterious and complex Sefer ha-Bahir!
Sefer ha-Bahir has been the subject of scrutiny and debate for hundreds of years. Ambiguity about its dating and authorship have consumed Jewish scholarship's greatest minds over countless ages. Born in the Ancient Near East's cultural cauldron, Sefer ha-Bahir was not written in ancient times, although many ideas found in its pages hail from them. According to scholars, this fragmented document - scattered to the winds and then reassembled - would appear to us today to be one of Kabbalah's foundational documents. It's in Bahir that we first read of the sefirot. But the sefirot of Bahir are not the sefirot of later Kabbalah, not even of Sefer Yetzirah. These sefirot are seen through a completely different lens, a lens which ascribes to them seven voices and three sayings and a pivotal role in the Creation narrative of Genesis. In this book, you'll learn the fascinating story of Bahir, including:- How Sefer ha-Bahir was first published and how it was written over the course of many ages
- The structure of the modern form of the Bahir and who's responsible for it
- What the ten utterances are
- The concept of God's concealment, as explained in the text, and what "hester panim" means
- How the Hebrew language is an active agent of Creation
- Who the Masoretes are and how vowels and cantillations added new meaning to this adqab (all consonant) language
- Who Adam Kadmon is and why he and Adam, Bad Boy of Creation, are and are not the same "guy"
- What the seven voices concern the sefirot and the theophany at Mt. Horeb
- How the ten commandments figure into the Kabbalistic model of Creation
- What the 613 mitzvot mean in Judaism and their functional purpose in tikkun
- How the Tetragrammaton came to be the highest name of God and how it's not really a name at all
- The connection between glory and wisdom
- Who Gershom Scholem and Aryeh Kaplan were and how their contributions to understanding Sefer ha-Bahir catapulted it into the public consciousness of this Modern era
- What Neo-Platonism concerns Sefer ha-Bahir
- What Shekhinah is and what it has to do with the "Victory of Victories" - the healing of Creation
