Monday, November 20, 2006

The Sefer Yetzirah

To continue the theme of last post, Rabbi Chareidi discusses the Sefer Yetzirah. Sefer Yetzirah is important because it is the earliest Kabbalistic work, predating the Gemara, provided that we accept that it is a book of Kaballah. The gemara (quoted by Chareidi) seems to say that it is, although it may be possible to make a chilluk between Sefer Yetzirah and Hilchos Yetzirah. That being said, there have been other interpretation of SY; if and when the time comes, we will explore Shadal's understanding of SY in his Vikuach. I found one attempt to interpret (and reconstruct) SY very amusing: In the Jewish Quarterly Review, Phineas Mordell attempts to demonstrate that SY is an extremely truncated grammar. (I may decide to comment on it later; if I do, then I will post it. If not, you can email me and I'll send it over.) In another article, Eliyahu Rosh-Pinnah says this theory was summarily rejected by the other kabbalogists.
But that's beside the point here. I wanted to point out an interesting inconsistency in the Analysis:

Because of the gemarah which indicates that SY is, in fact Kabbalistic, RC accepts a "core" which Hashem gave to Avraham Avinu. (This is not dissimilar to the rabbi he cites later, who maintains that the Zohar also must have a legitimate "core".) However, on the same page, he tries to downplay the kabbalisishkeit of the SY by naming commentators who held differently.

1 comment:

Mississippi Fred MacDowell said...

How/ do we know that our Sepher Yetzirah is the same work as the one named in the Gemara?