The Garden

 

Title:

Wisdom of the Zohar by Isaac Tishby

Description:

Gan Eden


Here is a brief glimpse of a description of the dynamics of the spiritual realm as seen and shared by our Rabbi's. Remember that this is an attempt to explain it, taking from the Hebrew and translating it into another language, another way of expressing this entanglement between the spiritual and the material realm.

On the basis of the tradition all of the attributes of G!d in the six extremities are also called “garden”. It says, “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east”[1] that is to say, from before the creation of the world ... In truth, Eden refers to Wisdom - one of the ten emanations, the inception of all the emanations[2] which is intimated in the word bere’shit ["in the beginning"] translated as be-hokhmata [“by means of wisdom”]. We say “even the word bere’shit (Gen 1:1) is a saying” in the tally of the ten sayings by means of which the world was created. Hence, Eden is the inner Wisdom[3] in which are engraved the thirty-two paths of wisdom, and it is like a spring and like the root for all of them and for the garden. And the garden is like a tree that has many branches, from its head to its foundation, and it is nourished constantly from the root, which is the spring that comes forth from Ein Sof, the Holy Infinite. It spreads forth from the source without separation and without cessation, without day or hour, even a second, and this is “the river [that] goes forth from Eden to irrigate the garden” (Gen 2:10). River signifies the inner light that issues constantly from Eden.[4] Therefore it says “goes forth” and it did not say “went forth” for it does not cease, and in every moment it emanates in these attributes.[5]

Footnotes

  1. (Gen 2:8). The expression mi-qedem can assume two connotations: “from the east” (the sensus literalis of the verse) and “from before” (the meaning assumed by Asher ben David). ↩︎

  2. ro’sh le-khol ha-sefirot ↩︎

  3. ha-hokhmah ha-penimit ↩︎

  4. River [nahar] is from Nehora, and this is the inner light [ha-or ha-penimi] ↩︎

  5. we-khol et hu mitpashet ba-middot: Asher ben David, R. Asher ben David, p. 75. ↩︎