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The Ten Sefirot That Have No End and No Bottom

Sefer Yetzirah opens with ten dimensions that are boundless and infinite, yet they have a center. The Vilna Gaon spent his life inside this paradox.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Ten Things That Contain Everything
  2. Sefirot of Nothingness
  3. What Abraham Discovered at the Bottom
  4. The Paradox That Holds the World Together

Ten Things That Contain Everything

Ten dimensions. Boundless. Holding all of space, all of time, all of good and evil simultaneously. And a single king who governs them from a place no one can locate.

This is how the Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, begins its account of the Sefirot. Not with a creation narrative, not with a genealogy, not with a legal code. With a paradox: ten things that contain everything but have no end, ruled by a presence that is everywhere without being findable anywhere.

The Sefirot described here are not yet the ten emanations that later Kabbalistic tradition would name and map: Keter, Chokhmah, Binah, down through to Malchut. They are older than that system, more elemental, the original ten dimensions of creation described before any later tradition developed the language of emanation. The Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman of eighteenth-century Lithuania, devoted extraordinary attention to this passage. His posthumously published edition of the Sefer Yetzirah, issued in 1806 CE, is considered the most precise and demanding version of the text.

Sefirot of Nothingness

The Sefer Yetzirah calls them Sefirot Belimah: Sefirot of Nothingness. The word Belimah is dense with meaning. It can mean without anything, signaling that these ten are not made of any substance. It can mean restraint or sealing, suggesting they are bounded even though they contain infinities. Read as two words, bli mah, it becomes without what, pointing to a category beyond human categorization. Whatever these ten are, they are not made of the world they make.

Ten Sefirot of nothingness: the depth of beginning and the depth of end. The depth of good and the depth of evil. The depth of above and the depth of below. The depth of east and the depth of west. The depth of north and the depth of south. Each depth is infinite in its direction. And the One who governs them stands at a center point the text calls the singular Lord and faithful king who rules over all of them from his holy dwelling.

What Abraham Discovered at the Bottom

The Sefer Yetzirah opens with the cosmos and closes with the patriarch. The final section of the text describes Abraham observing, investigating, and understanding the structure of the thirty-two paths of wisdom. He looked. He probed. He combined the letters. Something appeared before him. He seated it, bound it through speech, and named it the Lord God of Israel.

This is an extraordinary sequence. The most common interpretation in later Kabbalistic literature reads it as Abraham creating a golem, a constructed human form, through the letter combinations of the Sefer Yetzirah. The Talmud tractate Sanhedrin preserves traditions of sages creating humanoid beings through mystical manipulation of letters, and Abraham is among the earliest figures associated with that tradition.

But the Vilna Gaon's reading focuses on something more interior. Abraham reached the bottom of the Sefirot in the sense that he understood the principle they enact. The ten dimensions that are boundless still have a center, still have a king. Abraham found the king by traversing the dimensions. His theology is not inherited, in this telling. It is arrived at through investigation, through the same rational-mystical process that the Sefer Yetzirah teaches.

The Paradox That Holds the World Together

The Sefer Yetzirah's Sefirot are not the last word on paradox. They are the first. Ten infinite dimensions governed by one center. Boundless extents that nonetheless have a lord. Good and evil both present, both real, both held within the same structure without destroying each other. This is the cosmological fact that Abraham internalized, the fact that made possible his covenant with the God who could contain contradiction without being undone by it.

The tradition the Sefer Yetzirah encodes is that knowledge of the structure is available to human beings. Abraham did not receive it as prophecy. He worked for it, turned the letters, followed the paths, reached the bottom of what could be reached. And what he found there was not an abyss. It was a king.

AbrahamSefirotSefer YetzirahVilna GaonCreationKabbalahNothingness
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From the tradition

Sources

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Sefer Yetzirah 1:1-2Sefer Yetzirah

With thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom did Yah, the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, the living God and King of the world, El Shaddai, merciful and gracious, high and exalted, dwelling forever, and holy is His name, engrave; and He created His world with three sefarim: with sefer, and sefar, and sippur.

Ten sefirot of nothingness, and twenty-two letters of foundation: three mothers, and seven doubles, and twelve simples.

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Legends of the Jews 5:201Legends of the Jews

Ishmael’s story doesn't simply vanish; it continues, filled with hardship, growth, and a surprising encounter with his father.

In Ginzberg's, Legends of the Jews, Ishmael's wife bore him four sons and a daughter in the wilderness. God, remembering Abraham, blessed Ishmael with flocks, herds, and tents, allowing him to prosper. Yet, despite this divine blessing, a rift formed between Abraham and his son, fueled by distance and, perhaps, Sarah's enduring influence.

Time passed, and Abraham, yearning to see his son, decided to visit Ishmael. "I will go and see my son Ishmael," he said to Sarah, "I yearn to look upon him, for I have not seen him for a long time." And so, he journeyed into the wilderness, riding his camel, driven by a father's love and a deep-seated longing.

Upon arriving at Ishmael’s tent around noon, Abraham found only Ishmael's wife and children. Ishmael was out hunting. Abraham, still mounted on his camel, for he had sworn to Sarah not to dismount, asked her for water. Her response? "We have neither water nor bread." She didn’t even offer him basic hospitality, nor did she inquire about his identity. Worse, she was inside the tent, berating her children and cursing Ishmael. Can you imagine Abraham's heartbreak, witnessing this scene?

Abraham, witnessing this lack of hospitality and respect, called the woman out of the tent. Still on his camel, he delivered a cryptic message: "When thy husband Ishmael returns home, say these words to him: A very old man from the land of the Philistines came hither to seek thee... When thou comest home, put away this tent-pin which thou hast placed here, and place another tent-pin in its stead."

What did this all mean? The "tent-pin," of course, was a metaphor. Abraham was telling Ishmael, through his wife’s behavior, that his marriage was not working.

When Ishmael returned and heard his wife's account, he immediately understood. He knew it was his father, and he recognized the wisdom in Abraham’s words. Heeding his father's veiled instruction, Ishmael divorced his wife.

Later, Ishmael moved to the land of Canaan and found another wife, whom he brought back to his tent, to the place where he dwelt.

This brief episode offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of Ishmael. It reveals the challenges he faced, the importance of honoring one's parents, and the subtle, yet powerful, ways in which familial bonds could still exert influence, even across vast distances and years of separation. It also emphasizes the importance of hospitality, a value deeply ingrained in Jewish tradition.

What does this story tell us about family, about legacy, and about the enduring power of even indirect communication? It's a reminder that even when relationships are strained, the echoes of family wisdom can still resonate, guiding us toward better choices and a more fulfilling life.

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