Azriel of Gerona


Rabbi Azriel ibn Menahem ibn Ibrahim al-Tarās also known as Azriel of Gerona was the founder of speculative Kabbalah and the Gironian Kabbalist school. He is known for implementing Neoplatonic thought into mainstream kabbalistic tradition.

Biography

Born around 1160 in Girona, Catalonia to the al-Taras family, very few details about his life are known. His father Rav Menahem was a minor rabbi in Girona. In his early years, Rabbi Azriel moved to southern France, where he studied under Isaac the Blind. Rabbi Azriel later travelled across Spain, preaching his kabbalistic views, however this proved to be unsuccessful, with Rabbi Azriel later stating that "the philosophers believe in nothing that can not be demonstrated logically." He later returned to Girona, where he founded a kabbalistic school. Amongst his main students, were Nachmanides and Abraham Zacuto. The poet Meshullam of Gerona hails Rabbi Azriel as the greatest Kabbalist of Spain, and Isaac the Blind, later opposed Rabbi Azriel's open propagation of kabbalistic doctrines in wider circles.

Theology

According to Rabbi Azriel, the status and importance of the will of God surpasses all other attributes. He laid the foundation for the idea of Ein-Sof, by stating that God can have no desire, thought, word, or action, emphasized by it the negation of any attribute. Rabbi Azriel goed on to adopts a gnostic approach, going as far as to say that all qualities of God are ascribed. Rabbi Azriel investigates the relation of this En-Sof to the universe, asking "has the universe been created from nothing?" he explains "No, Aristotle is perfectly right in saying that nothing can proceed from nothing. Moreover, creation implies a decrease in the Creator's essence through subtraction, and that can not be predicated of the En-Sof. Nor can the universe have existed eternally, as Aristotle asserts, because nothing is eternal except for God." In order to solve the problem of creation, Rabbi Azriel recourses to the theory of emanation, which he develops as follows:
The universe, with all its manifestations, was latent in the essence of the En-Sof, in which, notwithstanding its infinite variety, it formed an absolute unit, just like the various sparks and colors that proceed from the one and indivisible flame potential in the coal. The act of creation did not consist in producing an absolutely new thing; it was merely a transformation of potential existence into realized existence. Thus there was really no creation, but an Atziluth. The effluence was effectuated through successive gradations from the intellectual world to the material, from the indefinite to the definite. This material world, being limited and not perfect, could not proceed directly from the En-Sof; neither could it be independent of God. In that case God would be imperfect. There must have been, therefore, intermediaries between the En-Sof and the material world, and these intermediaries were the Ten Sefirot. The first Sefirah was latent in the En-Sof as a dynamic force. The second Sefirah emanated as a substratum for the intellectual world; afterward the other Sefirot emanated, forming the moral, the material, and the natural worlds. But this fact of emanation does not imply a gradation in the En-Sof, the flame of which is capable of igniting an indefinite number of lights. The Sefirot, according to their nature, are divided into three groups: the three superior forming the world of thought, the next three the world of soul, the last four the world of corporeality. They all depend upon one another, being united like links to the first one. Each of them has a positive and a passive quality, which emanates and receives.

Works

Rabbi Azriel's works are as follows:
Rabbi Azriel also wrote a number of shorter treatises, the most important of which is a large section of a partly-preserved work called Derekh haEmunah veDerekh haKefirah.