Azriel from Girona

Azriel from Girona, Azriel ben Menachem ( 1160 - 1238 ) - a well-known Jewish Kabbalist of the 12th century at the Gerona school , student of Isaac the Blind . It is claimed that Rabbi Ezra ben Solomon and Rabbi Azriel first published many terms and ideas that prevailed in Kabbalah over the next seven hundred years. Rabbi Azriel was a teacher of Nahmanides , an outstanding Kabbalist of Gerona.

Rabbi Azriel's works are devoted to the explanation of the 10 Sefirot , the mystical interpretation of the Jewish liturgy and the Haggadah. They include the “Explanation of the Ten Sephiroth” and “Commentary on Talmudic Legends.” According to the tradition of Neo-Platonism. God was understood as an absolute about which nothing can be said, except that it is infinity ( Ein Sof ). From Ain Sof emanate Sefirot, which are not, as in Sefer Yetzirah , figures or elements, but are instruments of God and an expression of its creative energy, perfect in relation to the absolute itself and imperfect in relation to the existence and change of created things. Ein Sof - “the light in oneself”, everything else arises in the process of emanation, which is intensified or weakened, depending on the approach or distance from its original source. In order to know God, it is necessary to focus on the letters of his name YHWH , according to which he appears in the worlds of Atzilut, Beria, Yetzirah, Assiya .

Azriel was influenced by Solomon ibn Gabirol , one of the founders of the Kabbalistic doctrine of the ten sefirot. The Gabirol doctrine of divine will is also seen in Rabbi Azriel's Kabbalah. While his teacher Isaac the Blind considered divine thought as the first instance emanating from Ain Sof , Azriel, on the contrary, argued that divine will is the first emanation. Therefore, it was an act of the will, and not an act of the intellect, which became the first manifestation of the divine being of God.