Two Hundred and Twenty-One Gates [or: 231 gates]”: Mystical and Magical Techniques in Sefer Yetzirah

• In Event: Error, Doubt and Anxiety in Kabbalistic Manuscripts

Abstract

My talk will be devoted to a number of engagements with the text and application of a mystical and magical technique based on Sefer Yetzirah. In section 19 of Sefer Yetzirah, it is described how God weighed and exchanged the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and formed with them the life of all the present and future creatures. An explanation is attached to the way by which he combined the letters: Aleph with each of the other 21 letters and all of them with Aleph, Bet with them all, and then each with be, etc. The sentence that concludes the description of the technique reads: “The result is that they go out by two hundred and twenty-one gates”. As I will show in my talk, each of the first four commentators on Sefer Yetzirah – Saadia Gaon (931), Dunash ibn Tamim (955\6), Shabbatai Donnolo (946), and Rabbi Judah ben Barzillai (12th century) – strongly criticized the version that reads 221 gates and explained why it should read 231 gates (or 462). The mathematical explanation for the version that reads 231 gates is presented by Saadia (and in similar ways by the other three commentators). According to Saadia, we can translate this description according to the following equation: 22 (letters) x 21 (=22 letters, omitting the identical combinations like אא) : 2 (omitting combinations like א"ב ב"א). The logic and rationale presented by Saadia are not in doubt, and hence the versions of Sefer Yetzirah that read 221 require an alternative method of calculation. From an examination of dozens of witnesses of Sefer Yetzirah in manuscripts, I would like to show that the version with 221 is not a scribal error, and that this version is based on a technique that is related to magical-mystical methods of combining letters. This case study offers a window into how different commentators on Sefer Yetzirah sought to avoid error and address their textual anxieties about the correct reading of the text and its meaning.

Author

• Naama Ben shachar, Bar-Ilan University