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Audiobook edition · 46 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 44 pagesAbout this book
What if letters and numbers hold the pattern of the world?
Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, is a short Hebrew text with a vast subject: creation itself. According to the text, God forms the universe through thirty-two paths of wisdom. Ten Sefirot, understood as numbers or primal principles, join twenty-two Hebrew letters as the foundations of existence.
Traditionally linked to Abraham, this anonymous work moves through numbers, letters, and their connections with the cosmos, the calendar, and the human body. Its compressed style mixes poetic lines with technical lists. Later readers, including Saadia Gaon, Abraham Abulafia, and the Kabbalists, turn to it to explore the relationship between language and creation.
What you’ll discover
- Thirty-two paths of wisdom Explore a vision of creation built from ten primal principles and twenty-two Hebrew letters.
- Letters as foundation stones Encounter an alphabet that the text treats as the raw material of the universe.
- Air, water, and fire Discover the three mother letters and their place within the text’s symbolic scheme.
- World, year, and soul Trace shared letter patterns across the cosmos, the calendar, and the human body.
- A long tradition of reading Meet a terse, symbolic work that Jewish thinkers have studied for more than a thousand years.
Who will love it
Readers drawn to sacred texts, the roots of Kabbalah and Jewish intellectual history will love this book. It also suits anyone fascinated by symbols, the Hebrew alphabet and the ancient vision of language, number and cosmos as one pattern.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Creation has a grammar
- An anonymous work invites interpretation
- Numbers and letters shape reality
- The Sephiroth order creation
- All things share one alphabet
- The body mirrors the cosmos
- Letters link heaven and human life
- Opposition belongs within the whole
- Speech and nature belong together
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Sefer Yetzirah
by Attributed to the patriarch Abraham
Ten numbers and twenty-two letters shape the cosmos, the year and the human body in a few pages of ancient Hebrew.
ChallengingUnder 2 hours to readEnglish
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In short
Picture a book small enough to read aloud in one sitting that sets out to describe how the universe is built. It does not retell the seven days of Genesis.
Sefer Yetzirah at a glance
- Reading time
- About 10 min10 min fast, 15 min slow
- Length
- 2,960 words6 chapters
- Pages
- 44 pages44 in large print
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
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Listen to the whole bookOr hold it in print: paperback, hardcover or large print, at costFrom the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A short Hebrew text with an unknown author
Sefer Yetzirah stands among the oldest surviving works of Jewish mystical thought. The work is brief, and depending on the version it runs to only a few thousand words. Yet it attempts a full account of the structure beneath creation. It describes the hidden architecture, the grammar by which the world was spoken into being.
Scholars do not agree on when it appeared. Most place it between the third and seventh centuries. The text shows Abraham mastering its teachings, so some traditional authorities took him as its source. Others named Rabbi Akiva, the great sage of the first century. The honest answer is that the book arrived without a birth certificate.
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Details
- Language
- English
- Listening time
- 46 min
- Level
- Challenging
- Paperback
- 44 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print paperback
- 44 pages · 8.5 × 11 in
- Delivery and returns
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For Christmas, order by Thu 12 Nov
Cite this edition
Abraham. Sefer Yetzirah. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/loa-sefer-yetzirah.
Abraham. (2026). Sefer Yetzirah. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loa-sefer-yetzirah
Abraham. Sefer Yetzirah. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loa-sefer-yetzirah.
@book{abraham2026sefer,
author = {Abraham},
title = {Sefer Yetzirah},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loa-sefer-yetzirah}
}
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What is Sefer Yetzirah about?
It describes how God formed the universe through thirty-two paths of wisdom, made of ten Sephiroth, or numbers, and twenty-two Hebrew letters. These are matched to the elements, the planets, the months and the human body.
Who wrote the Sefer Yetzirah and when?
The author is unknown. Tradition names Abraham, but scholars generally place its composition between the third and seventh centuries, and they still debate the exact date. It was written in Hebrew.
What are the Sephiroth?
The Sephiroth are ten numbers or emanations through which God shapes creation in this text. They include the Spirit, Air, Water, Fire and the six directions of space, and they later became central to Kabbalah.
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