THE SECRETS OF CREATION: Mysticism Meets Science and Art (Based on the Hebrew text Avodat ha-Kodesh by Rabbi Meir Ibn Gabbai)

In September 2026 Ben Yehuda Press will publish the fruits of a fascinating collaboration with the renowned scholar of Jewish mysticism, Arthur Green, Harvard astrophysicist, Howard Smith, and myself. As Art writes in the preface, “The authorship of this book sounds a little bit like a lead-in to a contemporary Jewish joke: “A kabbalah scholar, an astrophysicist, and a manuscript artist met in a bar.”  Or “What would you get if you combined a mystic, a star-gazer, and a creator of images?”  The answer to either, of course, is the book before you. This collaboration is the product of two years of shared study, a close reading of a sixteenth century Hebrew text.  We read together The Secrets of Creation by Rabbi Meir Ibn Gabbai, a master of the Kabbalah.  We did not know, when we set out to study, that we would write a book together.  But it soon became clear that each of us brought very different insights to the text before us, and that what each of us had to say was of mutual interest to the three of us.  It did not take us long to decide that others as well might find value in what we had to offer.” Let me share a few of the twenty four illuminated paintings from this mind- and style-bending project.

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