200 BCE–500 CE · TAN · Tiberias
Anonymous author of Sefer Yetzirah ('Book of Formation'), the oldest extant work of Jewish mystical speculation. Reconstructs Creation as the combinatorial work of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and ten primordial 'sefirot.' Variously dated from the 2nd to 6th century.
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Galilee center; home of Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and his Hasidic disciples after aliyah.
Jerusalem · 500
The proto-text of Jewish mysticism. A short, dense work attributed traditionally to Abraham and dated by scholars to somewhere between the 2nd century BCE and the early Geonic period. It describes the creation of the world through ten primordial numbers (sefirot) and twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet — the architecture every later kabbalistic system would build on.
Tzfat · 1600