National Library of Israel Now Has World’s Largest Collection of Kabbalistic Ilanot Scrolls

Kabbalistic Ilanot (Courtesy of Israel National Library/ Gross Collection/ photos by Ardon Bar-Hama)

The National Library of Israel boasts that it is now the holder of the world’s largest and most important collection of scrolls containing ilanot (trees) – diagrams illustrating Jewish esoteric teachings – dating to the 17th century, some over 11M long. This came after the library acquired what it described as a “rare and outstandingly important collection” of Kabbalistic scrolls.

These scrolls, comprising text and diagrams, are called ilanot (trees) or sefirot (a Kabalistic term) trees, and served to illustrate the Jewish esoteric teachings of the Kabbalah. This unique collection includes thirty-six parchment and paper scrolls with a variety of Kabbalistic trees in different sizes and shapes.

According to Chabad.org, sefirot are defined as divine attributes or emanations which are manifested in each of the Four Worlds and are the source of the corresponding ten faculties (kochot – Hebrew for powers) of the soul.

Everything that happens in the spiritual worlds takes place through the medium of the sefirot, explains Chabad. However, they are not G‑d, and the Kabbalists warn that one should not pray to them. There are ten sefirot.

Haifa University explains the sefirot are the skeleton keys that unlock all of reality. Understanding the sefirotic code underlying all things and performing such knowledge is the work of the kabbalist.

To do this work, fourteenth-century kabbalists began drawing arboreal diagrams on membrane sheets, creating artifacts they called ilanot (trees) or yeri‘ot (parchments), one synecdoche highlighting the schema and the other the medium of the genre.

The National Library of Israel explained that for the Kabbalists, these trees served as a map describing the divine world in its various forms. Ilanot were essential for learning the structure of Kabbalistic teachings of God’s attributes and aspects, understanding the mysteries of the world, and for carrying out the practice of Yichud (unification), particular to Kabbalistic prayer, and the worship of God. Ilanot are a well-known and accepted Kabbalistic tradition dating back to the 14th century.

The NLI collection already included some twenty-five scrolls of Kabbalistic trees. The new addition, acquired from the collector William Gross, whose private Judaica collection is considered the largest of its kind, means the Library will have the world’s largest collection of ilanot, with over sixty scrolls, dating between 1660 to 1920, from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Yemen, Kurdistan, Iraq, and other locales, including some scrolls measuring over 11 meters (~12 yards) in length.

According to Dr. Chaim Neria, Curator of the Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Collection at the National Library of Israel, the collection is unique in that it represents all of the different types of Kabbalistic verses. “The Gross collection is extraordinary for its scholarly importance and sheer diversity, containing various examples of original Hebrew works that have great historical, research, and aesthetic value. It contains beautiful and rare ilanot, some illuminated with colors, created by Kabbalists from all over the Jewish world, that are both a visual and spiritual experience.”

Dr. Raquel Ukeles, Head of Collections at the National Library of Israel said, “The Library has long been a world center for Kabbalah scholars and researchers. The Library houses rare Kabbalistic manuscripts and books, and our Gershom Scholem Collection of Kabbalah and Hasidism has the most comprehensive collection of Kabbalah literature and research materials. We are delighted that these rare items will be an integral part of our national memory, preserved on the one hand but also digitally and physically accessible on the other. They will receive the recognition they deserve as distinctively Jewish works, and as rare treasures at the National Library of Israel.”