Note 35 — II.

It is this commentary to which we must look, as the most ancient document embodying the doctrines of the Kabbalah. The author of this commentary, R. Azariel b. Menachem, was born in Valladolid, about 1160. He distinguished himself as a philosopher, Kabbalist, Talmudist, and commentator, as his works indicate; he was a pupil of Isaac the Blind, who is regarded as the originator of the Kabbalah, and master of the celebrated R. Moses Nachmanides, who is also a distinguished pillar of Kabbalism. R. Azariel died A.D. 1238, at the advanced age of seventy-eight years. “The Commentary on the Ten Sephiroth” is in questions and answers,35 and the following is the lucid analysis of it as given by the erudite Jellinek, according to Spinoza’s form of Ethics.