Secrets of Creation

Five hundred years ago, Rabbi Meir Ibn Gabbai’s work Avodat HaKodesh brought the opening chapters of Genesis into conversation with the kabbalistic teachings reshaping Jewish thought. In The Secrets of Creation, Arthur Green, Howard Smith, and Debra Band translate and expand Ibn Gabbai’s vision into a richly illustrated conversation among Jewish mysticism, modern cosmology, and sacred imagination.

Structured around Ibn Gabbai’s ten-part interpretation of the Creation story, the book offers a translation of the original text alongside theological commentary, scientific reflection, and illuminated artwork. Green, a historian of Jewish mysticism, explores Ibn Gabbai’s spiritual vision; Smith, an astrophysicist, considers its resonance with contemporary ideas such as the big bang, quantum mechanics, and the Anthropic Principle; and Band, a Hebrew manuscript artist, gives visual form to the text through Jewish iconography and scientific imagery.

Together, they invite readers into a layered encounter with Creation: ancient and modern, mystical and empirical, textual and visual. The result is both a work of scholarship and a meditation on humanity’s place within the unfolding story of the cosmos.

Advance Praise

“Secrets of Creation is mind-bending and spiritually illuminating in every sense! The symbolic vocabularies of Kabbalah, astrophysics, and art converge in most wondrous ways. What a gift!”
— Michael Fishbane, author, Fragile Finitude: A Jewish Hermeneutical Theology

“Secrets of Creation combines science, Kabbalah, and art, linking together old kabbalistic and new scientific accounts of origins with the imaginative insight of the artistic eye. Bringing them together is an act of contemporary Jewish creativity.”
— Melila Hellner-Eshed, author, A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar

“Mystics, scientists, and artists have always pondered the Secrets of Creation. Here, in this marvelous book, three brilliant contemporary seekers—a mystic, a scientist, and an artist—have collaborated to produce an updated guide to these secrets. Based on a sensitive reading of a traditional masterpiece of Kabbalah, these three modern masters demonstrate how ancient wisdom can stimulate and enlighten us today. Delve into this book and you will be amazed!”
— Daniel Matt, author of God and the Big Bang, and the multi-volume annotated translation, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition.

Arthur Green is a historian of Jewish mysticism and a theologian. He was first introduced to the writings of Rabbi Meir Ibn Gabbai by his mentor, Abraham Joshua Heschel, more than sixty years ago. He has a longstanding interest in Jewish Creation theology largely because of its implications for life on our much-threatened planet at this crucial moment in our long evolutionary journey. His most recent works include a translation of the Hasidic classic, The Light of the Eyes (Stanford, 2020), and Judaism for the World: Reflections on God, Life, and Love (Yale, National Jewish Book Award, 2020). Green retired in 2022 as rector of the Hebrew College Rabbinical School, which he founded in 2003.

Howard Smith is a senior research astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, an author on over 400 scientific journal articles, and a principal investigator on numerous NASA and international space programs. He was a Lecturer and mentor in the Harvard Astronomy Department, and served for a decade as the chair of the astronomy department at the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum where he developed public education programs, museum galleries, and films in addition to leading science research. He is also a longtime student of Jewish mysticism and publishes frequently on science and religion and their essential, complementary roles in helping us understand the cosmos and the divine. He is the author of Let There Be Light: Modern Cosmology and Kabbalah, a New Conversation Between Science and Religion (New World Library, 2006). He is active in the Boston Jewish community.

Debra Band is a Hebrew-manuscript artist living in Potomac, Maryland. She is the author and illuminator of The Song of Songs: The Honeybee in the Garden (Jewish Publication Society, 2005); I Will Wake the Dawn: Illuminated Psalms in collaboration with Arnold J. Band, (Jewish Publication Society, 2007); Arise! Arise! Deborah, Ruth and Hannah, in collaboration with Arnold J. Band (Honeybee in the Garden, 2012); Kabbalat Shabbat: The Grand Unification, with Raymond P. Scheindlin (Honeybee in the Garden, 2016); All the World Praises You: an Illuminated Aleph-Bet Book, in collaboration with Arnold J. Band (Honeybee in the Garden, 2018); and Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living, in collaboration with Menachem Fisch (Baylor University Press, 2023). Her artwork interprets these texts through a new, Jewish iconographic vocabulary that she has been developing for many years, drawn from midrash and biblical texts, and from related Jewish and general Western and Middle Eastern culture and modern science.