Ein Sof

Ein Sof, “without end” or “the Infinite”, is the Kabbalistic name for God as God is in God’s self, hidden and beyond all knowledge. The term first appears in the circle of the early Kabbalists of Provence and Gerona in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Ein Sof has no attributes and no name, and is not addressed in prayer or mentioned in the Bible; nothing can be said of it except by negation.

From Ein Sof the divine life unfolds in the ten sefirot, the powers or qualities through which the hidden God becomes manifest and active, and which can be spoken of and known. Some Kabbalists described the first sefirah as ayin, “nothingness”, the divine nothing beyond being, from which all being comes.

Ein Sof has often been compared with the Neoplatonic One and with the Godhead of Meister Eckhart, and medieval Kabbalah owed something to Neoplatonic ideas. But the Kabbalists insisted that the hidden Ein Sof and the God of the Torah who speaks and acts are one God, not two.