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.
