9
A I R  A N D  B R E A T H I N G 
I N  M E D I E V A L  J E W I S H 
M Y S T I C I S M
M i c h a e l  M a r d e r
Just as the body is constructed in this world from the interweaving of four 
elements, taking form in this world, so is the spirit formed from the inter-
weaving of four spirits existing in the Garden of Eden. […] And were it not 
for these four spirits, which are the airs of the Garden, the spirit would not be 
formed at all (Zohar 2:13b; v. 4, p. 66).
Air in the Zohar, the masterpiece of “medieval Jewish mysticism, 
myth, and esoteric teaching,”1 is polysemic. It involves breath or the 
highest level of the soul (nešamah); wind or spirit (ruaḥ: also occasion-
ally translated as breath); airborne earth in the form of dust, water as 
vapor, and chemical substances as aroma (reyaḥ); the fleeting, short-
lived breath (havel’); the aura, of which light is a faint trace… Along 
with fire and water, it is considered to be that through which the world 
was created. As Rabbi El’azar says: “Come and see: By breath [b’ruḥa] 
the blessed Holy One made the world, and by breath it is sustained 
[uve-ruḥa mitqayyma] – the breath of those studying Torah, especially 
the breath of schoolchildren” (Zohar 1:47a; v. 1, p. 265).2 Then, “the 
mystery of this breath of children becomes voice, spreading through the 
world, and they are the guardians of the world [neturey ‘alma], guardi-
ans of the city” (Zohar 2:39a; v. 4, p. 185). On a par with the dark spark 
and the primordial drop, breath is at the origin of the world. Despite 
its apparent volatility or motility and its ephemeral character, it also 
1  Arthur Green, “Introduction,” in The Zohar, Pritzker Edition, vol. 1, trans. Daniel C. 
Matt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), xxxi.
2  All the citations from the Zohar refer to The Zohar, Pritzker Edition, 12 vol., trans. Dan-
iel C. Matt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018).
https://doi.org/10.35469/poligrafi.2023.399 Poligrafi, no. 111/112, vol. 28, 2023, pp. 9–29
P O l I G R A f I
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serves to sustain, to guard and to protect everything created through it. 
Spanning creation and the continued existence of the world, the pneu-
matics of breath and/as spirit also straddles the divide between God and 
schoolchildren, in keeping with the singular, living, and exceptionally 
fragile foundations of being, which the Zohar locates in the figure of the 
ẓadiq, the righteous one.3
The nucleus of the idea that God created the world through breath 
may be found in Psalms 33:6 – “By the word of YHVH the heavens 
were made, by the breath of his mouth all their host” – and in Sefer 
Yeẓirah 1:9 that tracks the “ten sefirot [divine emanations, MM] of 
nothingness” back up to “the one breath of the living God [eḥad ruaḥ 
Elohim ḥayyim]”4 – not with creatio ex nihilo, but with deus ex nihilo. 
There, the composition of “the holy breath,” ruaḥ ha-qodeš, is revealed 
as “voice, and breath, and speech [qol’ ve-ruaḥ ve-dibur].” To be a holy, 
animating breath, ruaḥ must resound with voice and speech, or, to put 
it in Greek, the essential dimensions of logos. In the Zoharic “Midraš 
Ha-Ne’lam,” Rabbi El’azar (who pays close attention to the pneumatic 
underpinnings of the world) explains that “by a single letter was the 
world created – without speech” and adds: “Now this implies that by 
 ,hē) the world was created, with one letter – literally” (ZH 2d; v. 10) ה
p. 4)5. The letter bespeaking the potency of binah and, to a lesser extent 
of šeḵīnah, is the only one that recurs in the tetragrammaton, remind-
ing us of the irreducible doubling in and at the origin, the doubling 
that denies the origin its simplicity and self-identity and that, from the 
get-go, exiles the origin from itself. This may explain the beginning 
of the enigmatic verse 1:10 in Sefer Yeẓirah: “Two: breath from breath 
[štayim ruaḥ me-ruaḥ].” But the question is: how and why does hē con-
note breath?  
3  This is an inversion of the assertion made in the Babylonian Talmud, “The world endures 
only for the sake of the breath of schoolchildren” (BT Šabbat 119b). Citations from the 
Babylonian Talmud refer to The Babylonian Talmud, The William Davidson Edition, available 
at https://www.sefaria.org/texts/Talmud.
4  Sefer Yeẓirah: The Book of Creation, trans. Aryah Kaplan (San francisco, CA, and New-
buryport, MA: Weiser Books, 1997), 68; translation modified.
5  Volume ten of the Zohar includes supplementary materials that are conventionally quoted 
as ZH.
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In a subtle polemic with the earliest known kabbalistic text,6 Rabbi 
El’azar subtracts speech and voice from the world-creating letter, since 
hē has no proper sound, except that of breath itself, an exhalation. The 
holy breath is reduced to nothing but breath. As such, it wafts close to 
the “ten sefirot of nothingness.” But, in being itself, it is already more 
than itself, given that breath consists of air and water: hevel’ it’avid be-
ruḥa u-maya (Zohar 2:39a; v. 4, p. 185). And it is a nothing that makes 
all the difference when, for instance, thanks to the addition of hē, elim 
(gods) are converted into Elohim,7 a word that, though written in the 
plural, is one of the names of the God of monotheism, or when Abram 
is renamed Abraham. The exhalation of hē expands and makes room 
where there hasn’t been any: between other letters, between elements, 
between worlds. Air is the element of expansiveness. It gives room with-
out occupying any; it lets be. Whatever else it means, hē also signifies 
this.
The expansiveness of air is palpable in the description of the pillars 
of breath, supporting the world: “On seven havalim, breaths, the world 
subsists – namely on seven pillars [‘amudin], supports of the world, cor-
responding to the seven heavens […]. Just as there are seven heavens, 
there are others adjoining them, expanding, issuing from them. Similar-
ly, there are other breaths, expanding, issuing from these” (Zohar 2:10b; 
v. 4, pp. 44-45).8 The seven breaths are, obviously, the seven sefirot from 
binah through to šeḵīnah, from the upper hē to the lower, from the first 
hē of the Tetragrammaton to the second. They are the metamorphoses 
6  This polemic has a broader scope than may appear at first glance, since the Zohar refuses 
to confer the originary status on any one element, while, as Scholem observes, in Sefer 
Yeẓirah, this status belongs to air: “from the first Sefirah comes forth, by way of condensa-
tion, ‘one Spirit from another’; that is first the primal element of air, and from it, issuing one 
after the other as the third and fourth Sefirot, water and fire.” Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah 
(New York: Dorset Press, 1987), 24.
7  Rabbi El’azar again: “It is written: ‘Who is like you among elim (gods), o YHVH (Exo-
dus 15:11) – that is able to create the world? Indicating that elim, gods, could not create the 
world, until the blessed Holy One took one letter from his name – the letter hē – and with it 
the world was created; this letter expanded into Elohim and his name Elohim was inscribed. 
Concerning this we have learned: With hē he created them” (ZH 4a; v. 10, p. 14).
8  The signature expression of Qohelet (or Ecclesiastes), hevel’ havalim, futility of futilities, 
is reinterpreted by the authors of the Zohar as “breath of breaths.” As in many other cases, the 
most ephemeral, denigrated, and negative becomes the most essential, enduring, and positive.  
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of the seven branches of the cosmic tree, the tributaries of the river of 
emanations, or the seven letters of light. The uniqueness of this rendi-
tion of the sefirot is that they are, simultaneously, supportive pillars and 
expanding realms. The pillars are not static and they only perform their 
task of sustaining the world well to the extent that they do not remain 
the same, do not stay still (to be sure, the same may be said about the 
growing branches of a tree, the tributaries of a fast-flowing river, or the 
burning letters). Swelling with divine exhalation, they make room and 
accommodate all within it. literally aerodynamic, these ‘amudin sup-
port the world by proliferating, by birthing further breaths, reiterating 
ad infinitum the basic operation cryptically described in Sefer Yeẓirah as 
“two: breath from breath.” The breath of life persists in its circulation, 
sharing, and increasing; instead of dwindling away, or dissipating in an 
entropic process, it grows. Such is the axiom of mystical sustainability.
The support provided by breath is unstable in the substantive sense 
of stability. Moreover, the pillars of air are a part of the elemental whole, 
which they internally interconnect and interrelate. “fire, water, air, dust 
– interconnected, interlinked, indivisible [ve-itqašran da be-da]. […] 
Though all four supernal sides that we have mentioned are interlinked, 
all of them sustaining above and below, what sustains the world the 
most is ruaḥ, for thereby all exists [qiyuma de-‘alma yatir ruaḥ, be-gin 
de- ḵola qayyma]” (Zohar 2:24b; v. 4, pp. 87-88). The pillars of air, as 
imagined by the authors of the Zohar, are flexible and pliable; they are 
the spiritual-elemental ties of the elemental whole, the ties that hold 
the world together and, by holding it together, uphold it. Neither above 
nor below (and both above and below), ruaḥ sustains the world from 
within by articulating the elements amongst themselves and by lending 
them configurations that are propitious to the continuation of finite 
existence. It embodies the relational and ecological conception of el-
ementality.9
9  In The Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig writes that “in Creation, the definite was created 
on the background of its indefiniteness, through the paired action of the two articles.” franz 
Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. Barbara E. Galli (Madison and london: University 
of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 253. As we can see here, the indefinite is not only the background 
of creation but its ongoing “support structure.” 
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Pillars of air will resurface several times in the Zohar. According to the 
interpretation of “leḵ leḵa,” “when the blessed Holy One created the 
world, he made the heavens of fire and water commingled as one, but 
they did not congeal. Afterward, they congealed and endured through 
supernal spirit [ruḥa]. Thence he sowed the world to stand upon pillars, 
those pillars standing only through that spirit. When the spirit disap-
pears, they all quiver and tremble, the world quakes [uve-ša’ata de-hahu 
ruḥa istalaq kulhu merafefin ve-za’in ve-‘alma irtat]” (Zohar 1:77a; v. 2, 
p. 2). These lines, too, contain an allusion to Sefer Yeẓirah, where the 
creator converts nonexistence into existence by carving “great pillars 
from air that cannot be grasped [‘amudim gdolim me-avir še-eino nitfas]” 
(2:6).10 The elusiveness of these aerial pillars (and of the atmospheric 
grounds for life) within the scope of an appropriative grasp – including 
a conceptual grasp – goes hand in hand with the spiritual consistency 
they lend to the primordial commingling of fire and water. Just as the 
earth quakes when its seemingly firm foundations give way under our 
feet, so the world shakes when spirit is on the verge of breathlessness. 
Such worldquakes are more devastating than earthquakes, because they 
both result from and aggravate the discombobulation of spirit, of the 
largely invisible yet also material bonds tying together diverse elements, 
beings, and the world (or worlds).
The mediations that air generates between water and fire, or be-
tween ḥesed and gevurah,11 yield ruaḥ šelim, a perfect or a complete 
spirit (tif ’eret).12 Between the primordial spark and the drop “issued 
10  Sefer Yeẓirah, 131.
11  “Come and see: Air and east. East – hot and wet. Air – hot and wet, therefore embracing 
two sides. for fire is hot and dry, water is cold and wet; air is hot and wet: the aspect that is 
hot grasps fire, the aspect that is wet grasps water. So it harmonizes between them, mediating 
the conflict of water and fire” (Zohar 2:24a; v. 4, p. 84). Pneumatic mediation of fire and wa-
ter also complicates the straightforward attribution to air and fire “the power of the heavens.” 
David Mevorach Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology: God’s Image in the More-Than-Human 
World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 217.
12  In turn, Marla Segol points out that “air and fire are tied together with the biblical 
prooftext: ‘he makes his angels winds, his servents fire’ (Ps. 104:4).” Marla Segol, Word and 
Image in the Medieval Kabbalah (london and New York: Palgrave, 2012), 51. In and of itself, 
however, the sefirotic drama of ḥesed and gevurah replays, at another level, the opposition of 
ḥoḵmah and binah, but the upper dyad is not unified below; the co-belonging of the upper 
sefirot is only obscurely indicated in keter above.
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14
ruaḥ šelim, so those two sides turned into one; it was placed between 
them [mi-beynayhu] – they were crowned with one another. Then šelam, 
peace, prevailed above, peace below, and the rung stabilized” (Zohar 
1:87a; v. 2, p. 55). The place of spirit, of breath, of air is in-between, 
which means that the spiritual foundation of the world, the “pillars of 
air” that support it, are in also in the middle. Worldquakes are the out-
comes of the erasure or the erosion of the middle, of the breathing space 
and time in-between. Without the middle, existence suffocates. And, 
conversely, the completion of spirit is not a teleological accomplish-
ment, but the ongoing activity of shuttling and mediating, of spanning 
and bridging. In Hebrew and Aramaic, such completion is conceptu-
ally and etymologically related to peace (šalom/šelam), an association 
that the authors of the Zohar could not overlook. Thus, the possibilities 
of both strife and harmonization are present in kabbalistic cosmology, 
where the conflict between opposite sides is only occasionally quelled 
when they are revealed as two sides of the same “thing.” 
Since Jacob personifies tif ’eret and, therefore, the atmospheric rec-
onciliation of water and fire, ḥesed and gevurah, his designation as “a 
consummate [šelim] man, for he dwells in two supernal dwellings, con-
summating this side and that” (Zohar 1:167b, v. 3, p. 12) is justified. 
While, horizontally, he completes the triad of the patriarchs, vertically, 
Jacob dwells with binah and šeḵīnah, or leah and Rachel, respectively.13 
The perfection, the consummate nature, and the peacefulness of Jacob, 
of tif ’eret, or of the ruaḥ-aspect of air are achieved at the price of their 
split identity, of dwelling “in two supernal dwellings” at once, of being 
exiled from “one side” by the act of dwelling in the other. Spirit itself, 
conceived as breath rhythmically moving from exhalation to inhalation 
and back, is this exile on the underside of spirit’s work of binding, link-
ing up, and forging connections.
The non-self-coincidence of the intermediary spills over into a con-
flict that provides sufficient traction for world-creation. The spirit or the 
wind of God hovers over the dark abysses swept with “another wind,” 
ruḥa aḥera, blowing from below, from the depths of the void. Subse-
quently, “the blessed Holy One struck wind against wind and created 
13  Zohar 1:167a; v. 3, pp. 12–13, n.86.
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the world [bataš ruḥa be-ruḥa u-vara ‘alma]” (Zohar 2:34b; v. 4, p. 154). 
The intermediary itself, split in or against itself, cannot be mediated. 
One airmass clashes with another, allowing the world to appear in the 
midst of this spiritual-elemental standoff, which parallels the cosmogo-
nic blowing of spark against spark, or, mutatis mutandis, the generative 
separation of the lower from the upper waters. Behind the peaceful fa-
çade of mediation, the frictions and tensions of the divided middle (di-
vided, above all, against itself ) are unabating. However, rather than the 
dead-heat of two identities confronting one another, divisions inhering 
in the non-self-identical foster the process of becoming.14
The mediatory function and the middle position of air qua ruaḥ 
holds, as well, for the soul. In the psychic order, it is the second of 
three layers of the “fragrant garments [levuša]” of days: “One garment: 
worn by ruaḥ in the terrestrial Garden of Eden. One – most precious 
of all: worn by nešamah within the bundle of life […]. One, an exter-
nal garment: existent and non-existent, visible and invisible. This is 
worn by nefeš, and she goes roaming through the world” (Zohar 1:224b; 
v. 3, p. 351).15 Between the highest and the lowest, the most ethereal 
and the animal kinds of soul bound with the body (“visible and invis-
ible”), ruaḥ occupies the structural position of thumos (spiritedness) in 
the psychophysiology that Plato lays out in The Republic. Nevertheless, 
the quasi-political hierarchy of the Platonic arrangement is disrupted 
in Zohar, where ruaḥ is interposed, cloth-like, between the other two 
kinds of soul, bringing or stitching together the highest and the lowest 
in such a way that the latter depends on the former and the former on 
the latter. The layering of psychic garments is, in and of itself, indica-
tive of the importance of their surfaces in the overall arrangement. But 
what, precisely, is gained (or lost) in this multilayered image of the soul?
14  In this sense, Hegel’s dialectics, and particularly the two Logics, are congruent with the 
dynamics of the Zohar.
15  This view seems to be the inverse of Christian mysticism, where it is the body that is the 
garment of the soul. Hence, Hildegard of Bingen writes: “The body is truly the garment of 
the soul, which has a living voice [corpus vero indumentum est anime, que vivam vocem habet], 
and so it is proper for the body, in harmony with the soul, to use its voice to sing praises to 
God.” Hildegard von Bingen, Hildegardis Bingensis Epistolarium, first part, I–XC, ed. l. Van 
Acker, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 91 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 64.
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There is no authentic psyche, the wearer that is the soul “itself.” 
Their layering of the garments replicates the dynamics of light that en-
wraps itself in itself, its previous shells transformed into new kernels, 
or into extensions of the same kernel. But, all in all, the soul is more 
intimately related to breath than to light, its “fragrant” garments also 
made of “days,” of time, of the duration of breath lingering on. In this 
vein, Rabbi Bo concludes his interpretation of Numbers 15:31 – “That 
soul shall be surely cut off” – by saying: “Well, it is like the breath that 
emerges out of a person’s mouth, unable to rise even up to his eyes but 
immediately disappears. So, the creaturely soul [nefeš] is like that breath 
which is immediately cut off from the mouth and disappears, never 
seen, as though it never was” (ZH 11a; v. 10, p. 75). Rav Huna con-
firms: “What is this labor of vanity [hevel’: also breath, MM]? It is the 
creaturely soul, which will be annihilated and cut off, like the breath 
that comes out of the mouth – which is vanity” (ZH 11b; v. 10, p. 78). 
The soul entwined with a living body is the breath with the short-
est duration possible: it drifts off and away, disappearing as soon as it 
emerges, now and again erasing this very emergence (“as though it nev-
er was”) in its disappearance. The thread of time, with which this layer 
of fragrant psychic garments is sewn, is marked by radical discontinuity, 
the fleetingness of an instant incapable of projection into the future, 
because it is disconnected from the ancient stream of the coming world. 
On the contrary, nešamah is the “divine soul [that] is in his [a person’s, 
MM] nostrils” (ZH 22a; v. 10, p. 246). Rather than escaping from one’s 
mouth, as nefeš does, it is enduring breath, the divine breath, dwelling 
in the nostrils and allowing a finite living being to participate in infinite 
vitality. Despite the rhythms of respiration with alternating inhalation 
and exhalation, this soul does not leave the body it animates, lodged as 
it is “in” a person’s nostrils.
Between these two durations and sources of vitality, ruaḥ mediates. 
Comparing the body to the earth, Rabbi Abbahu sees in the act of 
creation “the radiance of spirit [zohar ha-ruaḥ] hovering over the body 
to revive it, illuminating its darkness” (ZH 16a; v. 10, p. 149). Neither 
inhabiting a living body in the manner of nešamah nor getting cut off 
from it after the fashion of nefeš, ruaḥ hovers over the body (including 
the body of the earth). from close proximity, it dispenses light and 
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breath, the radiance of fire and the expansiveness of air. The vagaries 
of the soul, the drifting of breath and its ephemeral nature, are con-
strained and held in check thanks to the “hovering” of the animating 
ruaḥ over the body it cares for and persistently reanimates. 
Regardless of the mediating activity of the middle psychic layer, the 
three garments of the soul belong to distinct spatial and temporal con-
stellations. Breath is not gathered in itself; it is not identical to itself, 
tending closer to or further away from the body and its various organs 
(the mouth, the nose…), the earth, and the elemental manifold. In 
its vertical ascents or descents, moreover, it is not driven solely by the 
larger scheme of onto-theological reality, but, in a bottom-up determi-
nation, by human conduct. 
On the one hand, “when actions prove worthy below, and a per-
son contemplates the service of the Holy King, the act of righteous-
ness [ma’aseh ha-ẓedaqah] that he performs turns into a breath [hevel’] 
above. And there is no breath without voice – rising, crowned above, 
becoming an advocate before the blessed Holy One” (Zohar 2:59a; v. 4, 
p. 314). Breath travels, traversing long distances (not only of the physi-
cal variety) and metamorphosing from an act into a higher breath and 
then into a “crowned voice.” And since Qohelet bemoans the vanity/
breath (hevel’) that flutters “under the sun,” this reading situates the 
crowned breath “above the sun” – “the act of righteousness is different, 
for it is above the sun” (Zohar 2:59a; v. 4, p. 314), which is, incidentally, 
the sefirah tif ’eret – in a tacit reference to Plato’s “good beyond being,” 
itself analogous to the sun. Becoming “a holy breath,” it is “a seed sown 
by a person in that [other] world” (Zohar 2:59a; v. 4, p. 315).
On the other hand, the errancy of breath is the upshot of futile en-
deavors, marrying the two senses of hevel’: breath and futility. This 
breath “goes drifting through the world [ve-azla ve-šatat be-‘alma]. And 
when the person’s soul departs, that breath whirls it through the world 
[hevel’ megalgla leyh] like a stone in the sling” (Zohar 2:59a; v. 4, p. 315). 
An exilic breath drifts and whirls through the world without acquiring 
a body, a voice, a place of its own, or the promise of a future seminal 
potency or potentiality. It frustrates the mediations of spirit, spirit as 
mediation, the middling breath that acts as a buffer zone between crea-
turely and divine vitalities. Such a breath, which is nothing other than 
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breath and that does not translate itself into an act, into a voice, and 
ultimately into the good, “is the breaking of spirit [re’ut ruaḥ], for it 
breaks the spirit, rising and falling in the world” (Zohar 2:59a; v. 4, p. 
315). It leaves no chance for the mediatory, remedial, mending work of 
spirit, nor does it care about its disunion from the body, roaming the 
earth as a specter. 
The Zohar thus presents its readers with two versions of the exile of 
air, if not of the exile that is air. first is the non-identity and fecund 
divergence of air or breath from itself, its splitting into three fragrant 
garments, and its transformations into something other – voice, seed, 
an angelic advocate… Second is the perpetually itinerant air or breath, 
roving aimlessly, reduced to the purity of its identity and cut off from 
the mouth that exhaled it. In traditional theodicy, the successive his-
toric exiles of the Jewish people were seen as the second kind of exile, 
which, more than a divine punishment, rendered visible a dearth of 
righteous acts, the dearth of which was a logical expression or conse-
quence. Could it be that the overall negative experience of exile surrep-
titiously and incrementally nourished the first, fecund, interpretation? 
And what happens when this new interpretation touches upon the ele-
ments, air above all? Is our exile from the atmosphere and even from 
the breath that fills our lungs with suffocating smog a case of alienation 
from the ubiquitous element that envelops and indwells us? Does it not 
boast a more affirmative dimension?
“Airing” our exegesis of the kabbalistic approach to air a little, let’s 
contemplate for a moment the simple exile of air from itself in the case 
of the earth’s atmosphere. Vegetal and animal respirations are the in-
verse of one another: plants exhale O₂, while animals exhale CO₂. Due 
to these divergent effects of the living, joining the mix of other gases 
such as ozone, methane, or nitrous oxide, the atmosphere is constituted 
by the exile of air. To the extent that pneumatic exile is propitious to the 
fragile conditions of possibility for life, it is not utter errancy; rather, it 
transpires within certain limits. The aggravation of animal respiration 
by the techno-body of industrial humanity annuls these limits. Ema-
nating from the masses of long-dead plants and animals that have been 
incinerated for the sake of momentary energy release, a lethal breath 
shorn of a body, a voice, or a place of its own whirls through the world. 
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This second exile of air testifies to the breaking of spirit, the untying of 
delicate bonds conducive to life. Deep strata of the earth thrown into 
the atmosphere erase the mediations that are at the core of spirit and 
confound what is above and what is below, leading to an immediate 
collapse of the elemental whole. 
To return to Zohar, when a secret (i.e., mystical) word of wisdom 
ascends, it finally presents itself before the Ancient of Days. “At that 
moment, the Ancient of Days inhales the aroma of that word and it 
pleases him more than anything” (Zohar 1:4b; v. 1, p. 26). It is worth 
noting that the Hebrew reyaḥ, smell or aroma, is derived from the same 
root as spirit, ruaḥ.16 It is the spirit of the word in its airy materiality 
that ascends and that emits a fragrance. The passage further intimates 
that the divine sensorium is replete with an olfactory sense, capable of 
discerning and taking pleasure in the fragrance of the word. Shortly, 
we will examine the details and structure of the nose of God as it is 
depicted in Zohar in order to appreciate the kabbalistic take on air and 
breath. But prior to that, it is necessary to note how the inhaling of 
aroma by the Ancient of Days is not the end of its atmospheric jour-
ney: afterwards, the mystical word of wisdom “flies, ascending and de-
scending, and is transformed into a sky. So, each and every word of 
wisdom is transformed into new skies, the innovated skies [šamayim 
ḥadašim, šamayim meḥudašim],” and “all other [non-mystical] innovat-
ed words of Torah…stand before the blessed Holy One, then ascend 
and are transformed into ‘earths of the living [arẓot ha-ḥayyim]’ (Psalms 
116:9)” (Zohar 1:4b-5a; v. 1, p. 26).17
There are, then, multiple skies and earths, airy expanses and sub-
stantial supports, countless worlds created by words after the initial 
creation of the world. Rather than merely traversing the atmosphere, or 
journeying from the physical to a metaphysical dimension of existence, 
16  In addition to this etymology, the overpowering smell of aromatic herbs heated by the 
summer sun in the french Occitan and in Southern Spain, where the Zohar was compiled, 
must have had a strong impact on this olfactory conception of spirit.
17  Compare this to the Zohar 1:33b (v. 1, p. 207): “By the word of YHVH the heavens were 
made – the heavens below, fashioned by the word of the heavens above through a breath 
generating a voice reaching that river flowing forth, whose waters never cease. By the breath of 
his mouth all their host – all those below endure by the breath, namely, the word.”
P O l I G R A f I
20
the mystical word of wisdom becomes a new atmosphere for reading, 
acting, thinking, and being, as indispensable as the air one breathes. 
It contributes to the ramifying growth of tif ’eret. Conventional inter-
pretations of the Torah, situated lower on the sefirotic tree, form new 
substrata for existence, “earths of the living,” corresponding to the terri-
tories of šeḵīnah. Taken together, the air/skies and the earths formed by 
words of exegesis indicate that creation is not a one-time event and that 
it does not depend on the incipit of the demiurge alone. The creation 
of worlds in speech, through and by means of words, requires breath, 
which is then coupled with voice, but the breath itself births more air – 
indeed an entire new sky. This creation also entails a body, the density 
of the underlying with its organs of articulation, an earthy heaviness 
that nevertheless also rises as words that “ascend and are transformed 
into ‘earths of the living’.” The proliferation of worlds is, therefore, both 
elemental and logological; whether old or new, a world is the elemental 
mutation of a word.
Within the divine sensorium, the nose that picks up the aroma of 
mystical words of wisdom is described in Zohar’s “Idra Zuta,” “The 
Small Assembly” that purports to record the teachings Rabbi Šim’on 
gave on his deathbed. The nose, situated above the revealed sefirot, 
belongs to the face of the concealed God triangulated through keter, 
ḥoḵmah, and binah. “The nose. In this nose, through the nostril of an 
armoire within [be-nuqba de-fardašqa], blows the breath of life [ruḥa 
de-ḥayyey] to Ze’eir Anpin [the revealed sefirot, MM]. And in this nose, 
in the nostril of an armoire, is suspended ה (hē), sustaining another hē 
below. This breath issues from the concealed brain and is called ‘breath 
of life.’ […] This nose is life on all sides – complete joy, tranquility, 
health” (Zohar 3:289a; v. 9, p. 782).18 
The divine nose exhales the breath of life, which is, in turn, inhaled 
by and kept in the nostrils of all finite creatures for the duration of their 
existence and flows incessantly through the sefirotic network. The inver-
18  The highest and lowest mirror each other, even when it comes to this suspension of 
everything in the medium of breath or air. While the sefirotic tree from binah to šeḵīnah is 
suspended in the nose of the concealed divine face, the stones of the primordial void (bohu) 
are “suspended in the air [avira] – sometimes suspended in the air, sometimes concealed on a 
cloudy day, generating water from the abyss to nourish tohu” (Zohar 1:16a; v. 1, p. 120).
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sion of exhaling and inhaling between the nose of the concealed God, 
on the one hand, and the revealed divinity and creaturely life, on the 
other, is akin to the relation between vegetal and animal breath, the for-
mer animating the latter. In addition, the breath of life is not channeled 
from the lungs, but from the “concealed brain” – keter – and it passes 
through the divine nostril, compared to an armoire (fardašqa as a varia-
tion on the rabbinic term pardisqin, which is, for its part, a corruption 
of the Greek purgiskos, “cupboard” or “cabinet”19). The nostril is both a 
chamber and a passage, the place where the encounter between God’s 
olfaction and words of wisdom takes place. It marks a porous bound-
ary between the inner and the outer, the concealed and the revealed, 
whence life is dispensed. It is a dwelling for the two dwellings, the two 
figures of divine ecology, binah and šeḵīnah, the hē above and the hē 
below suspended in the nostril. Since this sublime armoire contains the 
place-giving emanations of God, can we safely conclude that what eter-
nally occurs here, in the holy of holies of esoteric wisdom presumably 
related by Rabbi Šim’on just before his death, is the ultimate totaliza-
tion and unification of all that is?
As a matter of fact, as the mystical account unfolds further, it be-
comes evident that the divine nose and divine nostril are not identi-
cal. Of nostrils, there are two, as Rabbi Šim’on casually remarks. The 
remark itself is prefaced by a cryptic, prima facie unrelated reflection 
of rešit, the beginning: “Alef on its own is called rišon, first […]. In alef 
is concealed and hidden what is not known. When this alef is joined 
to another place, it is called rešit, beginning. If you say that it is joined 
– no; rather, it is revealed in it, illuminating it” (Zohar 3:294a; v. 9, 
p. 823). The beginning is not the first, because it is preceded by the 
genuine but utterly unknowable first, alef illuminating the beginning 
without, itself, appearing. And Rabbi Šim’on leaves implicit another 
splitting of the beginning, namely the commencement of the text of 
Berešit not with alef but with bet, which corresponds to the number 
2. The beginning is not just multiple and variously preceded, but also 
doubled or redoubled. 
19  Zohar 3:289a; v. 9, p. 782, n46.
P O l I G R A f I
22
The same is true for the two nostrils and two noses of God: “The 
nose of Ze’eir Anpin,” Rabbi Šim’on observes in an argumentative leap 
from a lengthy reflection on the beginning, “ – enhancement of the 
countenance; the whole face is thereby recognized. This nose is unlike 
the nose of the Holy Ancient One, concealed of all concealed; for the 
nose of the Ancient One is life of life for all [ḥayyim de-ḥayyim le-ḵola] 
– from its two nostrils, breath of life for all [ruḥin de-ḥayyin le-ḵola] 
and life for all [ḥayyin le-ḵola]” (Zohar 3:294a; v. 9, p. 823). “The life of 
life for all,” ḥayyim de-ḥayyim le-ḵola, presents itself as a term of gather-
ing and totalization, of a meta-vitality that animates everything and 
everyone said to be alive. Even in the expression itself, however, life is 
redoubled (not to mention the irreducibly plural form of the word for 
life, ḥayyim or ḥayyin, in Hebrew and Aramaic). The reference to the 
two divine nostrils distributes this life of life between the “breath of 
life for all” and “life for all,” between spirit taken in its airy, pneumatic 
or pneumatological sense and the actual, including past and future, 
vitality of the ensemble of the living. On the same level of divine coun-
tenance, the two nostrils accommodate the inspiring and the inspired, 
the source (which will have always been preceded, if only by itself in 
its unrevealed aspect) and the destination, the animating and the ani-
mated. This doubling retrospectively clarifies the assertion “[t]his nose 
is life on all sides – complete joy, tranquility, health”: “life on all sides” is 
not the absolute where all the sides amount to one no-side, but a many-
sided physiological-spiritual process of respiration.
Besides the two nostrils of the same divine nose, there are two noses: 
one pertaining to the concealed God; the other, to the revealed. “The 
nose of the Holy Ancient One is ariḵ, long and extended, so he is called 
ereḵ apayim, long-nosed, long-suffering. This nose, however, is ze’eir, 
short; and when smoke begins, it comes out hurriedly and judgment is 
executed” (Zohar 3:294a; v. 9, p. 824). The short-tempered, fiery nose 
of the revealed God is quick to pass judgment, and it is appeased by the 
“soothing aroma,” reyaḥ ha-niḥoaḥ, of burnt offerings (Zohar 3:294a; 
v. 9, p. 823).20 The medium of the revealed divine olfaction is fire; that 
20  See also Zohar 3:289a; v. 9, pp. 782–783: “[J]udgment depends upon the nose; and it is 
written Smoke rose from his nostrils […] The root of wrath depends upon the nose.”
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of the concealed God is air. Other interpreters (notably, Rav Hamnuna 
Sava) attribute this difference to the two nostrils of the same divine 
nose: “from one [nostril], smoke and fire; from the other, tranquility 
and beneficent breath – for it includes right and left” (Zohar 3:294a; 
v. 9, p. 825). Be this as it may, the two noses or nostrils – that is to 
say, the vertical or the horizontal doubling of olfactory organs – corre-
spond, roughly, to the animal and vegetal breaths, whether with regard 
to the involvement or noninvolvement of combustion or with regard to 
the distinction between anger and tranquility.   
The physical and the metaphysical realities are, then, brought to-
gether in the nexus of the aroma and spirit (reyaḥ and ruaḥ), and the 
aromas run the gamut from volatile biochemical substances to acts. 
Upon descending from the ark, Noah made a burnt offering of thanks 
to God. The pleasing or soothing aroma, reyaḥ ha-niḥoaḥ, discussed 
by Rabbi Šim’on invokes this very smell of the first sacrifice after the 
flood in Genesis 8:21 and, furthermore, includes Noah’s name in the 
description of the aroma as pleasing or soothing, niḥoaḥ. Rabbi Yehu-
dah notes in “Midraš Ha-Ne’lam”: “Three aromas ascended before him 
[before God, MM]: the aroma of the offering, the aroma of his prayer, 
and the aroma of his deeds. No aroma in the world was as pleasing to 
God as that aroma” (ZH 22d; v. 10, p. 255). The smells that present 
themselves before the divine sensorium are 1) sensations, 2) words (of 
prayer), and 3) deeds. Words are the hinges, mediating between the 
sensory and the active dimensions of the aromatic offering; the right 
actions articulate the material and the spiritual aspects of air: reyaḥ and 
ruaḥ. Reaching the left nostril or the nose of God’s lower countenance 
attuned to smoke and burning, the three aromas reaffirm the middling 
and mediatory activity of spirit. And, in spite of this, they preserve the 
non-identity of air, to the extent that their mediations take place under 
the aegis of the revealed God alone. 
The non-identity of air is not only spatial but also temporal. As we 
have seen, at the creation of the world, light (אור, or) is what remains 
of auratic air (אויר, avir).21 light is deficient air, air that has undergone 
21  The light gathered in “the primordial point” “is concealed mystery, an expansion expand-
ing, bursting from the mysterious secret of the hidden supernal aura [or “air,” אויר (avir) 
P O l I G R A f I
24
the subtraction of something essential, something that, signified with 
the letter י (yod), refers to divine wisdom (ḥoḵmah) or, further still, to 
the dark spark of buẓina d’qardinuta. So, light is the remains of air, but 
air, too, is the remains of air, for, just as primordial light was reserved 
and hidden from the world, so was primordial air: “That father is spirit 
treasured away in the Ancient of Days. In him was concealed this air, 
absorbing the spark that issued from the lamp of adamantine darkness” 
(Zohar 3:292b; v. 9, p. 810). like everything else, air is subdivided into 
the concealed and the revealed; the Ancient of Days, keter or ein-sof, 
becomes a capsule of sorts for air that is “treasured away,” even as the air 
that remains animates existence and interconnects the world. That the 
pneumatic foundations – the pillars of the world – are not purely origi-
nary follows, therefore, both from their intermediary nature as rela-
tional ties and from their being remnants of the concealed spirit. In this 
way, air makes its contribution to the kabbalistic ecology of remnants. 
Not just formally but actively as well, the movements of air occupy 
themselves (indeed, are stubbornly preoccupied) with refuse. Concern-
ing Genesis 1:2b – “And a wind of God [ve-ruaḥ Elohim] hovering 
over the face of the waters” – it is said that “once this wind blew, one 
fine film clarified from that refuse, like filthy froth flying off, clarified, 
refined again and again, till that filth is left [‘ad de-ištaer] lacking any 
filth at all” (Zohar 1:16a; v. 1, p. 119). The wind hovering over the 
face of the waters precipitates a series of elemental discernments within 
the waters themselves, clarifying, refining, and separating refuse from 
non-refuse. Whatever remains of each of these operations still includes 
refuse, all the way down to the final refinement “till that filth is left lack-
ing any filth at all.” The goal of the successive purifications eventually 
MM]. […] After the primordial point, י (yod), emerged from it into being it manifested 
upon it, touching yet not touching. Expanding, it emerged; this is אור (or), light, remain-
ing [d’ištaer] from אויר (avir, air, or aura), the light that already was. This endured, emerged, 
ascended, was treasured away…” (Zohar 1:16b; v. 1, pp. 123-4). In the lurianic doctrine, the 
world-creating contraction of the infinite (tsimtsum) results “in the creation of ‘vessels’ (kelim) 
in which the divine essence that remained in primordial space is precipitated out: at first this 
takes place still hylically, in the vessel called ‘primordial air’ (avir kadmon), but subsequently 
it assumes a clearer form in the vessel called ‘primordial man’ (Adam Kadmon).” Scholem, 
Kabbalah, 130. It is thus reasonable to assume that the avira of the Zohar corresponds to the 
lurianic avir qadmon. 
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yielding the matter and form appropriate to creation is not the ideal of 
purity but “filth without filth,” the minimal version of the remains. Nor 
is it the case that ruaḥ plays a wholly active role in the purification of 
water; their elemental engagement is mutual. As the water was purified, 
the “wind clarified [ivrir ruaḥ], and embraced in its mystery was the 
sound of sheer silence” (Zohar 1:16a; v. 1, p. 119). Hand in hand with 
the water’s transformation into filth without filth, the air is transmuted 
into voice without voice; ruaḥ is rid of the voice but not of sound, re-
taining “the sound of sheer silence” – or that of breath.22
The tensions between identity and non-identity (of air, among other 
things) are concentrated in the variously sealed or burst open enigma of 
keter / ein-sof. The infinity that lends this sefirah one of its names (ein-
sof) is where, having ascended to it, “all becomes one” (Zohar 1:16b; v. 
1, p. 124). Moving in the other direction, with the creation of light as a 
leftover of the aura or air, “ein-sof  burst out of its aura [baqa’ me-avira], 
revealing this point י (yod)” (Zohar 1:16b; v. 1, p. 124). The dehiscence 
of ein-sof prompts the watery, fiery, or airy flux of emanations to spill 
over and travel to the rest of the sefirot. This is the moment of a cosmic 
breath that commences its respiratory rhythms, exhaling for the first 
time at the edge of the knowable, the representable, the conceivable. 
Nota bene: the Zohar does not insist on the initial unity of ein-sof; rath-
er, it is only by ascending to it that “all becomes one.” The opposite vec-
tor of descent begins with two: the tearing, cleaving, breaking open or 
breaking through (baqa’) of the aura, the parting of air, its dehiscence. 
The unity of the point י (yod) that concretizes in the transition from 
ein-sof to ḥoḵmah is disclosed within this cleft, against the backdrop of 
the two (or more) into which the first sefirah has burst. The identity of 
breath is reconstructed, ever so partially, in the upward journey of the 
elements. In their downward rush, non-identity reigns supreme.
Since the aura (avira) always presents itself as already cleaved, light 
and air are the remnants of a non-existent unity, of nothing in fact, 
22  This point (namely, that within the nascent ecology of the remnants or leftovers ruaḥ is 
voice without voice) is confirmed by what follows the already cited passage: “Ruaḥ, wind, is 
a voice hovering over bohu, empowering and conducting it with whatever is needed” (Zohar 
1:16a; v. 1, p. 120). Plus, as Rabbi El’azar notes: “A silent voice is the sublime voice, from 
which all voices issue” (Zohar 1:210a; v. 3, p. 289).
P O l I G R A f I
26
seeing that the ten sefirot are of nothing: ein, the prefix of ein-sof, of 
the in-finite. Everything and everyone that and who remains in post-
auratic reality commemorates the nothing in the wake of which they 
have emerged and endured – for a while. Identity and non-identity 
form only one facet of the inherently contradictory nature of air, at 
once volatile and enduring, suspended and grounding, divisible and 
indivisible, interlacing and initiating. 
The very place of air is indeterminate when examined from the kab-
balistic perspective. Whereas, according to its innermost dynamics, 
breath tends upward, this tendency is tempered by the pronouncement 
that “whether on this side or that, the breath that we have mentioned 
is actualized and empowered on earth [hevel’ na’asah ve-ittaqaf ‘al ha-
areẓ]” (Zohar 2:10b; v. 4, p. 46). Breath, as the instantiation of spirit 
traceable all the way up to ein-sof, becomes truly effective solely here-
below, in the realm of šeḵīnah and everything extending down from it. 
This is the breath that animates and ensouls – that, having delivered 
itself from the infinite to the finite, is entwined with the body. Only 
in this finitude does it gain power and actuality. The cleft, from which 
it was exhaled, is reiterated, realized each time anew but with indelible 
differences, in every event of ensoulment, in a living and livable world. 
The upward striving of unencumbered breath is moderated by its reali-
zation here-below.
The indeterminacy of place is further exacerbated by the shifting 
directionalities of wind, the environmental hypostasis of ruaḥ, which 
is not exempt from the principles of the motility of atmospheric air-
masses. Wind can blow from four different directions, themselves tac-
itly associated with distinct sefirot. “When the east wind rouses to flow 
into the world, whoever is walking on the way and attunes his spirit to 
this matter – at that hour, all the blessings with which he is blessed are 
fulfilled” (ZH 13b; v. 10, p. 106). Accompanied by the angel Michael, 
the wind rousing from the east derives from the upper sefirot, in light 
of the fact that the entire sefirotic tree extends from ein-sof in the east to 
šeḵīnah in the west. The airborne flow of blessings is another name for 
the flux of mazzala, although here it is endowed with an unrestrictedly 
positive meaning. This is the “proper,” or the properly metaphysical, 
vector of spirit, but it is counterbalanced by three other vectors that 
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question the unidirectional causality prevalent in metaphysical systems. 
It is also limited in time: a morning wind, it prevails at the beginning of 
the day, which variously refers to a millennium or to the entire limited 
duration of the world’s existence. The spatial indeterminacy of air is 
riveted to time determinations, its whence indissociable from its when. 
The wind blowing from the west emanates from šeḵīnah. “The west 
wind blows from the middle of the day until the night, and with it 465 
breezes flow forth from the fountain treasury – causing plants, trees, 
and crops to thrive. It has been taught: an angel is empowered from 
the middle of the day until the night – named Raphael; he is appointed 
over the west” (ZH 13b; v. 10, p. 107). The west wind, emanating from 
šeḵīnah, which is also the earth, is fecund: it stimulates plant growth. Its 
fecundity sends a plethora of blessings back up in the shape of “plants, 
trees, and crops,” and has a curative effect, hinted at by the name of the 
angel in charge of this wind, Raphael, or “God heals.”23 The spirit of 
healing is, therefore, vegetal; flying in the face of the sefirotic flow, it is 
exuded by the earth, precisely as the spirit of the earth.
In turn, “the south wind blows from the beginning of the night 
until midnight, and with it 275 breezes flow forth from that beloved 
treasury, invigorating the earth and warming the cold. An angel is em-
powered over it – named Uriel; he is appointed over the south, in that 
wind” (ZH 13b; v. 10, p. 108). In serifotic cartography, the south cor-
responds to ḥesed, with the warmth of compassionate love responsible 
for the unfreezing of the sea of šeḵīnah and moderating the excessive 
rigor of judgment (also occasionally concentrated in šeḵīnah and most 
relevant to gevurah). Here, the kabbalistic interpretation clashes with 
the Talmudic reading of the south wind as harsh: “And the south wind 
is harsher than all of them [ve-ruaḥ dromit qaša mi-kulan], and were it 
not for the angel called Ben Netz, who stops it from blowing even hard-
er, it would have destroyed the entire world” (BT Gittin 31b). Aware 
of this incongruity, the authors of the Zohar attempt to reconcile two 
significations of this wind (no doubt, affected by their own embedded-
ness in the climates of Southern france and Spain), when they relate 
23  The allusion is explicitly spelled out further down in the same passage, with the invoca-
tion of “the angel empowered over healing acts” (ZH 13b; v. 10, p. 107). 
P O l I G R A f I
28
that, when it is blowing, “the wicked are judged in the fire of hell” (ZH 
13b; v. 10, p. 108). But, while the addition accords with the Talmudic 
text, it refutes the derivation of the south wind from ḥesed. Speaking in 
the elemental terms of fire, the apparent contradiction is, nevertheless, 
resolved once it is stated that the warmth invigorating the earth may 
also scorch it – that having been just right, the heat may grow excessive. 
far from the global spread of compassionate love, global warming is the 
“harshest” in the 21st century, and it is life-giving if it follows on the 
heels of an Ice Age.
The north wind, emitted by gevurah, “blows at midnight and the 
blessed Holy One enters, all the spices and all the trees in the Garden of 
Eden emit their fragrance – singing in his presence” (ZH 13b; v. 10, p. 
109).24 Returning to the nexus of ruaḥ and reyaḥ, of spirit and aroma, 
and succeeding all the other winds, the north wind carries a bouquet of 
their curative, growth-promoting, and warmth-giving properties. Such 
a gathering of the four winds (or at least of their effects) is temporary; it 
will dissolve at the break of the following day. The fragrance of “all the 
spice and all the trees” that it calls forth is the ascent of ruaḥ as reyaḥ 
in the form of a song – a voiceless, silent song, mediated by airborne 
biochemical plant substances. In addition to being tasked with passing 
severe judgment, gevurah is the sefirah of separation, distinction, and 
discernment, which is why it promotes the fine discernments of the 
melodic language of plants. Reminiscent of the voice without voice 
of ruaḥ itself, this language similarly comprises “the sound[s] of sheer 
silence,” albeit a silence that sings, aromatically. On the precipice of 
undergoing future displacements, the place of spirit is provisionally de-
termined from the north as a green song, sung mystically and silently 
in the dark, at midnight.
24  A peaceful vision of the north wind stands in sharp contrast to Ezekiel’s vision, which is 
fundamental to the merḵavah mysticism: “I looked and saw a windstorm coming out of the 
north – an immense cloud with flashing lightening and surrounded by brilliant light. The 
center of the fire looked like glowing metal” (Ezekiel 1:4; Torah, Nevi‘im, K‘tuvim (Jerusalem: 
Hotza‘at Koren, 1994)). likewise, it radically diverges from a prior statement in the Zohar: 
“When the north wind [ruaḥ ẓafon: ruaḥ also means “spirit,” MM] blows, waters congeal – 
no longer flowing out, no one watered – since judgment impends and the cold of the north 
freezes water. When the south wind [ruaḥ darom] arouses, waters warm – their ice melting 
away – so they flow. Then all are watered [itšaqyan kola]” (Zohar 1:161b; v. 2, pp. 402-3).
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