The Gra Tree Of Life

The GRA is Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman ( aka the GRA) who was born in Vilna Lithuania in 1720. The GRA is a Hebrew acronym that stands for �Gaon (Hebrew for �genius�) Rabbi Elijah.� He is the genius of Vilna. His knowledge, understanding, and insights into Torah, Talmud, and Jewish Kabbalah earned him this title.

He is important to us for his commentary published in 1884 on the Kabbalistic text The Sefer Yetzirah. In that text, he presented a figure which has become known as the GRA�s Tree. It is a diagram of the Sefiroth aka The Tree of Life. Many books and websites have referred to this version of the Tree. The vast majority of images found on the web and the vast majority of the books talking about the GRA�s tree are mistaken. They are not describing and discussing the GRA�s tree but rather are discussing Aryeh Kaplan�s version of the Tree that he calls �the Natural Array� from Kaplan�s The Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice (Revised Edition), Samuel Weiser Books Inc, 1990.

To my knowledge, the only book illustrating and explaining the GRA�s tree is my own book The Qabalah Paths of Light.