This is also what the Possuk is referring to when it says וַיִּטַע אֶׁשֶׁל בִּבְאֵׁר שָבַע “Avrohom Ovinu planted an ‘Eishel’ in Be’er Sheva”. Because the basic understanding of the word Eishel is a single tree (As the Iben Ezra writes as well as other Torah commentators who explain the Possuk) that it refers to the Ze’eir Anpin of the spiritual world of Atzilus which represents the growth of Atzilus and it includes all of the ten supernal Sefiros of the spiritual world of Atzilus which are the ten saplings.
Iben Ezra: Life and Works
Iben Ezra: Rabbi Avrohom ben Meir Iben Ezra, born about the year 4852 (1092) in Tudela, in the present-day Spanish province of Navarre, which at the time was under the Muslim rule of the emirs of Zaragoza. He was a man of so many excellent gifts. He is known as one of the greatest Bible commentators as he was a man of Torah scholarship, but also of the arts and secular knowledge in philosophical teachings, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology. He was a poet of sharp wit, an astrologist, scientist, and Hebrew grammarian. He spent the first half of his life in the various cities of the Arabic part of Spain, in Córdoba, in Granada and maybe also in Calahorra, always in financial difficulties and dire need. In one of his poems he makes fun of his ill fortune and complains that "if he were to sell candles, the sun would never set; if he should deal in shrouds, no one would ever die." Life was made somewhat easier by the generosity of his admirers, who appreciated the elegance and stylishness of his poetry and other writings. Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra spent the second half of his life travelling from country to country, studying peoples and countries, languages and cultures. About the same time as his great contemporary, Rabbi Yehudah Halevi, he set out for-the Orient, together with his son Isaac. He visited Africa, Egypt, and the Holy Land, where he learned Kabbalah, the deepest and most mysterious part of Torah study, from the sages in Tzefat and Teveria. Then he travelled to Babylon and Persia, where the Caliph of Baghdad had permitted the Jews to have their own prince. Finally, he returned to Italy where he lived in Rome, Salerno, Lucca and Mantua (possibly also Verona). There he wrote most of his great commentaries to the Bible, and his books on Jewish grammar and philosophy. He wrote poems in honour of his friends and spent much of his time teaching a great number of disciples who gathered about him. Ibn Ezra did not stay in Italy. He moved to Provence (and Narbonne, Béziers), in Southern France, where he was received with much honour and respect. For it was there that the two great lines of Jewish tradition, the Sephardic in Spain, and the Ashkenazic from Northern France and Germany, met. After three years of quiet study, in Béziers, Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra again took up the wanderer's staff and went across the channel to London, where at that time a rich colony of enthusiastic Jews were eager to have this great representative of Jewish learning and art in their midst. Yet before his death Rabbi Abraham wanted to return to his old home. He passed away at the age of about seventy-five years around Shevat 4924/January 1164, it is said that this was in Calahora, between Navarra and Castilia, but it might have been Eretz Yisroel as a gravesite with his name on it has been found in Tzefat.
Ze’eir Anpin and Atzilus
The Supernal Middos of the world of Atzilus which are the ‘emotive attributes’ are referred to as ‘Zeier Anpin’ which means ‘small faces’ because they have a small amount of light in comparison to the ‘Mochin’ which are the ‘intellectual attributes’ and even smaller amount of light in comparison to the light that shines beyond the ‘Seder Hishtalshelus’ where there is a light called ‘Arich Anpin’ which means ‘the long faces’.
World of Atzilus: World of Emanation, the highest of the four spiritual groups of worlds. Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Each world consisting of a full set of ten Sefiros, with the lowest Sefirah of the spiritual world of Atzilus being Malchus of Atzilus serving as the highest Sefirah, the Kesser (Crown) above the set of ten Sefiros of the next world below it which is the spiritual world of Beriyah. And so too with the lower worlds in the same continuous pattern. With each world becoming more contracted than the world above it. Atzilus is the realm of spiritual existence which, although encompassing attributes which have a specific definition, is in a state of infinity and at one with the Infinite Divine Light. Also called Atzilus from the word Eitzel meaning next-to because it is right next to Hashem. In Atzilus there are no created beings that consider themselves an existence or independent presence.
Growth of Atzilus: Parable
Just as a person’s emotive attributes start off small and grow larger and a small excitement can soon grow and develop into a rapture and fervour, and just as vegetation grows from the ground so too do emotions grow from intellect. There is a good parable to understand this: There was once a person who was sitting on the train on his way home reading his paper after a long day at work. There were some children playing on the train making a bit of a racket running up and down. And as the train hurried along the track the kids were becoming more engrossed in their game and more disturbing and disrupting to our friend with his paper. This agitated the gentleman reading the paper and he began to experience frustration, resentment, anger, indignation, annoyance, along with a host of other emotions. At one point one of the children threw a ball across the train which landed in his paper, this was too much for our friend to handle and he jumped up and reproached the person traveling with these kids who seemed to be their father. Shouting ‘can’t you just control your kids’ to which the man responded that he could not, and he did not know what to tell them as they were on their way home from hospital where their mother had just died. At which point our friend suddenly felt, shamefaced, guilty, embarrassed, mortified, which were followed by feeling apologetic, remorseful, contrite, regret, empathy, compassion, kindness, pity, concern, amongst a host of other emotions. We see here how when the understanding changed the emotions followed suit. Or in the words of Chassidus the intellect gave birth to the emotions. In a similar way regarding the revelation of the supernal Middos above in G-dliness they grow, and they come to reveal the supernal intellect.
