The project: The presentation of the painting was at the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art on the 5th of September, 1998, the exhibition lasted till January 15 1999.

The first page (part) of "Book of creation" and a part of the painting before writing on it.

On a canvas 9 meters x 1.5 meters ( 354" x 59" ) I've painted an oil painting. On which I've copied as a scribe (sofer stam) the whole "Book of creation" the short version.

Nobody knows who wrote this ancient, Hebrew and esoteric book. It was passed from Rabbi to pupil and it is said to have been written between the theird and the sixth centurys A D, in Israel. There are two main secrets, one is the secret of creation that deals with the creation of the world ( Book of Creation ), and the other the secret of the "Merkava", the authority in the kingdom of God. The books that deals with it are, "Heicalot Zutrati", Heicalot Rabati", "The theird book of Enoch",and in the book Yehezkiel in the old testament.

The legend tells us that the Maharal of Prague used this book to build the "Golem".

This is a panoramic small book, it describes the connection between the body parts and the bodies of the universe. But the secrets are hidden among it's letters.

This is an exert from Gershom Scholem's book Origins of the Kabbalah, a Princeton University book, 1987:

"Besides the literary monuments of the Merkabah gnosis, there is another extremely curious text which circulated widely during the middle ages, exercising a great influence in many lands and diverse circles, "Book of Creations, or Sefer Yetzira"...It is impossible to come to any reliable conclusion regarding it's date which fluctuates between the second and the sixth centuries ad. This slender book also designated in the oldest manuscripts as a collection of "Halachot on the Creation"...The book contains a very compact discourse on cosmogony and cosmology...it has strong link with jewish speculation concerning divine wisdom, Hohmah or Sophia..."

This book interested me from the occult point of view and not the religious one. All the book, is written on the canvas, nothing missing, one can put it on the ground or mount it on the wall and read it like a scroll till the end, this is an ancient Hebrew, the Modern Israeli can understand most of the words, there are some words that cannot be explained, their meaning was lost through time, it's easy to understand the cover story ( " Pshat " ), but the secret, the real secret lies between the the lines.

During the process of the work on the painting, I,ve done several of drawings and small sketches in watercolors and gouaches on the same theme. Double click to see them.

Here are few lines that Efi Carmel an artist a scholar and a friend wrote as an introduction to my catalogue (the catalogue is also panoramic, as the painting, 1 meter on 21 cetimeters):

"BOOK OF CREATION"

"The process of fashioning the tools of creation and the resultant ennobling light are phenomena that take place in the mind alone."In the beginning was the creation" means it was created in the mind. This is an internal event, an internal drama. The mind. The head. The brain with its various channels of intelect that constitute the primordial basis for the wondrous laws that made the creation possible.

Since its source is in the mind, the 32 Wonders of Wisdom are the pillars upon which the Creation shaped its own world. The secrets of the 32 Minds is presented here as a preface to the Book of Creation. Aside from the 32 paths offered by the Angel Zadkiel, this interpretation is in fact a scientific description of how, according to Rabbi Sa'adia Gaon, the 32 Forces formed Man's head and mind, as well as his other parts".

"THE PAINTING OF BOOK OF CREATION"

"Using the Book of Creation in its entirety, without omitting so much as a single letter, the artist Challenges the unknown; nothing is quoted, there is no poetic ascription. The material lives and breaths by virtue of being whole; lives and is therefore subject to burial. Erez has addressed subjects relating to death in his previous work, such as in the Four Horsemen of St. John's Apocalypse, and in the "Boundary Between Painting and Poetry" in which he explores a series of texts dealing with death, including Alfred Jarie's vicious Ubu Roi , and poems of the Israeli poet Avot Yeshurun and Rony Somek about preparing to meet the Angel of Death and the tragic death of a young girl, respectively.

The subject was also the theme of his exhibit "Poison over Amsterdam" which commemorates the El Al plane crash in this city.

The Egyptian god Toth, otherwise known as Hermes Trismagistus wrote: "Life comes from Death, and death from life". The Al Chemical view attempts to clarify the unknown by refuting the existence of a final death, that after which there is nothing. That is to say "buried unto life, and born unto death", or in Heraclitus' mystical dictum: We live the deaths of the immortals and they live ours'.The same uninterrupted life , that same infinity that created the world by means of letters and wondrous paths appears here as a living scientific text. The artist challenges the unknown in his desire to demystify the unknown , death , which exists only through the fear of infinity, fear of the never- ending,with no closure, with no beginning. The artist challenges the unknown by leaving it intact thereby giving it life. It is like hovering over one's own grave knowing that one does not have to die over and over again. This optimism is reflected in a Book of Creation that reveals the exemplary order and efficient wisdom of those same obscure forces that created life".

Efi Carmel wanted me to write at this introduction that he didn't invent these words, he got them ("Kibel" in hebrew from the word "Kabbalah"), and he passes them on. Ramat Hasharon 1996.

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