Introduction to
Sefer Gan HaMelekh
Come and see, friends.
There are lights that descend openly into the world, and there are lights guarded in concealment until the hour appointed for their revelation. Their hiddenness does not weaken them. It preserves them. They rest within the chambers of Torah until the generation arrives in which their radiance must again be drawn forth for the sake of the many.
So it was with this holy work.
For centuries, Sefer Gan HaMelekh—“The Garden of the King”—remained hidden in manuscript. Its gates were closed, its pathways known only in fragments, its voice preserved in handwritten leaves. Yet the garden was never barren. Its roots remained planted in the soil of the hidden Torah. Now, as the words of the divine kabbalist Rabbi Naftali ben Yaakov Elchanan Hertz Bacharach, of blessed memory, are brought forth again, the reader does not merely open an old book. He stands at the entrance of one of the concealed chambers of the King.
The prophecy of Daniel stands over this labor: “And the enlightened shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who bring the many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever” (Daniel 12:3). The maskilim, the enlightened ones, do not keep their radiance for themselves alone. They draw hidden light into speech, study, and awakening, so that the many may become wise. In that spirit, this edition has been prepared: that the holy soul of Rabbi Naftali may shine again through his words, that the wisdom of the King’s garden may reach those near and far—even, as the sages said, those beyond the Sambatyon River—and that the study of the inner Torah may assist, in its measure, in the hastening of redemption and the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shekhinah.
This introduction is written from within the received tradition of the kabbalists, for readers who approach the Zohar and the wisdom of the secrets of Torah with faith, reverence, and expectation. It does not treat the hidden Torah as a mere object of historical curiosity, nor does it undertake here to adjudicate modern critical debates concerning the Zohar. It speaks from within the traditional world in which the inner Torah is holy, redemptive, and alive. At the same time, reverence demands precision. A sacred text must be introduced carefully: its author, its transmission, its manuscripts, its printed basis, and the limits of the present edition must be stated plainly.
Before entering the garden, the reader should know the path by which this work has come to us: the master who planted it, the larger project to which it belongs, the manuscript tradition that preserved it, the modern scholarly edition that brought it into print, and the purpose of the present edition, which now establishes a new stage of transmission through nikud and close English interlinear translation.
Rabbi Naftali Hertz Bacharach and Emek HaMelekh
Rabbi Naftali ben Yaakov Elchanan Hertz Bacharach is known chiefly as the author of Emek HaMelekh, first printed in Amsterdam in 5408 / 1648. That work became one of the great channels through which the teachings of the Ari, especially as transmitted through the path associated with Rabbi Yisrael Sarug, entered the wider world of European Kabbalah. Teachings that might otherwise have remained confined to smaller circles became known throughout the Jewish world through Emek HaMelekh. Whether one approaches Rabbi Naftali’s work through the historical transmission of Rabbi Yisrael Sarug or through the living tradition of the kabbalists, there can be little doubt that Emek HaMelekh became one of the principal vessels through which the mysteries of the Ari spread throughout the Diaspora.
Yet Emek HaMelekh was not the full measure of Rabbi Naftali’s vision. In his own introduction to that work, he describes a broader literary undertaking and names Gan HaMelekh as its second part: a commentary on the holy Zohar. This point is essential. Gan HaMelekh is not a detached composition, nor a later gathering of unrelated notes. It is the Zoharic gate of Rabbi Naftali’s larger project.
The relationship between the two works may be expressed through their names. Emek HaMelekh is the valley; Gan HaMelekh is the garden. Emek HaMelekh unfolds the order of emanation—Ein Sof, Tzimtzum, the supernal garment, the lights, the vessels, the World of Tohu, the breaking, and the restoration. Gan HaMelekh enters these same mysteries through the language and sequence of the Zohar. One work arranges the doctrine according to the architecture of the worlds; the other listens to the words of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and opens the secrets concealed within them.
Rabbi Naftali himself gives the key. Since the Torah of the King of the universe contains “a garden of portions,” he called the second portion of Emek HaMelekh by the name Gan HaMelekh, intending that the discourses of the Zohar be explained there, each matter in its proper place and manner. In Emek HaMelekh, the reader is brought into the ordered structure of the mysteries. In Gan HaMelekh, the reader is brought into the living speech of the Zohar itself.
For Rabbi Naftali, the holy Zohar is not a book of ornament, allegory, or distant speculation. It is the inner faith of Israel: the Torah of Truth speaking through the language of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. The King, the rose, the first light, the earth that “was” tohu and bohu, and the enlightened ones who shine are not poetic images alone. They are openings into the hidden order of creation: Atzilut and Beri’ah, the World of Tohu, the supernal garment, primordial delight, and the redemption planted from the beginning. In Gan HaMelekh, Rabbi Naftali follows the Zohar inward, as one enters the palace of the King.
The Author and His Larger Vision
The life of Rabbi Naftali is only partly known. He identifies himself as Naftali Hertz, son of the Gaon Rabbi Yaakov Elchanan, of Bacharach in Ashkenaz, born in the holy community of Frankfurt. The name Bacharach recalls the ancient town on the Rhine, associated with Jewish settlement from early generations. The biographical tradition records that Rabbi Naftali descended from Rabbeinu Gershom, the Light of the Exile, and further relates that he spent time in the Land of Israel, studied Torah in Tzfat, and heard teachings connected with the disciples of the Ari. These traditions must be handled with care, yet they form the received portrait of a man who pursued the hidden wisdom with exceptional thirst.
His own testimony presents his knowledge as the fruit of toil, seclusion, and inward revelation. He speaks of preparing secrets “in my poverty” through great labor and awesome solitude. Elsewhere, concerning the revelation of the 231 Gates, he refers to what he attained with limited intellect amid fear and awe that fell upon him in a vision of the night. Such words reveal the atmosphere of his writing. Rabbi Naftali does not present himself merely as an editor of inherited materials. He writes as one who trembled before the secrets and drew them forth through poverty, labor, solitude, and vision.
His larger project was vast. In the introduction to Emek HaMelekh, Rabbi Naftali refers to approximately ten compositions founded upon the golden pillars of the wisdom of the hidden Torah. The first is Emek HaMelekh. The second is Gan HaMelekh, a commentary on the Zohar. He also names works devoted to Torah, Prophets, and Writings; to the aggadot of the Talmud; to the Mishnah; to the commandments; to the gates of holiness and repentance; to the rectifications and adornments of the Shekhinah; to prayer; and to the language of the Zohar itself.
Alongside this larger literary vision, another work transmitted under his name deserves mention: Sefer Tikkunei Shabbat. Its attribution to Rabbi Naftali is supported not by an early printed title page, but by manuscript evidence, including the Paris manuscript, BnF héb. 876, an internal ascription in that manuscript, and the report of Yehuda Liebes that a damaged Bodleian witness still preserves enough of the introduction to identify the author. It was later incorporated into the Jerusalem 2003 reprint of Emek HaMelekh as Sefer Tikkunei Shabbat, brought out from manuscript.
This work reveals another side of Rabbi Naftali’s sacred architecture. Tikkunei Shabbat is not a Sabbath prayer anthology or a practical manual of customs. The surviving evidence points to a compact, chaptered mystical treatise that uses the sanctity of Shabbat to unfold teachings about letters, worlds, angels, faith, impurity, redemption, and the ascent of the Shekhinah. It belongs to the same Bacharachian synthesis as Emek HaMelekh and Gan HaMelekh: Sarugian Lurianism joined with older kabbalistic, pre-Vitalian, and non-Lurianic materials.
Whether all of Rabbi Naftali’s projected writings survived, or survived in full, remains a separate question. What matters here is the scale of the vision. Gan HaMelekh belongs to a comprehensive attempt to read Torah, Zohar, mitzvot, prayer, Shabbat, aggadah, and the worlds themselves through the language of the Torah of Truth.
The Transmission of the Ari’s Kabbalah
Rabbi Naftali’s work stands within a larger debate over the transmission of the Kabbalah of the Ari. One approach, associated especially with the line of Rabbi Chaim Vital and those who followed him, restricted authoritative study to the writings transmitted through that channel. Another preserved and used teachings transmitted through Rabbi Yisrael Sarug and the kabbalists who received from him, especially in Italy and Ashkenaz. From Rabbi Naftali’s side, the matter is seen through the urgency of revelation: the hidden Torah was not to remain sealed when souls were thirsting and vessels had been prepared.
This historical setting explains the influence of Emek HaMelekh. For approximately two hundred years, the full printed form of Etz Chaim was not widely available outside the Land of Israel, and many writings associated with the “Eight Gates” appeared in print only much later. Communities outside the Land of Israel often drew from the teachings of Rabbi Yisrael Sarug, Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano, and works such as Emek HaMelekh. Later rabbinic and kabbalistic voices—including Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin, Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, the Leshem, and Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag—defended the importance of this stream of transmission. The printed Emek HaMelekh also bore approbations from major rabbinic figures, among them Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, author of Tosafot Yom Tov; Rabbi Yehoshua, author of Meginei Shelomo; Rabbi Yehudah, son-in-law of the Bach; and Rabbi Shabbethai Sheftel Horowitz, son of the Shelah.
This setting is crucial for understanding Gan HaMelekh. Though it remained hidden in manuscript, it belongs to the same authorial and spiritual world as Emek HaMelekh. It is the Zoharic face of Rabbi Naftali’s project. Here one sees not only a systematizer of Lurianic doctrine, but a reader of Rashbi’s words. The controversies surrounding Emek HaMelekh sharpen the importance of Gan HaMelekh, for here the question is not only what teachings Rabbi Naftali transmitted, but how he read the Zohar itself.
The Surviving Work
The second part, named by Rabbi Naftali himself, did not come to print in his generation. Unlike Emek HaMelekh, which entered the public world through the Amsterdam press, Gan HaMelekh remained in manuscript form for hundreds of years. It survived in partial witnesses, sometimes under its proper name and sometimes under more general descriptions, such as a commentary on selected discourses of the Zohar.
The surviving Gan HaMelekh is not the complete work as Rabbi Naftali may have envisioned it. It is a substantial but incomplete remnant. It does not contain a full commentary on the entire Zohar. What survives is a series of selected discourses, chiefly from the opening mysteries of Bereshit and from the beginning of the Zohar’s introduction. We do not possess the whole garden, but we possess a true path within it.
The surviving work opens with Beresh hormanuta de-malka, “In the Head, by decree of the King,” from Zohar I, daf 15a–b. It continues with Bereshit: bara shit, “Bereshit: He created six,” from Zohar I, daf 15b; with Ve-ha-maskilim yazhiru, “And the enlightened shall shine”; with the teaching that every mention of Shlomo in Shir HaShirim refers to the King to whom peace belongs; with teachings on the radiance of the firmament and the celestial palanquin; with the extended mystery of Ve-ha-aretz hayetah tohu va-vohu, “And the earth was tohu and bohu”; with Yehi ohr, “Let there be light”; and finally with the discourse of the rose, Ke-shoshanah bein ha-chochim, from the opening of the Zohar’s introduction. These are not random selections. They are the first gates of creation.
The Manuscript Witnesses
The principal manuscript underlying the modern critical edition is Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Opp. 417, identified in Neubauer’s catalogue as no. 1856 and in the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts as no. 18456. It is a seventeenth-century Ashkenazic manuscript, preserving the work on dafim 1a–76b, with an additional numbering of the dafim as 1a–74b. The critical edition treats it as the base witness because various indications suggest that it may have been copied from Rabbi Naftali’s autograph, or from an exemplar very close to it. It is therefore best described carefully as a near-autograph witness: not certainly the author’s own handwriting, but a manuscript standing unusually close to the authorial source.
Attached to the Oxford manuscript is a later title page, apparently added after the original copying. It names the work Sefer Gan HaMelekh and describes it as a commentary on selected discourses from the Book of the Zohar, gathered from Emek HaMelekh. It bears the date 5472, corresponding to 1711/1712. The same date appears in the second part of the manuscript, where Sefer HaTemunah was copied, together with the name of the copyist, Yitzchak son of Elikim of the Weisna family. This later scribal frame is not necessarily the author’s own formulation, but it is precious evidence of reception: the work was remembered as Gan HaMelekh, as a Zohar commentary, and as belonging to the world of Emek HaMelekh.
Three additional manuscript witnesses stand behind the critical edition. The first is New York University Library, MS 8.882, IMHM no. 41509, an eighteenth-century Ashkenazic manuscript, dafim 1a–40a, lacking the introduction found in the Oxford manuscript. The second witness comes from a private collection; it too is written in Ashkenazic script, and its dafim are disordered. In it, Gan HaMelekh appears under the descriptive title “Commentary on Several Discourses of the Zohar,” across discontinuous ranges of dafim. The third is Jerusalem MS 8°417, IMHM no. 281B, an eighteenth-century Ashkenazic manuscript, dafim 30a–87a. This Jerusalem witness had been known in scholarship as a commentary on the Zohar to Parashat Bereshit according to the Kabbalah of the Ari, but had not previously been properly identified as a witness to Gan HaMelekh.
These witnesses show both fragility and faithfulness. One manuscript lacks the introduction. Another preserves the text in disordered dafim. Another was known under a general description rather than under its proper name. The book did not circulate broadly in print; it survived narrowly in manuscript. Yet what survived was enough for the gate to open again.
The 2023 Critical Edition and the Present Edition
The modern recovery of this work was advanced decisively by the 2023 Magnes Press edition, Gan ha-Melekh: Zoharic Commentaries by Rabbi Naftali Hertz Bacharach (Author of Emeq ha-Melekh): Annotated Critical Edition and Introduction, by Jonatan M. Benarroch and Yehuda Liebes. That edition brought the surviving manuscript witnesses into the modern scholarly world and made Gan HaMelekh available in annotated printed form.
The present edition does not present itself as a new critical edition in the technical sense, nor as a mere reproduction of the 2023 printed text. It establishes a new stage in the transmission of Gan HaMelekh: a vocalized and interlinear reader’s edition. Its purpose is to bring the reader close to the Hebrew and Aramaic words themselves, with nikud to guide the reading and English arranged phrase by phrase beneath the original. The vowels are not a claim about the manuscripts, which were transmitted without vowelization, but an editorial aid for study. The interlinear translation serves the same purpose: to open the text without carrying the reader away from its sacred language.
This edition does not reconstruct what has not survived, nor does it invent the missing paths of the garden. It presents the surviving Gan HaMelekh as the precious remnant that has reached us, prepared for the beginning student who needs a path into the text and for the learned reader who seeks precision.
The Inner Teaching of Gan HaMelekh
At the heart of Gan HaMelekh stand several master concepts, especially sha‘ashu‘a, delight, and malbush, garment. These are not decorative images. They are foundations of Rabbi Naftali’s reading of creation. Sha‘ashu‘a points to the first inward delight, the primordial awakening by which the will to emanate is stirred. Malbush points to the supernal garment, woven of divine light and the letters of Torah, through which the Infinite becomes related to measure, world, and revelation. Through these ideas, Rabbi Naftali explains Tzimtzum, the impression of light that remains, the emergence of the worlds, the World of Tohu, the power of judgment, and the arousal from below through the souls and deeds of the righteous.
For the beginning reader, the matter may be stated simply. Before the worlds are revealed, there is the Infinite, beyond all grasp. Creation begins not as a mechanical event, but as an awakening of divine will and delight. That awakening gives rise to a garment, a holy structure through which light may be revealed without overwhelming the worlds. Torah, letters, righteous souls, angels, palaces, and worlds all belong to this mystery.
For the advanced reader, Gan HaMelekh is a rare witness to the meeting of Lurianic Kabbalah, the Sarugian tradition, Zoharic exegesis, Cordoverian themes, older Ashkenazic esoteric materials, and symbolic worlds associated with Metatron, Orpani’el, the High Priest, the Bird’s Nest, the supernal garment, and the garments of redemption. It is synthetic, but not merely compilatory. It gathers, arranges, and charges its sources with religious drama.
The messianic note in Gan HaMelekh is essential. In Rabbi Naftali’s thought, the beginning of creation and the end of redemption are not separate. The first light already contains the promise of the final light. The garment of the King is bound to the garments of vengeance and salvation. The souls of the righteous awaken supernal delight. The hidden palace of the Messiah is bound to the mysteries of the Zohar, the Garden of Eden, the Bird’s Nest, and the restoration of Israel. The world is not merely created once in the past. It is continually drawn toward its repair.
The reader should therefore enter with two forms of attention. The first is the attention of the scholar: to manuscripts, witnesses, dafim, transmission, terminology, historical setting, and the layered traditions of Lurianic Kabbalah. The second is the attention of the seeker: to the voice of the holy Zohar, to the greatness of Rabbi Naftali, to the mystery of the King, and to the garden that remained hidden for centuries. When these two forms of attention are joined, the text may be read as it deserves: carefully, faithfully, and with awe.
Gan HaMelekh is a fragment, but it is not a ruin. It is not the whole garden as Rabbi Naftali may have planned it, but it is a true path into that garden. Its words allow us to hear again how a seventeenth-century divine kabbalist read the opening of the Zohar: not as an abstract beginning, but as the unfolding of the King’s own delight, garment, judgment, light, and redemption.
Through this study, the prophecy of Daniel returns to its force: the enlightened shine, the many are made wise, and the brightness of the firmament begins to illuminate the world below. May this edition help return the voice of Rabbi Naftali ben Yaakov Elchanan Hertz Bacharach, of blessed memory, to the house of study. May it open the hidden Torah to those near and far. May its study add light below and awaken mercy above, contributing in its measure to the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shekhinah. And may the Garden of the King be opened again before all who seek the inner Torah in truth.