Solomon ibn Gabirol

A poet of Málaga and Zaragoza — orphaned, sickly, famously difficult — who wrote both the fiercest Hebrew verse of his century and a work of pure philosophy, the Fons Vitae, in which God is never mentioned by any Jewish name and no scripture is quoted. Between the source and the world he set the Will: not an overflow, but a choosing.

The bridge. Emanation arrives in his hands as Greek physics and leaves them willed — and a world that is chosen can be addressed, where a world that merely overflows cannot. That single move is most of what makes the Tree Jewish rather than Greek.