  The general problem, of course, was that, on its surface at least, the doctrine of the sefirot seems incompatible with God’s unity. Rabbi Azriel of Gerona (d. 1238) addressed this issue in his “Explanation of the Ten Sefirot.” In the first place, the higher sefirot, at least, have always existed “in potentia in the Eyn Sof before they were actualized” (Azriel, 93, my emphasis) Moreover, because “the receptor [the sefirah] … unite[s] with the bestower [ultimately, the En Sof] into one power, … the two are really one.” So the answer to our difficulty is apparently this. The emanation of the sefirot is compatible with God’s unity because (unlike created beings) the sefirot are contained within the En Sof itself in a potential or undifferentiated form, and because (since their power is the power of the En Sof), there is ultimately only one power. Thus, “no emanation is radiated forth except to proclaim the unity within the Eyn Sof” (Azriel, 93–95). Or as Rabbi Moshe Haim Luzzatto claimed (Gellman 2013, 46) in the first half of the eighteenth century, “the sefirot are not separate from the one who emanates, for they are like the flame connected to the coal, and all is one, a unity that has within it no division.” Whether considerations like these fully resolve the problem is a moot question.