Etz Chaim by Rabbi Chaim Vital: what it is, structure and how it was transmitted

October 15, 2026

Etz Chaim (עץ חיים), “The Tree of Life,” is the work in which Rabbi Chaim Vital set out the Kabbalah of the Arizal. It is the great corpus of Lurianic Kabbalah, and its history is almost as eventful as its author’s: different versions, manuscripts that resurface in a genizah, editions prepared by different hands, and a title that today is used for related but not identical works.

Quick facts

What it is

When the Arizal died in 1572, he had written almost nothing. All his teaching was in the memory and in the notebooks of his disciples. Rabbi Chaim Vital, the chief of them, devoted more than twenty years to writing it down, arranging it and explaining it. That body of work is known as Etz Chaim.

An eventful history

According to the biography of Rabbi Chaim Vital:

• A first version remained in Damascus in the hands of his son Shmuel, who for many years did not allow it to be copied.
• The fragments of the version that Vital arranged in Jerusalem appeared, apparently soon after his death, in a genizah in the city and were recovered by Rabbi Abraham Azulai and his companions.
• From those materials, Rabbi Meir Poppers prepared the edition that he finished in 1653 and that is the basis of later editions.

There is also the already famous episode of the notebooks which, according to tradition, were copied en masse while Vital was ill: see his biography.

A title that designates several things

“Etz Chaim” is used rather broadly, and it does not always designate the same text. It is worth distinguishing:

• Vital’s work, in its different versions.
• Poppers’s compilation, which divided the Lurianic corpus into three blocks known as Derech Etz Chaim, Peri Etz Chaim and Nof Etz Chaim.
• Shemoneh Shearim (“Eight Gates”): the recension attributed to his son Shmuel Vital, in which the material was rearranged into eight gates. It was printed in the 1780s and came to be known by that title.

Specialists remind us that these designations overlap, and for the detail of the publishing history they refer to the specialized bibliography, in particular Yosef Avivi, Kabbalat HaAri.

First printing

Bibliographic catalogs place the first printing of Etz Chaim in Korets, in 1782, after circulating in manuscript for more than two centuries. Sources disagree about who edited it: some mention Rabbi Natan Shapira for the first half and Rabbi Meir Poppers for the second; others attribute the edition to Poppers. A later Korets edition, of 1785, incorporated more than a hundred notes and additions. One of them, which dates the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai to Lag BaOmer, passed into all later editions.

What it contains

Etz Chaim sets out the system of Lurianic Kabbalah. It starts from the Ein Sof and from the “contraction” (tzimtzum), and describes the order of the emanation of the worlds and of the sefirot, as well as the breaking of the vessels and the repair (tikkun) as the task of man.

How it relates to Shaarei Kedusha

Etz Chaim is the work that Vital reserved for the few. Shaarei Kedusha is its gateway: a book of ethics and conduct that prepares a person before approaching Kabbalah. The author himself mentions Etz Chaim in the note on the fourth part of Shaarei Kedusha: there he says that he wrote in it “several yichudim and wonderful paths.” See the guide to the gates.

Frequently asked questions

Who wrote the Etz Chaim?

Rabbi Chaim Vital, from what he heard from the Arizal. The standard edition was prepared by Rabbi Meir Poppers.

Is it the same as Shemoneh Shearim?

Not exactly. Shemoneh Shearim is a recension attributed to Shmuel Vital, the author’s son, who rearranged the material.

When was it printed?

Bibliographic catalogs place it in Korets in 1782, although it circulated for two centuries in manuscript.

Can it be read without prior knowledge?

It is a specialized work. For an introduction to the ethics and conduct that precede it, Vital himself wrote Shaarei Kedusha.