Etz Chaim עץ חיים

One cannot say "Luria wrote Etz Chaim": Luria wrote almost nothing. "Chaim Vital wrote it" is inexact too. Vital recorded what he heard; Etz Chaim is an editing of those records, and there are two editings.

Shemonah She'arim, the "Eight Gates," was assembled in Damascus by his son Shmuel Vital: the Gate of Introductions, the Gate of Intentions, the Gate of Reincarnations and the rest. By it the Sephardi kabbalists learn. The second was arranged in Jerusalem in 1650 by Rabbi Meir Poppers, who divided the material into Derech Etz Chaim — the theory, Pri Etz Chaim — the intentions accompanying the commandments, and Nof Etz Chaim. It is this that is printed under the name Etz Chaim from Zolkiew 1772 onward, and this that the Ashkenazi and Chasidic world knows.

The content is a revolution in kabbalah. Creation begins not with an outflow of light but with tzimtzum: the Infinite contracts, making room. Into the vessels appointed to receive the light, the light does not fit — shevirat ha-kelim, the breaking of the vessels, and the shards with their holy sparks fall down into the kelipot. Hence the world as it is, and hence man's task: tikkun, the gathering of the sparks, the mending. Every commandment acquires a cosmic sense.

There is a third line as well — Israel Sarug, who called himself Luria's disciple though he was not: he worked from manuscripts and added his own. Through him Lurianic kabbalah reached Italy, Germany and Amsterdam — so Europe first came to know Luria not through Vital.