Todros Taroç (al-Taras) Azriel ibn Menahem ibn Ibrahim al-Tarās (Arabic: عزريل بن مناحيم بن ابراهيم التاراس Azrēyl bin Mināḥīm ben Ibrāhim āl-Tārās; Hebrew: עזריאל בן מנחם בן אברהם אלתראס ʿÁzrīyʾēl ben Mənáḥēm ben ʾAḇrāhām al-Taras; c. 1160 – c. 1238) also known as Azriel of Girona was the founder of speculative Kabbalah and the Gironian Kabbalist school.
In his early years, Azriel moved to southern France, where he studied under Isaac the Blind.
He laid the foundation for the idea of Ein-Sof, by stating that God can have no desire, thought, word, or action, emphasized by it the negation of any attribute.
"[4] In order to solve the problem of creation, Azriel recourses to the theory of emanation, which he develops as follows: The universe, with all its manifestations, was latent in the essence of the En-Sof, in which, notwithstanding its infinite variety, it formed an absolute unit, just like the various sparks and colors that proceed from the one and indivisible flame potential in the coal.
The effluence was effectuated through successive gradations from the intellectual world to the material, from the indefinite to the definite.
This material world, being limited and not perfect, could not proceed directly from the En-Sof; neither could it be independent of God.
But this fact of emanation does not imply a gradation in the En-Sof, the flame of which is capable of igniting an indefinite number of lights.